The Sun Comes Up And We Start Again

Update time!

So last Friday I got back from my awesome trip with Sarah! We went from Northfield through South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon to Washington. Then back from Washington through Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and home! We went through the Badlands, stayed in the Black Hills (most beautiful campground we saw!), then to Yellowstone, then to Hell's Canyon, and stayed with my friend Erica for a couple of days. Then we went out to Coeur D'Alene, then to Glacier National Park, then drove for 15 hours to Teddy Roosevelt National Park, and finally, home.

We took a bunch of pictures, but I'm FAR to busy (and also lazy) to post them all online just now, so you'll have to be content with just one. :-)


It's Sarah and me at a waterfall in Oregon! Yay!

But now I'm back, and I've become addicted to this fellow called Mason Jennings, who's from Minnesota, and his music is brilliant. Sarah introduced me en route, and I can't get enough. Same can be said of the Shins record, "Wincing the Night Away." And I plan to listen to these things while packing.

Packing for Maddie and my move in to our new place on Saturday! Exciting! It'll be nice to settle in in our new place and have a few days to get organized before classes start. And classes! Wow, I'm gonna be busy this semester! But I think I've said that before.

So, other big news. Let's see.

I got an external hard drive that I'm happy about because that means I can back up all my music before my computer dies, which is looking to be soon. I'm hoping it'll last through this year before it goes totally to pot. Apperently lap tops are only designed to work for about four years before giving up the ghost.

And that's about it, as far as I can remember. I'm still trying to decide what to be when I grow up, but that's an on going project.

A Rainy Day

Life is difficult!

I just got done with a meeting with Dad and Maddie to run the numbers for school this year. Ugh. I'm so thankful that this is my last year mooching off the banks, the school and my parents to complete my "higher" education. By that, of course, they mean higher costs. Like Maddie said tonight, the fact that we have to pay thousands of dollars per semester to get the education that's required in most jobs is ludicrous. But after this year I'll be free! Free to pay back everyone I've borrowed from. :-)

And after multiple disappointments on the housing front, we MAY have got a place. I don't want to say that we HAVE a place, even though we put the signed lease in the mail today, because we've been so close several times, and it's only ended in house heartbreak. Updates will follow.

Meanwhile, I've been spending my days painting Dad's house. It took me all of last week to scrape and sand the place, and since Monday I've been priming, and I STILL haven't gotten to the second coat. I need to finish the place before the 15th when Sarah and I start out on our Westward! roadtrip!

AND! I've got Vacation Bible School next week! A whole week of hanging out with kindergartners! We get to make crafts and play on the playground and listen to bible stories and sing songs! It's great every single year.

So anyway, painting, VBS, housing, school, money. Life.

And yet I feel like I'm waiting for things to begin.

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDIE!!!!

Some Bad News, Some Good.

So, we didn't get the nice house that we wanted, but things could be worse. It turns out now that Maddie and I will be living up in the cities this semester, sans Gabe, so we're looking for a two bedroom place. A few new leads have turned up, but nothing certain yet.

And on the bright side, I have a new car! It's a Chevy Malibu, and it's a bit plain compared to my bright little two door Grand Am, but we're sprucing it up and making it interesting! It's already got my Scotland sticker and my San Clemente sticker on it.

So, that's all the news for now. Except for my general idea to take a road trip to Seattle. It's still a thought.

Ugh.

I'm feeling a trip coming on. I need some kind of monk-ish, away-from-civilization, bring-only-what-you-need kind of time out.

Unfortunately, I know that I'll set out on an adventure and then the first night I'll be thinking "gee, I wish I had a friend with me." But none of my friends are really right for the trip. I don't know if Lyss would be up for really "roughing it," Dita's working, and going on a solo trip with Gabe would be a bit weird. I wish Erica was here!!

And without work I'm spending a lot of time sitting around thinking about the fact that my life doesn't have any direction after college.

Oy, I need...change.

!

Hey everybody! I'm back! Back in the States, back online and back from my first bout of work.

So here's the skinny on what I've been up to since...well...a while ago. I flew back from Scotland on May 30th and took a few days to get back on Minnesota time. On the upside of being jet lagged, in meant that I woke up super early and got a lot done before my sisters even got up! I cleaned up my car and got it ready to sell, unpacked and cleaned my room, move my chickens back outside for summer, fixed my class schedule for next year, set up the garden at Lyss' house and picked up my mouse (who was being babysat by an old roommate) in Rochester.

It was a really productive week or two, but after a while I just got frustrated with not being able to find a job. Of course, since I couldn't do much in the way of job searching while I was overseas, there were NO job openings by the time I got back at the beginning of June. Thankfully, my AWESOME boss Suzie needed me out at Lorence's Berry Farm during strawberry season! So, starting around June 20th until yesterday, I've been working 6 or 7 days a week from 5:30am to noon or so. VERY tiring.

But now I'm done! On the upside, I can rest up! On the downside, I'm now sadly unemployed. Again.

And speaking of sad news, I no longer have my two chickens Pip and Piper. I came downstairs to get ready for work last Tuesday, only to find my lawn covered in their pretty gold feathers. A dog or cat or maybe raccoon got to them sometime in the early morning, and I took the day off to clean up and bury them. I was torn about how to feel about their death. They were just chickens, and as farm animals they had a longer and happier life than many of their relatives in factory farms. But they were also my pets who I raised from baby chicks, and they taught me a lot. As it happened, I had bought three new baby chicks the day before Pip and Piper died, so I've been trying to channel my energy into raising them instead of being sad. I'll update with pictures of them soon!

And now for a list of the animals currently residing in my home!
1 dog (Cricket, who I'm babysitting), 3 cats, 1 cockatiel, 3 baby chickens, 1 mouse, and 2 baby moles who I found in the strawberry patch. It's a MENAGERIE!!

And that's the way I like it.

Nocturnal Yet Again

I've begun going to bed at 4 and waking up at 2 again! Yay! :-P

Ever since classes ended I've been goofing off watching movies, hanging out, throwing dinner parties, going on random trips and staying up WAY too late. It's been fun, but I'm ready for normal life to resume soon. I can't wait for Lyss to get here (in about TWO AND A HALF DAYS!!) and to travel around and have adventures with her. We're gonna stay around here until Friday afternoon because I have finals, but then we're going down to see Sarah, and then up to Loch Ness and the highlands! And then to Edinburgh, and then we go HOME!!! YAY!!!

I'm SO ready to get home. I love Scotland, and I've had a great semester here, but it's time to go home now!

Anyway, for a quick update on last weekend when I went to see Sarah in Oxford:
I took a train down on Saturday (and forgot my camera!! Can you believe it???) and we spent that night out on the lawn of her college (there are about a million colleges that make up the whole of Oxford University) playing music with a bunch of cool people! I haven't held a guitar since I left the States, and my fingers were just itching to jam. It was great times.
We spent the rest of the weekend going to fancy Oxford meals in ornate wood-carved halls, reading and discussing poetry, running errands and shopping (I bought a bunch of amazing books), and staying up late talking about life. It was so great to feel the academic life there and pal around with Sarah for a few days.

On Tuesday morning I left Oxford on a train bound for York and arrived there in the early afternoon for some lunch and a look at York Minster Cathedral, which was stunning. I love huge old churches, and this place was breathtaking. I also walked along the road where Guy Fawkes was born, and saw the church where he was baptized. Of all the cities I've seen while I've been on the British Isles, I think I'd most like to live in York or Galway, with Edinburgh a close runner up.

So then I took a train from York to the tiny town of Thirsk in Yorkshire, which is James Herriot's "Darowby." I had to walk about forty five minutes from the train station into the village, but it was worth it when I got to see the clock tower where James first came into town, and finally his house and veterinary practice, which is one of the best museums I've ever seen! It had the house just as James, Sigfried and Tristan used to keep it (with the phone in the hall that they used to have to run down the stairs to get to at night!), and all the medicinal and examining rooms (just so tiny and non-sterile! Crazy, by today's standards), not to mention the courtyard which had the old car that James used to drive, and it still works! From there you got to go into an exhibit of the sets for "All Creatures Great And Small" and it looked just like the show! The last set of rooms was an exhibit of all the veterinary tools and methods that used to be used, and how they vary from today's methods. The whole thing was just fascinating, and totally worth it for any Herriot fan out there.

And finally I got on a set of trains back to Stirling, and it was nice to be back in my Scottish home. Even the Dales in England are nothing to the hills and mountains here, and I missed the rugged outdoor-ness of the Scottish lands. Everything down in England is soft and man-made in a way, and while I like it for a short period, I'd much rather have the Scottish Highlands any day.

So now I've just got a few more days to hang out and study before Lyss gets here and we'll have awesome new adventures. In the meantime, I'd better try to get back on a daylight schedule. :-)

I'll see you all soon!