Happy 4th of July!

Unfortunately, I'm working on this our day of independence. Josh and I spent the first part of the week visiting my dad at his cabin outside Cloudcroft, New Mexico, and I wish we were still there! Nice cool weather, no work, sleeping 9 1/2 hours every night....aaaahhhh.....Anyway, I don't get vacation time, so I'm taking advantage of having the place to myself to get some things done today and make up some of the hours I took off.

I've stayed pretty busy - two weeks ago, I gave the sermon at our Sunday night service. I was a little nervous walking up to the podium and getting the microphone hooked onto my blouse, but as soon as I got started, I had a really good time! I guess that comes with speaking about something you're passionate about. It went over really well, and I'm actually looking forward to my next turn! Maybe I'll stick my sermon at the end of this post.

I put an application in to be appointed to one of the City Boards or Commissions. I don't think any of the commissions I signed up to be considered for are in need of placement right now, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and get my name in the works. The next City Council meeting is next week, so we'll see if I get a phone call. (It never hurts to hope!)

Next week, I start summer classes. I'm only taking a physics class and it only lasts for one month so it shouldn't be too bad. I'm also starting the training to become an Adult Literacy tutor. Actually, orientation starts on Tuesday and I believe the training actually begins the following week; which is okay - that will give me next week to get my mind back on "school track." I'm so ready to be done with school!

Break's over....back to work for now, have to finish tonight...

Meet Dexter...

Okay so it's been almost two weeks and I've been pretty busy.
Quick rundown: we found out we had a gas leak at our house.
The original owners of our hose teed off a gas line that ran to a floor heater in the garage. That's where the leak was, and why we didn't smell it. We wondered why we were having $100 gas bills during warm months....Josh smokes, and he'd been in and out of the garage working on his motorcycle. Luckily he always opened the garage up and pulled his motorcycle out before working on it. It's a weird feeling knowing your garage and your husband could have blown up. I could complain about the cost of getting it all fixed but it basically comes down to this:

Total amount unneccesarily paid to the Gas Company: $315
Tools, parts and gas caps: $50
Plumber: $300
City Inspector: $175
Our garage not blowing up: Priceless

I had taken the afternoon off from work to help Josh fix the gas leak, and heard a desparate meowing coming from the other side of the garage. I followed it around and found one of Not-Martha's new kittens crying and clawing at the side of the neighbor's garage. Not-Martha is a neighborhood stray that looks like Martha the Cat but is in fact not Martha. Not-Martha had three kittens that were about 4 weeks old, and they were all very skittish. I'd noticed the day before that there were only two kittens with Not-Martha, and now here was this one. It's eyes were completely crusted over and swollen shut. It looked so bad that I thought maybe it had lost it's eyes altogether. His little tongue was hanging out, and he was completely infested with fleas. It was the most pitiful little thing I'd ever seen! So I wrapped him up in a towel and drove to the vet. $100 later, I had a new indoor cat! He had a respiratory infection, and the fleas were killing him. The vet said "If" he made it, to bring him back in two weeks. This coming Thursday will be two weeks and Dexter is a beautiful, feisty little kitten!

This is Dexter the second day after I found him.

His face looks a little greasy because I'd just put medicine in his eyes. It's been difficult to get a recent picture of him because he rarely sits still. Frankie the Dog is getting used to him. We were a little worried about how they would get along until the day I found Dexter sitting in Frankie's food bowl and Frankie eating around him. Frankie's a good ol' boy! Here's a few more pictures, the most recent at the bottom.

A Big Day

Well, I'm having a mini celebration this evening, and by mini I mean me since Josh is working tonight. I am very excited to say that my prof and I finished our paper and submitted it to ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) this afternoon! I've been working on this material since January and I have a real sense of accomplishment this evening. I've especially been working on my portion of the paper since the semester ended, and have spent hours at school over this past weekend. I celebrated by going to the gym. I got home and wondered for just a second about what I would do this evening, then remembered I have all the necessary ingredients to make a raspberry martini.

So now I wait until July 28th, when we find out if our paper is to be published. Regardless, this has been an experience of a lifetime, and the highlight of my undergraduate academic career. We're going to start on a new angle of the research on Friday, which hopefully will result in a published paper as well.

For now, I'm going to take a long hot shower and relax for the rest of the evening....or actually, I'll probably start looking over the proofs for the next research project.

Have a lovely evening!

Needing to vent a little...

I'm a little frustrated this evening. First of all, I'm out of Black Cherry creamer, and I don't feel like having vanilla.

What do you do when the only person capable of standing in the way of something IS doing ALL they can to stand in the way of EVERYTHING? How do you get someone off their soapbox when it IS actually their soapbox to stand on? An organization I have come to love very much is in a great deal of trouble. I have sadly come to realize just how arrogant and condescending this certain person is. I am in a position to make some changes and to get people motivated to take some initiatives, but unfortunately, this person is beginning to set up road blocks to everything we're trying to accomplish. This person, for some reason, thinks we haven't proven that we're good enough to accomplish some things we're really excited about doing. Personally, I think he's afraid of us actually succeeding. If he doesn't want to have some faith in us, then he can remove himself from the situation, and let us deal with the ups and downs ourselves. I am not afraid to give this my very best shot. I am afraid of what will happen to our organization if this person doesn't stop sabotaging us and himself. I'm afraid this is going to be a difficult road, and I'm not willing to accept failure as a possible outcome...but with as many good people as we have willing to work together, we won't fail.

Lord, give me strength to face the challenges presented to me with a strong and driven heart, and a focused and knowledgable mind. Help me to become the leader you need me to be.

Carrie-Anne's Guide to Top Drawer Traveling...

A couple of years ago, I took a fabulous vacation to Europe (England, Itlay, school in France) and learned several hard, quick lessons on travel. For those of you who are traveling, especially to Europe, take a look at these quick and easy quidelines before you go...
http://myonethousandthingstosee.blogspot.com/2007/04/carrie-annes-guide-to-top-drawer.html
And if you do end up reading my little travel blog, just know that I unfortunately didn't finish getting all my pictures uploaded and stories written yet. But I will.....

Have a great day!

Well I got my hair cut...

Well I got my hair cut...and I love it!! Cute bob hair cut...great color (dark blond with light blond chunky highlights). The stylist did a perfect job of giving me exactly the hair I wanted! Yea!! I'll get some pictures uploaded when I can...hopefully tomorrow. I have about a foot long braid to send in to Locks of Love. If you have long hair and have been thinking about cutting it, go to http://www.locksoflove.org/donate.html to get the guidelines for acceptable donations and the mailing address. Locks of Love uses donated hair to create hair prosthetics (wigs) for children with cancer. It's a fabulous organization, and these children will receive the wigs for virtually no cost depending on financial status. It's a really great website so you should check it out!

Today was a pretty good day. I went to work for a few hours then my faculty advisor and I met with the chair of the Mechanical Engineering Dept so he could give us his opinion on our paper. The deadline is June 2nd, so we're down to the wire, and I'm really ready to get this done and submitted! I was a little nervous, since I've had the chair for a few classes and I wasn't sure how he would like my portion of the paper. I am so pleased to say that he told me that I really did an excellant job and that he was very pleasantly surprised. Aaahhh...approval. Why is it that no matter how many people tell you they see how hard you're working and what a great job you're doing, there's always someone we still seek approval from. Well anyway, it was really nice to hear it from him. My faculty advisor has been working with me on this research and this paper since January of this year, and I couldn't have made it through without his constant encouragement. Speaking of which, I should be making my last minute changes to the paper right now. We're meeting tomorrow afternoon to put it all together as the Final Paper, or as I like to call it, the Final Paper Last Revision Version No. 4. But we're pretty sure we'll mean it this time. Dear Lord I hope so!

Also a quick note that we got our George W money today! Woohoo! Thanks George!

To Climb a Mountain...

Today is the anniversary of the first successful ascent to the summit of Mount Everest which occured on May29, 1953 by two gentlemen, Hillary and Tenzing. Apparently three days before, two other climbers, Bourdillon and Evans, came within 100 meters of reaching the summit, and turned back due to exhaustion. Seriously?! I can not imagine being so close to reaching such a phenomenal goal and having to turn back, only to have it reached days later by someone else; or to feel that level of physical and mental exhaustion that would allow you to justify turning back. Every night I go to bed with the intent of waking up more determined than I was the day before; because every day is one whole day closer to doing all the things I want to do..but that's only true if I make the most of every single day. So I now have a new standard of exhaustion before I will justify giving up...am I experiencing respiratory failure, throwing up uncontrollably, hallucinating, and have bodily fluids frozen to my face and legs? If not, then there's no excuse.

What summits are you striving to reach?