moving!

I spent the day trying to get our "library" packed. There's close to twenty boxes of books packed so far, so I'm about 2/3 done I think. Besides that I've been cleaning and packing other odds and ends and sorting through office related things and trying to keep food available so that Ben and I don't fall to eating convenient junk food. I think we're making pretty good progress with the packing, even though I keep looking around and feeling like I'm not getting anywhere. :)

Dad's first day with the Metro was on Friday. My mom is down there with him, searching for a place for us to stay. All being well we should be moved within a couple weeks. I'm pretty excited -- and I'm not even sure it's completely sunk in yet!

(insert creative title here)

So far I think the massage therapist has made my back worse, but then it's probably a good thing since it means muscles I haven't used right are finally working properly. :) There were a few spots that she commented on this last visit, asking if I'd done a lot of heavy lifting in the past -- which, of course, I did used to do quite a bit. And then she got started on my neck, which I sprained badly years ago from falling out of a tree. I think it actually affected my back too, since work on my lower back revived neck pain that I haven't had in a while.

So... the job that my dad got with Verizon fell through, but it was because he found something better: a job with the Metro that he interviewed for about a month ago. They called him up again this week and what do you know...! Very exciting.

balloon festival

On Saturday Ben and I went to the Plano Balloon Festival just down the road. Our main road was so crowded with traffic for the event it took me 30 minutes just to go just a couple miles. (Supposedly it attracts over seventy thousand people over the weekend.) I ended up taking some other roads that were twice the distance, but a whole lot faster.

There were several dozen hot air balloons that took off... they came back and lit up after the sun went down, which was kind of neat. Balloon rides were available to the public for $250 per person, so I'm afraid we were only spectators from the ground.





They say the statistics for balloon accidents are like a tenth of a percent, but we nearly saw an accident happen. Two balloons went up at about the same time. One of the pilots apparently wasn't watching where he was going, and came up right under the basket of the balloon above him. The crowd below was horrified; it looked like his balloon was going to collide with the edge of the basket above him, and dump it over! The pilot on top barely managed to gain enough altitude to just escape it, but his passengers were able to actually reach out and touch the offending balloon. I didn't even think to get pictures until the whole incident was over... I know, what kind of photographer am I?! ;)

I made a cheesecake on Saturday. As is known by a few people, I am not a cheesecake fan, and yet I continually make it with hopes I will learn to like it. Well, this cheesecake I made I actually like! It was a rather "different" cheesecake, so maybe that's why. Anyway, I'll be keeping the recipe for it. :)

And my dad has a new job! He's going to be working with Verizon.

firefox...

OK, I like Firefox. I really do. But it's beginning to drive me mad.
I have uninstalled/reinstalled/redownloaded it multiple times, but it still insists on freezing up my whole laptop for 10 minute periods while using 300,000+ memory usage, randomly closing windows only to pop them up hours later in the day, and just generally being a pain in the neck. I've run my virus scanner and my adware/spyware scanner and they've come up fine so I don't know what the deal is.

But on a better note, my mom made me go to a massage therapist the other day and discovered I'm a bit out of alignment, and with a few visits the kinks will get worked out and perhaps the back pain I've had for years and years will go away! I'm kind of excited actually, because I'd kind of thought back pain was just something you lived with. :D

Other news... well there isn't really any. I've been doing the typical housecleaning, cooking, baking, grocery shopping, running the dog, studying, not sleeping enough, and getting headaches, and drinking too much coffee, and other routine things. All very exciting, I know. ;)

Texas drivers license, finally!

Does this make me a real Texan now? I've been using my Indiana drivers license for more than a year since we moved here (ahem, I know) and finally got around to applying for my new drivers license. I waited around 2 hours in the BMV which was crowded and had the air conditioning set much too low. And for all of that I only got a little slip of paper for my new "license", because it takes them two weeks to process the info into an actual card!

I'm teaching my dog to throw things in the trash. She caught on very quickly; however, when I tell her she's a good dog she likes to reach in and take out whatever it was she put in, so she can do it again! We're just working on keeping the trash in the can now.

my laptop is alive again

Well a bright spot in this past horrible week I've been having: my laptop screen finally came in! I frequently use my laptop in the kitchen while I'm cooking, and when I was moving my laptop last Wednesday the cord caught on something and jerked the laptop out of my hands. It fell onto our kitchen floor, which is on a concrete slab. The screen promptly shattered; the outside of my laptop still has scars I'm afraid. I ordered the new screen on Thursday through Ebay and then fought with Paypal till Friday before it would configure sales tax right. On the page right before the actual paying page it would show me the invoice including the Texas sales tax and on the next page it would take it off again; increasingly maddening the more times I clicked and refreshed. The following morning it worked fine on the first try, and the seller shipped it within a few hours. I followed the FedEx tracker and couldn't believe that they sent it from its origin (a suburb of Dallas) to Fort Worth, and then to Memphis! On Monday it came back to Dallas and spent the day in the destination sort facility before arriving today. (I've concluded everyone needs to boycott FedEx and Paypal. :D ) But the screen installed with no trouble at all, and I actually like it better than the one I had before.

Where there's a will there's a way.
80 pound dog fitting in a 30 pound dog's bed.

I've been trying to decide what to teach Neluska to do next. Her latest trick, shutting doors, she's got down pretty well. Anyone have suggestions for what she should learn next?

the Heard

We went to a little nature reserve north of us today called "the Heard" and went on an interesting trail through some prairie and wetlands. There was a boardwalk that went quite a ways through a swamp, but I'm not sure how well they keep the place up going by one of the branch-offs we saw at one point...!

Ben posing on what was a hopefully safer section of boardwalk than below
Aww look, it's a teddy bear!

I baked a ton of cookies thinking we were going to do something else on Labor Day, but since those plans fell through I need someone to come help eat all these! :S