April's Gifts

~ I passed a pretty hard perspective class. Even got an A-. Not bad considering I was sick sick sick the entire last week and handed my final in a week late.

~ We signed the papers for our house refinance, a good thing with much lower interest rates.

~ Mike bought me a MP3 so I could listen to books on tape while I walk. I love it.

~ I started another class and it's pretty easy. A lot of reading, but not too time consuming. I'm glad I like to read.

~ I was able to rototil part of my garden before it got snowy/rainy/cold again.

~ It's now too snowy/rainy/cold to go out and finish the rototilling.

~ Joni was accepted into law school. Now she just has to decide if that's what she wants to do.

~ Andy is still golfing with the high school golf team in spite of what his coach did to him. I'm just waiting to see if the school district will do anything about what happened, but small town experience has taught me that they will look the other way.

~ Abby did awesome on her first wedding photography job. I'm proud of her and know she'll be successful.

~ I'm able to take my mom to church with me. Since she can't see to drive right now she comes with us. It's kind of nice for both of us.

~ I went to a fun party and made bracelet watches. It was fun!

I'm looking forward to May. April was kind of tough. My cough is finally going away, not gone yet, but going. 3 weeks is long enough to cough your brains out. I'll probably be taking a few days off of work next week, so that should be kind of nice too. Well it will be nice until I get my reduced paycheck, but you can't have everything.

Facebook Wisdom

I see quizzes on facebook all the time and hardly ever take them. Today I decided to stick my neck out and just see what came up. I took this quiz:
Linda just took the "Which Greek Goddess Are You?" quiz and the result is Artemis.

You are Artemis! The Greek Goddess of the moon and the hunt. Many people don't understand your personality, but you don't care. You're a rebel and you usually fall on the outskirts of society. You're unique and you embrace every aspect of that. Some say you're a wild child, and like Artemis, you know you are!

Kind of close to the truth. Maybe these quizzes are pretty accurate. So I tried another one:

"Which Tim Burton Character Are You?" with the result Edward Scissorhands.
You are very talented and artistic. Your character is very sensitive, even though people may think otherwise by your appearance. You begin to warm up to people after getting to know them for a while and often seem to be meeting new people in the neighborhood. Congratulations! You are Edward Scissorhands! .

I like that! If I could choose for myself I think I would have chosen these two. I may have to take more quizzes.

And now for your entertainment click on the following link.

AmericasCowboy

Yep, that's my classically trained violist daughter performing fiddle-tunes with her in-laws. Life is good.

Some images from my week

Small Town Politics

Living in a small town can be an excellent thing, or it can be torturous.

When things are going along well, then it's kind of fun to know everyone in town.

But, if something goes wrong,
if enemies are made,
and past mistakes are never forgiven,

THEN
A small town can be a prison that you want to escape from.

I Wanna Go To Oregon

I want to hike the trails lined with ferns.
I want to pick wild berries.
I want to go to Oregon.

Catch Up

School has been over for a week now. I'm just starting to feel like a burden has been lifted. I can hardly remember living for the last 4 months. I was treading water as fast as I could, just keeping the nose above drowning phase. Many things happened during the last while. I know I neglected putting it all down, so as I remember what I've forgotten to pass on I will be laying it all out here. If it seems a little out of order, it probably is.

Mom - she's got Macular Degeneration and has been slowly losing her sight for the past year or so. Not a good thing for someone who loves reading, knitting, reading, tv, reading and, oh yea, reading. She's had to go in to the doctor about once a month or so where he would give her a shot in her eyes to try and stop the blood from seeping into the eye's interior and stave off the macular. It's not fun to be stuck in the eye with a sharp stick, but it sure beats the alternative - blindness.
Anyway, last week she went in for her shot and then 2 days later she was almost completely blind. Everything was totally clouded over, visually. She went back into the doctor who told her she had a spontaneous cataract form almost overnight. He knew, because he'd just seen her 2 days previously. We don't know if it will get better or if she'll have to have surgery. Gees Louise, if it's not one eye problem it's another. We're all hopeful that Mom will regain her sight. She's much too active and engaged to have this things bring her down.

I got an A- in my Creative Perspective class. Quite a surprise to me. It really varies from teacher to teacher whether you get a good grade or not. Last semester I worked my tail off, and never missed a class. The teacher gave me a B, which is what I expected. This class, I worked my tail off, missed 2 classes and turned in my last assignment a week late. A-. I was expecting another B. I am not complaining. This summer I am going to take one on-line class. It should be pretty easy. I'm ready for easy. I will probably also sit in on a Science Foundations class taught by my department chair and boss. It sounds fascinating to me and I don't have to do any homework. ha ha. After that I still have to take either Sculpture or Ceramics, Readings, and a travel class before I can graduate with my BS in Art. I'm so close! And I'm only 51. I've still got plenty of time, right?


We just got word yesterday that our house refinancing was approved. Hurray! Our interest rate will go WAY down.

Lisa is still teaching lessons and taking classes from ISU. She should be done with her coursework for her doctorate next spring. (One year to go!) Then all the writing and stuff. She and Tyler are doing very well.

David is still in school and may be done next December? I'm not sure, he doesn't tell me much. Emily and the babies are doing pretty well, I think. I wish they lived closer so I could get my baby kissing in, but I guess you can't have everything.

Andy graduates from high school in a little over a month. Boy am I ready for him to be done with that. So is he. He's on the golf team and back working at the cemetery. (Which I think is a great job for him.)

Joni graduates with her BS in nursing in July. She got her AS in nursing last July. Then, who knows what she plans on doing. I have a feeling she's not quite done with school yet. She took the LSAT test (I think on a whim) and may go to law school. She may also go on to an advanced nursing degree. Then again she may try to find a job (good luck with that one in this day and age).

Abby is out of school until next Sept. and is working at one job and will hear next week about another. Her grades came back good enough that she'll have 3/4 tuition paid next year. That along with working should take care of school costs. The photos she took of her ex-roomates wedding are wonderful. She's been busy editing them. She just told me today that she had someone else hire her to take photos for a recital poster. Word is getting out.


Mike is working 3 jobs, still. He quit one of them a couple of months ago but they wanted him back and Mike has never learned how to say no, except when I want him to slow down, exercise, or eat right, but that's another story.......

Ta Da!!!

It may be a week late.
It may be too late for any kind of grade at all.
But I don't care.
I'm done.
I finished my drawing.
My exterior, 3 point perspective, city-scape (in my case, farm-scape) is DONE!
I feel like celebrating. I took a picture. It's not a great photo because the drawing was large and I couldn't get it all from directly above, but here's a peak at it.



I'm getting it scanned tomorrow and then I'll turn it in. Yippee!!!

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

From the National Weather Service, Pocatello:


SIGNIFICANT SPRING SNOW STORM POSSIBLE

A STRONG COLD FRONT IS EXPECTED TO BRING IN MUCH COLDER TEMPERATURES INTO THE REGION ON TUESDAY. SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATION IS POSSIBLE TUESDAY NIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY AS A LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM TRAVELS THROUGH NORTHERN UTAH. TRAVEL THROUGH THE CENTRAL MOUNTAINS AND EASTERN IDAHO COULD BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TUESDAY NIGHT AND WEDNESDAY.

A Message for Us All

This touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes. I hope you watch it.

80%

I'm only at 80%. This is one of the longest influenza infections I've had. Usually I'm sick for a day or two and then I'm fine. Today is the 8th day. My awesome final drawing, the one that I was going to really nail and get an A on is still sitting down on my drawing table, only 1/8th done. The semester ended yesterday, my class ended on Wednesday. Since the professor knows I work on campus he told me to take my time and do it right. I'm pretty sure I need to hand it in on Monday, though, to get any kind of a grade at all. I guess I've got my work cut out for me this weekend. So far I've put about 12 hours into it. Let's do the math. 12 hours input and 1/8th done. hmmmmmm
I'm not very good at math, but I think that means I should be done by July.

Sick

Not a good time, but I am sick.
I can't get warm, my entire body aches.

This is the last week of school. My final art project is due tomorrow morning at 8:00. It's about all I can do to type this and I still have about 20 hours that should have been put on my drawing. I went home from work yesterday morning after 40 minutes and stayed in bed. That's where I think I'm going right now, too.

Oh well. If I don't get my drawing done the world will not end.

Sunday

Nice weekend. Calm, fun.
David brought his family on Friday so I got some good grandmothering in. Emily gave me some pictures of the kids. Very cute pictures. I'll post some later.
Things ended kind of badly, though. This afternoon Joni, Abby, Burns, and I were half asleep/half listening to conference while laying on my bed. Suddenly Oscar jumped up to join us and startled Burns who scrambled to get out of there. The casualties included 3 pretty deep cuts right across Joni's nose, 1 claw mark millimeters from her eye, and a scratch and a punture wound on my arm. Joni is very upset, and I can't say that I blame her. It's no fun to have your entire nose bandaged up and still one week left of school.

Birds and Drips

The snow is mostly gone now, after snowing a good measurable 3 inches. (I know because I gather data for the NOAA weather station, ha ha) It's melting so fast that water is pouring off our roof. It's kind of a nice sound. It means the weather is above freezing, always a good thing.

The snow also melted off my bird feeder, much to the delight of the birds currently gorging themselves.
1 Morning Dove, 2 Lazuli Buntings, 1 Thrush, 2 American Goldfinches, and 4 Black-capped chickadees.

Winter Weather Advisory

Just the thing I want to see when I check Weather.com for our area this morning.
Of course I really didn't need to get on the internet to see that spring has forgotten us. Its like a winter wonderland out there.
Snow
Two inches deep and still falling.

April Fools Day

I'm gullible and a sucker in most cases. Yesterday was no exception.

Lisa, my daughter, told me about her plans. She teaches Music Literature and planned on surprising her students with a massively hard test telling them all they read the syllabus wrong and yes, it really was today. She was afraid some of her more anal students might either burst into tears or have a coronary right there on the spot so she backed off and just gave them a 3 point pop quiz that was ridiculously hard. One student asked if it was an April Fools joke and she deadpanned, "wouldn't that be nice." Then she graded it and had them pass it in. One student just crumpled up his paper in disgust and threw it over his shoulder.

Then she said "April Fools" and said they all got 3 bonus points whether they got the questions right or not. Ha ha. I laughed when Lisa told me what she had planned.

Then I went to my class. We had just spent the entire previous class period learning how to scientifically figure out how to draw things in 3-point perspective. We had to draw a building 200 feet tall, 90 feet wide and 75 feet deep with 10 feet sidewalks and 10 foot windows. There were 22 steps to the set-up alone. The handout he gave us was 7 pages long.

So, yesterday he comes into class and said, "get out a piece of paper. I want you to draw a building 75 feet tall, 45 feet wide and 45 feet deep, with 10 foot sidewalks, a 60 foot wide road in front and a bus 30 feet long driving down the road in 3-point perspective from memory."

I frantically jot down all the specs, thinking the entire time that I don't really need this class to graduate anyway, and maybe I can remember how to do part of the set up, and maybe I can just pretend like I know what I'm doing and can just fake it.

That's when the girl behind me calls out to the teacher, "do you know what day today is?"

I felt like such a sucker.

Aren't college professors funny?

Amazing!

You have to see this!