whoo hoo! i have *comments* now! (thanks blogger help people!)

so, uh...leave one!

i'm not sure what i find to be more odd: the fact that this even exists, or that fact that it's actually *sold out*.

*shakes head*

but these... these, i can get on board with :)

always looking for new music to listen to, and i've stumbled across/been directed to several websites to perpetuate that lately. one of the most visually appealing is musicplasma.com, an engine that lets you input musicians that you enjoy and get back an interactive, color coded by "likeness" map of similar/similarly inspired musicians. very cool. go try it and find some new music to inspire yourself with :)

i'm itching to go somewhere. which is completely unrealistic and out of the question right now...but not this summer. the plan: maine. acadia. baxter. katahdin. hiking and camping and not thinking about anything else.

who's with me?

the neatest idea i've seen in a while: Google SMS. you can actually text message queries to google, and get responses right to your phone. and it doesn't cost extra or anything...it's the same as sending a regular text message.

neato mosquito!

happy 2005 everyone, and happy 30th anniversary mom and dad!

merry two days after christmas, everyone...i know i've not been around much as of late, but those of you who know me know that things have not been exactly swell lately. christmas was a nice distraction for me, though.

that bright blue thingamabobber is my new leatherman juice CS4 multitool that my parents...err, santa got for me. i've already used it to hang a light from my ceiling and put together a ridiculously heavy bookshelf, so it was definately a great gift. i hope everyone hade a safe and happy holidays, and will have fun and be safe on new years. more later...

goodbye, bellarina...

let me just preface this by saying that belle was the best. dog. ever. she came from the humane society at 3 months old, all giant ears and puppy kisses. a german shepherd/great pyrenees mix, she grew to be one of the biggest lap dogs you could imagine. smart, joyful, attentive, sweet, friendly, protective...she was everything anyone could possibly want in a dog.

last thursday, belle became suddenly and extremely sick--what turned out to be an acute onset of immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. basically, this means that her white blood cells started attacking her red blood cells, limiting the amount of oxygen available to her organs. she had a blood transfusion on friday night, and despite every effort and what i know must have been a fierce fight on her part, she continued to decline. my parents made the difficult but compassionate decision to put her down on sunday afternoon. belle was only 6 years old; she would have been 7 at the end of the month.

i will miss so many things about bella...the way she bounced up and down like she was on a trampoline, the way she gazed at people, the way she loved to go for rides, the way she loved to give kisses and be pet...even her klepto tendencies of stealing toys and groceries from the neighbors :). she was sweet and good and i hope that everyone gets to have a puppy as wonderful as her in their life at some point.

i love you so much, belle-face bear...

click here to see more pictures of belle

!!don't forget to vote tomorrow!!

i don't care who you vote for (okay, that's not entirely true), just get out there and vote. polls are open from 6am to 8pm, so you have no excuse. don't make me come over there and go jukido on your punk ass. oh yeah. you know i will.

a bear votes

i love peanuts specials. there's something so integral to the holiday season (whichever holiday season it may be) about them...i always feel like it must really officially be/almost be a certain time of year based on its respective charlie brown cartoon.

i bought the most ridiculous boots to wear for halloween. they are black and high-heeled and they come up over my knees. but they were $20, so what the heck. and i can always wear them with pants or long skirts the rest of the year, right? okay, probably not. but for $20, eh, so what. hopefully they'll look rockin' with my spiffy black wings. there may or may not be pictures next week to support or refute that. you'll have to check my website next week to see.

i am exhausted. i'm going to go crash on my couch and read national geographic. 'cause that's what the cool kids do. later gators.

i am loving this fall weather...

it's leaves-changing, sweater-wearing, makes me want to bake type weather. i've made two batches of chai-spiced honey cakes since the weekend. yum. i'm wearing a red woolly sweater. cozy. outside my window all the leaves are red and gold, and the sun is sunshiney. lovely. all i need now is some hot chocolate. coffee, i have. hot chocolate, i do not. phooey.

so it appears that the red sox are going to the world series. good for them (sorry dad!). don't get me wrong, i'm a yankees fan, but man, how can you not feel bad for the red sox every now and again? i wish the yankees had won, but the red sox played a better game last night, so that's just the way it is. i'll root for them in the world series...winning will mean more to them than it would have meant to new york anyway. my dad is writing me out of his will right now, i'm sure of it.

i noticed on my hit counter that people actually do bother to come and check this site out, so i figure i owe it to them to update every now an again :). but now i must get back to work. adios, muchachos. go have some hot chocolate.

so in case you hadn't noticed, i barely have time to breathe lately, let alone update my blog & website. this semester is killer in terms of work load. i'm taking 2 classes (groundwater hydrology and modeling of small watersheds), and growing ever-closer to completing the set-up of my wetland. all of the pipe is currently laid, and the majority of my data-collecting equipment is set up. it's really just down to odds and ends at this point (i ought to be able to finish this week), then i can start collecting real data. yee-ha! unfortunately, because school sucks up so much of my time, i had to give my notice at the vet...that was a terribly, awful decision to have to make. i love my job, i love my boss and co-workers...but it's just too much, especially considering that i'm fully funded by uconn and making enough money that i don't technically *need* a second job. besides, mike and i were starting to each forget what the other looked like, we get to spend time together so infrequently. yeah, i know we live together...that's what makes it even more pathetic. so hopefully, this will ease up on a little bit on the stress in my life. wednesday is my last afternoon as a vet tech...gah.

let's see...i got a sewing machine for my birthday, so i've been playing around with that the past week. i made pillowcases this morning, and i've also made a little sack for my ipod and all its accoutrements (i also got an arm band for it for my birthday, and an attachment that lets me tune a radio station to my ipod...very cool).

that's all for now...i'm teaching (eep!) my advisor's wetlands class tomorrow, so i have to go prepare and make sure i don't look like an idiot...

having issues with the pictures on my blog...please excuse any messiness you may come across while i'm fixing this problem.



thank you muchly :)

i'm so glad i found this website. what a brilliant idea...send $10 to some total and complete stranger, and they'll make arrangements for the people of the future to time travel back and get you. fantastic. technology: it boggles the mind. truly, it does.

every grain of sand...equals all the stars and everyone



that's a lyric from a pearl jam song, and the inspiration for the domain name i recently bought, evergrainofsand.org. it's the same site that i had over on angelfire, only now it's at it's own address and is being hosted by dreamhost, which i'm very happy with so far.


in other news...classes start up again on the 30th, so the summer is officially dwindling down to a close. meh. this summer left a bit to be desired--i don't feel as though i got outside nearly as much as i would have liked. i'd like to start making up for it, but my schedule isn't looking too cooperative. one positive thing about the end of the summer is that lisa is coming home soon (she's been out in wyoming since the end of may). she, abbie and i have reached a serious deficit in girls' nights. another thing to make up for come fall...


anywho, must go check on my cakelets (! so cute !) before they burn... :)

this is cracking me up today...

my bad day
 
okay.  friday was bad.  there is potential for this to be a long, drawn out story, but i will spare you and provide you with the "highlights," as they were. 
 

while moving my six sections of 13-ft long pipe out of the building in which they were being stored so that they could be moved up the wetland, i broke a window.
 
upon arriving at the wetland with the pipe, i realize that i don't have enough pipe length.  at first i think that this is because i suck at math and figured out the wrong length using the scale off the plan.  after a bit of measuring i realize that my math is fine; the scale on the plan is wrong.  i go the the hardware store and purchase more pipe. 
 
after hours of digging with a back hoe looking for a pipe junction that is buried 7 feet below the ground, we realize that, once again, the plan is wrong.  the junction is nowhere near where it is drawn on the plan. 
 
we refill the large, 7-ft deep original hole and re-dig a new large, 7-ft deep hole.  yet again, no pipe junction.  this time, someone comes up in a truck and tells us that our hole is too deep and we need to re-fill and get out of there or we'll get fined.  fantastic.  still no pipe junction.

 
i'm thrilled, really.  my masters research is yet again put on hold b/c someone who should have had access to all of the original plans for when the pipe was first laid made me a plan without looking at those original plans.  which gives me, quite frankly, crap to work with.  i could have had a four year old crayon-draw me something more useful.  gahhh!!!
 
on a brighter note, today i'm going to help april and mark paint their new house.  i love painting :).

err...yeah.  it's been about a month. 
 
school is busy busy, going well...tomorrow we install the piping for my wetland, to route all of the roof water down to it.  pretty exciting, since that means i'll actually have data and samples and all that jazz soon.  ish.  also exciting--i found out today that i'll be TA-ing a class in the spring, which gets me full-time funding for the academic year (i'm currently half-time).  more money is always good, and TA-ing ought to look nice on a resume i suppose.  the guy teaching the class is also a friend (a PhD student in my department), so that helps. 
 
in suckier news, all of my cd's were stolen out of the jeep last week.  stinky, but what can you do?  i'm not even sure where/when it happened, which is even more frustrating.  someone suggested that i make a list of all of the cd's that i can think of that were stolen, so i'm doing that and adding on as i think of more.  if you've got any of them and would like to lend them to me so i can burn copies (i mean, listen to them nostalgically without illegally manipulating them in any way, shape, or form),  i'd be much obliged. 
 
i 'spose that's all for now...

i bought a tent!! i'm so excited!

it's a kelty gunnison 2, and it has two doors and two vestibules, and only weighs a little over 5 lbs. i can't wait for it to come so i can set it up and play in it :)

i swear, i'm not a slacker.

really, i'm not. i've just been super busy lately. i know that's a lousy excuse, because everyone's always busy, but it's all i've got. i've been working on getting my research project off the ground, and it's looking like everything could be up and running within a month's time. and that's really, really exciting. i ordered all the pipe and connectors that we're going to need to route the roof runoff to the wetland today, and that should all come in next wednesday. digging and laying the pipe will probably be the following week, and then it's just a matter of getting all the data collection equipment set up and working (oh, and, uh...teaching me how to use it all. minor detail). sooo...it's looking good.

in totally non-school-related news: my little brother's band has a real live GIG next monday! their band (dysthymia) is going to be playing at the webster underground in hartford next monday (6/21) at 6:00 pm. they're only playing 3 songs, but still...very cool. most people's first gigs are at much less cool places than the webster. so yay, rob!

that's all for tonight...i promise, i'll try to be better about updates. i swear, i'm not a slacker. not really.