i want to be a dolphin

Check this out. Dolphins are blowing air rings.

diving in FL

1st step, getting ready to dive. roughish seas. belly not happy.


belly still not doing well. waiting for captain jim to quit yappin so i can get in the water.


more spiegel grove


fred and i swimming under the crane



lock test--finishing deep water dive

2 videos from minneapolis

video of a big storm in minneapolis


segway tour on stone arch bridge across mississippi

lummi "adventure"

Beard, Kath and I went to Lummi Island this Sunday to ride the 7 mile northern loop. Where I have lived in the past, no one would think of asking me if I rode my bike to the ferry--hell no. What? Seven miles isn't enough for you people?! And, in case you haven't noticed by all the crosses on the side of the road, not a very safe place to drive. Ride--no.
We get to the ferry parking, it's fairly packed, probably b/c you can leave your car there for FIVE days, free. We wait in line; the order being: pedestrians, cars, bikes. BUT-the laugh's on YOU pedestrians, we with our bikes are only THREE bucks each, you with your measly feet are FOUR bucks.
It was a perfect day--little wind, sun, pretty wispy clouds, the water sparkling. Of course we took a lot of pictures and laughed at ourselves and those around us.



the ferry


a beach on the northern side of the island


me and beard


the scenery


who loves her honey bowker?



me and kath showing our athletic ability riding uphill. it may LOOK flat...it;s an illusion.


Here's a link: http://www.lummi-island.com/

playing

So...I want to finish reading my book but it's taking a boring turn and I have laundry in the washer and don't want to fall asleep before it's done. I decided, why not blog.
This weekend we helped Kath finish moving. It went really fast b/c so many of our friends were there and we had already made so many trips with her parents. Everything's in and basically where she wants it. It's a sweet house. We found out this weekend that our friends Derick and Keri are pregnant. She's 35 and considered an elderly mother. I thought that was a bit odd.
Today I went with kath to a graduation party for her student, miguel. he's been living by himself and working full time in order to graduate. His mom lives in Mexico. He saved up 680 to buy her a ticket to his graduation and somehow she got the wrong visa and they wouldn't let her in. It was really nice of Kath to do that for him. She bought burgers and buns and pop and a graduation cake and a ton of her students came. I got to meet her Ethiopian students as well.
And now, I'm home. Beard's finishing up his essay questions--reluctantly. I think I'll make my lunch for tomorrow, finish up the laundry and head to bed.

things

i saw tonight.
1) giuseppe's--i have no idea how to spell this. italian restaurant next door to downtown johnny's and the pickford. went for a pre-movie drink w/ roshni and megan.
2) met muslim who learned to fly and is in a movie about it. he gave me not one but two copies of the quran. he's from bellingham. his wife is going on a cross-country tour of small town america. if you see her, check out what she has to say.
3) saw then she found me--helen hunt, bette midler, mr darcy, and ferris bueller. how could it be so boring?!
4) roshni drove me home and we saw some old folks searching under the streetlight for something. we turned around and i asked if i could help them look for something. the couple was dressed in all navy/black, man in hat, woman in scarf. she gave me this huge smile and opened her plastic bag--they were searching for earthworms. of COURSE!

and now i'm having a baby glass of wine before retiring.

ear

my shorty ear piece gave out. i don't miss him too much. i mean, sure, stereo is good, but really...i can still hear.
however, i feel awkward with one ear bud in. like i'm missing something.
i've searched for my back up pair of ear buds. i bought them before we left for indonesia but they've jumped ship.
yar--the one ear bud bandit rides again.
photo:

oldish videos

This is from the Butterfly Garden in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.



Monkey at a Flower Garden in KL.

saturday night bill was in town. after eating turkey meatloaf made by kath's mom, marie (which has allowed us to have meatloaf sammies for lunch the last two days), we decided to go out. we went to the shoe first. beard and i hadn't been there since we left. it's a lot different with the non-smoking and the more lighting.



it was crowded nonetheless and we decided to find a quieter spot.
we headed to the waterfront.



it was quiet. we ordered a pitcher and a vodka blah blah blah for kath and settled in.
soon--there was dan pike, mayor. chattin us up.






it was a nice night...
and now

getting ready for bed.

yeah!

so...
if you remember WAY back in 2006 when my toshiba laptop took a shit, i thought i had lost everything. all my pictures, music, etc.
THEN in late 2007 Angie took me to the electronics market in daegu and a wonderful man there put my 80gig hard drive into a box and MAGIC i had access to all my old stuff.
Immediately upon returning back to our apt in gumi, i plugged in my old hard drive into beards PC and copied all my photos to CD. I had assumed that I couldn't plug it into my mac without losing everything. Beard talked about dreams of networking our computers and la la la. i started downloading music, copying friends cds, etc in korea to make up for my severe lack of music. i forgot about my old hard drive and that was that.
we moved back to WA. i unpacked my old hard drive and we talked about networking again. Beard actually checked out books from the library on how to do so. We still have the books, but no networking.
Today I decided I was going to plug in the hard drive to my mac and see what happened. I expected warnings, weird noises, perhaps sparks. BUT NO! nothing! all my pictures are there and i can open them. all my music is there and i can play it.
IT'S AMAZING.
So, while beard is on the phone with windows help, i'm trying to play down my excitement that I'm able to access my old files.

whoa is me

first ha to myself for my PBdom.
This picture is me after 13+hrs of work. Sure, a little of it was down time, but I WAS still there and still half-assedly working. And that was only like 30 minutes anyway. And yes, 1 hour was piloting a study which is usually a little exciting and fun b/c I get to be on and answer questions and troubleshoot and be cool--all with my co-project manager megan. We're calling GA right now and MAN do some people speak SSSSLLLOOWWW down there. "hold on, hold on, taaaake yooouuurrr tiiiiimmme." Great. An estimated 10 minute survey now takes 20.
Marilyn is back at SBDC that makes me happy b/c now I don't have to work with the forgetful retired cop. She wasn't a cop when younger, she became a senior patrol officer and she's ALL about it. I don't want to go on about her. She was nice and all...
Now we're going to watch stupid ass lost on my computer b/c beard's is acting up. go figure.

full of fish

sunday

me watching beard read his favorite daily reading.

today is a rainy sunday. we're going to canada today to visit kath's uncle in the hospital and eat some delicious sushi and sashimi. yummy yum yum.

snow

it's snowing and pretty hard, too. I might expect this in the midwest or east but up here? COME ON! oh well, gives us an excuse to sit inside and read and watch movies all day.
kath's in vegas (lucky) and we're in charge of hanging out with zoey tonight. this also involves eating whatever kath has in her fridge, i know there is an orange pepper in there somewhere. we've invited the hairs over for dinner and then hopefully some euchre.



last night we went grocery shopping and then watched a couple episodes of lost before making a dinner of tofu, broccoli, onions nad mushrooms. I got everything together and beard took care of the sauce. it was lip smacking good. then we watched even more episodes of lost and went to bed fairly early for a friday.
tomorrow we're going to do a take back our trails 5K walk/run. A couple of weeks ago a woman was running on squalicum trail in the AM and was assaulted. As far as I know the man hasn't been caught. This walk/run is in response to that.

working and reading

I've had to work hard these past couple of days to get caught up on everything from when I was sick. Now that's done, thankfully. I just finished 2 books: The Omnivore's Dilemma and Mummy's Legs. Omnivore's Dilemma is great for anyone who thinks a lot about food. I really liked it. Mummy's Legs is a novel. It was ok.
Beard and I have been watching Lost streaming online. We're on season 2. I don't know about this show. It holds my attention, that's for sure, but some of lines/plots are too much for me and I'll walk away for awhile. I always come back though.
Tomorrow I'm going to a yoga class with Rebecca and then to dinner at Roshni's. Tonight I have to add the ingredients to my Amish Friendship Bread start.

spring things

my NEW BIKE--aka rad rabbit

bike friends

blossoms on our tree

suzie and mikkel's clementine!

I'm IN!!

hello hello
I got into my grad program! woo hoo! My professor called me today to let me know. She said she nominated me for a scholarship, too. We'll see how that goes.

maybe i am die

beard ended last week with a very bad cold. megan and i hung out with him and NOW--we're both sick. she more so than me. i didn't go to sbdc today and was only at arn from 8-1. i'm going to try to go in again tomorrow but only half time i think.
lots of snot and coughing. fever, chills, ugh.

so yeah

i was put on the alternate list. but i'm FIRST on the list. The prof said it's very rare when they do not use the alternate list to fill the slots. so...i wait again. 7 out of 6. yar. oh well. beard's in and we wanted at least one of us to get in so we didn't need a plan b.

afterwork

wooo,
it was a pretty busy day at works today. ARN in the AM was getting training materials together. then SBDC and entering impact survey data, then back to ARN to interview potential new hires.
Tomorrow will be more of the same except I'm going to go over an RFP at ARN on top of hiring stuff.
5 days until I find out if I get into my program! I'm a horrible waiter.
Here's me after work:



On easter we're going to see these people and their spouses:




And we're going to stay at these people's house:
crap, i havent uploaded those pictures yet and all my old pictures are on my external hard drive. well--what are you going to do.