Hauling a new recliner

It is December 26^th. This means three things: a messy house, grumpy people, and bins filled with goodies just waiting to be discovered. It is unfortunately a wet day which puts a damper on the dumpster diving. I can’t let a little rain stop me. I have a new head lamp that needs to be tested.

This break has been weird. I haven’t worked at all. Generally I come home and go to work the next day. Instead I hang out with Sarah and my family. According to my studies in leisure theory I shouldn’t feel guilty.

Sarah has gone to be with her peoples. I miss her. It’s odd to talk to her on the phone instead of walking across campus to see her in person. Sometime the end of this week I will drive up to her house and hang out, then it’s off to college again.

There are a lot of new things waiting for me at college. I’m hauling in a new recliner for my room. I start a new job driving prospective students from the air ports. And I’ll have a lighter load academically (including my senior seminar).

Such is life…

Cool thing #1

Soapmaking is cool. My mother and Sarah decided to make a few batches. The following pictures document their progress. I thought it was cool...

Sarah reads up on the science of soapmaking while the vials of scents wait their fate.

Before the lye and lard can be mixed, each must be at a specific temperature. Mom and Sarah are monitoring and cooling the two before they are mixed.

Mom ponders the potential scent combination of "sticky buns" and "opium"

Batch #1 about to reach saponification (the process of lye and lard becoming soap)

cool stuff

This post is titled "cool stuff" because it reflects what I do. Yesterday I interviewed to be a Wilderness Instructor. It would be a summer intership kind of thing. I don't understand the name. Does the wilderness need instruction?

Today I'm going to make home made soap with Sarah and Mom. I would rather house clean the kitchen but making soap is somehow cooler. Tonight Jared is bringing his Sarah and the whole famdamily (Joella in spirit) is going to the Fulton to see Oliver. The trebuchet is almost fixed, so expect pictures and video of our upcoming attempt.

Not being sick is cool. I was sick last week which was finals week. I took an exam and then visited the health center. Diagnosis: 103 temp and a contagious cough. The nurse told me in a firm motherly voice to "go to bed and stay there"

Cool stuff to come...

"Christmas time is here" -Charlie Brown

A chorus of high voices are singing “Christmas time is here..” while a hollow piano accompanies the Charlie Brown tradition. Outside the snow silently steals through the dusk. Rothenbuler dorm creates an eddy from the wind. Flakes whirl up in spiraling arches. Then, caught by the wind, they set out on a straight course. I’m inside; warm, happy, and in festive spirits.

Sarah and Queena are having a night on the town. Queena’s getting a do-job on the hair and Sarah is visiting her ailing computer in Olean.

If I had completed four finals, a large Geocaching project, and six page paper detailing my philosophy on trails then I would be done for the semester. But for now I’ll enjoy being happy, and study another hour.

Below are some pictures of interest with captions.

Me (above)-contemplating how well I've balanced my
camera in my sock drawer

Sarah got a little suprise the other day.

She cried when I gave it to her and I cried when she said "yes"

Here we see Sarah applying coat number three to
the kitchen wall. Why not paint a kitchen over break?

"A lot of things in life, but only one thing I love" -rapper KJ52

Folks, here is my Christmas list published for all to see:

-Petzl tikka plus LED head lamp ($33)
-48 oz nalgene (2x$8.50)
-Warm winter coat: possibly an old navy or whatever is fashionable and reasonable ($?)
-Games that 2 or more persons can play (game surplus.com)
-Long sleeve shirts or sweaters
-a honeymoon with Sarah in the white mountians of New Hampshire ($850?)



Most of you who buy for me know each other, so it might be good to e-mail each other so I don't get 4 sweaters, 2 honeymoons, and no head lamp.

a disjointed rant

The efficiency of technology has juiced up our society to our point of hypertension, stress, and increasing expectations. Our friend has become our enemy. These devices designed to save us are smothering us. Our communication has become impersonal: email instead of phone calls, ipods instead of social interaction, blogs instead of mass emails, and facebook instead of blogs.

I have a shoe box with dozens of pages of letters. It is a one sided history of my growing love for Sarah. I don’t regret the extra hours it took to write instead of email. Nor do we wish we had cash for the used stamps. We communicated in real ways. It would have been a betrayal of our values to thoughtlessly fling our experiences through the web. I would have robbed myself of those moments in Kenya where I sat writing as the creek guggled by and the goats grazed.

So, as you might have noticed, I post about things that don’t really matter. I do this with the assumption that anyone who cares about me will take the time to actually ask me “Kevin, how are you?” I have more than a hundred friends on face book. But I would trade them all for a real relationship.

This has been kind of a disjointed rant, but I think you get the idea. If anything important is going on in my life, you won’t see it here. Ask me, not technology for details.