longest day ever

yes, today promises to be quite the long one. it's my last day to be at the office before i get to see trevor again. hopefully i'll find enough to do to keep me busy...i am going to pick up nari at lunch and bring her up to the office. i'm tutoring this evening after work, and sarah wants nari and me to come in costume (we're party animals). so that should be pretty fun.

tomorrow i head to little rock for the women's foundation of arkansas "power of the purse" luncheon at which i will be awarded the check for the grant proposal i wrote. go me. and i've got a fun coworker as a "date", so it'll be good even if the luncheon is boring. it's at the peabody, so the food should be pretty good...just hope there's a meatless option...

thursday is the greyhound day. 14 hours on a bus. yuckola. but not as bad as 24, as it was when i "moved" to denver. thank goodness for that!

booo on blogger!!! i was going to post a picture of what trevor looked like before his trip, but it's not letting me...and i'm even on my office computer. booo! maybe i'll come back and try again later.

testing, testing 1-2

oh, so i guess i just have to post really small pictures and wait ten hours for them to show up...durn dial-up...

maybe when i have some energy, i'll post some more pictures. of last night's rockin halloween party at sarah & will's.

but for now, this is my house.

it's magarin!

yo, i'm so on a roll with this posting thing.

this is just a quickie to say: holy crap! my wedding dress was on tv last night! and it will be again on monday. now, i just want to go on the record as saying that i got the dress BEFORE seeing it on the bachelor, rome. but hey, it's a pretty dress. i'm no bachelor fanatic (in fact, this is my first season to watch it...i was a joe millionnaire fan, though), but it was totally the dress that the bitchy lisa had on in the preview for next monday's show. so if you want a sneak peek at what i'll be wearing at le wedding, just keep your eyes peeled for nutso lisa wearing it on her hometown date (who does that...seriously?).

and am i wrong to be obsessively worried that aunt margie STILL has not ordered the invitations. i mean, the wedding is just 10 weeks from freaking friday! i think i'll just have her hand-deliver them as punishment. i wish.

blogging...from...home...dial-up style...

first time blogging with dial-up. we'll see how that goes. i'm even going to attemp to post some pictures in here, and i'm a little nervous about it. yeah, that didn't work out so well; i guess i'll try to do that at lunch tomorrow.

things are alright here in bethesda. i'm still plugging along with this solo thing. less than two weeks now. still feels like an eternity. everyone else seems to believe that the time has just flown by. but they're not the ones with empty houses and needy pets (one of whom has decided she's no longer house-broken--that's a TON of fun, let me tell you) and boring drives to and from little rock and nobody to laugh with when the movie is funny. it's pretty sad, really. i really liked living alone when that was my life. liked having my own space and not cleaning up after myself unless i felt like it. and NEVER making the bed. trevor moving in changed a lot of things...i quit eating the same thing for dinner over and over (example: last week, from monday through friday, i ate either homemade vegetarian chili or three-cheese tortolini), i started making the bed every morning, sunday was "clean the house day", i got to get back in bed while he showered because i knew he wouldn't let me over-sleep. and i don't mean to say that everything is entirely different since he's been gone; it's just been lonely, and i can see the good habits slipping.

anyway, on to current events!

my biggest adventure of the weekend: getting myself and my captive passenger, anna-kate, extremely lost deep in the ghetto of little rock. as in college station. scary. freakin scary. but we had gelatto at the river market to calm our nerves, and all was well. had papa johns (soooo needed that) and a movie date with leah--marie antoinette. good quality time.

and although my sunday appt. with the alterations lady went well, the boobs at lens crafters "forgot" to call me to tell me that my contacts haven't come in, and that i have to come back yet again next weekend. which won't be a total loss, since i'll get my early voting in, and make it to some halloween fun!

oh, and happy thoughts for my nonie. she's in the hospital with pneumonia.

on the bandwagon

well, i guess i'm on myspace now. it's actually pretty ridiculous how i ended up on it...i've been trying to track down my former piano teacher for weeks so i can ask her if she will play the piano during our ceremony. so i finally got internet at home again. dial-up-is-pretty-slow. and i did a search on both her and her husband's names, and i found her myspace. well, it wouldn't let me send her a message unless i signed up. so i did. and now i'm finding all sorts of folks on it that i would have never thought to find. it would be pretty easy to stalk someone, you know. way easier than this blogger bit...i don't know how long i'll keep the myspace account, cause it's kind of freaky.

anyway, if you are as bored as i am, and you want to check it out, the link is http://www.myspace.com/abrookeje

and i'm trying to make it look nice. i don't seem to have many decent pictures of myself to put up...i'm beginning to think i'm even less photogenic than i once believed. hmmm.

it's what trevor would call a boomshackalacka moment

yeah, baby. my first grant came in! a few months ago i wrote a grant to the Womens Foundation of Arkansas for their mini-grant awards. and i got it! well, i got $3000 of it. which is not quite how much we asked for, but every little bit counts around here. and i get to go to their luncheon to accept the award, and i get to bring a guest. it'll be pretty funny to have my boss, the ceo, be my guest to a luncheon. silly.
now, the down side is that it'll be my responsibility to put the program (an offshoot of our farm program, but just for the girls) into action. and my plate is getting fuller (on paper and in theory at least) each day. but i guess i'm young and can take the heat.
the only thing is...i got my one phone call from trevor on friday, and he's liking outward bound so much that he'll likely want to apply for a job. which would mean moving. and leaving stuff behind. i complain so much about my job, but i also kind of feel like i'll be leaving so many things undone. but everyone is replacable. and nothing is set in stone.
in other exciting work-related news...last thursday we had the arkansas field coordinator from heifer international come out to have a meeting with us. he showed us a video and we talked about the steps toward becoming a heifer project partner. which means we'll be getting trainings and money for livestock and garden stuff and all kinds of great things. i'm holding a more inclusive staff meeting in a couple of weeks to show houseparents, farm staff, etc. the video and to prep them for when mr. ashanti comes back to do a values training with all of us. i'm pretty pumped. because it was my idea...it's my baby. and it's really happening.

anyway, it was a decent weekend: friday i watched a video (imax videos can come on netflix) about dolphins and ate too many cookies. saturday i went to little rock and ran errands/had lunch with katie and then went to lenscrafters to be fitted for contacts. my eyes=horrible. they didn't even have my perscription in stock, my astygmatism is so bad. so i've got these "practice" ones that are the closest they could get. but i can't get them in. i got one out and one in on my own, but otherwise the dr. had to do it for me. she seemed really confident, but i'm a little worried i can't do it. my eyes are so small, and i can't seem to keep myself from blinking and flipping the contact inside-out on my finger. and my eyeball hurts from trying so much. and it's making the headaches worse. wah wah wha. but i'll be the little engine that could, because i want to have 2 eyes, and not 4 for my engagement photos, bridal photos, wedding, etc.
saturday night i went to sarah & will's for mike c's belated birthday party, which was a total blast and much needed. after the first wave of folks left, sarah, holly, kat and i had a dance party, which was loads of fun. i haven't danced like that in for-ever.
tonight i'm making vegetarian chili for my non-vegetarian brother. we'll see how that works out...

those were the days...

ha! i just found this on katie's ringo site. there is some editing, of course (nobody wants to see that...). this is from well over a year ago and it totally cracks me up. we're at heifer ranch's "northside" house where katie and her cousin ben used to live. i don't remember the occasion for the party, but it involved much drinking. at this point i had lost my clothes to travis (hence the overalls with duct tape around my chest), trevor had won them from travis, and i was trying to win them back from trevor. i'm pretty sure trevor just let me win. that's love, folks. the rest of the night included ali and me dancing on the counter to ocms wagon wheel song and my very first keg stand. yeah, i think i was already too old for that business. much sickness later.

how fun to reminisce...and to post pictures of trevor in my clothes while he's away in north carolina.

the weekend: meeting with melisa the photographer; hanging out with pals i haven't seen in a while; staying with meg and her crazy dog; telling the lady at clinique to help my face; buying too many clothes at banana republic (on sale); walking halfway across the big dam bridge with nari...while wearing burks--bad idea; dog park; meeting with sarah the photographer, and probably some other stuff...

the coming week: cpr/first aid in like 12 minutes; tutoring two nights this week; meeting with heifer international dude; meeting with the arkansas community foundation; GETTING A PHONE CALL FROM TREVOR SETH! i'm very excited about that part. but it might not happen...still have my hopes up.

well, that's enough blogging. just be glad i didn't blog about what ashley said i should last night. then you'd think i was the devil, instead of a girl in overalls taped to her...

off the deep end

it's official: i'm desperately hating living up here. i mean, i love my house and being in the woods a quarter of a mile off the road, but that's about it. work is alright, if you pretend that the big raise really was big and not small, and if you pretend that i don't still feel like a total fish out of water. i'm making more per hour tutoring after work than i do at work, and tutoring is just down the hall from my office. but at least i finally have an office door to close if i want to have a meltdown.
one good thing is that i've been hanging out with my brother, paul, for the past couple of evenings. monday night he cooked spaghetti for me, and last night i made tacos (taco tuesday!) for paul and his friend, jc. and saturday i went to a coworker's dad's friend's farm to strip sorghum. yep, that defines my social life in independence county.
i am going to be in little rock this weekend, so hopefully i'll see some friendly faces and drink some alcoholic beverages...anybody free for such a thing?
i'm still on the hunt for the perfect photographer, but at least i've got one meeting sort of scheduled--with sarah bussey or something. we'll see how that goes...

ASSISTANCE!

i need help, people. planning my wedding from batesville is getting a little harder on the parts where i don't already have a clear-cut idea in my head. like, i already know my cake is coming from mickey's, so there's no need to shop around and do comparisons. but photographer, music, i have no idea where to start! well, i've kind of got some ideas...but if anybody has any suggestions/recommendations for reception music, photographers, etc., i'd really appreciate the help.

think nari would let me...?

halloween is in the air...i can feel it! 41 days and counting.

one is the loneliest number

that's me. i'm sad. only 4 more days with trevor seth before he's gone for 45+. i'm probably also sad in this picture because i'm so misshapen and my hair is bad. and the wonky leg. which is what happens when you live too far out in the woods for dsl and you have to give up the internet at home and use the computer at work.

on a lighter note, we've got our rings ordered and i've got my dress. progress abounds.

here's to hoping i get better at cartooning in paint.

just so you know...(not that it's all that interesting)

this is what went out this morning...yahoo, i feel so much more important! like i got that degree for a purpose...








Brooke Stapleton is hereby named to the new position of: Coordinator of Professional Services

As an MSW..She will take on the above position for Program Services In addition to her responsibilities as Exec Asst to the CEO

She will be responsible for: Coordinating House Parent Training.
Creating a streamlined admission process.
Integrating the Program Team Balance into Program Services
Development of Professional Resources for Program Services Development of a New Youth Tracking System ( allowing us to know quicker the exact services a child needs)
Recommending both Policy (to the BoD) and Procedures (to the CEO)
Overseeing compliance with Child Welfare Licensing

Trevor Edwards will be going on a Sabbatical to Train with Outward Bound in the Smokies for 6 weeks. He will be out in the wilderness and completely cut off from the "good life". ( So, everyone will have to interact with Brooke even more than usual to keep her sane.) Thanks to the animal shelter a dog of unknown origin, Nari, has been hired to baby-sit Brooke in Trevor's absence.

seed ticks = the devil

alright, so i've found the hole in the gloriousness of living in the woods: seed ticks. i mean, seriously, they are the DEVIL. when our landlady said "the ticks are really bad," i thought she meant the regular ones that you can pick off with relative ease. um, no. friday trevor and i took off early from work to "unpack", which was code for exploring the woods we're living in (we had been dying to do so ever since we first saw the place). we ran into a few seed ticks here and there in the first stretch...found the old salvage yard that was on the property along with some random abandoned trucks, boats, a school bus, trailers, etc. then we started following a cattle highway in hopes that it would lead us to the river (we know it's out there somewhere!). we did find a super old-school chicken house and a 1970 AR license plate. and a mess of seed ticks. all over our feet. horrible. we eventually gave up the search for the river when we came across a shale pit and could tell that the river was quite a ways off, and made our way up the trailless hill back to the house.

saturday we went to little rock to do some wedding stuff. trevor's dad was stopping through, so we got to have lunch with him at the flying fish. we went to look at wedding invitations, and tried to go purchase our rings, but the jewelery store was closed for the holiday...bummer. looks like another trip to little rock this coming weekend. boo--tired of driving/riding in the car! but we did get to have dinner with katie and travis at vino's-delicioso.

sunday i messed with the ipod i stupidly purchased on saturday. it seems that it and my laptop don't want to get along. it worked the first time i connected them, but not since. i'm thinking about just taking it back. what a fiasco.

monday we spent about 45 minutes getting seed ticks off of nari, and then we got the tip to bathe her with lemon fresh joy. we also treated her with the regular flea/tick stuff, so we'll see how it works out. she's been pretty miserable. but still in a pretty good mood.

lots of unpacking has taken place, but we're not quite ready to do a photo debut of the house. but you'll all be jealous of the paradise. except for the ticks i can't seem to stop talking about. i'm stopping.

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.