Sunday, June 14, 2009

Summer Fever, Senior Fever

Aah. Chamomile tea - very relaxing. Just what I needed following a crazy week of downpouring rain, late to all-nighters, and utmost exhaustion to complete my second assignment of my Communication Consulting and Training course. So now, as my brain unwinds and... ick, headache... I can actually write for fun : ). This past week's spin cycle is summer plans or something to with summer.... ya really tired - which is good. I have to present in the morning.

Anyways... my summer, well as you can see is school, school, and did I say school? Since I had surgery back in March (which it has been 3 months and I'm officially healed! yay!) the timing was perfect so that I finished one class, went into "spring break", and moved my 2nd class of the semester to right now.

For the past two summers I have physcially gone to Gonzaga University campus in Spokane, Washington and loved it! I missed going this summer and staying at the B&B five blocks away.... I have found doing a class during summer is difficult when it's a full 8 weeks, and I don't go to Spokane. But as of today I am half-done! Two assignments down, two to go! And it's only getting more intense! You parents, I don't know how you do it, but you're amazing!

The other thing that's making it hard... this is my second to last class.... that's right 1 more and I'M DONE. D-O-N-E, DONE! No more acadamia as a student for me.... I don't want to hit the bottom of the scale shown here. It's scary how close to the "socks with sandals" area I've been... (if you didn't look at that scale, do so now....)


So I have summer fever and senior fever combined... plus I'm currently without employment, so ya. Great times.

Altough here's what Merlyn and I just designed for my assignement I just finished (yes it will take years to do):

This one is a sketch done to scale by Merlyn of the current layout of our yard.



















This one is our xeriscape design for entire yard.
Whew! What a pain to get pics on here.... grrr... anyways it's exciting. But we're hoping to at least begin with:
Painting the house, rebuiding the porch covering, new gutters, redo the grade around the house so water flows away from instead of towards, new side door complete with storm door, new bathroom window, take down those blasted weedy trees, and celebrate our 5th anniversary in August... while living life in between.... whew!

Night ya'll that's all folks.... need sleeeeeeeeeeeeep - and hopefully can get up early enough to shower and prepare for my presenation.

--Ecologista

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Help with Education

Hi all,

We could really use your help in anyway - especially if you could donate even just $10 to help raise awareness that Food Allergies are very real for a lot of people - myself included. I'm still learning a lot too!

As a reminder I created a team - Hall of Allergies - for the Oct 3rd, 2009 Food Allergy Awareness Walk here in Utah. So please visit our team page at:

http://www.foodallergywalk.org/site/TR/2009Walk/2009Design?pg=team&fr_id=1380&team_id=40370

Thanks and God Bless!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Our Story

Since I have some time I'm going to do what Evenspor did here. I'm going to do the same, and tell you our story for this past week's Spin Cycle: "I Love You".

It was my second year at Utah State University's College of Natural Resources (CNR). I had moved into the top floor (3rd floor) of the 'natural resource (NR)' floor in the campus housing in between the Engineering and Business buildings, and across from the new library and CNR. It was nice to be right there, pretty much on campus, where you go to class - but what I didn't anticipate was Merlyn.

Not everyone - in fact half of the twenty-four(+/-) women and men that lived on the third floor were not NR majors... It was fall 2003. I was meeting my new neighbors and one in particular was tall, and somewhat handsome (of course at the time I was NOT interested in dating, in the least bit - I wanted to stay as far away from the dating nonsense as I possibly could....)

Sidenote: For those of you unfamiliar with how housing works, there were four apartments per floor that could house up to six people each. Two apartments were for women, two were for men - so it was "co-ed" Utah style. (I say Utah style, because you would rarely find men and women in the same apartment - unlike one of my friends' place in Nevada. I have also lived with men in a house during the summer - at least the few that were single were... uninteresting...)

Right, so we were all friends, yada, yada, college life is great and hard. Round October, the tall man, who told me a nickname then had to prove his real name as Merlyn, started to show interest in me (although I honestly had no idea, except this weird sensation that he liked me - it was like walking into the sunshine after being in the cool of the shade - it really freaked me out!)

Time passed, and when the first Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was out, our student government was able to do a showing at the Kent Concert Hall. Well, Merlyn, being a man interested in the movie, came into the Quinney Library where I worked one day with tickets in hand to ask me to join him. I said sure, why not, I'd like to see the movie - hey it was free (really it was free, even for him)! On my way to chem lab the day of the movie an odd idea hit me - "Does that mean I'm going on a date?" It seemed weird, but I guess it was.... sort of. We went as friends and nieghbors - but he began hanging around me more and more.....

He later amitted that he was thinking about getting back with an old girlfriend, but then became interested in my girlfriend Jeweles next door. He was shy - and everytime he worked up his courage to go ask her out, he happened to notice a lovely short red-head. So weirdly enough my name kept pushing Jeweles out.... I talked to her about it, and she said she wasn't interested in him - she really liked him, but just as a friend. (She married the man that was Merlyn's roomie - it's funny we both met our future spouses' and didn't even know it... none of us did.)

I liked him - er, I wasn't sure of these "feelings" I was having. They really frightened me. My dreams never really involved a man - at least not until after I was graduated from college and had a "real" life, with a career I enjoyed and traveled the world.... So yes, I was afraid of an early ball and chain.... if that's what you want to call it. I did everything I could consciencoulsy or unconsciencously to see if he would stick around or hopefully give up on me...

And yet somehow we became - gasp - boyfriend/girlfriend in mid-to-late November.

One dinner date I had drank an orginial A&W rootbeer, well, he insisted on opening my door, and with him looking down at me from his stance of over 6' and me at my just over 5' I let all out right in his face! *BELCH* *AHH* *BLUSH* *LAUGH* I'm sure those in the long line of the drive thru heard it! It was LOUD. He looked at me, and I believe he said, "Um, smells like rootbeer." (I'm still laughing about it to this day. Hey he bought me dinner and the rootbeer.)

Well, obviously nothing seemed to deter him. In March of 2004, unexpectedly (even by him - as our whole relationship-thing, was unexpected) he proposed to me (no ring, I was very picky about being able to design it - which I did do)... I was going to wait a month and tell him no - I'd rather date longer & maybe serve a church mission - but I only lasted a week and here we are 4 years and 10 months later into our marriage. We were married August 2004.

Merlyn I Love You!