Update

I keep waiting for something exciting and/or interesting to happen so that I can write about it, but it seems I'm doomed to mundacity these days. I've been busy, as is usual. I'm TAing two classes, teaching a night class, and trying to get the prospectus ready to defend. I'm also working on preparing for the GRE subject exam (and the regular old GRE again), so I probably won't be updating much for a while. At least I'm keeping out of trouble, right? Oh, well, in exciting news, my little brother Andrew got his mission call to . . . . Albania. He reports to the Missionary Training Center in Provo on October 24, so we're all pretty excited about that. I'm out of trouble, he's out of trouble; life is good. :-)

Home Sweet Home

After a long trip across the plains, I have once again arrived in Utah for the beginning of a new school year. My little brother drove out with me, and it was nice to have some company whilst in the middle of nowhere. My roommate helped me move my stuff out of storage and into my new apartment yesterday, so my arms are pretty much aching beyond belief today. My apartment is located on the third floor, so I really got a good workout carrying stuff up the stairs. Anyway, I'm slowly unpacking and getting settled in while waiting for school to begin. I'm hoping to get my prospectus defended shortly, so cross your fingers! My new church ward seems like it will be good, too. It's a slightly older ward, so I am at long last NOT the oldest one around. Well, there goes the crazy cat lady for a while. :-)

Rain, rain, go away!

I don't know how many of you have heard, but we've been having tremendous rain storms here lately. Yesterday, Saturday, we got somewhere between 7 and 12 inches of rain. I love thunderstorms, but after hearing them for twelve or so hours, I was ready for a break. We lost power for a few hours yesterday evening, too, which was a not-so-welcome surprise. Apparently, a lot of the city lost power; electricity was the exception instead of the rule last night. Anyway, we're all safe and sound here at my house, but I'm kind of glad we live an hour or so away from the Mississippi River. The local river, the Zumbro, hasn't yet crested, and it's supposed to keep raining all week long. Fortunately, we don't live by the Zumbro, but it's still a concern. Several years ago, Rochester had major flood control work done on the river, both downtown and through other parts of the city, and it really seems to be paying off now. Many places have flooded, but we haven't had the type of problems other cities are having. For a link, see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20346539/. It makes me realize how fortunate I am to live where I do and to have been protected from all of these calamities. I'm still in a little bit of shock. I mean, you read about all of these sorts of things happening somewhere else, and you don't really expect that they will happen to you. What with the bridge collapse and this weekend's flooding in Minnesota, and the mine collapse in Utah, it brings to mind how fragile life really is. I'm happy to report that it's currently not raining, nor is it thundering or lightening right now, and we're all praying that the weather forecasters are going to be wrong this coming week. It's predicted to rain until next Saturday or Sunday. Heaven help us all.

antiquing

After going antiquing, I confess that I feel like an antique myself. Oronoco, Minnesota, has an annual antiques fair the third weekend in August, and it's this weekend. Caitlin's fiddling group got invited to play at it today and tomorrow, and I was the responsible adult today who took her. Yes, my sister is multi-talented and does everything. Anyway, while they were playing, I went and looked around at all of the things there. I was surprised at how much junk was there; you'd think that a nationally-known antiques fair would have more quality and less useless stuff. I confess that if I had a house and the income with which to furnish said house, I could have found some fun pieces, but alas, I am also a student with grandiose dreams of further education. Besides, my mom would kill me if I came home with a fiberglass moose. Anyway, I did find some Depression-era feedsack fabric, for a reasonable price, so I guess I had some luck. I also did a fair amount of walking, so at the very least, I got my exercise. Aside from the fact that I'm actually allergic to dust and have asthma, antiquing might be a good hobby. Then again, maybe not.

Caitlin's home!

My little sister has now gotten home from music camp, New York, and all the madness that was the summer. I'm going to have a week or two with her before I head back to Provo, so we've begun making grand plans. She wants to go buy beads to make earrings, so I'm afraid I'm going to fall off of the no-craft-store-for-the-summer wagon. Oh, well :-) Life was cheaper while that lasted!

A rainy day. . .

It's been pouring rain all day today. We really needed the water, since everything's been a bit dry, and it's finally gotten rid of some of the humidity in the air. There's nothing quite like the smell of the world after a fresh rainstorm. Of course, if you're near to a farm, the smell of wet manure is absolutely atrocious, but that's a whole other issue. For the suburban dweller, though, it's lovely. Instead of staying inside today, though, I went to our local farmer's market this morning in the pouring rain, and had a jolly old time. It was interesting to see the mix of people selling produce. There were some Amish individuals, local farmers, people from the Hmong Baptist church, and people from who knows where else. I ended up with some blackberries, some fresh green beans (I love them!!!), and a lovely bouquet of some bright flowers I don't know the name of. I used Caitlin's impending return as an excuse to buy the flowers, but really, I just thought they were pretty. Don't tell her, though. :-) I also got two enormous zucchini, too. Yes, I bought zucchini. I felt like such a traitor, but it was only a dollar for two of them. I got pretty soaked, even with my umbrella, and I then had to go to the grocery store to get milk.

Now, I'm not much of a milk drinker, but I am the exception in my family. Both my sisters and my mom can guzzle the stuff, and with Caitlin expected home on Monday I thought it might be nice to make sure we have at least enough milk to tide her over until Tuesday. While I was at the grocery store, I happened to see that strawberries and peaches were on sale. Oops. I got some of both and decided it was a lovely idea to make some more jam. Now, I have already made tons of jam this summer. I've done both strawberry and raspberry freezer jam, along with traditional jar canning with four berry jelly, peach butter, and blackberry jam. I have no idea why I find hot pack canning so fun; I just do. I will attribute it to some DNA fluke and move on. Anyway, after getting home, I blanched the peaches to aid in easier peeling, and washed the other fruit. While that was happening, I also grated the zucchini and made 4 loaves of zucchini bread (1 double recipe). Suffice it to say that I had a busy morning/afternoon. I am happy that the zucchini is now in palatable form; I can feel good for eating my veggies today.

In other notes, I spent the entire morning in pajama pants after I got home. Now, while my jeans were wet, it was the fight with the door jam that did them in. No pun intended, I promise! I bumped into the door while carrying in my groceries and it caught my back pocket and ripped. What a pain in the behind. Anyway, since it's been pouring and I had nowhere pressing to be, I spent almost the entire day in the kitchen. Good grief, have I become even more domesticated? (I was already domestic, you know.) :-)

Anyway, as evening falls, I now have strawberry-peach-blackberry jam and strawberry-peach jam to add to the growing collection. I will not eat this much jam in the next 10 years, but it's so much fun to make that I think I have an addiction. I figure I can give away some of the half-pint containers as thank yous to my advisor and thesis committee members, and some for Christmas gifts. If you get a jar-shaped gift around December, chances are you'll know what it is. All of them are really, really good, though. I've tested it myself. :-) However, that still leaves me with a LOT of jam. Maybe I'll just have to make more bread. Of course, I'll have to wait until it stops raining, but I might just cheat and use my parents' breadmaker. Did I mention how much fun it is to work in a fully stocked kitchen with fun gadgets? And I'm going back to college dorm living because. . . . ? Oh, yeah. Because education means I can someday afford all of this myself. What a fruity idea.

Beware of brothers. . .

I know I haven't updated lately, and I apologize. I've been a lazy bum ever since my classes finished in June, and I've enjoyed myself thoroughly doing nothing much at all. I'm going to start school again shortly and the chaos will re-commence, but I still have a week or two. I'm teaching another class at BYU this coming fall, too, so that will definitely add to the stress level. It's good, but busy.

Anyway, yesterday, I just happened to mention to my little brother that I had a blog and hadn't mentioned it to him, and he therefore took it upon himself to find my life in cyber-space. Well, given that I gave him no clues, he wasn't having much luck until he took it upon himself to type my e-mail address and try to sign into Blogger. Now, I had thought I had a decent password, but he kept trying combinations that "sounded like [me]." To make a long story short, on his 4th try he managed to hack into my account and find my blog site. Needless to say, I have since changed ALL of my passwords as a precaution, but the damage is done. If he hadn't started laughing hysterically at his own cleverness, I would never have known. Pathetic, aren't I? Andrew, you've officially exceeded the turkey level, and I know you're proud of it (Just wait till you go on your mission, buddy. Your IPOD is mine! Mwa ha ha.) Okay, I realize the IPOD bit is just wishful thinking on my part, but really, how often do you get to insert a maniacal laugh?

At least he told me that I should update more often because he enjoyed reading it. Maybe I should compare him to a lab rat. Better yet, maybe he should be my lab rat. I'm sure I can get a dissertation out of pestering my little brother. Where there's a will, there's a way!

I now know how Harry Potter ends. :-) And that's all I'm going to say.

(Okay, I confess I stayed up all night reading. I just had to know what happened before I could sleep. I'm going to take a nap now).

Weekend plans

I just barely submitted my latest thesis draft, and I am now going to buy the next Harry Potter and read fun stuff for the entire weekend. I'm very excited. Anyone have any good book recommendations for the rest of the summer?

Caitlin's getting famous. . .

Here's the schedule for this weekend, if any of you are interested (I'm too lazy to write it out, so I'll just copy from the e-mail):

"Caitlin would like to tell you that she has been invited to be interviewed on Friday morning (July 20) on the Today Show, with Arthur Levine and one other Harry Potter contest winner. They will be interviewed by Tiki Barber sometime between 8 and 9:30 EST (We are not quite sure what time it will be broadcast). The group is also scheduled to appear on the CBS Early Show on Saturday morning between 7 and 9 a.m."