Dominoes

I remember setting up dominoes as a kid when I was home sick from school. I remember having lines of them crossing under the table, over books, around obstacles, spiraling, straight, curved, expanding, shrinking, even loop-de-looping. Man, it was frustrating when they would fall over before you were ready. When your pinky toe accidentally hit the one on the end and they all fell over before another human being could appreciate you actually did set up 987 dominoes across the entire kitchen. I miss those times. I set up a few on my grandparents table just for old times sake. It's good to be a kid again.

Roses Are Not Just Red

I'm started to get an overload of gorgeous flower pictures. It's like this spring and early summer has boasted of a ridiculous amount of natural beauty. Here is a selection of roses in my grandparent's flower bed.



I am staying at my grandparents house this week until our air conditioning gets fixed. I swear, the air went out during a record heat wave for our area. I get the feeling it knew it was going to have to work overtime so it decided to shut down completely. On the plus side though, one hour in my house leads to lovely skin. The sauna-like conditions guarantee it.

Confessions of a Pack Rat

Ok. I admit that I am a somewhat of a pack rat. I have trouble discarding precious items that symbolize specific memories. I fear that I will want that New Years plastic hat next year or that I will need those worn-out shoes for some day painting fences outdoors. I worry that I will not remember a vacation from 13 years ago without the novelty snow globe or think that I will be able to use those scraps of paper for some future craft project. I have a real problem throwing things away.

However, I've been researching "packratism" online and I realized that I am not nearly as bad as some people out there. Wikipedia has to say about the issue:

Compulsive hoarding (or pathological hoarding) is extreme hoarding behaviour in humans. It involves the collection and/or failure to discard large numbers of objects even when their storage causes significant clutter and impairment to basic living activities such as moving around the house, cooking, cleaning, showering or sleeping. Hoarding rubbish may be referred to as syllogomania or disposophobia. A slang term for a compulsive hoarder is pack rat or packrat.

Woah! I am not THAT bad. But I do have some advice for fellow packraters like me:

• It's ok to let stuff go. There is no need to keep completely unnecessary things.
• A good way to part with stuff is to just keep one item that can represent an entire group of things.
• If you donate your nice old junk then maybe someone else can actually benefit from it who needs it. Lets face it, You don't need 20 purses, 14 of which you haven't touched in the past year.
• Or if you have time, you could sell your stuff on Ebay which means $$ for the things piled on the stack of junk blocking the path to your bed.
• The most important thing to remember is that it will feel good to clear the clutter from your life.

However, after saying all that, I filled up two huge bags of stuff to donate to Goodwill and my mom was practically going through everything saying, "You can't get rid of this."

Gosh. Way to make me feel guilty. At least I know where I get it from...

Could It Be Global Warming?

Sweltering. Yes, that is the word to describe the heat today.

Today being the first real "hot" day of "summer," it didn't take long until we realized that our air conditioning is broken. The air inside our house sticky as molasses. It feels like we are sitting inside a greenhouse with winter coats on. I am generally a cold person, but today is the exception.

The air conditioning repairmen originally said they couldn't come for two weeks since everybody is probably cranking up the air for the first time this season, but then they showed up at our door an hour later. They have been tinkering with the central air all day long, but nothing. They hacked up the bush surrounding the unit, been hammering, taking apart, putting back to together, making strange noises, and it won't work. Oh, now we'll have to back to the days before air-conditioning. I don't think I enjoy that prospect.

i am neurotic

I enjoy reading about others' neuroses over on the site, i am neurotic.

People seem to have idiosyncrasies from fear of the letter E to irrational organizational behavior. Site visitors anonymously send in their secret little obsessions to share with others. For some reason, peeking at the crazy stupid unexplainable habits/fears of other people is amusing. Perhaps there is comfort in knowing that everyone has a little bit OCD-approaching behavior hidden somewhere.

I sent in one within the past week and it is published on the site. I won't tell you which one is mine, but maybe you can guess?

YOU should share your strange behavior with the rest of the world. Let me know if you do, so I can read it and laugh at your uncontrollable freakish neuroses too!

How To Make A Swan Angry

I always thought swans were beautiful, serene birds. After yesterday, I now know better. I stood in front of this gorgeous mama swan and her two baby swan ducklings to snap a good photograph. They posed nicely and I got my shot, but then I heard this wing flapping and hissing in the distance.


To my left a giant male swan is strutting toward me with his head tucked down, wings out, and feathers puffed up. I thought he was going to walk into my frame to make the picture a complete swan family. But he had something else in mind.

Instead of heading toward his family, he started cowering toward me. I slowly shuffled backward with my camera still out in front of me. The swan started hissing louder. And running. Then I started running. And he started running faster. So I screamed and spun around to sprint back to my grandfather's truck. I hopped in only to find the swan right behind me pecking viciously at the truck, making horrible noises. My heart was racing. If I hadn't taken cover, that big white bird probably would have pecked me to death. Shudder.

Lesson? Never mess with baby swans.

Strawberry Picking Season

Today is the first day of strawberry season! I woke up at the crack of dawn to go strawberry-picking with my Pappy. We headed over to Beam's Blue Mountain Farm and spent the morning taking ripe red strawberries out of the field. I love the sound of the fruit as they pop off of the rest of the plant. I'm not sure that as many strawberries made it into the basket as into our mouths...

Then when I got home, I made some tasty strawberry shortcakes. Instead of baking it in a round cake pan I lumped the dough onto a cookie sheet to make shortcake patties, or whatever you want to call them. This is the first time I've tried this method over the large round hunk of shortcake that serves pie-shaped slices kind. I think I like this way better so that all of sides can get golden brown. Although, I must admit, I may have done something wrong because they don't look as good as they taste. They look strangely smooth and biscuit-like.

But oh well. Mmmmmm. I love strawberry time!

A Turtle. Really?

On Saturday I drove down to Maryland to visit my soon-to-be graduate school and potential apartment for the first time. I love the UMD campus. It is huge and very nicely landscaped. The academic buildings are classic-looking and the other facilities are giant, especially after going to a small university. I'm really excited for the upcoming fall. We hit some of the DC traffic once getting close to College Park. I can't wait to live so close to the (or really any) city!

Unfortunately, we picked kind of an ugly day for touring outside. The rain was practically coming down sideways. And weather.com displayed a little gray cloud with raindrops falling out of it for absolutely every daylight hour. For once they were right--it rained all day.

Might I just ask one question? Who would pick a terrapin, namely a turtle, for a school mascot? There are various 'artworks' around campus triumphing the iconic diamondback, but I have to admit that it's kind of strange. And slightly ugly. A turtle. Really?

Also, they supposedly have this saying that goes something like, "Fear the turtle." And to that I would ask once again, really, a turtle?