Help me...

So, this year for Canadian Thanksgiving, I asked Jesse if he would want me to throw a dinner party with some friends to celebrate, and I think that is the plan. Not everyone that we are inviting knows each other though, and I don't want there to be any awkward/weird silences or just general weird lame party tension. So, I'm trying to think of ideas that would prevent that all together, or at the very least, be a back up should the feared silence fall on us. I'm thinking about things like easy to play games that help you get to know people (i.e. not board games, but more like ice breaker games, but not like youth group ice breaker games, know what I mean?) or favors that reveal something about the person...things like that. So, with that being said - anyone have any ideas???

1943

In 1943 Transportation Magazine ran an article to help employers during World War II. Of course, during this time, many men were overseas, so companies were being "forced" to look at the female candidates. I thought you might enjoy some of their very enlightening suggestions:

*Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilites of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses, which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

*When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy...

*Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making critcism. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirits and cuts off her efficiency.

And here comes my personal favorite -

*Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick, and wash her hands several times a day.

Randomness

I should be working on a paper right now, but my brain revolts every time I begin reading another journal article scouring facts and figures. So for now, I'll blog.

It's been a busy, busy month, so this will probably be totally random with all of the stuff that I should have blogged earlier. Here we go -

Jesse's mom and step-dad were here over the weekend and I can't believe, I didn't take one single photo! I had been planning to get a good family photo with all of them, but the camera never even made it out of the bag. Besides that sad fact, the trip was really good. Fast, but good. We introduced Ray to Chipotle and Sonic, and are still currently eating our weight in Canadian candy.

I started volunteering at an animal shelter as a dog-walker a month or so ago and it's been pretty cool so far, though there are many dogs that I really want to bring home with me. Saturday, I went to one of the shelter's annual fundraisers with my mom, Horton, and Abe. Abe actually walked close to 2 miles without his back legs giving out at all. I was quite impressed. And Horton was his usual social self, happy as ever. Since working at the shelter, I have learned that big, black dogs are the hardest to adopt out. I've seen week after week, the little dogs get adopted out so quickly, while the same big ones remain at the shelter. At least this shelter treats them very well and will keep them as long as necessary to find them a home. Any stray should be so lucky as to end up at this particular place over another one. I think that is the only thing that keeps me from crying when I go there, or from desperately trying to find a way to adopt more and bring them home with me.

Fall is in the air, which makes me happy. I have gotten to light cinnamon candles and make apple crisp twice. Plus, Canadian Thanksgiving is only 22 days away!

Elections are also coming up, which is also super exciting. I am very happy to have a front row seat for one of US history's most exciting elections ever. No matter what party wins, we will have a minority in one of the two highest positions. Of course, I have to admit, I will be disappointed if Obama doesn't win. Very disappointed.

Our furnace is officially dead. It died last spring, but we thought it was just this coil thing that needed to be replaced, so Jesse replaced it a couple weeks ago, but it was still broken, so we had a guy out and he told us that the exchanger part has a crack and could leak carbon monoxide at any time, so he wouldn't even look at it further. He basically just said we need to get a new one. So, Jesse's been calling around getting quotes on new furnaces. Right before vacation, Jesse also noticed a leak in the hot water heater, but thankfully, it turned out to just be a broken valve that will be a quick and pretty inexpensive fix. The rest of the house seems to be functioning normally, but nonetheless, things around here are keeping us busy...like the dead tree in the front yard that has been needing to be cut down for months...or the sealant that has been needing to be put on the deck since spring...or the weeds growing in the driveways cracks...or or or...

Jesse is looking at different work options, possibly an educational leave of absence. We are in the middle of figuring out all of that, but hopefully by Christmas, things will be a little less hectic with the schedule. My work is going well, so I imagine that unless something major changes, I will be there at least until I graduate (which is about 243 days or so...not that anyone is keeping track...). I'm still debating about post-graduation options. There are so many positives and negatives to the paths I'm considering, it's hard to decide. I hope time will make things more clear - and I'm sure that if time doesn't make it clear, then rejection letters will. =)

So that is that for now. Lots of exciting changes on the horizon, both in the next few weeks and the next few months.

Vacation

We got back from vacation last night and were both feeling pretty tired. It was a lot of fun, but always too short. Now it's back to reality...broken furnaces, flooded crawl spaces, issues with hot water heaters, work, and school. =) More on those topics later - for now, we'll just think about the fun stuff. My pictures are, once again, totally out of order. Sorry. One of these days I will get a better system. Until then, I'll just make notes under each photo.

This is Jesse at The Wilderness Lodge. We had lunch here one day and just walked around the grounds. Pretty and peaceful there.
That's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in the background. It's one of the roller coaster rides at Magic Kingdom.
Jesse was very happy to get his photo with Buzz Lightyear. They were showing me their manly muscles.
This is on the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin ride, one of Jesse's favorites. It's actually a kiddie ride, but we like it anyway because your cart has little guns where you shoot at targets and it tracks your points. It also has a control in the middle so you can spin your cart to throw the other person off. Jesse usually wins, but I have to say, I gave him some good competition this year.
This is right outside the front door of our room. We stayed at Port Orleans Riverside this year. It was really nice, but I think we both prefer the place we stayed at last year.
This is back at Wilderness Lodge...just out of order!
Here's Jesse waiting for my favorite 3d show - It's Tough to Be a Bug.
Me on the safari. I think there must be some animals way back there that you can't see in the photo very well.
Shaka from Jesse! This is at Ohana - by far the best place we ate, and probably the best dining experience of my life. We had really good service and the food was great. Plus we got sat at a table where we had an amazing view (that you obviously can't see in this photo). I don't think anything could have been more perfect. (Except maybe the entertainment... a very interesting lady.)
Main Street USA (aka - the street you walk down as you enter into Magic Kingdom.)
This was our last day there. We swam, rented a sea raycer, took it easy.
This is the Boardwalk. It's a really nice little area. We ate dinner here one evening and spent some time just walking around.
That's Expedition Everest in the background. I rode it by myself last year, and vowed to never set foot on it again, as I thought I was going to have a heart attack. But, it does make a nice backdrop for photos! It's at Animal Kingdom, which is our favorite of the Disney parks.
Out of order, but this is when we were on the sea raycer. We were trying to "park" it in the middle of the lake to get a photo with the castle in the background, but it never quite fully worked.
And this was our last morning there... Jesse was making fun of my self-photos because my arm is so much shorter than his, it always cuts off his head when I hold the camera.

Puppy Update

Puppy's name is Cheyenne, and she is back home now. Whoo hoo! I am very glad. She was a hand full and this morning, starting around 4:00am, she decided it would be better to whine and bark at me until I got out of bed and turned on all the lights and stayed up with her. And of course, Abe decided that was a good idea too, because it was thundering outside. Not how I wanted to start my week. Oh well. I'm just really glad that we were able to finally find her owner. And the owner was very happy when Jesse called, so warm fuzzies for happy endings.

Moral of the story: Everyone who owns a dog, go invest five bucks and put your phone number on their collar.

Wedding Weekend

My brother got married this weekend, so I have a whole slew of photos. They are in kind of mixed up order, but you can probably figure it out. The first few are from the rehearsal dinner.

























This next photo is seemingly unrelated. On our way home from the reception, we had just turned onto one of the more major streets, and we saw this dog running across the road just trotting around everywhere. It was rainy and it was pretty obvious that she didn't belong to any of the houses right near by, but she had a collar and tags, so we stopped, thinking we could find a phone number on her tag and call her owner to get her back home. Unfortunately, her tags don't have phone numbers on them. So, we waited there for a while and Jesse kind of trotted along with her to see if she seemed like she knew where she was going (back home hopefully), but it didn't seem she really knew what direction she was heading in, and we were really afraid she would get hit by a car if we just left her. We tried to call animal control to see if they could match the number on her tag to the owner, but since it was late on a Saturday night, they were closed. After some debating, we decided to load her up and bring her back home with us until we could track down the owner. We just didn't want to leave her out in the rain, especially on a busy street at night. Anyway, so she slept here last night, and we've been calling around trying to find someone who could connect her tag numbers with her owners and posting online that we've found her, but no such luck with getting her owner yet. Jesse even took her to the emergency vet today to have her scanned for a microchip, but she doesn't have one. So, now we are just sort of waiting. Tomorrow morning we should be able to get animal control, and hopefully they will be able to look up her owners, so the plan is to have her back to wherever she belongs tomorrow. She's still in a puppy stage, so it's not exactly convienient to have her here, especially since we already have two big dogs, but we just didn't know what else to do with her. So for now, we have 3 dogs in the house and are praying it will be back down to just our two boys by tomorrow evening. Hopefully this little lady will be back home soon! We've just been calling her "puppy", so at any given time in our house right now, you can hear "No, no puppy!" "Get off, puppy!" "Stop that, puppy!" "Come on, puppy!" Horton and Abe are being very hospitable though. We are trying to give them some extra attention, especially Abe, because I think he may be a little bit put off. Anyway, here's "puppy":

Good Memories

This is South Point, and believe it or not, I jumped off this cliff a few times, right where that wooden board is (just up the distance from the red hoist).




I remember the first time, standing at the top, looking down and thinking a million things. I wonder how deep I will plunge into the water. I wonder how long it will take to swim back to the top. I wonder how strong those waves are. How can I be sure there are no rocks where I am jumping? What if there are sharks? Count to three and just do it. If you don't jump on three, you'll never jump. And then I counted to three and jumped, and when I stopped plunging downward in the water, I swam as fast and hard as I could back toward the top. I am not sure if I would do it again, as each passing year seems to make me keenly more aware of how very much I have, and as such, how very much I have to lose. It makes me not quite as adventerous as I once was, which may be a good thing. At the same time, in my current life of working, taking care of the house, and going to school, I miss the adventure. I want another risk. Not necessarily one that involves jumping off cliffs, but just a little excitement would be nice. Since I was 18, I moved every year, (at least once, if not more), except for the past 2 or so years. Maybe somewhere in all the moving and changing, I somehow became slightly addicted to the thrill of starting new.

I don't know what all the future holds. I know things will be changing this spring once I graduate, and I know what I want the changes to be, but I don't know if they are the changes that will actually happen or if they are the changes God wants. I know I will feel a sense of let down should my hopes not happen, as to me they seem exciting and full of adventure and the alternative seems so ho hum.

I don't know what "settling down" really means. And I'm not talking location necessarily. I just mean life in general. It seems like I do everything I can, whether consciously or unconsciouly, to prevent whatever "settling down" is, from happening to me. Maybe part of why I avoided college for so long was because I associate it with the settling. And now that I'm coming up on graduation in a few months, I'm worried that life will sit me down and finally tell me my adventures are over.

And I don't want them to be over.