They're Here!

Houseparty has arrived.

We've got amazing students! Today we all went ice skating and sightseeing in the Soo...and I met some countrymen- fellow Yinchuanese!

Newbie

With our powers combined, we are your Cedar office!

Babies do crazy things to people. Right now, I'm really glad I don't have one - I can sleep all night long tonight.

YES!

But they are adorable. No doubt about it. I held a week-old for half an hour tonight. What an amazing gift.

Great Birthday

Officially 24 now - and smiles due to a few good gifts! Like this 'Note to Self' pad:

Because of Dan and Kelly's great gift, I have now found another sweet website - Knockknock is my kinda business. In perusing their Philosophy section, these folks value utility, humor, beauty, and craft.

The fact that they use the word contextlessness scores points in my book as well. I don't think I've ever seen that word before.

Crazy races

I don't have strong thoughts about the issues yet- because I still need to read up on how candidates are responding to them, but in my meandering thoughts, according to Pick Your Candidate here's where they stand by issue in my mind. Weird to see like that..

24 Kucinich
18 Gravel
16 Obama
16 Edwards
15 Richardson
14 Clinton
12 Dodd
11 Biden
3 Paul
-1 McCain
-6 Brownback
-10 Cox
-11 T. Thompson
-12 Huckabee
-13 Giuliani
-20 Tancredo
-21 Romney
-21 Hunter

Thanks Lance for the link..

Farewell

Farewell, originally uploaded by sarah_laughingguts.

In my spare evenings, particularly lately, I've taken to hunting for schools and learning all over again what the teaching situation is like in China.

Seems like it's gotten more confusing in recent years. I've pored through sites a lot since 2003, searching for possibilities, then stopped when I was in China the summer of '06. So much has changed! Even more, it seems, anyone and everyone who wants to travel to East Asia is seeking out teaching jobs. That puts me on my guard. I don't want to work alongside one of those people that doesn't care about education and is just looking to get as much as they can out of the setup.

It bothers me.

So I'm looking for a dream job. I know that. It's possible, isn't it, though, to make it come true? Of course there will be things (let's face it, a lot of things, and probably most things) that I won't expect and that won't go as I wish they would. I know enough about China and the way things usually work to know that.

But I still hope. Once I get in that classroom (well, in my city of work, really,) I can begin building relationships, which is where I really want to be.

Oh well. I guess every place has its issues. Just another thing to know...

A day in the life

With about 1/16 of a gallon left in our milk jug, I had a glass that was bad a few weeks ago. For some lack of reasoning, I put the jug back in the fridge to deal with it later.

A few days later, roommate Catie took the jug out, we talked about how we needed to throw the milk away, and she left the jug on the counter, again with some lack of reasoning.

A few days after that, I realized the jug was on the counter and beginning to bloat. I had a reason to leave it, though. Catie was the one who had put it out, and besides, wouldn't it be kinda cool both to see her reaction when she notices or even it the milk jug blew? So I left it.

Several days after that, Catie noticed.

She said, "Didn't we get that out like a week ago!? Ew. We need to get rid of it," and left it again.

Tonight, I walked into the apartment and smelled a truly horrid reek. I sniffed all over the apartment, only discovering that the smell seemed to be worse in the kitchen. Maybe it was our fridge? I'd been thinking we needed to clean out the fridge again... so I just sprayed the whole place with vanilla air freshener. It helped.

Not enough, though. And I heard this weird dripping sound. Figuring it was the sink, I didn't think much further of it. But I did call Catie to ask her to use her brain when she got home to maybe find out what the smell was. Something like rotten eggs or spoiled milk, I told her.

She remembered the milk jug. That's where the drip was coming from, making a pool on the floor- which explains why the spray didn't work well enough.

EWWWWWW GROSSSS!

So here I sit with candle lit. And milk jug on the deck in the snow.

Maybe we're not as far away from college as we thought.

cross-country mania!

Today, I chilled my x-country skis and hit the new trail across the road - saw hunter Eric when I was about 10 feet away from him (or closer) and later ran into the whole Miller clan - Gabe, Eli, Jonah, Beckah, Rod, and Gayle about to hit the trail. I followed only two sets of ski tracks, a set of boots, and a snowmobile; now that trail is 3x more x-countryified!

Here are some of my latest from the awesome winter weather:

Some swirling in the sand

The icy sea of reeds

Just a little picture of Taylor Lodge, if you catch the drift...

And a toy truck just for kicks.

Just about now

It sure would be nice to go dancing. Swing, maybe. Yeah.

Been thinking about seeing what's going on up in the Soo- it takes about an hour to get there, though. Now that it's winter, we've got awesome (snowy) weather. A little unpredictable sometimes.

I'm looking forward, though. To houseparty, when we've got international students from awesome places like China. And summer crew come back. It'll be like having a social life for 5 days. And to think, I used to wonder what houseparty was like up here, even fantasized a few years ago about maybe going to Cedar Campus for houseparty just after Christmas. Oh yeah. Forgot that memory.

Well here I am, and I've been recruiting crew, readying the website for next year, sorting pictures, and looking forward to photographer duties December 26-January 2.

I'm all smiles about that.

That, and all the books that just came in for me on interlibrary loan :-)

Winter.

It's upon us!

Over a foot of snow this weekend.

Lots of drifting. Not all survived.