More Eagles

Look at all of those eagles!! My friend Tracy and I decided to go out and watch the eagles again...and this time we were to get there before they started feeding. We got there 10 minutes EARLY, and they were already finished! Not sure I will ever get to see this event. I've driven out there 3 times now and as much as I enjoy it, I don't have time for it if it will continue like this.

Took photos from the car...so not so many favorites this time. Tracy let me play with her awesome Nikon DSLR....I want one now!! When I told C that, his comment was, "You can get a new car before you get a fancy camera like that." :O

I'm loving the silhouette look. The sun was right behind the majority of the birds today, so it was hard to get good photos.

Baby Emma (11 months) came along for the ride. She was entertaining once we were freezing from sticking our cameras out the window.

One life in China

For sale: One life in China

I don't know if any of you have seen this story yet. I was quite a bit more concerned before I read the article. Now I am slightly intrigued...but a bit weirded out. Would anyone be willing to try this out? (hypothetically, that is)

Twitter friends

I put up a several frames this week...here's my friend wall. It's free for expansion, but it looks nice at the moment, so I am content.

Fairly complete family wall...missing an extra photo of 2 of C's brothers, but I don't see that as a priority at this point. It's not perfect, but it's slightly symmetrical...I put a few notes on the picture to explain some things.

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When I joined Twitter, I was found by a foreign exchange student in town...it turned out that he is friends with one of my friend's brother. I exchanged a few words with him, but not much more. Today, I helped out with "Feed the Kids" again. This time, we served spaghetti. My friend's brother walked by and said hello. Quite a bit later, this kid walks up to me and says, "Hi M!" I looked at him, with no recollection of who he was, and he said something about Twitter (in an accent, of course) and it took me a minute to understand what he had said. And then it dawned on me that it was my Twitter friend. How strange! But it was cool to put a face to the name.

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In think that's it for now!

Tidbits

I love discovering how forcing oneself to do uncomfortable errands is really not that bad. I needed to:
- Go to the bank and get a statement for interest that I never got from my savings account that I closed last year.
- Go to the electric company and clarify how to set up my own account and when to do it.
- Call Alaska Airlines. I tried emailing first, which was very fruitless. I needed to gain access to my mileage account, which I have never been able to do, because I was set up under my parents. And I also needed to change my maiden name. This is by far the most interesting story. I called AK Air, going through a list of options. I tried the wrong one - Customer Care. I went through that list, and realized it was not the direction I wanted to go, but there was no option to go back to the main menu. Before I could decide to hang up and try again, a live person was there on the line! I explained that I thought I was in the wrong place, but he had no problem helping me. He granted me access to my account in about 30 seconds, and gave me instructions on changing my name. At this time, it was 4:30pm...and the man was off of work by 5pm my time, so I took C and we raced to town to my work and faxed off 2 documents. It was quick and painfree and my name is supposed to be changed in a couple of days. Thanks Brad, for a painfree and easy transaction!

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I am taking a personal finance class, and it has been fascinating. Some of the stuff is old hat to me, already, because I have been reading tons of personal finance blogs. It's humorous to me to hear my professor spout off the same things they do. Anyway. There are some things, however, that I have not given much thought to. I had no idea that disability insurance was such a big deal. And hardly anyone carries it.
This week was about house and car insurance. Having to think about needing insurance is a scary thing. In class yesterday, my teacher mainly discussed car insurance. I'd never really thought about how much coverage you really need. My teacher is an accountant and also a lawyer (crazy man!) and was harping on the fact that lawsuits go for much more than $100k. I think C and I will be reconsidering our insurance policy sometime soon.

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Got 100 prints from Snapfish in the mail yesterday :) That meant that my walls were attacked with new picture frames. (No not 100 pictures!) I don't have them all up yet, but will post pics when I do :)

What I Learned this Week

1. If you think that something will be at a certain time, research it a bit more. I had read in a book about seeing the eagles be fed that they would be fed at sunrise....now that the Eagle Lady is gone, the feeding is done at 10:30 am.

2. Safeway is a great place for a bathroom break. Working retail, I hate it when people come into the store to just use the restroom. But in Safeway...it really doesn't matter!

3. Setting up an account with the power company is not going to be nearly as painful as I was expecting..

4. I have a strong dependency on stuff...namely my camera and my journal. I already knew that I had a strong dependency on the camera. I use that thing pretty much everyday. And I left my journal at home tonight. On accident, that is, and I had to ask for some paper at small group (I write a ton of notes down for everything). Man am I dependent on that thing!

What I learned this week carnival hosted by Musings of a Housewife...check it out!

Going to see the Eagles

C and I woke up bright and early this morning to go see the eagles get fed. Turns out we were totally off on the time when they do get fed (10:30, supposedly) but they were still there with a whole bunch of photographers. But the sunrise was great!

I took a whole bunch of photos, and then took C to work. I had to be somewhere at 10, but until then...I went back out to the Spit and took more photos for another half hour. I got some better ones this time.

And now, I have the same moose from yesterday hanging out. I took several photos and movies of him. And continue to do so. The moose is doing strange things like eating snow. I think he's trying to get at grass under the snow. Although, we have a "stream" through the backyard and he was pawing at it, trying to get water. Who knows!

In the midst of this, it occurred to me to find my "tripod". C bought me a tiny tripod for Christmas a year ago and I hardly played with at all, despite wanting it for months. I just broke it out of its case and played with in front of my window with the moose. Pretty snazzy little thing, that is!

Another quake

We had another earthquake today. Not sure how many people even noticed it. I was sitting on the couch doing homework when the apartment shook for like 5 seconds. It was really light, but disarming after the one a month ago.

After I was sure the quake was over, I looked out the window to see a moose in the yard. I took some photos, but he was turned away from me, so they aren't great. He left soon after, as well.

The weather has been fantastic the past two days..or rather, very sunny. And of course...I haven't been able to be outside. I had to work yesterday, and then today, I was under an insane amount of pressure to get an exam done by 6pm. It was a "48 hour" exam that was handed out on Friday. The most inconvenient time for something like that is the weekend for me, but I got it done.

Potentially, C and I are getting up extra early in the morning and going to watch the eagles being fed before C goes to work. We need to talk about it again and plan if we really will, but it would be fun as I have never gone out there to watch before.

Tis all for now!

Photo Sharing Solved

I have been a longtime user of Flickr for my photo sharing needs. I recently hit 200 photos...meaning that only the most recent 200 photos would be the only ones shown. Well, that was no good. I refuse to pay for a service like that. I'm not seriously trying to display my photos, nor am I trying to make money off of them. If I had my own web domain, this would not be a problem. But, I don't.

I went through my favorite photos earlier this month and plastered my own watermark on them. And promptly uploaded several albums to Facebook. (Therefore, some of you may have already seen these) However, I wanted to share my photos with my blog readers. For privacies sake, I wasn't willing to share my FB with the world. I already had an account with Picasa, and use the software, and it made sense to go with them. The public can view the ones I want, and it's fast and simple to upload to. I also looked into Deviant Art, who I also have an account with, but the uploading process is extremely long and drawn out for a single file. Thus, here we are:

http://picasaweb.google.com/the.dairy.queen

Feel free to view at your pleasure, and pass along the link if you desire!

Underground Church

Who's ready to hear about college meltdown numbers 4 and 5? I can just tell you all are dying to hear about them. Suffice to say, they happened yesterday, at 2 different times of the day. Me, crying my eyes out, ready to quit, yet again. All 4 of my classes are officially causing me stress now.

In between the meltdowns, C and I went to youth group. And last night was Underground Church. Every year, the youth group leaders plan a scavenger hunt around town. They notify the police and then have at it. They set up an interrogation place, with interrogators ready to "torture" the kids. "Cops" drive around town, and when they see kids, they are to pick them up and take them to the interrogators. The kids were trying to get to a certain destination. C led a team of kids. I think only 10-15 kids made it without getting caught. I was in charge of letting the interrogators into the house and instructing the cops. Then I was told where to go for the secret destination. I waited around at the destination for 2 hours. It was kinda depressing how many kids got caught. There were probably 50 kids playing. There were 2 different clue trails going and one was going via the post office. The first group managed to take the entire envelope with clues in it, so the rest of the kids going that direction ended up wasting a ton of time looking for it, and thus getting caught. Rather depressing. C's group was part of that, and were caught after an hour or so. It was fun, but stressful!

In other news, I think these baby owls are so darling!

Attack of the spatulas

This is our spatula collection. It started off innocently before we were married as two simple metal ones. I collected basic housewares from Walmart to get us started. Then my mother in law gave us the 2 blue ones. She had purchased some red ones that I really liked, and these were the blue versions. So far so good, now we have 4 spatulas. And then the wedding came along. And then the wedding happened, gifting us with 4 more, each a different kind. So we now have 8 spatulas, and only 2 are the same. And we have found uses for each one, amazingly!

Trip to the Bigger City

Monday morning dawned, ready to snow. My friend and I left at 9, and set off for the next big town. The roads ended up being pretty bad. It was snowing hard and there was ice on the road, but we made it fine...althought the 1.5 hour drive turned into 2 by driving slower.

Off we went to Fred Meyer's, me filling up a cart as we went. It was an expensive trip, but full of essentials that we needed. Nothing too exciting was purchased, except these goodies!

Off brand kleenex boxes in the cutest patterns I have ever seen: kitties, doggies and a star! Picture frames were buy 2, get 1 free. Not the greatest deal, but they were good prices from the start. I got 6 frames, and then 1 5 picture frame. And lastly, a soft hoodie that was marked down for $45 to $15.

We also went to McDonalds for lunch (my friend is on a limited budget right now) and then Gottschalks (where I purchased that hoodie.) 3 hours after we got there, we turned around and came home. This time, the trip was an hour and 45 minutes. All of the snow had melted and turned to slush, with giant puddles, which was actually bit more concerning at times, but we were fine. We got stuck behind several slow people, which slowed us down a bit, but no big deal.

Came home and unpacked. At 6, went to pick up C from work. His car had been moved, for the first time in a week! Picked C up, and he knew nothing about it. When we got home, my brother was waiting for us. The car is fixed, but it cost a pretty penny to get it done.

After running ragged after that, we made it to small group, where we have another new couple coming. Had another great session of "Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage," if a bit awkward, as this one was on the most awkward topic imaginable! (guess, I dare you :))

But it was good, and the conversations afterward were very good as well.

Today, C and I did not do much. My sister ordered Collapse for the DS for C's birthday and it came today (Thanks D!) and it is actually really fun and not just the game only. It has different settings and ways of playing and even a "quest" game to make it through. Much better than I was expecting, so that's great.

Otherwise, it's been pretty low key, but I needed a low key day.

Shopping Tomorrow

Today was a good day. Had a good lunch with my parents, got my usual Cajun Chicken Salad at my favorite restaurant. Bought Easter (!!) chocolate eggs at the drugstore. They just put them out this morning. Bought 6 things at the grocery store for the week...wow. And now I'm home. I'm going to the next big town tomorrow with my red headed friend. She is not much of a shopper by any means, so it will be interesting. We're leaving at 9am. I told her we had to be back before 6 to pick C up from work. "How long is this trip going to be??!" You just never know! No, I really only have 3 stops in mind. But a huge list. I put off buying groceries today because I will get the nonperishable stuff cheaper there. Here's a fraction of my list...
- Kleenex
- 2 cookie sheets - we pretty much ruined one on accident. We need more than 1.
- a bottle opener (see previous post!)
- CDRs
- Laundry detergent
- Pancake syrup

So it will be such a fun trip!! I will be spending a lot of money, but it is all stuff that we need. Hopefully I come home with lots of exciting details!

Valentine's Day

Had an ok Valentine's Day. It definitely wasn't spectacular, but it was nice. Work was a zoo, and I was exhausted by the end. C and I waited a bit before doing anything. We knew all the restaurants would be packed, so we tried to think of where to go that wouldn't be.

Enter Subway...wooo, way romantic! They are having a footlong deal right now. $7, not as good as $5, but ah well. C had been craving Subway, so that's where we went. And we brought along a bottle of sparkling cider we'd had since Christmas. I asked C if he had a bottle opener on one of his knives that he carries in his coat. He told me he did, so away we went..... We ordered. Bought a bag of new Doritos. Sat down. Pulled out the bottle. C became confused. He doesn't have a bottle opener on his knife after all.

We don't have a bottle opener at home. SO....naturally, where do we always go when we need something? To the in laws'! A mere 2 minute drive away, we had our Valentine's dinner in the comfort of the kitchen. Thankfully we were left alone for a few minutes. Definitely kills the mood, but eh, it's a memory!

Culture of Honor

Church was interesting this morning. The speaker talked about a "Culture of Honor". He had been convicted many times about passing on email forwards about racism or derogatory jokes, or even about Obama. God would often ask him, "Is this honoring to that individual or that group of people?" He just made a great point about showing others honor and not being prideful, judgmental, or even sarcastic. It was pretty convicting for me too.

I don't send hardly any forwards any more. But I do participate in several forums, and it is easy to become judgmental on there when someone says something less than intelligent. And my temper has been flaring quite a bit at it as well. It's obviously something I need to work on.

I figured I'd share this in case it helps someone else too :)

Our Mystical Garden

Today was a busy day where I got many things done. In the midst of getting annoyed at an exam I took and not doing well, I decided to pull something out. Enter the Mystical Garden.

My mother in law gave this to me for Christmas this year. She got a whole bunch of similar gifts for everyone from her schooling program. I've been waiting for an opportunity to play with it. And today was the day.

Here are several of the pieces and parts. I started putting it together, thinking it would be a piece of cake...mmm, not so much. The pieces didn't like to bend, or stay up right.

That put me in a sour mood again, not very relaxing and/or helpful when I wanted a break from frustration. Then I had to pour the packets of "magic water" over everything. Pretty scary. The packets just kind of explode once open and its hard to pour them without getting the stuff everywhere.

2 hours after I poured the water on....it's growing!

2 more hours, so 4 hours from the pouring time. Quite a bit bigger and a lot more interesting to look at.

5 hours after the previous photo. 9 hours from the time of watering. It's supposed to be done "growing" after 10 hours.

So as you can see, I had an interesting afternoon watching this thing emerge. Kinda creepy, but it was enjoyable, I suppose. Not the easiest or cleanest thing to put together, but it was simple enough and would be a fun project with a kid. So there you have it...our 3rd..."plant".