And then...

I dreamed about it all night long. Shells upon shells. And I would pick them out of the sand with tweezers and name them some sort of gobbledigook. Just some gibberish names. It actually woke me up. I woke up mulitiple times saying to myself, dream about anything else! I would rather have a scary nightmare than pick more shells!

What I did today...

I think I am going to start a new on going post about the events that happened in my day...

I woke up an hour early to get to school to print a paper. Yes, I have a printer, but my computer was broken. Yes, I tried to set it up to my laptop, but it is so old, it is only compatible with XP. Anyway, I tried one last time to start it up, and YAY! It did! So I had an extra hour of this:



It was a nice surprise.

So, when I did head out to school, I sat through another lecture about this:


And then another lecture about this:


Then back to geobio AKA Paleontology for some of this:



And This:



And picking out this:




It was excruciating. Hours and hours of picking shells out of sand. Microscopic shells. And THEN we had to look through some thick textbooks to identify all the taxons we just found. And guess which detail oriented, good with small things person was really good at it? Me. Its a bad thing, trust me. I had to stay on the scope for, well, I started at one and ended at five. Four hours of diatoms and forams is painful.

Well, I went home. And made something like this:



And now I am getting ready for this:


Goodnight everyone!



Well that isn't very nice...

Confession

I just read this: http://thewomenscolony.com/family-room/2009/4/19/feather-by-elizabeth-segrist.html over at the Colony and decided I had better come clean about a family pet situation of my own.

These pets:

We had them when we were living at Nana's. Remember, I was only six or so at the time. I think Lauren really wanted a dog, but mom got us each a fish instead. Mine was smaller and had more black on it. Lauren's was bigger and orange, it was also slow. I really wanted to have a pet I could PET, right? So... I tried to take my fish out to pet it. Now, I knew this was wrong and it couldn't breathe, but I vowed it would only be just this once. And I would only take it out and pet it a few seconds, then I would dump it back in...



Well, I stuck my hand into that fish bowl and tried to catch my small, dark, very fast little fish. And couldn't catch him. Lauren's fish, however, was large, bright, and slow... I proceeded to cuddle him a little, and drop him back in. For about three weeks. I even *dare I say it* BRUSHED the poor fellow with a comb. Which pretty much consisted of me setting the fish on the comb and dumping him back in. Now that I think about it, it was probably Nana's HAIR comb... I really hope you are laughing and not having some other reaction...

Anyway, I don't know if you remember how this story ended. Lauren's fish came to a comparatively speedy demise. I know it is mostly my fault, but he didn't die in my arms, he died while I was out. I even tried petting my fish after Lauren's was gone, but he was too darn fast to catch and lived an annoyingly long fish life.

And that is that. Lauren, I am sorry for killing your fish. Whew. Glad to get that one off my chest.

Miss California

There is talk about a certain question ruining Miss California's chance to become Miss America. Perez Hilton asked, "Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?"

And Carrie responded "Well I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um, we live in a land that you can choose same sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and in, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, No offense to anybody out there. But that's how I was raised and that's how I think that it should be between a man and a woman."

What a set-up, for one. No matter what she answered, it would have been controversial. And honestly, whether or not I agree with it, California just vetoed same-sex marriage. She was representing our state well I think. If she really lost the crown over this, popular opinion, I think that is wrong. Opinions are opinions, don't ask the question if you don't want to know the answer.

Once upon a time

This is a story using a famous first line from another book...

- Anne Tyler from Back When We Were Grownups "Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person." The woman discovered this when she looked in the mirror today. Her eyes were wrinkled in the corners. Her smile was flat and vacant. Her windswept hair with more grey than she remembered. She pulled back her face, a move she had watched her mother do many years before today, and watched the wrinkles smooth. It comforted her to know that face was still in there, somewhere.

Someday, when she was young and fearless, she dreamt of being a model on a runway in Paris. She dreamt of becoming the greatest photographer for National Geographic. She dreamt of curing the flu. And of fame, and of brilliance. But today? Today she saw a woman. Just a woman. A woman who had accomplished a pile of dishes in the sink and moth holes in her favorite dress. The whistling wind grabbed her attention and pulled her toward the window.

Outside, the world looked grey, or was it just the sky. Wind was striking harder, like tiny pins prickling across her face, through her hair. The window croaked its objection as she shut the world out and sat in the comfy charcoal armchair. Another Oprah’s Book Club winner sat on her left, but today, she reached toward her right. A sepia tone picture in a painted silver frame stood collecting dust beneath the fading lamplight. She realized she had forgotten this picture.

It was a simple family photo. A grown man and cheery young faces stared into the darkness, not knowing their fates. She set it down, dust intact. Let them sit it peace, she thought and got up to look out the window again.

The neighbor’s houses were boarded up. The Johnson’s American flag flitted and fluttered aggressively in the breeze. It looked violent; until a basketball rolled and bounced merrily down the street. It jumped and flew and floated on the air. “My son would love that ball” was her only thought. She ran into the air and plucked the happy, circular orb from the sky. She knew she had not hit the ground, but it did not seem to matter. “I’m coming home, my dear.”

She let go of the ground, of gravity, of it all, and floated and twisted her way into the sky.

Mosaic of me!

Here is my ME-zaic hehehe It's a mosaic of me...




Step 1: Go to flickr.com
Step 2: In another window open http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php
Step 3: Choose 4 columns, 3 rows
Step 4: Answer the following questions in the search bar of flicker.
Pick your favorite one (picture) on the first page and paste the address into the mosaic maker (on bighugelabs) line.
Create the mosaic and then save it to your computer and post it.
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. Where do you want to be right now?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Favorite memory?
6. Dream vacation?
7. Favorite dessert?
8. What do you love most in life?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10.. Who is your celebrity crush?
11. One word to describe you.
12. Your nickname.

Now remember you are making ART

Another cool thing I did was open each of ours in their windows and compared side-by-side. I just can't figure out what your favorite memory was Lauren...

Life in the slow lane

image from flickr

Last night, when I was driving home from school, I had a terrible experience. I was going my usual 20 in a 25 (I'm not kidding) and I saw a car coming toward me in the other lane. No big deal, right? When this minivan decides to pull onto the road, that oncoming car was a big deal! I couldn't swerve into the other lane while this minivan pulled out. SO I did what my reflexes told me to and freaked out. This caused me to slam on the breaks and stop about one inch from this minivan. Or rather, he was one inch from me to my right. My passenger door was one inch away from making my car a total loss. I was shaking a bit, gripping the wheel, as I looked into the eyes of my attacker. He looked a bit like this...



A very young looking 16 year old, driving his mother's minivan. I started screaming, throwing my arms in the air, and drove away looking something like this...



But as I grumped in my car, I started thinking about when I was *cough* 17 *cough* and driving and... I am sorry to say that in high school... I was a terrible driver. Sorry to tell you Mom, but I was terrible. There are many occasions that I could have died or crashed or gotten into some severe fender bender. I remember a month or so after I started driving on my own, I knew that I had to stop before I turned right at a red light. So, I stopped, and went... And so did the cars that were turning left at a green light... That woman yelled and waved her arms so big, I will never forget to look for cars before I turn.

And then there was when the car behind me called the driving school to complain about my slow-ness.



So readers, I would like to think I taught that... kid... a lesson. LOOK BEFORE YOU TURN! It's a simple lesson, but one I think we need to be scared the bejesus into learning. Personally, I prefer to live life in the slow lane. Five under the speed limit. With my turn signal on a quarter mile before I turn. Zero tickets and counting.

Stops along Death Valley

One of the stops was the dunes from below, but we had a few others as well.



This was a giant gorge cutting through the sedimentary rocks allowing us to "see through time".


We also stopped at these cool lava tubes.



And we got to climb inside.



It wasn't very long but there was an awesome skylight.



Another stop was the pup fish pool. This pool only exists because it is fed by an underground spring, and it is tiny!



There are only three pools left with these cool little fish that biologists study. They were at one point the same fish, but as Death Valley dried up, they evolved differently in these pools. Now only a few are left. I couldn't find the picture of the fish and spring, but here is us stopping for a group picture.



Lets see, where else...



This is the view from Zyzzx station where we stayed, and yes, this is another larger pup fish pool they maintain.

Kelso Dunes

I have sooo many pictures from my Zyzzx trip.
This is us on the top of the big Kelso sand dunes.

And us climbing to the top of the 600ft dune...


Back flip off the dune...


Us lined up ready to jump...



And this is the path we took sliding/falling to the bottom of the dune.


It is a "singing dune"


The noise was cool, a very low note.

More pictures of places to come...