officially official: for real this time.

wha-hoo...we're getting mawied! we've booked the place (pleasant valley country club...pretty swanky...who'd a thought?) and picked the date (friday january 5, 2007). it's just barely over four months from now. we're soo behind on planning, it's unbelievable. we're heading back to little rock saturday to order the rings we've picked out and so i can try on my aunt & mom's wedding dress (which will be way too small since they weighed like 100lbs when they got married...or less). so it's time to get crackin. if anyone's got any fab winter wedding ideas, i'd love to hear them. i'm kind of digging this snowball cake. i found the photo on the internet.

a couple of side-notes: 1. i'm going to be a girl scout troop leader! all by myself. i'm a little nervous, but so far it's just going to be 2 third graders in cushman. they're going to try to get a few more...maybe 5 total. pretty cute, though...brownies.

2. today is moving day. we're going to have one of the houses of boys help us this evening, and they love to work (and they're adorable), so it's going to go by really fast. horray for free help and no uhaul!

3. i'm taking the director of profesisonal services (i think that's what i'll be called) position, which means supervising people (yikes!) and way more moolah (horray!).

that's all, folks.

who knew...

that it is acceptable office etiquette to purposefully dump hole-punch dots so that the woman who does the cleaning in the mornings will vaccuum your office? i mean, come on! i heard some people talking about it one afternoon last week and i thought they were kidding. but then i saw a bunch of dots on the floor of marty's office yesterday morning. i'm sure it could be a coincidence, but you never can tell, i guess. and i'd be willing to bet that paula's wise to the scheme; she's just too sweet to make a fuss. is this common? is this the way of the office?

in other news, it's now just ONE WEEK until we make our move. um, yeah, we've only packed a handful of boxes. but we've had tons of offers for help, which is awesome. turns out i'm a sucker, and we'll still have the internet at our new house (they really give you a deal when you try to disconnect your service). also, it seems that my student loans have gotten effed up: my bank sold the loans to some company while i was in the process of consolidating. the consolidation folks sent me a bill even though the bank sent them a check. oh, and for some reason, the company the bank sold the loans to believe i'm in school till 2009, and can't change my status until ualr tells them otherwise, which means the consolidation folks can't buy my loans while i'm "in school". talk about a snafu. i'd better get my $200 check back!

and ashley, i've put another post on my other blog. i know i've not been writing on it nearly as much as i thought i would...

10-toed sloth

oh man, we've been such couch potatoes this weekend! friday we went to the melba to see the devil wears prada--don't see it if you don't like to receive the message: you're fat, unfashionable and homely. just another anne hathaway make-over movie. it was entertaining, though. yesterday was spent...grocery shoping, baking cookies and watching sex and he city. last night we went to the wards' house for movie night with some of the ranch girls and some of david and melissa's teenage nephews. 8 teenagers, 3 movies. three movies! we watched valiant (so david's little kids could participate in movie night), when a stranger calls and the benchwarmers. it was pretty amusing to watch a "scary" movie with a bunch of teenagers. more amusing, in fact, than the movie itself. we didn't make it home until midnight, which i belive makes our latest night out in independence county.

today we watched more sex and the city, packed a few boxes (this is our next-to-last weekend in this house) and lounged around. oh, and i've decided to take up "art". i'm basically playing with pastels making these "birds" taht are pretty weird. who knows how long it will last. it's pretty fun, though, and maybe i'll post some photos of them if i get brave...you have to promise not to laugh. and i've been playing the heck out of my mandolin. i got a new book last weekend that's way better for learning than the book i bought when i first got the mando. pretty soon, i'll be takin my sho on the road...

friends with ambitions

just a quick hoo-rah for my brilliant friends embarking on the world of graduate school. i'm super proud of my pals, and am actually somewhat jealous that they'll be starting a fresh semester while i'm sitting in an office. so here's to leah, who begins orientation for uams pharmacy school tomorrow; and to ashley who is studying american studies (need thesaurus) and will even have a literature class of her own...watch out university of iowa sophomores; and to miss megan moss, going all the way to vermont to the school of international training (now why didn't i think of that?); and to chandle, who will be the youngest, freshest and brightest new student at the clinton school of public policy. whew.
















as for the rest of us, go us.

today i submitted my first grant on behalf of the sheriffs' youth ranches. a whopping $4905 to start a program that i will direct (that is, if the money comes through)...i'll be teaching the girls about business and finance and entrepreneurship and arranging guest speakers on science and math and technology--that's funny, i thought i studied social work...

up and out

so it looks like our time on hawkins street is coming to a close. no, we're not moving back to little rock...we've found a house about a mile from work for literally half the rent! yeah, sweet deal. we're gonna save so much money. sure, we'll be about 15-20 minutes from the grocery store or hastings, but we can learn to consolidate our trips so we're only going that far once a week or so.

the house is pretty neat. the rocky drive way is about a quarter of a mile long, and there are no neighbors in sight. the house is built into a hill, so it's almost completely underground (read: practically no windows, but excellent energy efficiency). there's a sun room, a huge living space, 2 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. it sits on 100 acres, which technically is leased to a cattle farmer, but is mostly wooded and we'll be able to trek through it with the dog all the way down to the white river (hello ticks!)...hopefully there will be a nice swimming spot! i'm thinking about getting some hens, and maybe even borrowing our friend's dairy goat that he's not milking. who knows.

i'm pretty excited about the house, but not so much looking forward to moving all over again. we'll be moving out/in the last/first of the month. so if anybody wants to make a field trip up to batesville to help, you're more than welcome.

yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me!

well, one week later...here are the long-awaited (or not) boat race pictures.

ashley and megan having a pre-race chat.

travis, katie and sarah all decked out in costume (and a half-naked trevor in the background:)our boat's crew: me, sarah, ellen and katie...our boat was so huge, we probably could have used more paddlers...and notice the sexy old lady blow-up doll in the front!
a frenzied start (this is only about a third of the boats)
our boat in the home stretch...after downing melted jello shots that tasted like super thick cough syrup--yuckola
betsy & chris's amazingly crafted fightin' cock (rock out with your cock out as they'd say)
our boat was awarded "bigest boat" and katie did a dramatic reading from a trashy novel while sarah violated me (in order to best depict what was happening in the novel, of course)
surprise, surprise. i'm pretty sure that i've taken this picture each and every year. i think they even host the race and part cause they know they're going to win.

overall, it was a total blast. even nari had fun. we stayed later than we should have, but still missed out on the slip-and-slide. bummer.

holy running bobcat, batman!

so i know i need to be posting photos from the boat race, but i'm at work and without my camera, and i just have to share this crazy story from my drive to work this morning.

so i'm beebopping along down highway 106 to bethesda, when something darts across the road. i didn't have to slam on my breaks or anything, just had to let off the gas. trevor asked if a deer had run by, but i said no, it was a bobcat! i've never seen one before in my life, but i am 99% sure that's what it was. short tail, black spots, fast as all get out. it was a bobcat. apparently the people working in the lime quarry have been seeing a few of them around, and i guess that's probably near where i saw it.

anyway, it made my morning, for sure.