It Begins!

Yesterday was my official last day of work before starting my sabbatical. It was funny cause everyone pretty much kicked me out of the office a half hour before I was scheduled to leave :P They were all very happy for me and I'm excited as well! I've created a big list of things to do while I'm on sabbatical and I plan to keep everyone updated on my progress via this blog. Ramin knew I wanted to do a lot of projects as well so we had planned to make a trip to Lowes to gather all of our supplies. He is such a good planner because he was able to get a Lowes credit card before our trip and we won't have any interest for 12 months. We also had a $25 coupon as well. We ended up spending A LOT of money but it's for things we've been wanting to do for a LONG time.
I've included pictures of almost everything we got. First, we got 21 bags of mulch! You heard and see it correctly - 21 bags! Here's the reason. Our house faces South. There's nothing in front of our house for miles...just open fields...so there is nothing blocking the Southerly winds when they blow...and they do blow hard during the winter and spring. Sooo, that means almost all of our mulch we had laid down, has blown away! In fact, it's mostly all blown around the grass...it's horrible. So why would we buy more mulch if it didn't work the first time? Well, Ramin has a theory that if we plant more shrubs then it will help protect the mulch, plus he doesn't think we had enough on there the first time, it wasn't heavy enough.


So we move to the plants! We bought quite a few shrubs, all for the front yard of course. We bought a small spruce tree, it only grows to 5 feet. We bought some English Boxwoods (love those!) and some Burning Bushes (love these too, especially in the fall!) and I included some Lilac bushes for some color. We also bought these really cool red grass type plants, we figured they'd be some contrast amongst all of the green plants. So we plan to plant all of these along the side of the house, where we have all of the problems. We would have started planting today, except for the fact that it's been raining and cold all day. We hope to be able to do some tomorrow or early this week.
As you can see from the pictures, we also bought some paint. We bought a small can of very light green paint for the office (future baby room) and a 5 gallon bucket of paint called Almond Paste...it cost $90!! We were kinda shocked but it is the premium paint from Olympic so it better be good. I plan to paint both of the bathrooms upstairs as well as much of the wall in the great room. I will do that after my dad visits us for my graduation.


You can also see the annuals I bought as well. I'm going to re-pot all of my contains and fill them with petunias and some mums. I love watching how the petunias can fill out over the summer, they really grow great here!

So the gardening and the painting are my main projects, of course I've got a lot more to do! Today I already started working on my scrapbooking but that I've been neglecting for a while. I also plan to do tons of exercising and being outdoors. I also want to get myself really organized again and I'm even going to go to my mom's house and help her get her stuff organized as well.

It will be a busy month but I'd rather be busy doing these fun things I like rather than sitting at home relaxing the whole time, at least I'll have something to show for it all! What a great sabbatical this will be!

BTW - this coming week is my last week of school....and then I graduate on May 8th! YAY!

Sick :(

I've been sick for the past 3 days now. It all started Thursday night when I noticed myself sneezing a lot while at work. Any time I sneeze more than 5 times in a matter of a few hours, I know something is up. Friday morning came around and my throat was a tad sore. It didn't start to get really sore until the end of work...I knew it was coming then.

So Saturday and Sunday I've just been holed up on the couch or bed watching TV and movies in between naps...same goes for today. My eyes and nose are raw from all the snot to wipe away. When I get sick, I always get it to the extreme. It always puts me out of commission for a few days. I barely have the energy to let the dogs outside before I need to go lie down again.

I find it very ironic to get sick right now. It's my last week of work before my sabbatical. I haven't even been sick in over 6 months. The last time was when my eye was infected back in November. At least I think the was the last time I was sick. Anyway, it's been a long time and I even went the entire winter without getting sick - that's gotta be a record.

I think being sick now is preparation for good health during my sabbatical :P At least that's my hope!

2 Weeks To Go

I'm down to the final stretch! 2 weeks of work left and 3 weeks of school. Yesterday I finally wrote and finished the biggest paper this semester - for my Drugs and Justice class. It ended up being 13 pages total, which Work Cited and a cover page....so about 10 pages of actual text. I also created a power point to go with it! Now all I have left to do for school is to write a paper for my philosophy seminar and then give an oral exam for my Aristotle class. I'm not too worried about either of those!

In my 2 weeks of work that is left I really only have 9 days to finish everything I need to do. Last week at work I won this contest that I entered and won floor seats to the Britney Spears concert! HAHAHA...more stuff to win! The Pussycat Dolls are opening for Britney and that's who I really wanna see. It's funny cause I talked about goin to this show with Jill back in January or something...but we never bought any tickets. Now we've got floor seats next to the stage! It will be a fun night - it takes place this coming Tuesday.

I'm confident I'll get everything both at work and at school done before it's all over :) I'm sooooo excited to be this close to the finish line! It's been a long time coming - I'm also grateful that I get to have my sabbatical at the same time...what a great relief to be done with school and enjoy some ME time :)

Religious Use Drugs

I'm in the process of writing an extremely long paper about the effects and experiences acquired by various types of drugs. In my research I've come across many many articles and books about this topic. One part I've found rather fascinating is the whole Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Apparently this is the place for the Hippie movement and psychedelic movement. Back in 1967-68 there was an underground paper that was distributed called the San Francisco Oracle. In a lot of my reading and research I've come across various tidbits of information about what type of information was contained in the Oracle. Pretty interesting stuff. I'm not at all near done with my paper, I'm still in research mode, but I have a general idea of what the focus of my paper is going to be. Drugs used for religious purposes are really no different than many other types of sacrements that people have used through the ages to induce "religious experience". Anyway, just wanted to share what I'm working on. In the next few weeks after this paper is done, I'll be focusing on philosophy of religion for my other class, specifically I'm going to find out and discuss how philosophers called "The Romantics" felt about religion. Pretty interesting stuff!

Friends & Sims

So I play The Sims a lot on the computer. It's like the only game I play on a regular basis. I love the game. One aspect of the game that you have to do is maintain your friendships. If you don't interact with your friends in the game, then you face some consequences of course. So it makes me realize that I have to do that same kind of thing in real life.

I've been feeling bad lately that I haven't had much time over the past few years to really focus on my friendships. I really feel bad about this. Working full time and going to school full time really takes a toll on me. I try to keep up with the few friends I have, but it's hard. It's also hard when those friends have kids and we have to adjust our schedules so that both of us can make the time.

I just want my friends to know that I do care about them. I want to spend time with you...I realize it's been hard over the past few years. Our relationships have had to change as we each progress. I've been trying to focus some more by sending emails and texts when I have the chance and remember. A big problem for me is that I like to be home a lot. I spend so much time at work and school, during my free time I just like to be home and relax.

So the point of all of this is that once I've graduated, I hope to have more time for my friends this summer. Friends and family are really all we have in this world. I do like my alone time, but lately I've been having dreams and feelins that make me realize that I'm missing out on my friendships and I'm sorry for that.

I love my close friends, you know who you are :)

Senioritis - BIG TIME!!!

I only have 6 weeks to go and I already feel drained of all energy to do more schoolwork :P I have a major paper to write for my 7000-level class and while the topic is interesting - religious use drugs - I am finding it very hard to focus and concentrate on reading anything. My other 2 classes should be ok and I'll get through them ok. I am gonna do the best I can of course, but right now I really just want it to be April 26th so I can start my sabbatical from work and be in the last week of school! Graduation is May8th!!

Poor House

A storm is coming in tonight. All day Sunday is supposed to be stormy and it's even supposed to snow again Monday. This is after the great weather we've had all week - my flowers have all bloomed! But today it's been hella windy! We went to the Real Salt Lake (soccer) game today and we were wind blasted there. I took a walk with Lisa down the Jordan Parkway and we were wind blasted some more. I come hom and of course the wind is the worst here. Our house faces south - the direction that all the wind is coming from. So our house is facing all of the wind. It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that there's nothing in front of our house to block any of this wind. Basically it's just flat land for miles in front our house and the wind blows straight over the mountains and smashes into our house :-/ I am always so worried that one day the wind is going to carry something with it and plow it right into our house! It seriously sounds like a major dust storm outside. I checked the local wind speeds and here they are:

We are in West Jordan, of course it's like the second highest wind speed. Syracuse is a town on the other side of those mountains to the South...so the wind must come up, hit Syracuse then come over the mountains and hit us :P My eyes cannot wait to sleep tonight because they've dried up from all the wind. Ramin's eyes are horrible looking cause they are all red :P Hopefully the loud wind doesn't keep us up all night!

Scrapbook

Sometimes it's fun to look at old pictures. When we had our scanner I did scan a lot of my scrapbook pages onto the computer. I should do that someday with all of my scrapbook pages and back them up somewhere. Here is one of my favorite pages of when Chris and I were young. We were cute kids, and I'm totally not even being biased about that ;) Chris and I are best friends and always have been. We are so lucky to have eachother - he really is the best brother in the world! We don't ever fight about anything because there is no need.

What the?!?! And Steampunk

I went to check out my blog last night while I was at work...and low and behold they've blocked my blog due to sexual content?!? WTF? I was able to log on Tuesday and then all of a sudden Wednesday it doesn't work?!?! I'm bummed :(

Anyway, I have a new obsession, it's called Steampunk. Check out this site called Steampunk Workshop - it will show you what it's all about. It combines the romanticism of the Victorian era and the Industrial Age with new technology in a way. It really reminds me a lot of the movie Return to Oz...the character Tic Toc in there is exactly what it's all about. It's kinda cool and interesting. Not sure if I'd actually pimp out my computer though with clock works and gauges...but it is cool to look at!

Wii Fit

Ramin and I have been winning things a lot lately at work. eBay has a carpool contest thing every month...the more you carpool the more entries you have for the contest. Even though we can only carpool 2 days a week, we still make sure we record it every week. So for January they had the drawing and Ramin won! He won a $300 gift certificate to use on eBay. Pretty cool!!

During January they also announced another contest where the employees can come up with the name of the new recognition program. For years we had this program called Rising Results, but now that our company is in Turnaround mode, they needed a new program. So one day Ramin sat and thought about some names. I remember discussing them with him and providing my suggestions. One name was SCORE, but I can't remember the acronym stood for. At eBay we use lots of acronyms, it's like our thing :P The other one he came up with OSCAR. It stands for Outstanding Service to Customer Assistance via Resolution (I think that's the name)....anyway...he ended up winning that contest just the other week. The prize for that was a Wii and a Wii Fit!!! Well we already have a Wii thanks to Chris living with us, so we decided to put the new Wii and the Wii Fit in the spare/workout room! We all tried it out today and it's rather fun! I'll probably be the one using it the most because I use that room most often for my workouts and such.

And finally, just this week they announced the carpool winner for February, and guess who it was?! Yep, ME!! I feel rather weird because I know of a ton of people who actually carpool more than Ramin and I do, but it's actually going to turn out really nicely. I will get my $300 gift certificate to eBay and combined we'll have $600. We plan to buy either a bunk bed or some kind of bed that has a trundle under it. That way we can have sleeping for at least 2 guests if we needed it. Plus, whenever we have kids it would be a great bed for sleep overs!

So that's been my past few weeks!! Life is good...I'm focusing really well in school and at work. I'm also taking the time to improve my health and eat better while also working out :) All is good!