Saturday, October 28, 2006

Fall Leaves Gold on Red

One of my newest favorites taken with my new 8mp camera...The camera was only $150 with Shipping and Handling on Ebay...Great Deal! :)
Wow...16 hours of mind-numbing boredom...Back to working long hours at Foothill for less than $10 an hour...wooo-hooo....

Thursday, October 26, 2006

New dissertation chair...

I just had a meeting with Dr. Wells who has agreed to be my new dissertation chair now that Dr. Layne is no longer with the university....and for once, I left a meeting with my chair feeling happy, optimistic, and as though I have someone who will give me clear guidance to finish up by the December 1 deadline...wish me luck...

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Small world...

It is a small world. I was in the primary today handing out signup sheets for the blood drive (as I am the Blood Drive Coordinator in the ward)... I handed one to the primary president and she asked about travel restrictions and giving blood. I explained that the rules for donating have changed and some European countries have now been cleared for travel. I explained that I had previously been banned from giving blood as I had lived in Portugal. Turns out her father was a mission president in Portugal when the country was one mission and she lived in the home that was the mission home when I was there. Interesting...

Patriarchal Blessing time...

Today my 15-year-old daughter received her patriarchal blessing. I was impressed by the Patriarch. He took about 30 minutes to get to know us, talk to her, explain what a patriarchal blessing is and isn't, etc. It was a nice blessing and covered all of the areas of her life that I worry about. I think she will do just fine if she follows the advice contained therein...it was neat. I couldn't believe that it addressed all of the areas I had hoped it would.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Funny Rant on When we Were Kids....for our kids...

I saw this on someone else's blog and found it hilarious...

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill BOTH ways... yadda, yadda, yadda.And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!BUT NOW THAT I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damned Utopia! And I hate to say, it but you kids today, you don't know just how good you've got it!I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!! There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter... With a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up!And talk about hardship?

You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

Don't get me started on the cell phone for kids issue. We have all fallen into the trap of "it's for their safety". But it is amazing that we came and went and never had a phone on us and we all lived. A cell phone, hell, back then phones at home still had cords on them. Imagine being tied to one spot. Roaming charges... yeah, we had those... when we strayed too far from home we got charged with it and got our butts beat... there are some roaming charges for you!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "asteroids" and the graphics sucked a$$! Your guy was a little square! Youactually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever, and you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE !

Nowadays kids have a million activities after school and on the weekends that they need to be taken to. When we were young, our Mom's didn't take us anywhere, except to the grocery store (and back then they didn't even have to take us in, they could just leave us in the car!). Heck they didn't even drive us to school... Your transportation was your stinking little feet.Not to mention they would never have paid money for al of those activities. We were told, "What do you think? We are just made of money?" The answer was no, and we walked to where we wanted to go.

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your a$$ and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

And now there are DVD players in the cars! God forbid they just stare out the window like we did. Now Mom's can't say, "If you don't behave, " I am going to come across this seat and beat your butt". No, because they would hit their heads on the damn DVD player!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire... Imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that Stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shakeit over the stove forever like an idiot. That's exactly what I'm talking about!

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Trivial Prayer???

My 5-year-old daughter has had nightmares off and on since she was 3 when we used to let her watch Courage the Cowardly Dog before retiring for the evening (not realizing it was such a scary/creepy show). To help her not be afraid, and also to not want to sleep in my bed every night, I taught her to pray to have happy dreams about (long list of happy things)...I think it used to get her thinking about more positive things, and also help her feel more secure. Well, that has become a nightly ritual and one of the most important things she wants to pray about every night. Sometimes I wonder if God thinks it is silly for us to pray for something so minor when there are so many more pressing issues in the world. My daughter prays that she won't have nightmares, but children in Iraq pray they won't be killed by a car bomb, children in Africa are so hungry and listless they lack the energy to pray, children in abusive families pray the abuse will stop, etc. I think God does hear and answer my daughter's prayers because she has not had many nightmares in the past 2 years when it used to be a nightly occurance, but I also feel slightly foolish at times when there are grave dangers and much bigger problems throughout the world.

PhD ABD for Hire

When I returned to work at an inpatient drug treatment facility recently, I almost felt like I had relapsed...I was reminded several times during the day, by several employees, that the facility had a Ph.D. working on-call...(although I don't officially graduate until December)...I am not sure if the facility is proud that they have someone with that much education, or if they think I am pathetic for going back there to work. :)

Sunday, October 15, 2006

We're all together again...

My parents and 3 of my 4 sisters came to Cabela's yesterday to buy my Dad a birthday present (at least I think it was a bday present). Anyhow, it was good to see everyone. We hung out in the store for about an hour or an hour and a half, then came to my house for a while. I am not much of an entertainer, but I enjoy having my family around and catching up with everyone. Then we went to DI and my sister picked up a few books for her English class. Then my parents took us all out to IHOP. It was fun.

I think the highlight of the evening was when my 2nd oldest sister told a story about how her husband was being a smart ass when she was talking to her older sister on the phone. He kept saying things like, "Who are you talking to? You need to get in there and make my dinner!" K told S, "Make him a dogshit sandwich!" or something to that effect. So with the constant cheerleading of K, and despite feeling that she was going to throw up, she went outside with two slices of bread, picked up a piece of dog crap between it, and gave it to him. She said if she had realized that he was going to tell everyone, she would have added garnishes! :) I laughed so hard it made my underused smile muscles ache a little bit.

Also, I think I hurt my Dad's feelings with a comment, so if he reads this, sorry for what I said...

Oh, and thanks again for dinner...it was fun...and delicious...

Friday, October 13, 2006

My New ECrater Store "Photo For You"

I have just opened my new ECrater store...Photo For You...It has some of the same pictures as my Ebay store, but I am trying to get away from the fees on Ebay...out of $500 worth of sales last month, I only took home $50...that is sad. :(

So, check it out...

http://www.photoforyou.ecrater.com/

Thursday, October 12, 2006

More Autumn shots...






Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Cora


Cora, our cute "little" dog...She's not so little anymore...

Monday, October 02, 2006

Autumn Glory

I have been taking a lot of autumn pictures...I will post my better ones here or at "My Pictures" link...