yesterday, jim and i saw a unicorn cow.

no, really.

went to the big e, ate a lot of food (though less than normal, admittedly...we got a late start), then went and saw a kick-ass "half plugged" Stand show in wilbraham mass. i attempted to work this morning, then pretty much said "eh...no." and putzed around all day. we had a great fall weekend...today was cloudy but nice and cool, and yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. i'm hoping we keep with the cooled-down trend, i'm ready to bust out the autumn clothes.

nothing much to say, so i won't blather on...

i handed in my lit review today! granted, it was only a rough draft, and i'm sure it'll get edited to within an inch of its life and i'll be pretty much starting from scratch come monday, but for the weekend...it's handed in, and i don't have to think about it. huzzah!

it was an eventful week in world of klutz girl! on wednesday, i slipped on a rock and fell into a lake (luckily my elbow broke my fall...), garnering myself a lovely ground beef-esque elbow, and big ol' bruise on my hip, and some back pain. then today, i got sucked up to my calf in a bog and almost lost my shoe. then i horrified the shoppers of the north windham walmart by going to buy bandaids (for my ground beef elbow) *covered* in bog mud. covered. my feet were black. i got several disgusted looks. (hey! i needed bandaids! and i didn't go near the food....for pete's sake).

tomorrow jim and i are going to the big e, then going to see stand (again). will my international contingency PLEASE assure me that you know what wetlands are? because when i tried to explain to these fine irish lads what i do, i got "what's a wetland?". and i was sad. i think i'm going to have to make some sort of "this is what i do" page to refer people to...anyway, should be a fun weekend. hope you all enjoy(ed) yours as well.

oh my god. you can get old school oregon trail online. i am so disproportionately excited about this it's not even funny.

ahoy, mateys! 'tis national talk like a pirate day!

arrrr!

yesterday was the girls' trip the the yarn store. i got ~$80 worth of really, REALLY nice yarn for $50. I am a happy, happy camper. christmas presents, here i come! i'm so excited about all of the fun things i'm going to make, and i can't blab about them b/c i don't want to ruin any surprises. but...wheeee! dana already knows that i'm going to make him these fabulous mittens, so i don't have to worry about ruining that surprise ;).

had sushi with abbie and adam and lisa last night, then we all went to bidwell for beer and dairy queen for blizzards (sushi, beer, blizzards...we are a very cultured lot). fyi: the key lime blizzard rates an "eh" on a scale of "blech!" to "yum!", which is somewhere in the middle. not necessarily worth repeating. lisa spent the night and we went to breakfast at nita's which was very very tastey (thank you dana for introducing me to that place, we split a crepe and it was fantastic). and now i'm home and i think i'm going to go play with my new yarn. later gators.

i am completely hopped up on coffee right now. as in, bouncing on my exercise ball-slash-desk chair, humming loudly to myself, talking to the cat as though he might answer me. but damnit, i WILL have a draft of my lit review done by friday!

*bounce bounce bounce*

pictures from erin and enoch's wedding.

i am such a useless human being right after dana leaves.

today was absolutely gorgeous, and the only time i stepped outside at all was to bring dana to the airport at 5 am. then i came back home, got back in bed, and slept until ten. then i sat on my arse all day working on Christmas Project #1 and reading the cool new book that jim got me for my birthday (thanks jim!) and trying to figure out crochet patterns. i should have gotten outside, and i definitely should have worked on my lit review, but i was just too bummed out to get off the couch. blah.

had a wonderful last few days...dana surprised me with a dozen red roses and an incredibly beautiful sapphire and diamond bracelet while we were at the rehearsal dinner for enoch and erin's wedding at this really nice restaurant, and friday was the wedding itself which was lovely. got to meet a lot of dana's friends that i hadn't met yet, which was great and they were all very nice people. and my man was hands down the most handsome guy to ever put on a tux. so there ;). aside from my feet being in incredible pain from wearing super high stiletto heels two nights in a row, i'd say it all went well. and now i'm tired and i have to go back to the real world tomorrow, so i'm going to shower and go to bed. g'night all.

pictures from offroading with justin, and also some shots from the labor day picnic (complete with go-carts!).

you can get free, legal live music downloads at archive.org. they're recordings of concerts, so sound quality is not necessarily guarenteed, but there are reviews to help you decipher that information. i've had really good luck so far, and am happily listening to a recording of a guster show in RI on june 25th. thanks to the guy whose name i don't know who recommended this site to justin and i while we were off-roading yesterday.

now that's some funny sh*t.

and happy birthday, ray. you're old. and in five days...you'll still be five days older than me. ha ha!

yeah, yeah, i know. i'm sorry. *hides head*

still working on my lit review, which seems so impossible and cumbersome and just ugh that i'm fairly certain that it is killing my brain. slowly. otherwise, classes seem like they're going to be interesting, which is always helpful in making the semester slightly less suck-like.

glorious long weekend coming up, which is even more glorious because it only really occurred to me at around 4:30 this afternoon that not only is it a long weekend, but that today was, in fact, friday. don't ask. it just seemed kinda mondayish. tomorrow i'm the fabulous pinch-hitting vet tech, after which i will come home and make buckets and loads of potato salad, and maybe some cookies. maybe a lot of cookies. who knows. which reminds me that i forgot to re-borrow april's ginormous le crueset, and it will take me roughly forever to boil five pounds of potatoes. but that's okay. i will perservere. then on sunday i'm going 4-wheeling with justin. whee! (check out his jeep pictures...we're going *real* 4-wheeling!). then crashing at april and mark's most likely, and back to justin's for a picnic on monday (after april and i go into the office for a while and work like diligent little grad students of course...and stop by col's to feed bootsy rodent slayer). hooray for long weekends!

and double hooray for dana being here on wednesday! only for a few days, and they're all pretty much booked solid (again), but that's okay. and he'll be here on my birthday, so that's even better. *and* i get to see him in a tux at the wedding we're going to, which is even more better (*fans self*). the wedding for which i purchased an $80 dress for $12.49. that's right. $12.49. too bad i hate shopping, b/c apparently i'm pretty good at it. and i was still out of the mall in under 45 minutes, so that's not too bad i'd say.

so, recap: classes good, weekend good, hottie boyfriend in a tux good, and i'm a mad bargain speed shopper. i think this ridiculously long post makes up for my recent shoddy posting habits. so there.

(as a post script...i had the intention of writing about the hurricane, but i just can't do it. it makes me cry, and nothing i have to say seems relevant or meaningful. this site and this site are two good places to go if you want to donate money to the victims. it seems like so little, but i just don't know what else to do. if any of you are looking for loved ones in the stricken areas, wiki has some good links and tips for finding people. my heart goes out to all of you...)

tomorrow, the freshmen come back.

this means that summer is officially over. not on the calendar, i know, but in my world. on one hand, i am not happy about this. on the other hand, i can't wait for classes to start because it means that time is progressing, and every day i am moving closer and closer to the day when i am done with grad school.

i started a new project at craft night last night; it occurred to me that i'm going to be more broke for christmas this year than i've been in a really long time, and that i'm going to have to make christmas gifts for pretty much everyone. so i can't go into details on the new project, other than to say that it's a christmas gift for somebody and even though i still have a lot more to do on it, i got myself off to a decent start. which is good.

off to go running...it is BEAUTIFUL today :)

yay! i get my new tires today! i'll be very glad to be rid of my sissy highway tires. next step--doing something about that lame-o fake diamond plate the last owner slapped on the sides...

not a heck of a lot of free time lately...

i've been spending a lot of time reading articles for and starting the writing on my literature review for my thesis. the original goal was to have this done by the end of the summer, and that's definitely not happening. but hopefully by mid september it'll be set. there's very little left of summer now--classes start a week from tomorrow. this semester, i'm taking advanced fluvial geomorphology and aquatic plant biology, presenting my data at a conference in atlantic city, and wrapping up my research. next semester, i'm TA-ing and writing my thesis (and possibly taking one more class, but i'm hoping not). then...i'm done. done with college. three degrees later...

i have a feeling that these past two weeks are a harbinger of what my blogging frequency is going to be for a while. i'm going to try my best to have that not be the case. maybe i'll start adopting april's "w.i.p. wednesday", to keep myself on the ball...

anyone who would like to donate money to the american cancer society for the relay for life that i'm participating in in october, click here. my goal is to walk for as much of the 24 hours as i possibly can (i managed 17 last year...going to try to beat that without the unfortunate side effect of blowing out my knee this year). Every little bit helps, so please consider donating. visit this site to learn about how to organize a relay for life team in your neck of the woods.

stealing this idea from CTG over at pinkrunningshoes [who just had a baby! aieeeee! congratulations (again)!]...

identify yourselves! i know who some of you are that read this, but others have me flummoxed (yes, flummoxed!). you know enough about me...who *are* you people? ;)

[edited to add that as of 6pm on 8/11, 23 different people have been here since i put up this post. fine, poo on all of you ;)]

happy birthday to my mom!

this is going to be short, because i hurt my wrists pretty badly today trying to obliterate a large patch of phragmites and they are KILLING me, but i haven't updated lately and i probably won't get a chance again this week. i have a LOT of stuff to do.

so...last weekend was a rock-on kind of weekend! friday night i crashed at ray's, and we got up at 3 am and drove to new hampshire to go hiking. we hiked roughly 17 miles and did two mountains (zealand mountain and mount guyot), and even though it was probably the most challenging hike i've ever done, i had a blast. ray's a good hiking buddy, even if he is a friggin' mountain goat. he makes me challenge myself more than i probably would if i were alone. so yeah...got up at 3am, drove the 4 hours there, hiked 8 am until about 4:30 pm, then drove back home. then sunday, i went to the beach with april and mark, and april's sister shelly and her fiance rich. then we met up with justin in manchester and meandered around a car show (i love car shows!!). after that we all met up with another friend of theirs and had pizza and beer and alarmingly tastey fried pickles, and saw the dukes of hazzard movie (pure and utter cheese, but good car chases!). THEN, justin helped me get the doors off my jeep. ROCK. ON. all in all, a very good weekend.

okay, i'm in pain now. a lot. youch.

added pictures of the second bracelet to the page with the jewelry i made for my mom's birthday...

today was mutual of omaha wild kingdom day at the wetland. mice *and* groundhogs running all over the place. usually i just see sign that they've been there, but they were ballsy little vermints today. the mice i can deal with, they're easy to seal out. but the groundhogs have far, far, far overstayed their welcome. at first, i was sympathetic to the groundhog plight. i was hospitable. i figured, as long as they stay away from my monitoring equipment, i don't so much mind the giant, cavernous, swallow-up-your-leg-and-snap-it-off-at-the-hip holes in the hillside. but they took advantage of my hospitality. first, they chewed a hole in my wetland liner. and i was grumpy, but i patched it up and all was well. next, they dug a hole right through a spot where some of my underground wires run through. They didn't damage the wires, but you can actually see them in the hole, and that was a little too close for comfort for me. now, they've dug holes below *both* of my monitoring stations, which is way too close to the wiring for my samplers, datalogger, and rain gauge for me to be okay with. groundhogs, i have been patient with you. i defended your right to live on the cozy little hillside. but so help me god, if you damage my wiring and make me lose data resulting in my having to prolong my life as a graduate student...*runs finger across throat*.

groundhog stew, mark my words.

from both squirrel and eck...