Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Buh-bye now y'all...


Well... your local gunfighter is going off on a long-distance hiatus for a week. Just so nothing happens, I am leaving dear little Ghandi here to keep an eye on things. And I am proud of me- I didn't post a beach picture. ^^

Monday, March 27, 2006

Ironic, isn't it...

...How you can ace a class for 6 marking periods, without trying, then loose it all when it really matters. @#$%^&* A-. Now I get to take the exam. *Yay.* Maybe this will teach me to be alert, but I'm not betting on it. Would you?

Ironic, isn't it...

...How you can ace a class for 6 marking periods, without trying, then loose it all when it really matters. @#$%^&* A-. Now I get to take the exam. *Yay.* Maybe this will teach me to be alert, but I'm not betting on it. Would you?

Friday, March 17, 2006

Darselo's Infallible Top Ten Signs of Spring

You Know It's Spring When:

  1. Seed Catalogs begin to arrive, and the father figure and I cook up plots for the upcoming dahila season. This year, after a two year struggle, we have finally secured my namesake dahlia. Hy Darseylo. Spelt wrong, but I since so very rarely see my name on anything I shall ignore this annoyance.
  2. All winter clothes hit the clearance racks, and the summer's trends begin to appear.
  3. The search for a Banquet dress is on. A perilous quest indeed, for the dress must have attached sleeves, high back, and be at least remotely in style. Last year was a stylin' $25 dollar victory. This year's model is looking to be more expensive, but we have a $20 off coupon and if we wait a while longer there may be a 20% discount.
  4. First crocus blooms- March 11
  5. Tulips and Daffodils start sprouting.
  6. You know fo' shizzle where you are going to be on Spring Break. For me, this is FLORIDA with the galpals!!!!!!! Really awesome, b/c it's my first trip to Florida, but a little weird b/c my parents won't be along...
  7. All of a sudden the Washington D.C. trip, such a distant date for the past 4 years, draws nigh...
  8. The Pussywillow tree in the back" fourth" blooms. It has grown (as trees are wont to do) over the years, so getting the buds is much more of a challenge than it used to be. The tree-climbing and ladder wrestling are worth it though, for as Christopher Robin might say, they are "So cute and fuzzy!!!!!!"
  9. Dren hangs up the snowboard and hauls out the scooters.
  10. You almost hit the first two robins of spring because they are fighting in the middle of the road at 6:00 in the morning.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

More whacked upness...

Last week began with some major excitement... On Monday I came home to find that my church was on fire. Which was, understandably, rather disturbing. From what I was able to gather, it was an electrical problem, something about heat building up but the breaker not shorting out, so it ended up catching some of the wood or something on fire. The consistory room, which doubled as my class' chatechism room, is gone, and the rooms directly above and below it are pretty much toast too. (Above it was a room holding some of the organ pipes, and not much else, and below it is either the ladies bathroom and coatroom, or the boiler room... Not exactly sure which one is right below.) I am really bummed about that chatechism room, because it was deeeeelux. We had uber comfortable leather chairs, and the coolest varigated green carpet, with elegant drapes to match. And there was a beautiful white piano, with lots of scrollwork and filigree. Everything in the building suffered smoke damage, but thankfully the stained glass windows all made it unscathed. They are really beautiful although they do have images of Christ on them. The whole building is really old and really cool- the doors are all huge, and they all have old-fashioned spider key locks. There were a whole bunch of books when we first came, lots of really nice old Schoolastics, which I wanted for my collection but didn't know how to ask for. There also is this giant cupboard of sheet music, that nobody has had time to look over yet. I have yet to know if it made it through the fire. It might not have, because the cupboard is really close to the boilder room and the bathroom... All in all, there is about $150,000 worth of damage, and we're going to be out of the building for 6 months. Right now we're in the Seminary, which is a bit of an awkward fit, for multiple reasons, although much better than the school gym. When the service ended, there were 3 deer grazing outside, which was pretty cool. Then we had chatechism, and my class had to make do with a hallway. It's one of those things that you think will never happen to you, so it is really hard to believe that my church is all sooty and burned right now. Can't get my mind around it.
Anywho, if that wasn't enough, the next day a convict escapes from the jail a few blocks away from our school, so we go under a lockdown and have to wait for the police to escort us out to the buses. There were helicopters everywhere, and a whole lot of hulabaloo. It was Tuesday, which is my hospital volunteer day, so I get there really late. Business as usual, I go out on break with Brooke and Deer blah blah blah. When I get back, I find out that my department is on lockdown, because they thought that Odius, the son of Nel (the convict) was in the hospital. Kind of freaky because I was out and about for most of the lockdown. Then, when we're moving again, the patients I bring down had had to wait for half an hour, and were minorities, so they had a few bees in their bonnet. Somehow I got things smoothed over, and in the end we parted friends.
Monday a church fire, and Tuesday a convict... I had some reservations about taking on Wednesday, but that was the end of all the goat roping for that week. Very thankful to have been spared through all that- it could have been a lot worse.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Down dooby do down down...

Finally, I have the time for a really truely post... Lot's of catchup work to do, so let's start with the Olympics. Overall impression: Dissapointing. Why?
  1. NBC did a less than stellar job. They have this thing for dividing up events, and then mixing and matching the pieces, so maybe two ski runs here, 15 minutes of skating there... This means that those of us who tape the Olympics must either watch the whole 3 hours, or use up a ton of tape and live with all the commercials. Also, they pared down their medals ceremony coverage to just showing the national anthem. I kinda would like to see the athletes getting their medals, which, after all, is the point of the medals ceremony.
  2. There weren't any real stellar American heroes, outside of Joey cheek. Nobody to really root for. I thought maybe we had one in Chad Hendrick, but then there was that whole Shanni Davis thing. Then maybe Shaun White, until he declared his love for Sasha, which was weird enough, then went home and messed around with Lindsey Lohan or whatever... My favorite athletes of the games were Shizuka Arakawa (women's figure skating gold medalist) and the figure skaters from Georgia and Turkey. All foreigners.
  3. I've been looking forward to these Olympics for 4 years, and back at Salt Lake I was wondering what I would be like now, and what life would be like. Some expectations weren't met, and it just makes me feel old. Something I used to think was so far away is now done and gone. By the next Olympics I will be almost graduated from college. Man I'm old. I can still remember a teeny bit of the first Olympics I watched, at my Grandma Putter's farm, and WOW, have there been changes. That house has been sold for years now, and that TV saw it's end a while back as well. It was one of the kind where you turn a knob to change channels. So yeah, those kinds of feelings don't mix well with the Olympic spirit either... oh well. Vancouver is coming, and we have Bejing to mix things up a bit in 2 years. Wonder what I'll be like as a college grad? Hm...

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Wild nights, wonderful mornings...


These are some around the house shots of the lovely ice we had after a day of really whacked out weather...

This is just the sunrise, all the white stuff in the trees is ice...

A little closer...

Even closer...

And closer still...




Wednesday, March 01, 2006

I miss Mayberry...

July 21, 1924 - Febuary 24, 2006
Just wanted to wish a fond farewell to one of the greatest actors ever, Don Knotts my favorite "G-man." So long Barney, Mr. Chicken, Bert, Theodore, Mr. Furley, Coach Venner, Sherrif Kid and all the rest that I'll have to meet posthumously. It's was nice knowing you.