I know you're jealous

I know you're jealous that I'm battling another massive case of poison ivy. I went to the doctor Wednesday (off base), was going to get my meds on Thursday, but the base pharmacy closes early on Thursdays, so I was going to go today, but Jon said a lot of people have today off, and he's not sure if the pharmacy will be open or not. So I thought, "I can pay the $3, I'll swing by Wal-Mart." A quick hour and 15 minutes later, we were walking out. Talk about frustrating.

One of my students is up for expulsion. She only made it through 7 weeks of school. That's pretty bad. Especially since they don't have alternative school for elementary school. You'd think it would be more of a threat. Oh well, can't say I'm glad to see her go. It's not like she's been here all that much (suspended 6 times).

College

Hooray for Jon--he "started" school today. His classes go in 5-week time periods (?), and he should graduate in about a year, just before he gets out of the AF. If he wants, he can continue on and get a Master's in Teaching, just like me. And I will no longer outrank him. :) Maybe then we should move somewhere where your Master's is worth more than $400/year.

Stupid injury

I will never reveal how I truly hurt my fingers, but let's just say it has to do with getting our power turned back on, air conditioning, and a fan. Think of the stupidest possible accident to be had, and you'll probably figure out what I did.
In case you can't tell, my middle finger is a bruised sausage and my ring finger has an impressive bruise near the top knuckle, and it's only been 3 hours. If it gets any better looking, I'll post another picture. Sarah's story is so much more impressive.
Kim, you'd better keep your mouth closed.

I love electricity

At about 6pm today we finally got our electricity fully restored. Not to be a whiner, but last night was MISERABLE. It was back up to 98 today, so that tells you that we're still having pretty hot & humid nights, especially with 6 inches of rain evaporating all around us.

Quilt

My wonderful husband bought me a new sewing machine today. We were wandering around Wal-mart because it had air conditioning and our house didn't, and he seemed to think that I needed one that actually had all of the parts in order to make my quilt. I played around and made two squares. I started to make some of the little squares, but our 1/2 power waned when I was about halfway through my second one.
I know that it's barely been 24 hours, but I'm ready for complete power again. I sound like a whiny baby, and at least I have some power, but it's frustrating to have some things work and others not. It's like my house is prioritizing--the kitchen light works, but not the garbage disposal. The computer works, but not the aquarium or lights in the living room. The TV in the bedroom works, but not the valve that lights the oven. The fan works on the A/C, but not whatever part it is that makes it actual cold air. I'm sure they'll sort it out soon.

Caution

Don't put your arm on an M-16 shell after you've fired it. They burn you.

We didn't have church this morning, although we got up and went anyway.
We think this might be why there's no power at church.
On the way to/from church, we drove around to try and find damage. Here's a tree that didn't make it.

These are pictures of our house this morning (Sunday). Mild debris. No biggie except that I hate raking.
Hmmm...what NOT to do when a hurricane is coming...

Kronk was really bothered by the storm.
This is when the eye of the storm was passing through. Jon & the little dogs were sleeping on the bed, and Kronk was comatose on the floor. You can tell we were all really scared and nervous. The worst part for me was the little dogs going to the bathroom in the house--stupid pansies!

Our neighbors lost power, but it's because a branch from our tree was really leaning on the wires and kind of "dislodged" his connection.

This is in the middle of the storm--some small branches/debris.
We put the trash can outside in case we needed water for the dogs or to flush the toilet. Needless to say, it was full rather quickly.

Rita

Well, it wasn't as impressive as we thought it was going to be. We only got about 6 inches of rain, and since we'd been in a drought, most of it has been absorbed. We lost some small branches, but nothing big. I've seen it rain harder and I've seen the wind blow harder. We lost part of our electricity, but never all of it. The microwave still won't work, and some of the appliances, like our refrigerator, are only at about 50%. Hopefully that'll get fixed today. Church has no power, but school does (darn it).

Getting Ready

We're trying to find that balance between the frenzied masses and the unprepared. We have water bottle freezing just in case the power goes out. We have more gallons freezing in our deep freezer. We brought the camp stove & lanterns inside (yes, we know not to use them inside) in case the gas goes out, which it most likely won't. At school we prepared as if every window was going to blow in and have 3 feet of floodwater--or so it seemed. There is not a propane cannister or bottle of water or transistor radio to be found for many, many miles. I'll have to go sit on my car on Monday morning to see it I have school :). We have food, we're on high ground, we feel okay.
Oh, and someone just called about the BMW.

Rita

We're now anticipating 7-12" of rain, scattered power outages, and moderate winds. It also looks like it'll kind of stall out over us, giving us rain well into Monday and Tuesday. Perfect.

Rag Quilt

I am making a quilt! I am so excited. I'm part of a small group at church (really small--4 people), and we're getting together once a month to sew our quilts. Right now I'm in the cutting stage, which would be a nightmare except my friend let me borrow her rotary cutter and guide. I have to cut out over 500 squares. In hindsight, I'm really glad I didn't pick any plaids, becuase as a perfectionist I'd die trying to make the lines straight. Or maybe it'd be easier to follow the lines... Anyway, I did drag Jon along to help me pick patterns, because like Sarah, I'm too picky about having things exaclty match. Jon is brave and has a better eye for color. The picture is just an example from a website--clearly not my quilt.

Rita

Is it sad thatI'm excited about Rita? I mean, we're around 300 miles inland, so we'll really only get a tropical storm. And we're in the middle of a drought, so my lawn is all cracked and dying. The rain will be awesome. Not to mention it'll be the weekend, so we can just hole ourselves up and watch movies and eat frozen pizza. Of course that means the power will be the first thing to go...

Things have been quite busy lately. Between small groups and meetings and tutoring and youth group and football games and babies being born, neither of us have really had a spare minute. But I kind of thrive on keeping busy & stress. Short-term, that is. But tonight Jon is at a men's Bible study and I finished Sylvan at 6:30 (the time he started), so I have a few hours of down time to catch up. And work on my assignments for the class that I'm taking. It really stinks that we missed each other, but at least now I won't feel like I'm ignoring him while I'm doing my classwork. He has tomorrow off, and plans to spend all of it playing Sim City--again, good thing it's while I'm gone!

The BMW still hasn't sold, even with two bites. Keep praying, we want to be rid of it.

Well, that's about it. We should get some great pictures this weekend.

Pinkerton

My mom bought us four of the Pinkerton books. They are kids books about a Great Dane named Pinkerton. He almost looks like Kronk, except he is mostly white with a few black spots. Still, close enough to be hilarious. Kronk enjoyed reading them, too. They are pretty funny books.

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

My brilliant sister-in-law Kim reminded me that I could use this handy dandy blog to encourage people to support Jessica in her fundraising efforts. You can visit the site http://www.active.com/donations/fundraise_public.cfm?key=tntorJUbel to support her. She still needs to raise a bunch of money, and can really use your support. Any amount will help, and it's for a great cause. Plus, she's walking a marathon--she deserves the support!

Mick Jagger

Kronk has HUGE lips. Notice the butterfly effect.

Hmm

I've just been catching up on my friends' blogs, and am kind of bummed that I don't really have anything to post. It's been a rather uneventful week. Progress reports went home on Thursday, which is always stressful, but so far I've only had one parent phone call. This usually means that Sylvan is about to pick up, so I'm trying to prepare myself for more hours there. I saw a guy looking at the Beemer on base, but he hasn't called, so we'll see. We're kind of hoping that someone in the weekend base-visiting crowd will see it & buy it. I do kind of feel like I'm selling a dog that bites, though--it really should just be put down. But hey, maybe we've fixed everything and the next person won't have any problems. Hopefully.
We had dinner at a friend's house last night, and are having some other friends over tonight. So I guess lately I've been really thankful for friends. I look back at our first 6 months-a year here and wonder how we managed with no friends. Then again, it was our first married year, and we liked to just see each other, so we were okay. Small groups are starting in the next week or two at church, and I always look forward to starting new ones. We're in a group on Sunday nights called "Marriage Matters," and it's actually a long-term group that will go for 18 months rather than the usual 6. Jon's in a men's group on Thurday nights, and I'm in two once a month groups for Bunko and Rag-Quilt making. Mostly I'm going for the fellowship :).

Major life updates

Well, I don't know if they're major or not--I'll let you decide. I feel like I haven't blogged in forever, so I have a lot to catch people up on.
First decision--in February 2007, when his commitment is up, Jon's going to get our of the Air Force. There are parts that he likes, but overall, it doesn't really fit his personality. There's something to be said for being in control of at least a small part of your life--like taking vacations when you want to. As far as where we'll live when that time comes, who knows. We're really plugged in here, have an amazing church, great friends, I have a job, we have a thriving ministry, etc. Oh the other hand, it is Louisiana, and we're far from family. So who knows, we have a year and a half to decide. We could move back to Oregon, we could choose somewhere neutral like Colorado. You just never know.
Second decision--we're selling the BMW. When another light came on yesterday, we decided to throw in the towel. It was an airbag light, so you know that won't be cheap. The Blue Book value is more than what we owe, so we can either break even, or make a little money. We test drove a few cars, but our most promising buyer for the car is on leave for two weeks. We may try the one car thing for a little while again, we may not. Who knows.
Third thing (not really a decision)--if anyone wants to donate to the Hurricane relief efforts, but doesn't really know where to donate to, I might suggest our church. We've committed to cook dinner for the 120+ people at Hooter Park (I know, I giggled for a long time when we first drove by it). It's not a Red Cross shelter, nor is it FEMA, so they're going solely on the community resources. We're also doing games and stuff with the kids on Tuesday nights. You could send a check to Jon & I, or straight to our church, noting what it's for. Just an opportunity if you want it.
I'd say it's time to sell the house, what with all the buyers around, but then we wouldn't have anywhere to live. That's not so good.

Hurricane Katrina

I'm sure most of you are seeing what the hurricane has done to our state. It's crazy. On one hand, we're lucky to have escaped unscathed, but our cities are now flooded with refugees with noplace else to go. We know several people who are up here and either know they have nothing left, or have no information about their house. We're enrolling students at our school, giving them uniforms and school supplies. We volunteered our home to anyone from church's relatives, so we'll see if there are any needs. We've had several New Orleans teachers submit substitute applications at our schools--almost makes me want to miss on purpose just to give them some work. We'll see how it all shakes out.

Back to School Night

Well, I survived. I had a ton of parents, too--more than last year. We had a spaghetti dinner before and an assembly of sorts afterward (danceline, cheerleaders, band, choir), so I was able to come a little late and leave a little early. I'm sad that I don't have anything hilarious to report other than it's interesting how closely apples fall from trees.