Robins, black raspberries, and a very big storm

What do you do when you're tired and just want to lie on the couch but you want to feel productive beyond shifting through inane internet babble? Apparently I decide it's a good time to write a post.

I love watching robins take baths (or avoid them as the teenaged ones do) and various birds drink from the makeshift basin (tupperware container) we have on the patio. It was a happy accident that I had left it out there with water in it once and noticed the birds appreciated it.

Oh, and the garden is still mostly green. There is the tiniest sweet pepper and cucumber, neither of which  I don't think will actually grow up, but the tomatoes are doing pretty well. And potato plants seem to be thriving. I finally moved the lavender from the little container it originally came in into a little pot for each plant but they had started to whither really fast; they were doing quite well earlier.

There was a huge storm Monday morning. Colin woke me up, pointing out the window. I sat up, saw that there was sheets of rain pouring down the window, and fell back into bed hoping for more sleep. "Oh, that's nice," was about all I could muster. The power in our house apparently went out for less than an hour that morning.

We had considered going south to Deerfield that day but decided against it. We went about doing our usual home-bound activities. By mid-afternoon, we'd decided to go run a couple errands and hang out in a coffee shop in an area usually about 20-30 minutes from our house. While driving through our town, we were intrigued by the lack of lights - no stoplights were working and all the businesses looked black and shuttered up. Of course, that didn't ward us off at all. In retrospect it would have been a good time to turn around; we ended up sitting in traffic for three hours. And only being able to get one little thing at a hardware store and grabbing some coffee to go. The cafe was jam packed with people on laptops and everything else except the hospital seemed to be shut down. We went so far we saw the lake.

Tuesday was really not much better; I went to get some milk and other food stuffs at grocery store in the opposite direction that we took the day before. First, I had to pay for gas with cash. Then the store was closed. So I went to another store, which was open but had no milk. Had nothing that usually is kept cold or frozen, in fact.

There are trees and branches down everywhere. I left half an hour earlier than usual for my shift at work this morning anticipating bad traffic but it was actually just fine. However, I learned that some coworkers still don't have power at home, including one who doesn't have running water either. There's apparently something like 100,000 people who probably won't get power back until Saturday.

What was the storm damage to my garden? One unripe tomato ripped off by the wind. We were just plain lucky.

...

I went for a walk near the college today and stumbled across some black raspberries. There was quite a lot of them and it didn't look like anyone or anything had eaten them. They were yummy.

The wedding is in two weeks and one day. We've gotten so much done but it feels like there's still so much to do, despite how low key, small, and simple we're keeping it. I don't want to imagine the headache organizing a more normal wedding would be - ick.

I'm feeling a little more awake now so I'm going to go get more things checked off the wedding to do list.

Quick! Stuff about Halloween before I snooze and Nanowrimo starts!

Okay, I'm really tired because I didn't sleep well last night since I didn't feel all that great. Fine today though, which is bizarre. We finished the pumpkins in time for the hordes of kids who came to our doorstep clamoring for candy. We tried to not eat too much of it ourselves but I've eaten more than I have in probably a month or two. Which is still not really that much ...

Just so you realize, these pumpkins maybe not the best you'll find on the internet but it was the first time we did something other than hacking out a regular grinning jack o lantern with a kitchen knife. I created the designs and made the initial cuts. I also scraped out the guts and seeds while Colin did a lot of cutting and also scraping the second pumpkin's inner wall. We attempted at first to try using a dremel power tool but it didn't quite work (it coats *everything* in the vicinity in pumpkin goo), so we switched to the trusty speedball cutting tools. Also, the first one was the crow on a fence and we didn't realize we should scoop the wall from the inside to make it thinner so that's why it's cut so deep. So, without further ado, our glorious pumpkins:

And tomorrow, Nanowrimo!

Wavy hair

Every once in awhile, I get bored with my thick straight brown hair. I do love the color, with all the different tints (mostly gold and a hint of red), the really thick almost black strands and the really light almost invisible blonde strands. But overall, it's just plain brown. I've never dyed it, only done highlights once and even then I was pressured into it. I did like the red tint but was glad to get to grow out completely so my mom would stop nagging me about "touching it up" because it looked weird (this was while in high school). Anyway, like I was saying, every once in awhile, I get bored with it. Sometimes that involves a haircut (like when I cut it reeeeally short a couple summers ago - Colin didn't really care for it) but other times it just styling it differently.

Last night while we were watching an episode of Smallville, I made my hair up in two French braids and slept with them in. Since it was an off day for washing my hair (I usually wash it every other day, often shampooing twice and conditioning once - it's a pain in the butt to dry because it's so thick, but I need to do it before putting my aids in), I just made sure it didn't get soaked and even then I blow dried it while still in braids.  Then I took the braids out and it was nice and wavy. I don't have any hair spray (I did but I used it so infrequently it went bad before most of the bottle was used) so it'll eventually straighten back out as the day wears on. That is, if I don't get exasperated with having it down and put it up in a pony tail like I almost always wear it. I took some pictures but it's hard to take pictures of your own dark hair to show waves and to not show a scary face.

Kind of a long detailed way of saying "I was bored so I made my hair wavy. Here's a pic."

Sometimes, I find myself staring at wavy and curly hair because it reminds me so much of waves and rivers and trees and wind. I don't know how else to describe it. I just get mesmerized by the beauty of it. Does anyone else feel this way or is it just me?

Recently, Colin has been giving me presents. He'd gotten a bunch of stuff from thinkgeek.com, and being the cute boy he is, he couldn't help but also order things not only geeky but cute to give me. The first one was what is supposed to be a grasshopper but I much prefer to think of it as a cricket. I made and uploaded a video of it in action, because words don't quite do it justice. You can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDLEKNTCIek

A few days later, he gave me something quite different. It consisted of a cup, dome-top, saucer bottom, weird dirt pod thing, and two lima beans. The cup was covered in pink and purple hearts and said "I love you." Then Colin pointed out that the beans have "I love you" stamped on themselves also. He wouldn't let me see the back of the instructions, so I suspected there was more to the surprise. It was really cool to watch the really hard dirt pod soak up the water and expand into mushy diggable dirt. Then we buried the beans, put the dome cover on top, and set it on the windowsill in the kitchen. A couple days ago we got some sprouts and it's been fun watching them grow. Here's what they look like now:

You're probably thinking, "Okay, great ... that's cute, I guess, in a third grade science experiment sort of way. Why are you blogging about it?" Well, behold the little surprise:

Both plants have "I love you" on the leaves. Told you I had a cute geek. :)

A people photoblog of the last four months

I thought I'd attempt to post a blog with some photos. More will be put on facebook, but but this entry is people-themed with some narration. I'm pretty sure the transition between blogger and livejournal's gonna flunk out and I don't want to post it all over again (I hate LJ picture blogging) so to make life a little easier for most of you, try going here for the fancy picture stuff.

I'm putting these in chronological order, starting with this first picture taken at the aquarium cafeteria in Chicago on January 21, Martin Luther King, Jr. day. I met up with Amanda, Tom, and Sessily and we toured the aquarium and science museum which were open for free that day.

















This is one of me and Colin the following weekend in Bloomington. He was trying to get me to make a face.

















We went to Kalamazoo late February where Colin gave a talk about his company, most of which over my head but I got to sit in the back and make fun of him with his parents, especially when he was being a smartass. While he was talking to people afterwards, I met up with Kelsay and we made our way back to her apartment where this picture was taken of her and Kiki. We ate dinner with the Alworth family and Ashley at the Saffron. Later that night, we played Scrabble and watched Xena with Lenya and Kelsay (and Kiki, of course).

































This is a picture of Rachel, Colin, and Emily in the back of their family van. Emily was visiting K College as a prospective student. Funny thing is, she told me that she was just there to make her parents happy - in the end, she decided that's where she was going. She's also doing LandSea like her big brother and her parents.

















A couple weeks later, I had my spring break, so Colin and I headed north to Charlevoix and had a lot of fun, especially with William but also with the rest of my family. This picture shows Laura and William standing inside the local grocery store next to a sign that promises that some weird porcupine cartoon dude is sold there. William had run into the store and waved from inside, not realizing the advertisement right next to him.

















Later, some of us were a bit wild in the library; William is sitting in the children's section, pretending to be scared and not know where Colin is. I love both of these silly boys so much.

And that's my awesome blog slideshow of the pictures I took of people the last four months! I think I should go get some work done now ...