Winona Lake, Dec. 2

A bit of culture shock?

How unexpected.

Yesterday, Winona got a nice batch of snow. It was pretty, it was white, it covered the ground... It was more than a dusting, but less than bothersome. Or so I thought.

Apparently the policy here is to plow no matter how much snow has accumulated, and damn any cars that happen to be in the way. In South Dakota, folks would have barely thought about shoveling this much snow, let along plowing.

The kicker is that I would have moved my car this morning, so that it wouldn't have been towed, had there not been two or three other cars in the parking lot fifteen minutes before they were all supposed to have been moved. I went out there, saw the cars, and said to myself, "Hey, these guys must not think it's a big deal either. Cool."

I hope they got towed too. /grumble grumble

What I Did On My Weekend Vacation...

In no particular order I...

Went to a wicked awesome Q and A session with Doug Jones, of Pan's Labyrinth fame!



Bought fun things!


Ate at Burger King!


Busted ghosts!


Marveled at the thrilling shopping opportunities offered by the Twin Cities!


Got attacked-ed by a madman!


Met Michael Berryman, of The Hills Have Eyes fame!


Met James Duval, of SLC Punk fame!


Met Chris Sarandon, of Fright Night fame!





















Got attacked-ed by a zombie!


That's the short version with interesting pictures. I'll do the real version in a little while.

Wherein ThinkGeek is AWESOME!

And so am I.

Blue Sun DOES work for me!

Monkeys.

I love the Japanese.

As if macaques aren't awesome enough.

Chair groove

The EPA

While I generally agree with the ideals of the Environmental Protection Agency, I think sometimes they overstep their bounds.

"Excel"ent?

I have spent this weekend trying to stuff my brain full of the workings of Microsoft Excel in the hopes that I can ace an exam tomorrow which will qualify me for a super job here in Winona in a field that I've never worked in before. I have no idea what will be on this test, so I have no idea how prepared I am or should be. I am feeling a little tense, and a little brain-dead.

The nice thing is that Excel is, for all intents and purposes, pretty damn easy to figure out - especially since I cut my technological teeth on Microsoft Works spreadsheets, databases, and the like; it isn't as though the programs are drastically different, I've just not used them in some time. Luckily, tutorials aplenty can be found on the glorious internets; the main problem there, of course, is some tutorials only take me so far, some rehash stuff I already know but throw in cute little tips in the middle of the rehashed stuff, and some teach me things that I can't imagine needing to know, like how to make a pair of die in the program that can be rolled for random numbers...

I am tempted to break out the AD&D program we've got and roll up a monster treasure list to enter in and play with in Excel. See if I can calculate total gp values, xp, and whatnot.

All I really know is that doing well on this test means that I stand a good chance of not having to work in a factory again, and that makes my little heart go hoppity-skip. I really really wish I had a better idea of what was going to be asked of me on this test.

And here comes a headache... Let's see... a glass of wine, or a pair of ibuprofen?

And now that I mention it... Living in Brookings set me up for a state of extreme culture shock. It's not the people, it's not the way that the streets are arranged, or anything like that.

This place has liquor stores. STORES! Many of them! There are five that I can think of just off the top of my head, and I haven't even explored that much! I feel like I'm in bizzarro alchy land.

Squee!!!

I have a new obsession.

The Daily Puppy

Pictures of puppies every day forever and ever. Nick is quietly laughing at me as I'm going through the archives making squeaking noises over all the cute puppies they have here.
Soooooo much cuteness!

I don't know why Nick is surprised at my behavior. He and I have both agreed that we're not interested in having children in our lives, but when the time is right, we can get ourselves a dog (or four...). Obviously, this is going to be many years down the road, when he's got himself a nice cushy teaching job, probably on a tenure track, and we've got a house with a yard and the time to actually train our little guy(s). We're both enthusiastic about Rottweilers, Huskies, and German Shepherds.


I've got a special place in my heart for Welsh Corgies (see first photo).

I'm almost on cuteness overload. I have no idea how people can want babies more than puppies.

Trip to the Lake

There is a walk/bike trail that runs all the way around Lake Winona. It's about five miles long, and I walked it today with my mighty camera 'round my neck. My feet hurt, my legs hurt, my back hurts. Out of the 208 photos I took, only 74 of them were worth keeping. But it was totally worth it, because it was two uninterrupted hours of me and Nick time. No computers, no movies, no homework - just us and the camera and the ducks and geese.

This place is just too beautiful.

Ducks and Geese!

Ducks!!Quack, quack...

And geese!

HONK!

Why, yes, I am easily entertained, thank you!

Sorta Moved

I'm sitting in the dark, eating cherries that still have their pips and stems, and listening to Bad Religion's "Boot Stamping on a Human Face Forever". My monitor is sitting on a box, and I'm sitting on the floor in front of it. There is no overhead light in this room, and the one lamp we brought on the first trip is in the bedroom and too much of a pain to move. The sheets have been washed, and the bed is set up and made; the kitchen's perplexing cupboard space has been dealt with though the purchase of a stepladder for my short self. As a result, most of the kitchen stuff has been successfully unpacked.

I'm sick and wish I could just nap all day tomorrow, but other than that, I feel pretty good about today.

Oh, and I just found out that the US womens team sabre took the bronze. Good going, ladies!

Holy Crap

I'm moving in two days. Holy crap. Commence to freaking out. Am I ready for this? I don't feel ready for this. There's still so much crap that needs to be done, stuff that needs to be packed up - this WHOLE APARTMENT needs to be cleaned... We never really clean around here... something that we'll have to work on in the new place.

I need to take more crap to the dumpster. How did I manage to accumulate so much junk???

I broke down my computer desk yesterday because it was a piece of junk - I'll just get a new one when we get settled.. For now, this is how I'm set up:

Awesome.

Maybe I'm Emo?

I suck at video blogs, FYI. From here on out, most video blogs should pertain to dancing and being silly.



There will be time for crazyness, and weirdness, and other things both strange and peculiar. Today, right now, there's pretty much just this.