Inventive Excuses

These are from the beginning of the term when I was in school, but I thought they were funny....

From another professor:
"I recently reported to the Dean of Students that three of my students had various claims of fraternity initiation sleep deprivation as reason for flunking exams or missing class."

From a student:
"I thought there wasn't class the other day because I got here at 7:40 and the lights were off and no one was here."  Um.  Class doesn't start until 8 AM.

So... a new adventure.... pushing a shopping cart.... in a snow covered parking lot!  I had no idea how difficult that could be!  I didn't have good traction, so I would try to push the cart but my feet would just slide backwards and out from under me.  I had to get a good solid stance and try to push the thing, but the snow provided an awful lot of resistance.  It had to be pretty funny watching me!  It took me over 10 minutes to get the cart to where I parked.  Other people didn't seem to have quite the trouble I was having....  I must learn the secret of pushing a cart in the snow, because the native Montanans seem to have conquered it!

Library Oddities...

Need a pencil?  This handy machine is located at the library desk!  Buy several for school, home, and everything else!!!!!!

Restroom Design.  I know this is a frequent annoyance of mine, to the point that maybe architecture school should have a whole class on this.  The library restrooms actually have stall doors that open correctly (so that you don't have to stand on the toilet seat to close the door), so score for that.  However, they have vents that are located directly above the toilets.  And granted in the winter they blow nice warm air.  BUT, they blow so much air, that seat covers will not stay on the toilets, they blow away....  So then you are left with this balancing act of trying to sit hold the seat cover in place and sit down at the same time.  Not especially easy for those of us who are uncoordinated, like me!

Library Late Nights.  And as far as night owls at the library go.  By far and away, I am the only woman here after midnight.  And also one of only a handful of Americans.  Mostly there are international students.

car odditites....

New paint job?

Spare tires?  Enough to last the next zombie apocalypse of tire slashing?

I am estimating about 25 tires or so!

Toilet...

I have to share this story because right now all I can do is sit on my floor and chuckle, otherwise I would cry because I am so tired and exhausted.  So I got up this morning and my toilet wasn't working.  As in water won't go down the toilet and it is clogged.  Tried my plunger.  No dice.  But it is one of those 'new' school ones that I don't think work as well.  Went to the hardware store, and bought an old school plunger.  Still no dice.  At this point I call the property company.  Didn't hear back after a few hours, and I seriously needed to use the restroom, so I went to the laundromat and used theirs and then went back to the hardware store and rented a snake.  Still no dice.  In the meantime I cleaned my apartment because I knew they were going to send a plumber.  He gets here. After five minutes, the end of the snake breaks off in the toilet.  So after much work we get all the water emptied out of the toilet and he unbolts it from the floor and he carries it outside.  (At least it isn't snowing yet!!!!!)  He works on it some more hoping to get it fixed. The toilet breaks - you can see the crack on the tank.  (I had to take the picture because how funny is an upside down toilet in the grass?!?).  So now he is at the hardware store buying a new toilet.  And I am sitting on the floor in my living room waiting for him to get back.  I may be resilient, but can I please, please get a break from the chaos of life?  Like I said, what else can I do but chuckle!?!?!  :)

So I haven't gotten much done today except the toilet (which I guess still isn't done!) and I am beyond exhausted and ready to crawl into bed.  At least my apartment is straightened up for when I wake up tomorrow.  But here is the picture!

It is supposed to snow on Thursday?  Um.  Yikes!
Have some photos to post, hopefully in the next day or two from an engineering event I went to....

I am certain our bus driver used to drive demolition derby!  Today I had my eyes closed and was trying to rest on the way to campus, when he turned a corner and hit the curb.  Hard.  I was flung out of my seat, completely startled awake!  I was like at least I am awake to teach now!

I haven't been sleeping well at all for the past month, so I was just exhausted this morning, and I got to class and my students were just as wiped out.  But we persevered and learned a few things!  I have such an amazing group of students.  I am so proud of them!  They really work together and we have fostered a great learning environment.  And I am trying out a new idea this semester called cookie pts.  If they spot a mistake I made on the board or said, instead of waiting and wondering, if they ask right away they get a cookie point.  If they ask a good question or something else like that - cookie point.  We get to 30 points and I bring them cookies.  At first they were skeptical.  But now they are really into it.  One of them emailed me and wanted to know if a typo on a worksheet was a cookie point!  Goodness I love teaching so much!

I think winter is rapidly approaching here, or at least much earlier than last year.  :(

We have had much rain and hail the last few days, and this morning when I looked outside, there was snow on the tops of the mountains.....

I received high A's on my first few homework assignments.  The funny thing is, I am realizing, that no matter what the grade, I am not satisfied, although oddly, I tend to be happier with a few points off than a perfect score because a perfect score I think the professor missed something when grading my paper.  A few points off is irritating, but I like better I think.  I don't know.  Seems like I am a bit over the school thing.

It just got really windy here and I am watching the leaves blow across the ground and the pattern they make, the swirls and eddies.  Pretty interesting.....  Wonder about the math involved in that....

Had another student switch to my class today.  I didn't think they could, but she must have begged the registrar's office....

And now it is raining, watching the pattern on the window, which is an interesting scatterplot.  Watching the rain hit the ground, thinking about percentages of rain coverage, etc.  Interesting

Oh dear.  Now there is lightning too.  Maybe it will slop down in the next 20 minutes before I walk across campus to class.  But the wind is blowing the rain across the cement in amazing patterns.  It even looks like in some places the water goes airborne from the wind hitting the cement!

Working on topology homework.  Trying to decide what sets are open under the parameters we were given.  The professor was talking about this in class last week.  And while we were all massively confused and trying to decide if they were open, he walks over and starts swinging the door open and closed, open and closed, and I am thinking, what in the world????  And he says "I am not airing out the room because I farted, I am trying to give you a hint."  The class just busts out laughing.  Apparently, a set is not like a door.  A door is either open or closed.  In topology land sets can be neither open nor closed, both open and closed, and who knows what else.  So he was trying to tell us that a set in topology is NOT like a door.  So silly!

Though this does remind me of a song from grade school music class.  the words go something like "when is a door not a door", which repeats a bunch of times until you get to the punchline, which is "when it is ajar".  A Jar.  Ha!

I could smell fireplaces going last night when I walked home from the bus.  This morning I woke up to the smell of new rain on the air and a crispness and cold to the air.  I LOVE fall!  :)

Jammin' to "What Makes You Beautiful" in the library while waiting for the bus.  Discovered there is a place to nap on campus, so I got a good hour of rest, or at least time with my eyes closed.  Wishing I had a guitar.  I miss playing....

Got a good evaluation from my supervisor today.  Said I did an awesome job teaching!  :)

They're coming back!!!! Students vs zombies: two teams they play for a week solid with nerf guns, water guns, walkie talkies, camo clothing, the whole nine yards. They play day and night. The only time you are safe is when you are physically class. I don't know what they do if a human and a zombie are in the same class though! Interesting!!!!

Still adjusting to the weight loss.  I was looking at Good Will for clothes since most of mine don't fit, and I was looking in the plus sizes for awhile and then I was like oops...  I am not plus size any more, so I had to go back and find the regular sizes.  Sooner or later I will get used to it....

Today I watched two physics professors who were watching two college students.  The male college student was trying to teach a female college student how to long board (not terribly successfully).  The two professors were debating the relative physics and how they could perhaps give better pointers on successful longboarding merely by employing the principles of physics.  Pretty entertaining.

Westboro Baptists come to MSU

Westboro Baptists came to campus yesterday. Students had organized an equality rally, which was VERY well attended so Westboro didn't stay long before leaving. Pictures are of the rally, and 'green man' who was their mascot.

Contacts

Forgot to post this when I got contacts

I was so tired yesterday (i haven't been sleeping well), that I walked into a class room and stood there for several minutes looking at the instructor, who wasn't my instructor, although he was talking about something familiar, as if he was subbing for my professor.  And I looked around the room and the faces were familiar (they were other math grad students), but I was like, something isn't right here.  It doesn't seem like enough students.  And that isn't the right prof.  So I asked - Is this 511?  (The class I was looking for was 505, but I was tired, I couldn't even remember the right number!)  The prof was like nope - 547!  I said SORRY!  I am so lost and bolted from the room.  I found my classroom a few doors down.  I have no idea how I got so lost, except sheer tiredness.  But in retrospect, it was pretty funny!

Day 2 of School

So these are from Wednesday.  I was just too tired to try to type it up sooner.  It rained on Wednesday, and I wasn't paying attention and I cut my thumb open on my umbrella - and had to get it glued together so it would stop bleeding.  Don't ask.  I must be special to cut my thumb open that good on an umbrella.

More from my Topology prof...

Most of math is working hard to write the correct definition.  If you can define something properly, then everything else just works out fine.  So if there is an issue with your definition, just add or subtract things until it works the way you want.  (My mother would say that sounds an awful lot like cheating!)

Another gem:  "You will learn to do proofs by doing proofs."  Hm.  Or maybe you could teach us?

The prof told us that all of math can be boiled down to about 20 examples and they can work for everything.  When he started teaching, it would take him half a class period to cover an example.  Not he says he can do it in 5 minutes, but he isn't sure anyone understands it!
Cantor Set Example
So he puts this example on the board.  This is a Cantor Set.  You start with a bar of length equal to 1.  Then you remove the middle third (the piece between 1/3 and 2/3), so that you have one black bar, a white space, and another black bar.  In the third row, for each of the black bars, you again remove the middle third.  You continue this process, until as my professor proclaims, you get DUST (complete with sound effects!).  The 'mathematical definition' of dust:  all the remaining pieces are completely disconnected.  (See there is that definition thing again!)  He then goes on to say that we don't know what connected means, so saying it is disconnected is not meaningful in any way, but he is pretty sure we will get to covering that in about 5 weeks!
Another fun fact about this....  If you add up all the white bars, the pieces that were removed, it adds up to 1!  Which doesn't make any sense because you still have some 'dust' left at the end.  I see how it mathematically works out that way.  It has to do with as things go to infinity, but still, a bit hard to wrap your mind around!

What we are doing in this class is like the CDC, when they have the virus in a box and they use those thick gloves to work with it.  We have stuck topology in a box so you could work with it.  (Say what?)

The topologies, we abbreviate with the letter T (with some squiggleys in it).  However, he wrote them with J for half the class period, and then he was like, you know, something is not right about that.  He stares at his notes for the LONGEST time and he is like - I don't know what letter that should be, I don't have any idea what my notes say!

Last, but not least, he tells a story in class about countries where pubs are forbidden.  So he says you go to the grocery store, decide what size bottle of alcohol you want to purchase, and then you stand in the aisle with your hand in front of your chest holding up the number of fingers for the number of people you want to share it with.  So maybe 3 people.  One person stops and waits with you, so then you hold up 2 fingers.  Once you get your 3 people, the 4 of you proceed to the checkstand and purchase the alcohol.  Then you go outside and sit somewhere and enjoy it together.  He said it really ends up being a lot like a pub because you go there and drink with strangers anyway, so it isn't any different.  (I have no idea why he told this story, but it was pretty funny!)

My stats class is going well, I think.  Except I brought the wrong quiz today for my students.  (Ch 4 instead of Ch 3)  So no quiz.  Until next Wednesday.  They were happy!

Two funny student stories:
(1)  One of my students sent me an email saying he missed class and could he turn in the worksheet late because he had to "chase down a cow".  I gave him the extension just on the sheer entertainment factor of the excuse alone!  I can honestly say I have never before received that as an excuse.  I laughed so hard when I read that!

(2)  I overheard another GTA talking to someone and he was saying that he asked students to bring up their add slips this morning so he could sign them.  He said one student walked up and said, this isn't my add slip, it is for my roommate but he was way too hungover to come to class this morning!  >> Ok seriously?!?!  Wow.  I don't even know what my response to that would be!

I asked all of my students to post an introduction on our class discuss board.  It is amazing how many can NOT spell their major correctly!  I think the worst misspelled major (or at least the one with the worst consequences of misspelling) was:  Organismal Biology which is studying plant or animal biology at the whole-organism, species, population, and community levels.  And I will leave it at that as to what the misspelling resulted in.

Westboro Baptist Church plans picket at MSU?!?!

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Kansas have announced their intentions to picket for 30 minutes each at Montana State University and at Bozeman High School on Monday, Sept. 9.

WBC's website says the group is picketing MSU because "MSU doesn't teach anything that will benefit their students on that great and terrible day of judgment! MSU teaches to [sic] worship yourself!"

The email that came out from the school said:
We at MSU adamantly reject the group's actions and positions. MSU is a place that welcomes diversity in all of our actions every day across our campus. WBC's message could not be further from our own.

As a state university, we are bound by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and we will honor the right of free speech and the right of people to assemble peacefully.

The Dean of Students and the leadership of the Associated Students of MSU are working collaboratively with a number of campus and community groups on how to best communicate a message that celebrates true commitment to diversity and inclusion at our university.

We at MSU believe that the response to hate speech should always be respectful speech. The answer to violence should always be healing, and the answer to ignorance should always be education. We hope that our response to this event is something we can all learn from and one that will make us feel proud.

First Day of School

Today was the first day of school.  I teach at 8 AM, and I was actually awake and alive!  I might be turning into a morning person   :)      The class went well and I enjoyed teaching.  There was a little difficulty (because of first day chaos) of switching from my class ending to the next professor's class starting, and I did the very adult thing and went and found him later in the afternoon and just chatted about how we want the changeover to go.  He was impressed a GTA had the wherewithal to do that and said he was going to try that approach in the future with other professors since just taking the time to communicate (and not between classes, but an actual face to face chat) was going to make things so much better and less frustrating for both of us.  So I am finally learning to tackle problems head on before they become drama  :)

What else?  Oh yes.  Excel doesn't make histograms.  Don't ask me why, but it is like a zillion step process to get a somewhat legitimate histogram.  Plenty of bar charts, just no histograms.  But in researching I found a FREE add-on to Excel (made by some awesome person who just shares it with everyone) and it works great.  So fast and easy.  I love it!

And now it is time for funny stories from Topology.  Just a few words about the prof:  he is our new department head, I had him last semester for Linear Algebra, he is insanely intelligent, and he speaks several languages (English is NOT his first language).

Story #1  At one point he writes a word on the board.  We aren't sure what the word is because he is talking so fast it is hard to understand.  Then he steps back and stares at the word and announces there is something wrong with the word because there just aren't enough letters in it.  I wanted so badly to laugh, but I managed to keep a straight face.  And then he asks us how to spell the word correctly, but we still had no idea what the word was because he had been talking so fast, and he was like c'mon guys - you should know how to spell this.  (At this point I am thinking to myself:  this.  T - H - I - S.)  He did figure it out and we were all like ohhhhhhhh - that is what we are talking about!

Story #2  When he comes into class, he starts lecturing at record speed.  I mean lightning fast.  At one point he looks up at the clock and he says, wow - I am behind.  I only covered 40 pages of the textbook in 40 minutes.  That is only a minute per page, I need to be teaching faster than that!  (I am thinking to myself, are you serious?!?!  Each page takes me many minutes to read, reread, digest, and try to understand.  And he thinks he can cover them in like 45 SECONDS per page?!?!  Oh dear!  At that rate we will be done with the book before Halloween!)

Story #3  He tells us that even a 3 year old can do a bijection.  (A bijection is where each number is paired with one, and only one other number.  And it has to be unique.  So for example you could put 2 and 4 as a pair.  But then you could never again use 2 as the first number and never again use 4 as the second number.  Typically this is what you think of as a straight line on a graph.  So it is more or less like matching the items on one list to a unique item on another list.)  I am thinking to myself, really, a three year old can do a bijection?  Good thing I didn't ask the question with the amount of dubiousness and sarcasm I was thinking in my mind, as he proceeds to enlighten us.  He is like sure - ask a kid how old they are and they will start counting on their fingers.  So they pair being 1 year old with their index finger, 2 year old with their middle finger, and 3 year old with their ring finger.  So they hold up three fingers and tell you they are 3 years old.  They just matched each year of age with a different finger.  (Yes, feel free to groan here and shake your head because I am pretty sure almost no parent says to their child, ok kiddo - today we are going to learn bijections - 1, 2, 3, .... as they count on their fingers!)

Story #4  Last but not least.  He talks about equivalence classes.  (This is kind of like where you make some rule about how items are related to each other, and this rule allows you to break up the list of items into groups and each item can belong to one and only one group).  So he proceeds to compare equivalence classes to cliques of high school girls.  He says that girls are really cliquey in high school and they each belong to only one group and they don't socialize with people from other groups.  Ok.  I can see that.  And then he proceeds to try to expand on this analogy.  Well there are 3 properties of these relationships.  So he starts with the first property, which when translated into his analogy would mean that a high girl likes herself or is friends with herself.  He stands there for a second and says.  Well actually that isn't always true.  I don't think many HS girls like themselves.  He says ok - second one would translate to if Mary is friends with Suzy then Suzy is friends with Mary.  Again he pauses and he is like, well actually that isn't true either.  Mary might treat Suzy as if she is her friend, but maybe Suzy only tolerates her presence and doesn't consider Mary a friend.  AND then he reaches the third property which would be if Mary is friends with Suzy and Suzy is friends with Heidi, then Mary is friends with Heidi.  And then he just shakes his head and says wow that is definitely not true.  This is a terrible example!  None of these properties hold up!  The whole class was laughing at this point.  I will say though that his insight into the typical HS girl and HS girl relationship dynamics was quite impressive!

So that is my day in a nutshell.

Tomorrow is the first day of school!  Yikes!  I teach first thing tomorrow at 8 AM.  I am ready, but I always get nervous the first day......  Guess I better get to bed so I am ready early tomorrow!  I will let you know tomorrow how it all goes!

Spent my day resting and working on lesson plans.  Since I am teaching stats again, I am taking the opportunity to tweak and improve my lesson plans, homework, quizzes, and activities.  I am pretty excited about some of the changes, which were inspired by a class I took this summer when I was working on my online teaching certificate.  One change is having the students look for examples of statistics, charts, graphs used incorrectly (there are an abundance of them everywhere, newspaper, news, magazines, etc).  They will post a picture of it and write a few sentences about it.  But by having them post it to the class website, we can all smile and enjoy the errors, rather than just me enjoying them.  And each student needs to reply to at least one other student's post, which will help build connections with their classmates.  Just stuff like that....

Other than that, even with the intermittent rain, it is so dry here.  I am drinking tons of water and still feel parched.  And using lots of lotion.  I guess my new cactus plant will feel at home here though.  At least until it snows!  :)

So good news - I am teaching Stats again this fall!  :)    Ok - the bummer is that it is 8 AM, three days a week, but hopefully it will help turn me into more of a morning person!  And I only have classes and meetings and whatnot on M/W/F, which means I can stay home T/Th, which is a blessing because by the time I take the bus or drive to campus, park and walk in, and do the same thing on the return trip, it eats up an hour to an hour and a half of my time.

So I have been working on my stats class, improving things from when I taught it in the summer.  Making my own worksheets, finding better examples, and even incorporating some ideas from the class I took this summer on how to be an online instructor.  I am pretty excited and think it will benefit my students a lot.  There is an online gallery where they can post badly used statistics and graphs and charts.  Investigative tasks where they work in groups finding the odds for Vegas games.  Designing research plans for tractors and backhoes.  All kinds of fun!

School starts on Monday...  So a few more days of freedom and then back to the grind!  It is raining here with thunder and lightning.  So amazing!  I love it!

My plant and I made it safely home  :)

Let's see.... It rained a good chunk of the way or was overcast.  Two of the more interesting things I saw on the trip:  (1) taped up on the door of the restroom stall at the gas station was an ad which, among other things, featured a blow dart gun available for purchase at the gas station!  

(2)  someone had a GIANT bumper sticker on their car which read: e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0.  For those that aren't math enthusiasts, that is a fairly famous result!  But I was surprised to see it blown up into a huge bumper sticker on a car!

For those that don't know, I don't typically eat candy or drink soda, or chocolate or anything of that stuff.  Baked goods I will have a little.  But I don't know, this summer I just completely lost the taste for those things (which I used to LOVE to eat all the time, so that is a good thing).  I ate skittles to try to stay awake while driving, but my body is so unused to sugar it was like ugh!  And I ate a bite of a chocolate bar and that was all I wanted to eat.  I thought wow - how my life has changed!  I used to live on that stuff and now I can't hardly stand it.

It was SO nice to walk into a totally apartment!  I forgot how nice I left it and how much I had done organizing stuff.  I unlocked the door, and walked in to the light scent of candles that had been warmed in the sun, and a spotless kitchen, vacuumed floor, and everything all neat and tidy.  No one has ever seen me have an apartment like this.  And it is WONDERFUL  :)

 

New glasses arrived before I left for MT  :)

Half of my contacts arrived too!  Loving the new contacts!

My dad got down the boxes of clothes I have been storing in their attic.  Many of the clothes fit now, which is such a blessing because with the amount of weight I have lost, everything I have back in MT is laughably huge on me.  I haven't weighed this little since high school, and thankfully I have always been somewhat immune to fashion trends, so most everything I wore back then looks fine today.  We are still hunting for one more box that has slightly smaller clothes still, from my last year of high school which was the smallest I have been in my adult life.

Bike Ride

I survived a two-hour bike ride to and around Sebastopol.  The first time I have really ridden since I got RSD.  I was surprised I did so well, but I am definitely hurting some.  I wouldn't have ridden so far on my first ride, but I forgot what 'weekend warriors' my family can be, and the ride was their idea.  It was nice to ride again - I have a nice road/racing bike that I used for commuting in Portland, San Francisco, and for a short time in Santa Rosa before I got RSD.  I didn't realize how much I had missed riding my bike.  I'm hoping that my RSD will allow me to continue riding.

People have been telling me that they bet my leg isn't as painful since I lost weight.  Sigh.  It isn't that type of leg injury.  It is damage to the nerve, so weighing less, while it does reduce impact to the body overall, isn't helping my leg a whole lot.  In fact, some things are more painful since I lost weight, like sitting for long periods of time because there isn't as much of a buffer of a layer of fat for cushion.  And as I gain more muscle mass, it actually impacts the nerve more, especially when I work out.  I know that whenever I get stressed out or depending on what else is going on with me health-wise, then it can be killer.  For the most part though, it is the lack of stress that has made the pain not as bad.  The weight loss does feel good overall on my body though  :)

Savory spice shop

I went to Savory Spice Shop and got some new mixtures and rubs to try.  I took some cooking lessons over the summer, and have gotten to be a little better cook.  Still not great, but better.  Finally learned how to cook hamburgers!  :)     And I cook pretty decent chicken now, among other things.  Excited to have something new to cook with.

Art at the Winery

Tonight I mustered the energy to have a picnic at a nearby winery (Paradise Ridge Winery at Fountaingrove) with my parents and look at some of the art. It was pretty neat, although I am tired...

View of Santa Rosa

Standing in the "Stargate"

There are 4 pictures of this artwork, each from different angles. At first look, it appears "flat" or 2-dimensional, but as I got closer, and looked from different angles, it is truly a 3-D piece of art. This is one of my dad's favorites.

A 'mushroom' house. My mom liked this one.

This just made me smile. Not sure why, but it did :)

Time to go home...

For those of you who don't know, I have been in California for the past week.  Doctors gave me the ok to drive down.  I am supposed to be leaving in a week to return to school, as long as I am well enough.

Hail Storm

So we had an EPIC hail storm.  Ok.  Not quite epic.  But serious hail.  Nearly the size of golf balls!  Unfortunately, it caught me as I was walking home, so I have some pretty awesome bruises.  It broke a window at the apartment and the outside light fixtures.  But my neighbor helped me put cardboard up over the window, and then I cleaned up the glass.  So it is all taken care of!  It was the most amazing hail I have ever seen!  And the rain that came down with it was so fast and so heavy that the water was more than ankle-deep on the walk home, and with it moving so fast over the asphault, it was quite disorienting because it was hard to tell if the ground was moving, or water was moving or what.  I have never experienced anything like it, but wow!  Even though the apartment suffered some damage, it was still really neat!

Waterfall

Got a picture of the plane on the train

Still not driving, so my life isn't terribly exciting, but when the world gives you lemons, make lemonade...  So I have been on the elusive hunt to get a picture of an airplane on a train, which I can do from my front porch.  I did it!  See, they removed the wings, and they put the airplane on the train!
(And then there are some more pictures of train graffiti.)

New Neighbors

Got back from the hospital and found new neighbors that must have moved in this week....  Not sure if they belong to the same family or if I have two new neighbors....

Update:  Met the neighbors.  Three kids!  The oldest is 7.  The kids actually knocked on my door and came over to say hi.

Third Day Concert

I went to a Third Day concert this evening!  Third Day is a band I have enjoyed since I was a young adult.  It was only a few blocks from my apartment, so I was able to walk there, which was perfect since I am still not driving yet.  The concert was on the football field of the local high school.  The tour buses were parked on the track surrounding the football field!  It was really neat that they could hold a concert for 5 hours that ran well after 10 PM in a residential neighborhood.  I couldn't imagine something happening like that back home: amplified sound, lights, traffic, concert in the middle of a residential area with homes right next to the high school.  During the concert I saw people in the homes sitting outside enjoying the music, and as it got darker they got out flashlights and cellphones and were waving them back and forth just like everyone at the concert.  That was pretty cool.

I have to say the crew did a stellar job getting the concert going.  The terrible wind we had earlier in the day also blew over a bunch of their tents and equipment and they had to scramble to get everything back together and in working order.  The interesting thing is that when the concert started, all the security/crew guys wore kilts, like those new-school utility kilts.  It was different, but it was very effective.  I knew who was in charge quite easily.  They were wearing kilts!

I think one of my favorite things is how very beautiful it was!  I have always loved Giants games when I have gotten a seat overlooking the bay.  But, this was even more beautiful with mountains and an endless sky as the backdrop.  The 4 bands that played the concert kept turning around and talking about how beautiful it was - calling it God's country.  I would agree.  Outdoor concert in Montana is the most beautiful thing!  And the music was spectacular!

Early in the evening when people were still finding seats

A few pictures while it was still early in the evening....  I was sitting pretty close the front, which was great!
There were many people in the stands behind me.

windy

So windy right now it is shaking my apartment building.  A bookcase was shaking so bad, I unloaded it and laid it down before it decided to fall.  That is some crazy wind!

Plane on a Train

Just a bit ago I saw three more planes loaded on the train go by!  It was pretty awesome!  They take the wings off and ship them on a rail car behind the airplanes.  I will try to get a picture next time!

While I was watching, I saw someone lose control of their car run over trash cans and just miss running into the apartment across the street.  Yikes.

Other than that, finally home and resting :)

Howdy

Fourth of July was spectacular here.  Practically every firework is legal and everyone has them, even giant mortars that go way up in the sky and are brilliantly amazing.  From about 4 pm on, it was the most impressive fireworks display I think I have ever seen!  The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder (?), but wow was it beautiful!  I could see fireworks in any direction I looked!  Like surround sound, but 360 degrees of viewing fireworks in the sky!  The best part was I didn't even have to leave home to see them because everyone was lighting them off!

Other than that I haven't been up to much.  With the health issues I have had this summer, I am pretty much mostly home and hoping that if I rest I will be allowed to make the trip home for a few weeks at the end of summer.  Hopefully I will see y'all then.  But I will try to get some more pictures posted soon.

Twice the shade

Twice as effective, twice as 'ghetto'.  Where there is a will (and little money), there is a way!
I now have two car windshield sun reflectors in my front apartment window to keep out the sun and heat.  Excellent use of $15 and relatively 'green' since I am not using electricity to cool down my place. (Not that I have an air conditioner, but that is what people with $ use to cool down their homes!)

Fourth of July in Montana

Wow!  So pretty much every firework imaginable is legal here!  People buy tubes to shoot these amazing amazing fireworks in the air.  For the most part, it appears people use common sense, although I will say I saw some guys shooting bottle rockets out of a moving car!  INSANE!

Anyway, not only are they legal, but it is totally fine to shoot them off the week before and after 4th of July.  And to be honest, people have been shooting them off for at least two weeks now.  All night long, I hear fireworks.  I sit on my porch and watch the free show provided by the people delighting in shooting them off.

I have heard that actually on the 4th of July so many fireworks are shot off that the air outside everywhere is hazy with the smell of gunpowder.  Ought to be very interesting tomorrow!

For my friends back home in SR....  wish you could see this show, night after night!

Saturday, June 29, 2014

wow.  So this is what it is like to live in a clean and very organized house.  MY very clean and organized home.  Wonderful.  Love it!  Just sitting on the couch, looking at my clean carpet, all the books and papers organized in the bookcase, bins with pens, notecards, highlighters, etc.  wow.  Wish y'all could see it.  Those who have ever seen my apartment or old office, this is probably hard to believe, but believe it!

The furniture is back....

Cleaning carpets is definitely a day+ job....  By the time you move everything out, actually clean, let it dry, and put the furniture back.  But here it is  :)

Cleaning...

Today was really warm, so I decided to steam clean the downstairs carpet.  Treated the spots first, then steam-cleaned the rug.  Got all the bunny items cleaned up and stored away.  Did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the bathroom.  Scrubbed walls, replaced water filters, cleaned the steam cleaners, cleaned the tracks for the window and sliding glass doors, etc.  It is nice to have a day to do something like this.  (With my old job it was really difficult to get time to clean like this.)  Long day, but the hard work keeps my mind off sadder things.  This has been a really long year, and these last two months have been one shoe after another dropping. It is amazing that I think things can't get worse and then something else happens, and another thing happens, and yet one more thing happens.  I have ceased thinking that this is as bad as things can be, because it could be so so so much worse.  But God has been teaching me a lot and I have changed and grown so much in these last two months.  Whereas I used to have a meltdown with so many problems, it was only a few minutes of tears as I prayed about it and then started taking positive and constructive action to find a solution.  And these many problems have been teaching me to be thankful for what is truly important in life:  my faith, a God that never abandons me, that my health isn't as bad as it could be, I have a roof over my head (at least for the moment), food to eat.  I know this is where God wants me to be for the time being and I trust that He will take care of me.  It's not easy, to be sure, but God is faithful.

Here is the floor.  It is actually cleaner now than when I moved in!  Those two little stains in the center were here when I moved in and they won't come out, but I got many other stains out.  Now for it to dry, and then tomorrow morning I can put the couch and end tables and such back.  :)

Now it is time to sit down and grade papers.  This is my back porch, and I put a little candle in the stone basin and use a fork to toast marshmallows and make s'mores and enjoy the sunset and the trains going by.  I can get away with a fork instead of a stick since candles don't put out much heat, unlike a fire!