no photo yet

sorry, haven't gotten around to taking a photo of my hair. but i did go to a hair stylist and get it fixed up. it's not bad now, but a little too short for my taste. jamie summed it up pretty well the other day. i came downstairs early in the morning, having just been forcibly woken up by my alarm. he said "steph! look at your hair!" i said "what does it look like?" he said "it looks...tired!"

More on mice

So at lunchtime today I decided to fetch something from the downstairs freezer. I opened the basement door, and had to stand stock-still to take in the little tableau before me:

At the bottom of the stairs were two cat food dishes, from which our two indoor cats, Bert and Ernie, are served their ridiculously expensive meals (they’re on a special diet thanks to Ernie throwing the cat equivalent of a kidney stone last year).

Directly in front of one of the dishes sat Ernie.

In one of the dishes sat a mouse, nibbling away at the tidbits left behind after the cats’ morning buffet.

Ernie was boredly observing the mouse – not as if he were stalking it, not even as if he found the mouse particularly interesting – certainly not as if he intended to do anything about it – and the mouse continued to eat.

Ernie could literally have stretched out his neck to snap up a mouthful of mouse, but he chose not to.

Apparently our cats are taking their diet way too seriously.

Guess what Wes will be doing when he gets home tonight?

thine hair shall be chopped...

ying cut my hair this evening. i was terrified the whole time. i won't go into details...it looks okay. i'm just not going to think about it, maybe on monday i will sneak down to the hair salon and ask them to clean it up for me without making it look too noticeable that they did anything. i think mom would like the style, it's just kinda messily done. anyway..........only one week left in this homestay, then i'll be with some friends for a week, then Uluru, then home! i'll put a couple photos on here of my new hair when i get a chance.

Kra-KOOM!

So we all know that I'm going to a chiropractor, right? Well, I've been going to a chiropractor for the past week or two. This week I've spent three hours on what they call a 'decompression table' designed to seperate my vertebrae, but what amounts to a medieval rack. Because I'm just starting this therapy, I'm required to spend the rest of my evening on my back, usually watching movies on the couch so my vertebrae don't reset (tough life, I know).

ANYWAY... Yesterday a nasty storm blew through Delaware, and on my way home from the doctor's office I saw a half-dozen branches blown off the trees, and power was out on the main road through town. Every time a galer like this hits, I'm afraid that the trees just south of our house will blow over. That didn't happen, but something else did.

I was flat on my back (watching Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, check you're local listings), when she asked me to come outside and see something. We walked to the back of the property, where she showed me that the largest remaining tree on our land had been split down to the trunk, and a large strip of moss had been turned black.

Looks like lightning, but since we weren't there when it happened, it's hard to tell.

When I was growing up, something similar happened to a tree in my parent's yard, where my family could see it. Lightening struck a tree and scored it in a spiral like the thread of a screw, then jumped to another tree with the same root system and shot up it like a bottle rocket. At least one of the trees died. I don't know what that means for the tree in our backyard.

In other news... I've formally and officially gotten Carrie addicted to Lost. Our local library carries a lot of DVDs of TV shows by season. I reserved the set at the beginning of April, and it just came in last week.

Once I got her to sit still for an hour, we ended up watching 17 episodes over the course of 2 days. She's so hooked she actually chose to watch a couple of episodes over working on the stairwell.

Hello Little One!

Here is what our Little One looks like. Everything looks good so far!

Kiss Me, I'm an Uncle!

So, among the other things my parents talked about as they were at our house for lunch yesterday, we learned that my brother has a 12 year old daughter he didn't know about. Dan was slapped with a paternity suit earlier in the year, and he took the test to fight it.

You can figure out how that turned out.

Her name is Taylor, but we don't know too much about her. We believe she is living in Kentucky with relatives. Her mother is unmarried, and we think that she has 3-4 other kids, each with possibly different fathers. Beyond that, we don't have much more info on her. Not even a photo.

Dan's going to have to pay child support, but in return he does get visitation rights. It's doubtful he'll pursue it, but my parents would at least like to meet their first grandchild, even if they know that they won't have much of an influence in her life.

This is the way we wash our clothes, wash our clothes, wash our clothes

This is how we get dressed in the morning now:

We get up, shower, brush, do whatever we have to do, and put on some sort of undergarments.

We pick out our clothes for work for the day, walk out to the end of the scaffolding that has been filling up our stairwell since Friday, and hang them on the end of said scaffolding.

(At this point I usually like to take my shoes and toss them over the end of the scaffolding in such a way as to maximize the scaring of the allegedly starving animals congregated at the bottom of the steps. (There are usually 5 (animals, not steps) at the moment, as we are dog-sitting for Drew and Lesley.))

Then we climb over (which scares the willies out of me, hanging 5 feet above the nearest step) or through (which requires one to do the limbo -- twice) the scaffolding, to get downstairs.

Then we can simply pick up our work clothes and get dressed downstairs!

Handy, aye?

Running

I have some exciting news. As some of you may know, I joined Curves about 3 weeks ago and have been working out regularly 3 to 4 times a week. I am feeling great and I really like it there. Anyway, I decided today that I really need to get myself in shape as well - not just lose weight - for soccer. (The team had there first game on Monday night for the Wooster league that they are in for the summer and just kicking balls with the girls and showing some of them proper techniques made me winded and tired.) So today, a day that I do not work out at Curves, I got up and ran before Mike left for work. I ran a whole mile without stopping at all. I was so proud of myself. I know for some of you this might seem silly and trivial, but for me it is a milestone. I have walked many miles for workouts, and walked/ran many miles, but it has been years since I have been able to run the whole mile without stopping. So I think Curves must be doing a lot for my stamina as well as losing weight and toning my muscles. It took me 13 minutes to run it and I could probably walk it just as fast if not faster, but walking never seems to get my heart rate up as much and I don't feel as good about doing it when I walk. Anyway, my next goal will be to get the mile down to 10 minutes which is about as fast as I ran it even when I was playing soccer in high school.

And by the way...

...you're standing in bull ka-ka.

James's first birthday

We would like to have a birthday party for James on Saturday, June 17th starting at about 1:00 and going til whenever. It will be kind of an open house with games and food and that kind of stuff. I know some of you are busy with house and yard work so if you can't come it is okay - or if you come late that is okay too. We are inviting lots of people including extended family so there might be people you'd like to see.

i don't understand this stupid blog. i'm trying to add a photo to my profile. i finally figured out how/where to go to add my photo to my profile, but it says the url is wrong, even though i just copied and pasted it from here. and it keeps saying something about i have to click on some "template" tab when i log in in order to change my links. where in heck is the template tab?? and why are there 2 separate sites, one to edit posts and another with the actual blog? and how do i get back to that original edit post site? i don't think i've ever gotten so worked up over something before. the blogger help is almost completely unhelpful, and the way this whole thing works is ridiculous. it's not good for my health to use this blog. i hate this stupid thing. i hate it, i hate it, i hate it!!! now i know how old people feel.

vacation

here are just a few photos from the trip. we had such a wonderful time. i couldn't ask for a better vacation.

james got his first tooth! it came in last tuesday. he is also doing the army crawl very well. he is quite speedy. no new words yet, but he was talking up a storm all week.

All I want for Christmas

http://www.nycgarbage.com/

What Harvard is good for

So I get one of the blah blah blah Harvard Alumni emails (translation: Give us more money! We only have the largest endowment in the entire world!), and I see a link in it to an article recently published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,
entitled: Obesity levels in U.S. are grossly underestimated.

I'll sum up the SHOCKING findings for you here:

"Based on this new understanding of the survey data, the authors found that, on average, women tend to underestimate their weight while men do not. When it comes to height, young and middle-aged men tend to overestimate their height more than women in the same age groups. "

Women lie about their weight and men lie about their height! Wow! I'm glad someone finally figured this out!

old people

so i got hit by a car today (on my bike). i waited patiently at a light, got the green crosswalk sign, and went on my merry way. an old lady driving didn't bother to look, turned left, and hit me. i screamed, got my back wheel kinda stuck in the car a bit, and so i pushed myself along a bit to get loose. when i did that, the lady started moving forward again!! i had to hurry to get out of her way, and she drove off!! i was kind of in shock, i didn't know what i was supposed to do, so, seeing that i wasn't badly damaged, i started riding again. a guy in a truck behind me flagged me down and wanted to see if i was okay. he took me the rest of the way to uni. he was really nice. i wasn't very upset about it for a while, i was just in shock, but now that i've had time to settle down i'm pretty annoyed. i should have gotten her license plate number. there's a big fine for a hit and run here. and my back wheel is really buckled now. the bike was really crappy in the first place and not completely safe to ride, but now it's REALLY not very safe to ride. so now with less than a month to go until classes are over, i have to pay money to get it fixed, or else pay money and take the bus. grrrrrr. (oh, and as for my own well-being, i've just got a bit of a skid mark on my shin, my leg's a tiny bit sore. but i'm fine.)

Family work day?

How about this scenario: Everyone come to our house for a work day on the 22nd of July (shortly after Tessie gets home) then that evening we all go see "The Lady in the Water"?

Serious Drama

I just got back from D.C. and I am taking a break in my packing for Orlando. Just thought I'd let you all know I got back safe and sound and right on time. I had fun, although I was rather grouchy by the last day. The only thing I can tell you right now is that 6th grade girls have got serious drama issues. It was actually quite amusing what went on within a 2 hour period on a boat ride down the Patomac (sp?). I will update everyone when I have more time. But for now, have a lovely week here in the Ohio weather (or Australian as the case may be) while I am visiting Mickey.

office space

i got chao and brice to watch office space. they thought it was pretty funny, but we couldn't get the subtitles on so they couldn't understand half the jokes. they talked too fast. now i'm preparing to watch a japanese drama. it only has chinese subtitles, so i'll just have to pretend i have a clue what they're saying.

I forgot to mention...

...that I shot myself in the left index finger with a nail gun last week. It was just a finish nail gun, so no permanent damage. It didn't even hurt that horribly.

But every time I see my finger and the scab, I think about Adam Sandler's boss from Happy Gilmore, and then I start giggling.

"And you can count... On me waiting for you in the parking lot!"

An author to check out

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=pd_sc/103-9735302-7747047?search-alias=aps&keywords=harlan%20coben

Harlan Coben.

I've now read two of his novels.

His writing style/diction is a bit stilted; his character development isn't the greatest; he recycles some stuff from book to book.

But boy oh boy -- 5 pages into it and he has you totally hooked. I can't put it down. I have to cover the bottom of the page with my hand so I can't see what's coming. I find myself disoriented when I stop reading, because I was so sucked into it.

Definitely worth picking up one of his novels.