for those of you who know me well, you'll never believe it. i went to the health center yesterday. i know, i know. i've never been prone to take medicine or go to the doctor, or anyone for that matter, when something is wrong with me. i prefer to stick out my illnesses as long as possible without drug intervention or obvious doctor analyses. whats strange is that i'm not really sick. yet, that is. since saturday i've had a dry, stinging throat, minor headaches every once in awhile, and feeling a bit groggy. with only three weeks before the end of the semester, theres no time to waste lying in bed being too sick to function. so i decided to pay a visit to the health center on the other side of campus. turns out that my illness is still too early in its stages to diagnose it. the doctor's reply basically told me to wait a few days until it gets worse, come back, and then she'll decide what it is. wonderful. just what i wanted to hear. of course, the usual perscription of up the sleep, fluid intake, and vitamin c was recommended to boost the good 'ole immune system. she also wrote me a perscription for some samples of allegra-d...gotta love those free samples. the visit was free, too.
of course, with a 2 am bedtime and 6:50 am wake-up call from a lab partner who doesn't know didly squat about the lab to ask me stupid questions doesn't benefit my health. still working on homework...spent about 3 hours on chem homework and only have 47% correct. can't wait til this is over. i've got a few ideas for my english paper floating around in my head, so i guess thats a good sign. i also have to get started on my sociology paper. i didn't do so great on the last one and my prof wants to look over it before i turn it in to make sure i'm on the right track. benefits of being in an honors class where the prof actually cares.
i'm hoping for a movie night tonight...whether it be here with the girls (while you were sleeping, perhaps) or over at 0-house with the guys, i don't care. as long as i get to bed at a decent hour.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
i hate group work
why is it that my lab partners decide to wait until the day before our labs are due to work on them? why? and it just so happens that i'm the one that can't get anything done until the others do their parts...and the one who has to clean up all the errors my partners overlooked. and i can't get started until 10 pm. and i'm not done until 2 am. and then the one part this one partner has to do, she has to call me at 6:50 am to basically ask what the lab was about. hello! all your answers lie in the introduction to the lab. it would be one thing if they were important questions, but asking about things like units and verifying the data i sent was right does not qualify. okay, i think i'm done venting. and i apoligize, i just had to get it out.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
the last ______ of the semester
its the beginning of the third to last week of school. getting down to the semester's dirty work and in a bind for time. was i not just stressed to death two weeks ago over this kind of stuff? anyway, trying to nip the stress in the bud by hitting each memo on the agenda with a one punch knockout. by that i mean trying to get whatever done in one sitting. i've been successful so far on the things that are considerably easy... i.e. reading, brainstorming, wasting time, writing blogs. okay, so maybe i've gotten a little off track, but you're allowed to do that every once in a while, darn it. since the semester is drawing to a close and theres only, let's see...nine more days of classes, we are getting into the last ishkamabobcrap of the semester (ishkamabobcrap is a word i just made up to replace "blank", "fill-in", or skipping a beat in the sentence). this means last english paper, lab class (amen!), stat lab, chemistry homework, stat homework, sociology paper, set of english journals, and what-have-you. yay!
what makes me green with envy (in a hey-thats-not-fair kinda way) is that becca only has six more days of school. ya. not just six more days of classes...thats including exams. so she not only gets out a week earlier than i do, but she only has one day of consisting of two exams. thats it. grrr. i guess i can't really complain too much. my stat exam is a week earlier than other exams, our last formal lab report is due that same week, i have my english in-class essay monday the 12th, tuesday is my non-cumulative soci exam, and i've got two and a half days to prepare for my final chem exam on friday. even though megan and i will perhaps be the only ones stuck on campus on the last day of school, i at least have plenty of time to study for the dreaded make-or-break-me chem final.
off of the school topic, it was an interesting morning. i was ready for colette to pick me up at 10...but she was picking me up at 10:15. i decided i'd run over to the dining hall to grab a bite to eat before church. well, the university decided that students that sacraficed time with the fam to come back for the game saturday didn't deserve any breakfast the next morning.
(side note: speaking of the system of how the university operates over breaks, i have a bone to pick with them. whether the breaks be for fall, the turkey, or spring, what moron dictates when you can get into your room?? why, on two or three day breaks, are students kicked out of the dorms? what if they lived thousands of miles away and didn't have a home to go to? don't we pay for these rooms? what what? we couldn't get into the dorms until an hour after the game. some people (not including me) may not have realized that it would be so cold and wet during the game. plus, the closest room to thaw out was on the other side of campus. they could have at least opened an hour before the game. grrr.)
with an empty stomach and full of disappointment, i went over to the spot where colette was going to pick me up at 10:15. waited and waited. at 10:27, three minutes before church started, i called her up to see her status. turns out she was just leaving her place and still had to run over to kroger. i was quite upset and jo and i ended up taking his car and being ten minutes late to church. what do ya know, but the sermon was on forgiveness. figures. God manages to direct the sermons toward me on sudays. funny how that works.
worked on my ishkamabobcraps all afternoon. tried really hard to resist the temptation to fall asleep. i had turned the temp of our room up to about 80 degrees cuz i was freezing earlier. it was the kind of temp that lulls you to sleep. it worked for megan, who took two or three naps today. another complaint i have about the dorms is that the temperature on the lofted beds is so much warmer than when i'm working at my desk. i get comfy on my bed and freeze when i get down. just can't get happy. oh well. wish me luck on the ishkamabobcrap.
what makes me green with envy (in a hey-thats-not-fair kinda way) is that becca only has six more days of school. ya. not just six more days of classes...thats including exams. so she not only gets out a week earlier than i do, but she only has one day of consisting of two exams. thats it. grrr. i guess i can't really complain too much. my stat exam is a week earlier than other exams, our last formal lab report is due that same week, i have my english in-class essay monday the 12th, tuesday is my non-cumulative soci exam, and i've got two and a half days to prepare for my final chem exam on friday. even though megan and i will perhaps be the only ones stuck on campus on the last day of school, i at least have plenty of time to study for the dreaded make-or-break-me chem final.
off of the school topic, it was an interesting morning. i was ready for colette to pick me up at 10...but she was picking me up at 10:15. i decided i'd run over to the dining hall to grab a bite to eat before church. well, the university decided that students that sacraficed time with the fam to come back for the game saturday didn't deserve any breakfast the next morning.
(side note: speaking of the system of how the university operates over breaks, i have a bone to pick with them. whether the breaks be for fall, the turkey, or spring, what moron dictates when you can get into your room?? why, on two or three day breaks, are students kicked out of the dorms? what if they lived thousands of miles away and didn't have a home to go to? don't we pay for these rooms? what what? we couldn't get into the dorms until an hour after the game. some people (not including me) may not have realized that it would be so cold and wet during the game. plus, the closest room to thaw out was on the other side of campus. they could have at least opened an hour before the game. grrr.)
with an empty stomach and full of disappointment, i went over to the spot where colette was going to pick me up at 10:15. waited and waited. at 10:27, three minutes before church started, i called her up to see her status. turns out she was just leaving her place and still had to run over to kroger. i was quite upset and jo and i ended up taking his car and being ten minutes late to church. what do ya know, but the sermon was on forgiveness. figures. God manages to direct the sermons toward me on sudays. funny how that works.
worked on my ishkamabobcraps all afternoon. tried really hard to resist the temptation to fall asleep. i had turned the temp of our room up to about 80 degrees cuz i was freezing earlier. it was the kind of temp that lulls you to sleep. it worked for megan, who took two or three naps today. another complaint i have about the dorms is that the temperature on the lofted beds is so much warmer than when i'm working at my desk. i get comfy on my bed and freeze when i get down. just can't get happy. oh well. wish me luck on the ishkamabobcrap.
happy and crappy II
its sunday and time for my second list of what has made me happy and crappy this week.
this week's happy...yay for:
this week's happy...yay for:
- having only two classes in one week
- school breaks
- the feeling you get after you turn in a paper
- sleeping in
- buying that first christmas gift
- safe families
- the rain stopping
- ferris buler
- big dinners with turkey, cranberries, apple muffins, and pumpkin pie
- dinners with the fam
- hot chocolate
- lagaan
- italian
this week's crappy...nay for:
- trees that need to be cleaned up
- stripped canadian hemlocks
- cold and wet final football games of the season
- having to leave the game early
- bickering
- frustrated drivers
- being late to church
- formal lab reports
- brainstorming for english essays
- homework that needs to be done
Saturday, November 27, 2004
the evidence
finally have an internet connection to post these pictures for you. hopefully you can now envision how close our house was to a catastophe. if you have no clue what i'm talking about, see november 25, sturdy as an oak...or loblolly pine.
cold, wet, and numb
becca and i arrived in athens last night around 8 pm, prior to colette's return from the mog (mall of georgia). since we were staying at her place for the night (my dorm was closed for the break and doesn't open until an hour after the game today) we found other things to do around athens. we first stopped at vision video, didn't see anything too interesting, so we went over to chick-fil-a to grab a light snack of nuggets and milkshakes to make sure that we wouldn't be hungry when our thanksgiving dinner wore off.
met colette, her sister, and her sister's friend lisa at wally world to pick up a few things. back to vision video to pick up the movie lagaan. it was a very good four-hour movie that we started at 10:30. so we were up until 2:30 to finish the movie. it was worth it, though. i highly recommend it if you like musical, foreign films and don't mind reading subtitles.
since we were cramming five girls into colette's apartment, becca and i slept out in the living room/kitchen area. i took the sleeping bag and the floor while becca took the couch. i stole the back cushions off the couch to make a bed for myself...of course, they weren't long enough or wide enough, so i had to double them up side by side and let my legs dangle off my makeshift bed. slept pretty sound until 11 am when i realized that we were going to be extremely late for tailgating. after some morning drama between siblings, we walked over to myers, where we normally tailgate. froze a bit and decided to walk to the bookstore to warm up. man, was it hot in there with about a thousand warm bodies wandering aimlessly through the overpriced georgia clothes and junk. couldn't find any georgia gloves to stay warm. figures the one thing i'm looking for isn't available.
eventually, after standing in the dawg walk mob and not being able to see a thing except the player's faces bob by as they walked into the stadium, we made our way over to the ticket gate. now, i don't think i've mentioned this yet, but i've become a supplier of fake student ids. yes, with a little help from photoshop and glossy photopaper, i've managed to pull off some pretty believable ids. they were for becca, rachel, and lisa, who were all trying to get in on student tickets. we had to be super sneaky trying to get in. we had our first scare when they stopped an older man ahead of us and checked him...so we jumped out of line and headed back into the crowd. i'm thinking it was because he was old and trying to use a student ticket. anyway, we split up in all different ways and managed to get through the gate without any problems after that. bigger problems came when i was trying to smuggle two non-students and myself into the lower level of the student section. our tickets were for the upper deck, where all the frat boys get drunk and its difficult to see the game. we don't like sitting there. its complicated to explain, but in short, we basically have to walk across the stands without the gray-jacket guards discovering us.
we did fine until we got to the edge of the student section. that was the tightest game security i've seen so far...and ridiculous. why do they care if we want to root on the dawgs with students that aren't quite as wasted as the ones above? madness. we tried to blend in with the season ticketers; so close, but so far away. there were about six guards on the stairs between the student section and the section we were sitting in. the two we had to get by were impossible. each time one wasn't looking our way, the other was, and vice versa. 25 minutes later, (about 20 minutes til game time) the owners of the seats we were sitting in showed up to claim their spots. crap. we jumped up and darted across the aisle, weaved through the standing students and successfully joined our buddies. that was a close one. next season, i'd better get lowe level seats.
of course, doesn't start raining until five minutes into the game. and doesn't stop. i was wearing heels (i know, smart one. but hey, my dorm was closed and my only options were old navy flips or black closed toe heels and i voted for the "warmer" one) and standing became quite painful. the cold eventually found its way down to my toes that had no circulation anyway. i could feel the rain seeping through my not-so-waterproof raincoat and got colder and colder. five minutes til half time, we called it quits and i made the painful walk in heels with my numb feet back to myers. we got a ride back to colette's by jo, got into warm clothes, and then watched the end of the game.
man, those penalties kill us, but turned out alright in the end. i would like to know how many passes into the endzone tech missed. congrats to 96 c-something guy on his first attempt and successful fieldgoal kick. wtg. becca is driving around lost right now tying to get home. athens roads are quite confusing. i can't wait to get back to my dorm and SLEEP.
met colette, her sister, and her sister's friend lisa at wally world to pick up a few things. back to vision video to pick up the movie lagaan. it was a very good four-hour movie that we started at 10:30. so we were up until 2:30 to finish the movie. it was worth it, though. i highly recommend it if you like musical, foreign films and don't mind reading subtitles.
since we were cramming five girls into colette's apartment, becca and i slept out in the living room/kitchen area. i took the sleeping bag and the floor while becca took the couch. i stole the back cushions off the couch to make a bed for myself...of course, they weren't long enough or wide enough, so i had to double them up side by side and let my legs dangle off my makeshift bed. slept pretty sound until 11 am when i realized that we were going to be extremely late for tailgating. after some morning drama between siblings, we walked over to myers, where we normally tailgate. froze a bit and decided to walk to the bookstore to warm up. man, was it hot in there with about a thousand warm bodies wandering aimlessly through the overpriced georgia clothes and junk. couldn't find any georgia gloves to stay warm. figures the one thing i'm looking for isn't available.
eventually, after standing in the dawg walk mob and not being able to see a thing except the player's faces bob by as they walked into the stadium, we made our way over to the ticket gate. now, i don't think i've mentioned this yet, but i've become a supplier of fake student ids. yes, with a little help from photoshop and glossy photopaper, i've managed to pull off some pretty believable ids. they were for becca, rachel, and lisa, who were all trying to get in on student tickets. we had to be super sneaky trying to get in. we had our first scare when they stopped an older man ahead of us and checked him...so we jumped out of line and headed back into the crowd. i'm thinking it was because he was old and trying to use a student ticket. anyway, we split up in all different ways and managed to get through the gate without any problems after that. bigger problems came when i was trying to smuggle two non-students and myself into the lower level of the student section. our tickets were for the upper deck, where all the frat boys get drunk and its difficult to see the game. we don't like sitting there. its complicated to explain, but in short, we basically have to walk across the stands without the gray-jacket guards discovering us.
we did fine until we got to the edge of the student section. that was the tightest game security i've seen so far...and ridiculous. why do they care if we want to root on the dawgs with students that aren't quite as wasted as the ones above? madness. we tried to blend in with the season ticketers; so close, but so far away. there were about six guards on the stairs between the student section and the section we were sitting in. the two we had to get by were impossible. each time one wasn't looking our way, the other was, and vice versa. 25 minutes later, (about 20 minutes til game time) the owners of the seats we were sitting in showed up to claim their spots. crap. we jumped up and darted across the aisle, weaved through the standing students and successfully joined our buddies. that was a close one. next season, i'd better get lowe level seats.
of course, doesn't start raining until five minutes into the game. and doesn't stop. i was wearing heels (i know, smart one. but hey, my dorm was closed and my only options were old navy flips or black closed toe heels and i voted for the "warmer" one) and standing became quite painful. the cold eventually found its way down to my toes that had no circulation anyway. i could feel the rain seeping through my not-so-waterproof raincoat and got colder and colder. five minutes til half time, we called it quits and i made the painful walk in heels with my numb feet back to myers. we got a ride back to colette's by jo, got into warm clothes, and then watched the end of the game.
man, those penalties kill us, but turned out alright in the end. i would like to know how many passes into the endzone tech missed. congrats to 96 c-something guy on his first attempt and successful fieldgoal kick. wtg. becca is driving around lost right now tying to get home. athens roads are quite confusing. i can't wait to get back to my dorm and SLEEP.
Friday, November 26, 2004
carving the turkey a day late
very soon my family will be sitting around the dining room table (the fallen oak tree is in plain sight still) with the turkey, cranberries, stuffing, apple muffins, and pumpkin pie. i know what you're saying...today is friday, not thursday. well, dad was in brazil somewhere...i can never remember the names of the cities he flies to...unles its like paris, london, rome, or tokyo. anyway, he was flying. so we are carving the turkey a day late.
while everyone else rose early for the doorbuster sales at the malls (like colette...geez you people are crazy to venture outside your homes on black friday) i slept in. it was wonderful...i think i got up around 11. i'm all confused by the clocks in my room because most of them aren't set back yet but some are. i have no idea what time it is in the morning. the sales try to get earlier and earlier every year. it kinda frustrates me. i think one store was advertising their opening at 5 am. 5 am. that is ridiculous. i think the sales lasted only until 10 am too. stupid stores. some even started early sales on thanksgiving. come on people. its supposed to be a holiday, not some time to reap profits from anxious christmas shoppers. after halloween, thanksgiving is simply skipped over. everyone has no idea what thanksgiving is for anyway. they think its being thankful for crap like cashmier sweaters and new gadgets. one tv station claimed that it was in order to thank the indians. hello! no. the first thanksgiving was the pilgrims thanking GOD for blessing them.
anyway, been watching the tv even though its another beautiful day outside. thank God its finally stopped raining. hopefully it will be just as nice tomorrow for the game. i'm excited to kick tech's butt. my whole family is for tech. even my older sister who doesn't even go there. they're just trying to pick on me. oh well. georgia is better anyway. sense any bitterness?
i have many things to be thankful for today. some of them i listed yesterday. i won't bother with listing them here, but believe me, theres a lot. well, time to go eat with the fam. happy belated thanksgiving to me...and shopping to the rest of y'all.
while everyone else rose early for the doorbuster sales at the malls (like colette...geez you people are crazy to venture outside your homes on black friday) i slept in. it was wonderful...i think i got up around 11. i'm all confused by the clocks in my room because most of them aren't set back yet but some are. i have no idea what time it is in the morning. the sales try to get earlier and earlier every year. it kinda frustrates me. i think one store was advertising their opening at 5 am. 5 am. that is ridiculous. i think the sales lasted only until 10 am too. stupid stores. some even started early sales on thanksgiving. come on people. its supposed to be a holiday, not some time to reap profits from anxious christmas shoppers. after halloween, thanksgiving is simply skipped over. everyone has no idea what thanksgiving is for anyway. they think its being thankful for crap like cashmier sweaters and new gadgets. one tv station claimed that it was in order to thank the indians. hello! no. the first thanksgiving was the pilgrims thanking GOD for blessing them.
anyway, been watching the tv even though its another beautiful day outside. thank God its finally stopped raining. hopefully it will be just as nice tomorrow for the game. i'm excited to kick tech's butt. my whole family is for tech. even my older sister who doesn't even go there. they're just trying to pick on me. oh well. georgia is better anyway. sense any bitterness?
i have many things to be thankful for today. some of them i listed yesterday. i won't bother with listing them here, but believe me, theres a lot. well, time to go eat with the fam. happy belated thanksgiving to me...and shopping to the rest of y'all.
Thursday, November 25, 2004
sturdy as an oak...or loblolly pine
its a gorgeous day today. there isn't a cloud anywhere preventing the eye from seeing every bit of blue the sky has to offer. you never would have guessed that yesterday we were in the midst of 30 mph winds and unbelievable rainfall. well, if you didn't look at the ground at all the debris. i rolled out of bed around 9 am. i couldn't force myself to sleep anymore becuase my stomach was throwing a fit...guess i didn't eat enough the day before.
so i wandered downstairs, grabbed a bowl of honey bunches, and sat down to watch the tube. it was no surprise to me that it was raining. as i've said before, its been raining non-stop since saturday...or maybe even before that. i wouldn't know. anyway, i was watching some music videos on vh1 to get a jumpstart on the day. didn't last too long, though, because eventually the clouds interrupted the satellite signal and all that was on after that were snowflakes. on the tv i mean.
i gave up and turned the tv off and resorted to watching the wind swirl all around the yard, stripping the trees of any bit of leaves that managed to cling on to the end of november. much more entertaining. amazingly enough, there is still quite a bit of green in many of the leaves. thats the southern fall for ya. eventually the trees started to bend. my mom had joined me in the dining room. we kept screaming playfully as the gust of wind turned in our direction and the raindrops and leaves spattered and stuck to the windows. our mood the entire time was never dampered by the rain. it was actually quite fun. the wind picked up and grew worse and the sky was pitch black. the scence outside resembled the warm-up session of an aerobics class. the trees looked as if they were trying to stretch and reach their highest branches to their tippitoes...or roots. whatever. some of them were lashing back and fourth like whips.
all of a sudden my dad ran downstairs saying (that is a carefully selected word) "get in the basement." i thought he was joking. he didn't say it in any kind of hurried or worried manner. he went on to say "with all this rain we've had, the roots are really weak. this wind can blow them over. get in the basement." with that, we all rushed downstairs and continued to watch the leaves swirl about in the backyard through the basement window. the backyard was a carpet of colors...brown was becoming the prominent color as the rain continued to fall. the lights flickered off, then back on for a second, and then off again to leave us without electricity for the remaining hours of the day. after about ten minutes, the wind died down and all that was left to the storm was the pelting rain. my dad, who had to take a shower because he had work later, decided it was safe to head up from our shelter. no sooner did he leave the room did the final dying breath of the storm sweep through our debris covered yard. i guess my dad was standing at the top of the stairs when he heard it. i could hear it from where i watched the storm from the basement window. it in truth, wasn't very loud. in fact, it was a somewhat soft "thud."
"oh my gosh! come see this! come see this!" those are not the words anyone wants to hear. we all knew that it had been a tree, but my dad's exclaimation withheld the vital information: where it fell. my first guess was the car sitting in the driveway. who knows why that was the first thought that came to my mind. i hurried up the basement stairs into the dining room right around the corner. there, three feet from our dining room window (which is where we had been watching mother nature's show earlier) on the narrow patch of grass that lay between our house and driveway, a giant oak tree, about twenty inches in diameter, had laid to rest. the circumstances are incredible. a small (perhaps twelve-inch diameter) hickory tree that lay in the path of the falling mighty oak managed to snap a limb of the oak that would have hit my sister's bedroom (which is right above the dining room). the broken limb was forced to the other side of the tree; the hickory also guided the tree away from the house. the top of the tree was just short enough to touch the house and not break the window, but did manage to strip our beautiful 50-ft canadian hemlock from its branches on one side. it looks quite pathetic now. you would most likely have to see a picture to understand this scene. maybe i'll get a hold of a picture for you.
with all the chaos on that side of the house, we failed to notice until some time later, the other close call we had on the other side of the house. another oak tree (about the same size) that had lived in our neighbor's yard, fell right next to the sunroom. the root ball that the tree made when it fell is about twelve feet tall. you could prolly make a swimming pool from that hole. again, it didn't hit the house, but broke a few of its neighboring friends' branches on the way down. that one is about ten feet from the house. within fifteen minutes from the trees making their suicide dive into our lawn, dad was out there with his chainsaw chopping them up.
so, in the end, we have two trees perfectly paralleling either side of our house. my dad just finished cleaning up the last two trees that were down from the hurricane two months ago. now he's got two more. poor daddy. anyway, we definitely have something to be thankful for this thanksgiving. a home that isn't destroyed, our lives that weren't lost from standing so close to where the tree eventually fell, and that the driveway wasn't blocked in so dad could go to work that afternoon. okay, so maybe that last one doesn't seem that great...but at least he has a job to go to.
Happy Thanksgiving!
so i wandered downstairs, grabbed a bowl of honey bunches, and sat down to watch the tube. it was no surprise to me that it was raining. as i've said before, its been raining non-stop since saturday...or maybe even before that. i wouldn't know. anyway, i was watching some music videos on vh1 to get a jumpstart on the day. didn't last too long, though, because eventually the clouds interrupted the satellite signal and all that was on after that were snowflakes. on the tv i mean.
i gave up and turned the tv off and resorted to watching the wind swirl all around the yard, stripping the trees of any bit of leaves that managed to cling on to the end of november. much more entertaining. amazingly enough, there is still quite a bit of green in many of the leaves. thats the southern fall for ya. eventually the trees started to bend. my mom had joined me in the dining room. we kept screaming playfully as the gust of wind turned in our direction and the raindrops and leaves spattered and stuck to the windows. our mood the entire time was never dampered by the rain. it was actually quite fun. the wind picked up and grew worse and the sky was pitch black. the scence outside resembled the warm-up session of an aerobics class. the trees looked as if they were trying to stretch and reach their highest branches to their tippitoes...or roots. whatever. some of them were lashing back and fourth like whips.
all of a sudden my dad ran downstairs saying (that is a carefully selected word) "get in the basement." i thought he was joking. he didn't say it in any kind of hurried or worried manner. he went on to say "with all this rain we've had, the roots are really weak. this wind can blow them over. get in the basement." with that, we all rushed downstairs and continued to watch the leaves swirl about in the backyard through the basement window. the backyard was a carpet of colors...brown was becoming the prominent color as the rain continued to fall. the lights flickered off, then back on for a second, and then off again to leave us without electricity for the remaining hours of the day. after about ten minutes, the wind died down and all that was left to the storm was the pelting rain. my dad, who had to take a shower because he had work later, decided it was safe to head up from our shelter. no sooner did he leave the room did the final dying breath of the storm sweep through our debris covered yard. i guess my dad was standing at the top of the stairs when he heard it. i could hear it from where i watched the storm from the basement window. it in truth, wasn't very loud. in fact, it was a somewhat soft "thud."
"oh my gosh! come see this! come see this!" those are not the words anyone wants to hear. we all knew that it had been a tree, but my dad's exclaimation withheld the vital information: where it fell. my first guess was the car sitting in the driveway. who knows why that was the first thought that came to my mind. i hurried up the basement stairs into the dining room right around the corner. there, three feet from our dining room window (which is where we had been watching mother nature's show earlier) on the narrow patch of grass that lay between our house and driveway, a giant oak tree, about twenty inches in diameter, had laid to rest. the circumstances are incredible. a small (perhaps twelve-inch diameter) hickory tree that lay in the path of the falling mighty oak managed to snap a limb of the oak that would have hit my sister's bedroom (which is right above the dining room). the broken limb was forced to the other side of the tree; the hickory also guided the tree away from the house. the top of the tree was just short enough to touch the house and not break the window, but did manage to strip our beautiful 50-ft canadian hemlock from its branches on one side. it looks quite pathetic now. you would most likely have to see a picture to understand this scene. maybe i'll get a hold of a picture for you.
with all the chaos on that side of the house, we failed to notice until some time later, the other close call we had on the other side of the house. another oak tree (about the same size) that had lived in our neighbor's yard, fell right next to the sunroom. the root ball that the tree made when it fell is about twelve feet tall. you could prolly make a swimming pool from that hole. again, it didn't hit the house, but broke a few of its neighboring friends' branches on the way down. that one is about ten feet from the house. within fifteen minutes from the trees making their suicide dive into our lawn, dad was out there with his chainsaw chopping them up.
so, in the end, we have two trees perfectly paralleling either side of our house. my dad just finished cleaning up the last two trees that were down from the hurricane two months ago. now he's got two more. poor daddy. anyway, we definitely have something to be thankful for this thanksgiving. a home that isn't destroyed, our lives that weren't lost from standing so close to where the tree eventually fell, and that the driveway wasn't blocked in so dad could go to work that afternoon. okay, so maybe that last one doesn't seem that great...but at least he has a job to go to.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
rain, rain, go away...
it has been pouring buckets since i landed in the atl on saturday. something that irritates me is the news continuing to insist that we are still in some kind of rain deficit that we can never climb out of. well, i'm here to say that if that drama continues after this week, they're full of it. after an entire summer of rain to spoil our trips to the lake and an entire fall battling to keep hold of my giant umbrella in hurricane winds and terrential rain and with this weeks rain, there is no way there can be any kind of shortage for the year.
as for school this week, it was hardly worth going back. anna and i almost didn't get back...and if i didn't have a paper due at 1:25 pm monday afternoon, i wouldn't have cared. my parents dropped me off at tech with becca...she was insisting that she had to get back asap. she didn't even get any studio done anyway before i left. i plunked away at my laptop, trying to crunch time to get my paper done. its amazing how much time i can spend on a paper, and it still be crap. i guess the whole sun and sand thing kinda distracted me. well, eventually hitched a ride with my friend andy, who i know through megan. he was dropping a friend of at tech anyway...perfect! then a two-hour drive through flooded atlanta roads into athens. ended up meeting megan and some of her friends at some kind of Moe's imitator place. wasn't too bad, but i couldn't finish my burrito. afterward, i attempted to get started on my paper, but colette and jo interrupted and wanted me to watch a movie with them. okay, i think this movie sits right up there with somewhere in time and Royal Tennaboms (sp?) on my "that was the worst movie i've ever seen" list. it was called Harold and Maude, and it was quite unsettling. basically, this morbid teenager who has no life falls in love with an 80 year old woman who lives life to the fullest. sounds cute and all, but no thanks. don't worry, i didn't spoil the movie...its not worth the time to see anyway. that was sunday, and the end of the weekend.
i had stat at 9 am. perhaps i would have skipped if i hadn't already missed on friday. oh well. consequences of taking the day off to go to aruba. rushed back (of course, in the rain) and spent the rest of the morning and right up to 1 pm on my paper. i think its one of those that you just don't want to get back. the rest of the day just wasted away until i stepped outside in the same terrential downpour that started three days ago to go to dinner. i'm glad i didn't have to drive last night because i seriously couldn't see two feet infront of me. poor marilyn, who was our ride to bible study, was frustrated. you could see the concentration in her face. last night was our last study of the semester...we'll pick back up again next semester. we've "adopted" a girl from the local projects to get christmas presents for. next monday we're going shopping for everything and then wrapping the gifts. i am so excited about christmas shopping! too bad i don't have a ton of money to spend though...sad. i've got some pretty good gift ideas, though. i won't be out in the black friday madness this year...we're carving the turkey friday afternoon and then jetting up to athens for the game on staturday.
the only class i had today was sociology. we got our papers back and i didn't do great on it. i really need to make an A in this class...since my only other honors class is subjecting me to tourment with the liklihood of a C lingering over my head. crappit. i'll pull it off, though. we got our hall t-shirts today, so i'm excited. they're black with a pink ladies kinda pink font that says "studs". why it says studs, i couldn't tell you. but i guess the ladies of two south are, in fact, now officially studs.
colette and i caught a ride with her friend nikki...we departed at 2. it seemed like a rather long ride because of, what else, the rain. the forecast predicts nothing but rain until friday. then rain again on saturday. perfect. just in time for the game i bet.
as for school this week, it was hardly worth going back. anna and i almost didn't get back...and if i didn't have a paper due at 1:25 pm monday afternoon, i wouldn't have cared. my parents dropped me off at tech with becca...she was insisting that she had to get back asap. she didn't even get any studio done anyway before i left. i plunked away at my laptop, trying to crunch time to get my paper done. its amazing how much time i can spend on a paper, and it still be crap. i guess the whole sun and sand thing kinda distracted me. well, eventually hitched a ride with my friend andy, who i know through megan. he was dropping a friend of at tech anyway...perfect! then a two-hour drive through flooded atlanta roads into athens. ended up meeting megan and some of her friends at some kind of Moe's imitator place. wasn't too bad, but i couldn't finish my burrito. afterward, i attempted to get started on my paper, but colette and jo interrupted and wanted me to watch a movie with them. okay, i think this movie sits right up there with somewhere in time and Royal Tennaboms (sp?) on my "that was the worst movie i've ever seen" list. it was called Harold and Maude, and it was quite unsettling. basically, this morbid teenager who has no life falls in love with an 80 year old woman who lives life to the fullest. sounds cute and all, but no thanks. don't worry, i didn't spoil the movie...its not worth the time to see anyway. that was sunday, and the end of the weekend.
i had stat at 9 am. perhaps i would have skipped if i hadn't already missed on friday. oh well. consequences of taking the day off to go to aruba. rushed back (of course, in the rain) and spent the rest of the morning and right up to 1 pm on my paper. i think its one of those that you just don't want to get back. the rest of the day just wasted away until i stepped outside in the same terrential downpour that started three days ago to go to dinner. i'm glad i didn't have to drive last night because i seriously couldn't see two feet infront of me. poor marilyn, who was our ride to bible study, was frustrated. you could see the concentration in her face. last night was our last study of the semester...we'll pick back up again next semester. we've "adopted" a girl from the local projects to get christmas presents for. next monday we're going shopping for everything and then wrapping the gifts. i am so excited about christmas shopping! too bad i don't have a ton of money to spend though...sad. i've got some pretty good gift ideas, though. i won't be out in the black friday madness this year...we're carving the turkey friday afternoon and then jetting up to athens for the game on staturday.
the only class i had today was sociology. we got our papers back and i didn't do great on it. i really need to make an A in this class...since my only other honors class is subjecting me to tourment with the liklihood of a C lingering over my head. crappit. i'll pull it off, though. we got our hall t-shirts today, so i'm excited. they're black with a pink ladies kinda pink font that says "studs". why it says studs, i couldn't tell you. but i guess the ladies of two south are, in fact, now officially studs.
colette and i caught a ride with her friend nikki...we departed at 2. it seemed like a rather long ride because of, what else, the rain. the forecast predicts nothing but rain until friday. then rain again on saturday. perfect. just in time for the game i bet.
Monday, November 22, 2004
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