friday fun

This morning I had oral surgery! Yes, that is right and it went smooth. Now I am in pain, but that is expected right? I had my impacted wisdom tooth removed and bone graphed placed into my lower jaw for a later implant. The bone first has to grow and in 5 months or so, a screw will be put into the graphed tooth and I will have a crown on top.
I currently have stitches in my mouth and can feel the skin with stitches in it- very creepy. I want to explore with my tongue but don't want to disrupt the healing process. To help minimize the pain, I am on Penicillin and Hydrocodone and am allowed to take Advil interminably. Good drugs at least? Well, not sure I am a fan.. just makes me sleepy. I even threw up today from that or the drugs at the office. Thanks laughing gas and the IV in my right arm.

Enough about that nonsense. Next Thursday I am flying to St. Louis, a city I have never been to, to see my good friend Joey get married! I am really excited to go see STL, my friends, Joey and Cassie and have fun adventures while getting away from New Mexico. I also hope to see my friend Thomas from high school. Great to catch up and have a native show me around. I WILL see the St. Louis Arch. I just have to!

(Here is a photo for you all who live in a hole.)

Besides that, my life has consisted of school, no job and having a social life which is so nice. This summer was fantastic, but I didn't get to have as much fun as I had wanted since I was managing. Hopefully next year I can balance work and play.
School is good. I love both English and Art studio classes, but am not totally into my Ancient Religion and Myth class.... think it has to do with all the reading that bores me. 


here is a small update. I will post again after my STL weekend, hopefully with photos. thanks for reading


L

Fingers crossed for a successful semester

First week of school has come and gone. This is my 5th year of college and I still had the first day jitters. I don't think that will ever go away. I like to refer to myself as a Super Senior!

My first day of class was just a single 300 level art studio class that seems to be promising. My professor is really laid back and is talented. I wish he would have given the class a bio of himself. All I know is that he commutes on the Rail Runner from Santa Fe and can throw pottery because he saved a fellow students vase on the wheel because it was a mess. He barely seemed to touch it but the vase was gorgeous after a few minutes. He also explained why the base needs to be thicker, and later can be trimmed so the top won't collapse. I am excited to see the projects and problems we encounter in this class that will force us to push through and practice new techniques.
My second day of class was a bit longer, 11-8 ish consisting of 5 classes back to back. Thinking about it now is agonizing!

I first have a 400 level English poetry class where I knew 2 other students from pervious English classes at UNM. Both are really nice but everyone seems kind of shy the first day. I had a poem due this week and I used the prompt of one of my first memories, which I don't even remember but have heard the story and can elaborate on it a little. I wrote about the first time I learned to swim and seemed like a success but may be a little rough or not polished enough for a 400 level class so I am nervous in that regard.

Next I have a 300 level English-like class. It is actually a Classics/Literature class that has to be fulfilled for an English Major. And I did not want to take Shakespeare again. I skid by in the first Shakespeare class last semester but it was difficult and stressful. I of course did not give it 100%, but when I did it was something I was not into at all. I think this class will be interesting. It is titled Ancient Magic and Religion and must be great because the first day of class there were at least a dozen students standing or sitting around the class without desks because it was over enrolled an they were on the waiting list. Hopefully I will get familiar with the Greeks soon so I know who is who and what powers each god has.

My third class is a tumbling class which i have no idea about. I still an not sure what to expect but it seems fun. Our professor must be in 70s and looks to be in great shape. He also has lots of strange stories and I only heard a tid bit of them. He also called the guy next to me a retard which is not PC but laughed and said he jokes all the time. He may have even said the guy rides the short bus. My only conclusion there is that he does not look all that athletic but still, that is intense for the first day. Rusty, my old man professor also cancelled class on Thursday for no apparent reason. I am sure he is not ready for summer to be over either so Thursday that is when I had my lunch.

My fourth class, at 3pm is with Margaret, my good friend who I have know since I was 7 and will be fun that I get to see her at least twice a week now. We also may get scolded for talking to each other because we are busy bodies. This too is a 400 level English nonfiction class. Nonfiction can be boring and also hard but I need to take it. So far, not sure about my professor. She seems funny but also a bit scary. Updates to come! Homework already and there will be tons of writing so I may post on here some of my nonfiction writings. This also means I may not post on here with all this homework I am anticipating. It will at least get me writing.

My fifth and final class for Tuesday and Thursdays is another 300 level art class- Arita Porcelain. I am so excited about this class even though I know it will be tough and really push me. It is hard because it is the end of the day, after 4 other classes, but this is something that doesn't seem like class. It seems fun and I love having an end product that is usable. They make incredible gifts and people are in awe of the work. And personally, I would much rather have something handmade this is nice than some crap from some store that I don't need.

Anyway, my 9th semester of college is off to a good start and will test my patience and work ethic seeing as I am in 17 hours/ 6 classes. Hope I can still have a social life!

Til next time reader, I will leave you with this quote, inspired by English.

"Be not afraid of greatness."
Shakespeare

L

Cowboy Rules

I found this funny. Guess I am no city girl but a true country girl. Cowboy rules for:  Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, and the rest of the Wild West are as follows:  1. Pull your pants up. You look like an idiot.  2. Turn your cap right, your head ain't crooked.  3. Let's get this straight: it's called a 'gravel road.' I drive a pickup truck because I want to. No matter how slow you drive, you're gonna get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.  4. They are cattle. That's why they smell like cattle. They smell like money to us. Get over it. Don't like it? I-10 & I-40 go east and west, I-17 & I-15 goes north and south. Pick one and go.  5. So you have a $60,000 car. We're impressed. We have $250,000 Combines that are driven only 3 weeks a year.  6. Every person in the Wild West waves. It's called being friendly. Try to understand the concept.  7. If that cell phone rings while a bunch of geese/pheasants/ducks/doves are comin' in during a hunt, we WILL shoot it outta your hand. You better hope you don't have it up to your ear at the time.  8. Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer and elk. You really want sushi and caviar? It's available at the corner bait shop.  9. The 'Opener' refers to the first day of deer season. It's a religious holiday held the closest Saturday to the first of November.  10. We open doors for women. That's applied to all women, regardless of age.  11. No, there's no 'vegetarian special' on the menu. Order steak, or you can order the Chef's Salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham and turkey.  12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats, vegetables, and breads. We use three spices: salt, pepper, and ketchup! Oh, yeah ... We don't care what you folks in Cincinnati call that stuff you eat... IT AIN'T REAL CHILI!!  13. You bring 'Coke' into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice. You bring 'Mary Jane' into my house, she better be cute, know how to shoot, drive a truck, and have long hair.  14. College and High School Football is as important here as the Giants, the Yankees, the Mets, the Lakers and the Knicks, and a dang site more fun to watch.  15. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don't hit the water hazards - it spooks the fish.  16. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump ain't music, anyway. We don't want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers! Refer back to #1!

First day of school

Today I am starting my 5th year of college! This is exciting and scary.
I am taking 17 hours this semester which will be a challenge but I am really looking to this semester because I am taking classes that I WANT to take, not classes that UNM thinks would benefit me or just a way to make money. I have 2 studio art classes, both in ceramics and 2 English workshops. Those 4 classes are my main focus for the next 5 months! I also an taking another English class which I have no idea what it is and a tumbling class so we will see how that goes. I will tell you all a secret- I can not even do a cart wheel so this will be interesting. I am sure I will have funny stories to share or posts in pain since I am sure I will hurt myself. I also am in class 4 days a week so long weekends! This is awesome.
The scary part about almost being done with my undergrad program is that I am almost done. I don't know of many jobs out there in my field now and are dwindling because of the internet and the fact that book stores are closing. What kind of a future does that leave me? I guess I am old school in the fact I would rather go buy a CD than buy an album on iTunes or other music sites. Saying that, I would also rather go and buy a book that I can hold, highlight phrases, dog ear pages but the future is not so tangible for these CDs and books. Technology is taking over and I only wonder what our lives look like in 5 or even 10 years. Good thing I am becoming comfortable and this blog is helping me transfer and change my thinking of having each individual thing rather than everything being held in my MacBook.
Well, I am off to school, excited and nervous for what today will hold, this semester and my future.
Best wishes to all my fellow students and hopefully your semester excites you!
L

TABLE ROCK IS UPON US!

So, in 4 days from now I will once again journey away from home to the place I think I love more than home. Well, that week anyway and if a transporter is to ever be invented in my time, besides planes, trains and such, that is where I would go everyday. This year is my 13th consecutive year and still makes me giddy leading up to the trip, just like when I was young and counted down the days til Christmas when Santa comes to visit.
This year, the trip consists of myself, my parents, brother, my friend Doug, a few other couples from Albuquerque and a few families from Clovis, New Mexico. Our group is anywhere from 25-30 people this year. The first year I went to Table Rock there were 50 some New Mexicans!! Since then, the numbers and families have changed and evolved.
Table Rock Lake is a rather large lake in Missouri and also has a channel in Arkansas. We stay in the quiet town of Shell Knob that comes alive in the summers. One may call it a touristy town but I see it as home. The summer months are when the town makes its revenue but after the bountiful, colorful leaves have dropped, it is just lives with the townspeople.
My family packs up the truck and our boat Thursday evening and Friday morning before we pack in and jump on I-40 until we reach Oklahoma City where we decompress, relax and also get amped for the next week. After unloading our overnight bags and get situated, we pop beers and mix drinks that we enjoy pool side before walking to dinner in the hot humid climate of Oklahoma, nothing like the dry heat from back home. Our sweat and buzz leads us to act a bit wild at dinner, making jokes, telling stories from years past from our adventures. Like last year when Eric, a friend of the Clovis clan was tricked into eating a salted and sugared burger. Never, I mean never accept a challenge if you have left the table because we are more than likely going to prank you. And if you accept a challenge, there is no quitting!
The next morning, we pack up the trucks and our tummies with the continental breakfasts and hit the road to Missouri. It is only a few hours away and with each mile closer, I get giddy. I want to cry because I am so happy!! And excited for what the next week will bring.
The lake is blueish green looks incredible peaking between the lush hills. It only increases my excitement to get to our cabin, unpacked and on the water.
I think water has always brought me tranquility over the years of swimming and does the same now. I feel like a little kid just thinking about the lakeside. I have always loved it and have a hard time describing it. It has always been a place I get to escape to, a place where I don't wait for the next day or the next week but the next ten minutes. I feel more alive there in that week than most of the year. It sounds strange, I know, but I wish I could just stay there and slow down time and bottle up my feelings from there and bring them back home with me somehow.
I want the feeling of a great ski run or surfing in the afternoon sun, with music pumping out the speakers and hitting the trees or the shores all around. I want the peacefulness of napping in the sun, feeling the waves below slightly rocking the boat. I want to feel the love of my family and friends at dinner time and sitting on the swings in the evening looking over the lake, where the sun hides and the moon wakes up. I want the fun from the night of the 4th under the stars while fireworks shoot above us. I want all of these things that make me feel alive to make me love life more at home.
And yes, I digressed, a lot. Table Rock is me and I hope to never have to skip a year for work or because I will not be able to go. I want to go for my life so I get these same feelings and never have to grow up from this vacation.

Round 2

After 5 months of nothing, thought I may try again with this blog. Starting out, I was ambitious, or at least thoughts that I would be ambitious and write frequently. Well, thoughts are that.. just thoughts. Nothing came to me I felt like sharing or I thought people may even want to read and I think that now too, but since I can not sleep, I decided to try again.

Here goes nothing...

Currently I am deciding how much to share in my blog and if anything I write is relative or just the jumbled stuff going on in my head so I assume this will be a lot of nonsense and mostly to help with writers block.

As of 1 AM on a Saturday night, I can not sleep because of anxiety with my job as head swim coach and pool stuff in general. I used to always dream about my job, only more it was a nightmare when I worked at a bar in town (Stoneface). I dreamt that I would close and had the whole bar to myself and it would be dead but I would be so tired that I would go in the back to clean while checking to see if anyone new came in to have a drink and fall asleep. I thought I actually fell asleep at work and then, out of nowhere, the bar would be packed and I would be alone and overwhelmed with people wanting anything and everything. Then I would be running and slinging drinks, sweating and people would run out of their tabs. This dream or should I saw nightmare was re-occurring and freaked me out. Why should serving 2-3 shifts a week be so stressful? This is when I wake up because I am grinding my teeth. Currently, I think I am having anxiety over swim meets and ordering things for the pool, keeping parents happy, making sure my guards are doing their jobs, watching the steps for kids who go under, the pumps, the chlorine and Ph levels, etc.  Really, these are things that should not be a big deal but I am anal and will admit it. I like things done my way and I can not clone myself so have to hope the guards I hired will do a good job.

So, that started my rant which everyone needs to do occasionally, but if done too often, people stop listening. Hopefully I have contained enough above that you wont get anymore because I wouldn't want to read this either.

Moving on...
Less than one month until the annual family vacation to Table Rock Lake in Shell Knob Missouri!! This will be my 13 or 14th consecutive summer going and love it. I love the week before we go, eve though it is stressful. I think this summer I will make  TO DO list and get things done in time so it is not all the night before or day we are leaving. And the best part is making it super long with lots of easy stuff to cross out and feel accomplished when you have finished everything on the list! I will admit I am a list freak!
Missouri is beautiful and so different from New Mexico. I love the greenery but the humidity is hard to get used to coming from Albuquerque where cactus thrive and we get dirt storms rather than flash flood warnings. Shell KNob is a small town, about an hour from Springfield and is so homey. It has one grocery store, hardwood store, two gas stations and lots of mom-n-pop shops like the RX store rather than a Walgreens or CVS. Shell Knob is a sleepy town that gets its business in the summer when boaters come to stay, eat, drink, play and buy stuff they really don't need like at the Ski Shop with their cool water toys, cute swim suits, sun glasses, flip-flops, and the store dog who has been there for years. I cant wait to get our cabin and turn the AC up. We call it a meat packing plant after a day on the lake when we first walk into the cabin and freeze. I love the face that there is an ice cooler that you just take and put a tally for the number of bags next to your cabin number and the walk down to the boat slips. I love the fireflies that glow at dusk into the darkness and the moon that shines on the lake, no matter how cliche it may be. I love the old swings that are staggered between the cabins for a couple to laugh on and talk about the day or just to catch up while the spiders web the metal corner rods and crawl over the splitting wood underneath the couples butts. I love the boat dock where we all plan the day to go play and the two across the way that we swim to and do dives and flips from the tall metal bars, where more spiders spin webs and catch creatures, specially the ones that fly in the light, under the boat docks when the music is playing and the underage kids sneak down to drink and make out. The boat dock across the way is where he first kissed me one afternoon. Both of us being tipsy, he finally made his move and something I will never forget. That was the summer I fell in love. That kiss and on made Table Rock even better, even though I didn't think that was possible. Trips to Big Cedar and walking in Bass Pro Shops and the bus ride from the dock to the lodge where we always get kicked out of the pool. Those little details never fade and year after year, they start to stack upon each other.

SO, there is a start. I feel less anxious and hopefully can now get some sleep. This has inspired me to get back to writing, even if it is just for myself. I think this will be an online journal for me and it may be really bad but I am going to try to be honest to myself and readers if there are any out there.
Good night to all.

the world in shambals

So, I am sure the majority of people have heard, but there is a 13th Astrological Sign now. So, that horoscope you have been reading for years and years.. perhaps a lie.


Do not fear because I am still a LEO
[Insert characteristics here]





This new sign: Ophiuchus (Nov. 29- Dec. 17)


So, did your sign change?


Honestly, it boils down to the fact that the stars and constellations have changed positions with the sun over thousands of years. So, you can all still read your horoscopes and it is fun, but life and death? I think not. And another good reason not to get inked (although I do want tattoos) because NOTHING is certain.