It's official!!

I figure I finally have something to blog about.





Last month, Jake proposed and I accepted. I have some pics of the ring but they're not the greatest.

We went and bought a new fridge and stove last weekend and it'll be delivered at the first of October. That means I need to get all the clutter out of the kitchen to get the old appliances out and the new ones in. There is currently more stuff in that kitchen than it can hold so a ton of it is sitting on the table, chairs and stacked in boxes under the table. I really need to get rid of some of that crap. If you don't use it - toss it right? I have hoarder issues.

I've been in the middle of classes at the U of A and here at Tech. We gave our first speeches last Wednesday night. It was awful. I was so nervous I was shaking. I'll be glad when this semester is over. Our next speeches are going to be on October 1 - and it's a group speech. Fun stuff.

After reading "Fast Food Nation" recently, seeing Supersize Me again, reading "Don't Eat This Book" (the book he was writing when Morgan Spurlock during Supersize Me), and now seeing what Heidi has on her blog about pigs being mistreated, I'm about ready to swear off all meat completely. That just makes me ill thinking about it. Why are some people such sick and twisted bastards??

Storm pics

These are pics up the street from my house. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately) we didn't get pics of the downed meter and power lines at my house before they fixed it so I can't show my personal damage such as it was. The house on the left belongs to a friend of my grandmother's. She had a huge limb fall and puncture the roof. You can see the blue tarp covering the hole. On the right is the trailer that had the big cedar tree in the yard that snapped. Part of it is in the road still. It fell away from the trailer or it would have flattened that end. I still have part of their trailer skirting in my yard.





These are the two houses that I think sustained the most damage. These are all in close proximity to my house. Scary. It looks like someone just stomped her porch flat. The white house that had the porch flattened is just up the street from my place and the other is across the railroad tracks. The bottom one by far the worst. She had a GIANT tree fall over on her house and had major damage.



This is our poor little community gazebo-thing. It is no more. There used to be a bulletin board between those posts where people could post local events.





Another close call. That would have been devastating if that had fallen just a few feet the other direction.



Fortunately, there aren't any houses near this one.



These pieces of metal USED to be a shed that housed a man's riding lawnmower. His shed blew into a dozen pieces all over town but his lawnmower was still standing.



Patched shingles, hanging light fixtures...



Fortunately, no one was living in this trailer and hadn't been for some time.

All in all, everyone is pretty lucky. There were other trees down (including next door to my house) but nearly all of them missed the houses with a couple of exceptions. It could have been far worse than it was so we all feel pretty lucky (at least the ones that sustained light damage). My parents lost several huge trees in their back yard and it blew up some shingles but no real damage to their house. The right side of my car (the side that was against the wind) looked like someone had shot it with a grass and mud bazooka. It was gross. Seeing everything that went on around town tho, I guess I'm lucky it didn't blow my car cover (one of those aluminum ones that you just park under) away.

Live wires, downed trees, smashed sheds, OH MY!

I have been told we had a tornado last night. Jake and I were playing WoW, minding our own business questing when some alliance jerkwad comes over and kills us for sport (/begin mini-rant - WHY do the lvl 70's come kill me when I'm not worth honor points? I'm only lvl freakin 43 right now for heaven's sake. Why don't you go pester someone who can do some damage to your twinked out ass. Coward. /end rant) and bitching about it when the rain started. It was raining so hard that we had to raise our voices to talk. I went and looked out the door and stood there while the cool air blew in through the door. It's been really warm the last couple of days so the cool air felt really good. Then it started raining harder. It really looked like someone was pouring water out of a bucket. The water wasn't so much dripping or running off the house as it was just flowing in a steady stream. Then I heard hail hitting the AC unit in the living room. The power flickered a little at the same time and so we turned off the power strip on the TV because it kept kicking the tivo and dvr on and off. Then the power went off completely and the rain stopped shortly afterwards.

I went outside to assess the damage because I was really concerned about where the hell my trashcan wound up. I just knew it was going to be three streets over on someone's roof as hard as the wind was blowing. When I looked out the door once, the rain was coming down sideways. Jake finally looked at me and said, "Don't you think it's about time you CLOSE THE DOOR????" Which said to me - close the door or he'll close it for me and pull me away from it. I didn't think it was that dangerous - I mean it's just rain and a little wind. Sheesh what's the big deal?

After seeing what I've seen today, I think I'll listen to him. There was a tree limb (I noticed I forgot the important word LIMB here! Whoops!!) in my front yard that came down right next to his truck. It came within a foot of smashing his truck. The limb was a good 8 to 10 inches across the broken part. It landed on the power line to the house and literally yanked the meter off the outside wall. It pulled the wires down on the circuit box but didn't pull them out so we didn't have any live wires flopping around on the ground or anything. All in all I'm pretty lucky in that respect. We're pretty lucky it didn't hit the truck too.

We went out and took pics and (like the snow ones I've yet to put up) when I figure out how to upload them (or he gets them uploaded for me), I'll post them on here. The destruction was insane. A neighbor up the street lost her entire porch. It just fell like someone was pushing on the top. Another neighbor had a huge limb fall and puncture her roof. A huge oak tree (that my swing was in when I was little) fell in the yard next door where I grew up and narrowly missed a house. There are 100+ year old trees all over town that were just uprooted and knocked over.

I had no idea it was going to be that bad. They finally restored power at 2 am but I was sleeping soundly by that time. Jake told me that my neighbor next door had a tree uprooted and fell at the back of her house. She spends most of her time back there my mom says so it's a good thing it didn't land on the house. The house that took the most damage it appears is an empty trailer where no one is currently living. The house right up the street (maybe 50 yards away or so) had a huge old cedar tree in the yard. During the storm it snapped at the base and when I went outside after the storm the whole area smelled like the inside of a cedar chest.

When I was driving to work today, I passed several downed trees and saw a lot of debris everywhere but very little damage done to property except for the neighbor's porch falling in. We lost the bulletin board kiosk over in front of the post office. It just snapped the posts holding it up.

What a night! I wish the only thing that had happened was the ordeal with the meter but it wasn't.

I went into the bedroom to go to bed and stepped in water. I have window AC units and for those of you who don't know, you have to put something up between the window sill and the AC unit to block the great outdoors because they never make AC units to fit exactly in a window. Apparently, the wind was blowing so hard that it blew the spacing piece out and blew dirt, debris, grass and rain all over my bedroom. Fortunately I hadn't taken the heavy winter comforter and blanket off the bed so my mattress and sheets were dry. The bed skirt was drenched and so I had to take that off the bed too. I decided to heck with messing with it and draped the mess over the ironing board so maybe SOME of it would dry out a little. It didn't.

The whole night I was worried about the black cat and telling Jake I hoped that he was ok. He was. In the middle of the night he woke me up by jumping his dirty wet butt up in my bed and curling up next to me to dry himself off. So my sheets were dry through MOST of the night I guess.

Tuesday

So in rereading my last couple of posts, I find that I use the word "So" entirely too much. I need to work on that.

I'll be taking Speech this fall (my mom teaches it btw) and after telling her a story the other day about something I saw on TV, she said, "I hope you plan to take all the 'and...uh...'s out or I'll flunk you." I told her thanks a lot. I am dreading this class because I just know I'm going to have to work harder in it than any other except the Teacher Ed courses I took. Those classes were rough. We had work due nearly every other day and there was a ton of reading involved. If anyone thinks that her Teacher Ed courses are blow-off courses, they're sadly mistaken.

I had heard about how bad Lit was going to be so I spent forever dreading that one. Wound up with an A in the course and didn't have to take the final exam. I finished it about 2 weeks ago right after finishing Art Appreciation. Thank heavens, Speech will be my last class and I'll finally graduate. Since I changed majors and I'm taking less classes than originally expected I won't be bringing my GPA up as much as I had hoped but it'll still be a 3.67 or so. Better than my first year of college by a long shot. It's still a Cum Laude but I was really pushing the last few semesters to bring it to Magna Cum Laude. Oh well - at least I'm frickin graduating finally. It's only taken me 22 years. And this is only an Associate's. I've got to apply to UA Fayetteville for a program they have for in the spring 2009. They'll accept 60 credit hours so if I take classes each semester, I can finish in about 18 months. I swear I'm retarded. If I had just pulled my head out and finished school when I first started in 86, I could have 3 stupid degrees by this time.

Let that be a lesson to anyone reading - don't be a Dumas. Attend class when you're young and can get financial aid or get your parents to pay for it!!!

Sunday

Sunday is just not my favorite day of the week because it's the last day before work. *sigh* There's just not enough time in a weekend to do all the misc crap I want to get done. I would love to win the lottery but since I never buy tickets, I don't see it happening (we don't have a lottery here btw).

The black cat has taken to waking me up every day at 4-5 am to be let out. Today he let me sleep till 7. How kind. What really sucks about that is since the weather is so nice, the windows are now open and he can come and go as he pleases but instead wakes me to open the door. =/ Jake says it's my fault for pampering the little heathens. I don't guess I can disagree. They are quite spoiled.

One of the ladies at work has been on my rear hardcore about getting married. She thinks 2 years is plenty of time for him to pop the question and give me a ring. I personally think it's hilarious that she's all over me whereas my parents are not. However, his mom asks him every time she calls if we've gotten married. She even asks if I'm pregnant yet (that ain't happenin - sorry D - I'm leavin that one to his sister)! lol She's a riot. His sister just had a baby boy in December and he is a little doll. Every so often I think about wanting another baby and then I think - "STUPID - you're nearly 40!!!!" and then I think about 3 am feedings.

I can play the aunt role (my mother emailed me the other day to point out that I had spelled this word incorrectly lol) at this age but I don't think I'm up for another baby. And in another 10 years I'll be ok w/ Grandma but he's 17 right now so I'll kill him if he does anything ignorant right now. Speaking of, Brett had another interview for the internship position with UALR for their nanotechnology department Friday. He didn't get back to the school till 7. This is the 3rd weekend he hasn't been home and I've told him he could go to Springdale for Spring Break to see his grandparents and girlfriend. Heck he has been spending more time up there than at home later =( Apparently there are a lot more kids that go to the school from Springdale/Fayetteville than from around here so they drive back and forth nearly every weekend. Surprise Surprise =/ In case you didn't know it, NW Arkansas is like a whole different state. The wages are far higher than anywhere else in Arkansas (even McDonalds advertised opening positions at $7 an hour back when min wage was $5.15), there's more money being spent, the education is better in most of the schools, there's opera and ballet... it's just completely different in so many ways.

There are a lot of things that I miss about NWA. You could live in the country and still be close to major shopping and dining places. A friend of mine lived on a farm in Tontitown but she was 20 minutes from my house on campus.

Instead of spending 30 minutes here bitching about how bad this area sucks in terms of jobs and shopping, I should be cleaning the house and finding out what smells like a fart in my fridge. I think there's some broccoli that I missed back there. That fridge is a complete pain. The shelves are insanely deep so stuff gets pushed to the back and lost until the next excavation. I really want to replace it w/ a side-by-side but those things are expensive! I could buy a new regular fridge, deep freeze and stove for what a side-by-side costs. It's a conspiracy I just know it.

Well that's enough bitching for one day. I'm hoping that if I bitch more here, I'll bitch less in real life. Yeah I don't see it happening either but hey - it's a thought right?

Friday

So thank god the week is over.  I get two whole days to sleep in.  I really should be cleaning the house and working on getting this place in some order but all I've done all afternoon is freakin play WOW and watch tv.  I feel mentally brain damaged.  

On a side note, I'm starting to jones for Heidi's blog.  She needs to hurry and get it back up before my head explodes.

So I read online today that the CPL (www.thecpl.com) has officially closed up shop.  Those who are near and dear to me know what that meant to me.  When the ex and I were married we would spend our vacations at the events and since they always had one in July, we even had Brett's birthday party at one.  He turned 12 at the CPL in 2002.  That was probably the most excited I've ever seen him.  Angel stood Brett on a table, got the microphone and made the 1000+ people there sing "Happy Birthday" to Brett.  Then he opened his presents and we passed out cake to a bunch of ppl.  I bought two giant sheet cakes and still ran out in minutes.  I truly miss going to the events and the great people I've met over the years there.  I wish only the best for everyone involved.  Kind of ironic that it all comes down within days after I decided to email several friends from the CPL to tell them the latest on Brett.  

Monday

So I finally took the Essay Exam for the Lit class tonight.  God what a beast that thing was.  Five questions and two hours to write an answer to each - including quotes.  And I'm just crappy at writing on the spur of the moment like that.  I will be so glad when this is overwith.  On a good note, that means that the semester is almost finished for me since I took the art final last week and I'll be taking he Lit final tomorrow (assuming he grades the essay tonight/tomorrow).  

We had a massive freak snow storm come through on Friday morning.  We ended up with a good sized dumping of snow that morning and it was a pain getting home.  Like a moron I forgot to get gas in the jeep Thursday night and since we live in the sticks, I wouldn't have had enough to get to work the next day.  So I take my mom's car.  Brilliant move - she drives this little sports car that's about 3 inches off the ground so I got to listen to the snow and ice crunching under her car all the way home - not to mention sliding all over the road because it also weighs about 3 lbs.  I was practically kissing the ground once I got into town.  That is until I tried to veer left up her road and go up to the house.  The car decided it didn't want to go left and went straight instead.  I went off the road on 3 wheels and decided, "Ok - that's it!  My dad can take care of this" and walked up to the house to give her the keys.   It was really pretty and I am soooo glad I didn't have to go anywhere the rest of the day.  I have enough food to last us through a nuclear disaster and fortunately Jake had gotten cokes the day before so we were set.  I'll post some pics of it as soon as I figure out how to.