Today's top five

I thought I'd revive my top five lists. Today's top five is the top five questions I get asked when people find out I'm from Wisconsin:

5. Did you grow up on a dairy farm? Answer I give them: no, but I did live on a farm and I did work at a dairy farm in high school. If I don't feel like explaining, I just say 'yes.'

4. So you're used to the cold? Answer I give them: yes, which is why I live in Hawaii.

3. What are you doing in Hawaii? Answer I give them: my husband is in the Navy. People seem surprised that I would move from Wisconsin to Hawaii, almost the same reaction that you would give someone who you found out moved from Hawaii to Wisconsin.

2. So you're a cheesehead, huh? Answer I give them: *sigh* yes. Darn those stupid foam hats.

The number one question I get when people find out I'm from Wisconsin....*drum roll*...

1. So you must be a Packers fan? Answer: it's hard not to be growing up in Wisconsin.

To summarize, people in Hawaii assume that all people from Wisconsin live in igloos on dairy farms, stay in Wisconsin, run around wearing stupid foam cheesehead hats and are Packers fanatics.

Happy birthday, Matt!

I can't believe it - you're 17 already and you're about to start your senior year of high school. I think that your birthday is possibly the most special to our family because it's the day that our family became whole. I know it might sound a little cliche, but it's true. I'm really proud of you and the way that you have grown up. You're a real character and you always manage to make all of us smile. I love you and hope that you're having a good day!

Give me a break

I found this article on ESPN.com. I think baseball teams have bigger things to worry about than this. I thought this was a bit ridiculous.

"Milk does a body good, but it didn't do good for one batboy.
On a dare, a Florida Marlins batboy tried to drink a gallon of milk in under an hour without throwing up. But not only did the batboy not succeed in the challenge, his mere attempt cost him his job for six games, the Miami Herald reported Wednesday.
The Marlins suspended the unidentified batboy for the team's upcoming six-game homestand against the Cardinals and Mets from Aug. 28 through Sept. 4 for accepting the dare Sunday from Dodgers pitcher (and former Marlin) Brad Penny.
Penny offered the batboy $500 if he could drink a gallon of milk in less than an hour before Sunday's game without throwing up. Penny told the paper the boy drank the milk and didn't throw up, but didn't finish the gallon in the allotted time frame to win the dare.
"It's kind of ridiculous that you get a 10-game suspension for steroids and a six-game suspension for milk," Penny told the Herald.
''It's ridiculous that they worry about stuff like that. It shows they [the Marlins organization] don't know anything about the game. That kind of stuff goes on everywhere. It didn't affect the way he worked, the way he did his job.''

The sun sucks, Solarcaine is our friend

Ok, so last you heard, Matt was in poor shape (sunburn wise) and I was actually doing fairly well. Scratch that. For the first two days, Matt could hardly walk because his legs were burned so badly. However, he is almost back to normal, which is good because he's going to be at sea for the next two weeks starting tomorrow. I, on the other hand, have worsened.

My sunburn keeps getting a deeper shade of red/purple/white (in some spots) and has gone from annoying pain to "frickin' A that hurts" to "I haven't slept in 48 hours". My face is blotchy and red not in a uniform way, but noooo, only in some spots so I look like some sort of mutated leopard. I've got blisters on only one shoulder, and that nice deep, dark red/purple outline with an almost white center on the other shoulder/arm. The tops of my hands are really bad, too, and my left hand is swollen and blistered. I haven't been able to wear my wedding ring in two days. This is all just great since I have an interview with Best Buy tomorrow morning.

Ah yes, such is what we get for thinking we could enjoy noontime on the beach. We have decided that the next time we decide to do the beach, we're going to go much closer to dusk.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done

Today Matt and I went to a beach on the military's version of a playground. We found a really nice beach on Bellows Air Force Station. The view was stunning, with water varying shades of blue and the skies as blue to match. We could see the island of Molokai from our perch on the beach. I took lots of pictures, which I will post sooner than later. The sand was perfect - silky smooth and fine, but that means that it gets everywhere. The beach would have gotten a 5 out of 5 in my book, but the water wasn't clear due to the texture of the sand.

We arrived at the beach around 10:30 or so and stay until 2:30. I am a nice shade of pink, and if I were a steak, I'd say I'm medium-rare. I would be much worse off if it wasn't for Matt ensuring that I was covered in sunscreen all day. The irony is that while he was adamant in my sunscreen use, he missed quite a bit on himself, and on the steak-scale, he is medium-well. I feel sorry for him.

We had a good time playing in the water and playing catch with our softball gloves on the beach. Matt had a good time making a sand fortress, and I think you'll enjoy the pictures I got of the process. We had bought sodas and sandwiches before we left and ate on the beach. All in all, it was a fun day.

Now, however, I must get back to my paper writing. Ugh.

Happy birthday, Mom!

Hi Mom!

Happy birthday and stuff! I hope that you have a nice, relaxing day and do whatever it is that you want to do. I bought you something online, but I'm retarded and sent it to my home address instead of yours. I'll mail it out as soon as I get it :)

I wrote a really nice long thing last year that made you cry, and it's kind of hard to follow that. The best I've got this year is that I love you and I appreciate everything that you've done for me and our whole family over the years. We'd be lost without you.

:)

Movie review - Wedding Crashers

Tonight Matt and I went and saw the Wedding Crashers. I had read quite a bit about it in Enterntainment Weekly, and all of the critics were saying that it was one of the funniest movies that has come out in a long time. I hate going into movies with high hopes, but this one didn't disappoint. There are some scenes that are uproariously funny. One scene inparticular was so funny that we couldn't really hear what they were saying after a while because the people in the movie were laughing so hard - and there weren't that many people in the theater. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it was the funniest movie I've ever seen, but it is definitely worth renting or watching when it comes out.

Philosophy

I think therefor I am...to be or not to be...but what is the nature of being?

These are all questions that I used to think about a lot. Now that I am in a philosophy class and I'm reading about all of this type of thinking, I thought I'd really get into it. I'm not. In fact, I don't like it at all. The reading is hard and gives me a headache.

Maybe I've let my mind get lazy. Perhaps I have bound myself to the reality that we know and I'm just less willing to question that now. My theory, however, is that I just don't give a rats butt what the nature of being is anymore. I'm not planning on being a philosopher or a scientist of any type, so some things I've just come to accept as how they are and that's that. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a thinker, I just like to focus my mental energy on things that actually matter to me :)

The White Stripes

It's not very often that I discover a new band that I really get into. By "into," I mean that I immediately like every one of their songs that I hear. I have read tidbits in different magazines on websites about this band, The White Stripes, and how new and refreshing they are. But I had never taken the time to download any of their stuff until tonight (I had homework to do, so of course I was doing something else.)

This band is one that I think will appeal to a very broad range of people. It is a duo - brother and sister I believe - and they trade off as lead singers. This gives them at least two very distinct sounds. There are some songs that sound very very Zepplin and others that sound a little more non-accoustic folksy. It's really hard to put them into a specific genre. In fact, that was the worst thing about this band - what folder to I put their MP3s into?

Check them out, you might like them. :)

Hmm...

Tonight I was lying on the couch watching TV, petting one of my cats when I happened to glance out the patio door when I saw, over the mountains, a light that moved very quickly. It wasn't the normal type of movement from an airplane, as it moved very very quickly. It couldn't have been a meteor because it didn't fall, instead it went upwards and disappeared. I dismissed it as my mind playing tricks on me because one of the odd side effects of my medication is sometimes I see flashes of light. Then, a couple of hours later, I saw the same thing again, only in a different spot. This time, it was brighter and declined instead of going up. I know that this time it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me because it was very defined.

I'm not a firm believer in UFOs and aliens and stuff, but I certainly don't think that we are the only life in the universe. What was it that I saw tonight? There is a lot of military stuff around here, so I suppose it could have been some sort of test planes or something. I guess I'll never know...

Laptop with an attitude

I bought my laptop two years ago and thought it was great. It was one of the top of the line models of its time, and even two years later, its specifications are impressive. However, a little over a year ago, it started acting up. It would reboot every time I tried to play a game that involved more than solitaire. Then it would continue to reboot, forcing me to turn it off and let it rest for a while. This problem has continued, and a couple of days ago I decided that I had had enough.

Matt's laptop broke several months ago, and he wants a laptop to take with him on deployment. I decided that it was going to be cheaper to try and fix my laptop than buy a new one. My first thought was that it was overheating, because this is a classic symptom of overheating. So I bought it a special fan. Same problem. Then I bought it a new RAM chip, figuring that this HAD to be the problem. I got the chip, replaced the old ones, and the same problem still happened. Then I decided it was a Windows problem so I reformatted the thing. Same problem.

I finally broke down and called Best Buy, the place I bought it, and asked how long I have left on my service plan. I was told that I still have a year on it, which is great. All I have to do is take it into Best Buy and they'll either fix it or give me a new one. Good thing they just opened a new store here.

Now here was my crucial mistake. I called Best Buy with the laptop in the room. You see, it heard me on the phone talking about taking it in to get fixed. It didn't like that idea, and now it's suddenly not doing what it has every single time I've tried to play a game on it for the last year. It is working perfectly all of the sudden, even though I didn't do anything to fix it. I'm very glad that I tested it first tonight before taking it in. "I swear Mr. Best Buy guy, it does it EVERY TIME. I don't know why it's suddenly working now."

Anyway, I've spent the night trying to get it to reboot like it used to, but it won't. I hate computers >:/

FINALLY FINISHED

Hooray all of my final papers are done! Now I get to relax for the rest of the day and start three new classes tomorrow. Yippee. I am proud of myself for getting them done, and I'm very happy with the way my science and organizational behavior papers ended up. My religions paper really reflects my general disinterest in my subject, but it should be good enough to get me an 'A' in the class.

Not much else is new here. I've been watching the X Games on ESPN, which I really enjoy. I like watching all of the punks fall on their faces once in a while while attempting insane tricks and stuff. That's really about all I've been up to lately. However, last night Matt and I went to Hawaii's largest mall, the Ala Moana mall. It is HUGE. We stopped at Borders and bought some books and then went to Waikiki beach, found a tree to sit under, looking at the beach, and read for a bit. That was a nice change.

Two down...

It's crunch time here in my world, and as usual, I am doing fairly good work under pressure. I am very pleased with how my Environmental Science and Organizational Theory papers have turned out. I have my religions paper left, and I think that it will be the most difficult to write. However, I have four days to write it yet, but I have set small goals for myself. I am going to write half of it tomorrow and the other half on Friday. On Saturday, I will finish my Power Point presentation for the science class. On Sunday, I will turn them all in and relax for a day before I start three more classes on Monday.

Usually I am fairly excited about starting new classes, but I'm just ready to be done with school now. My next three classes are Philosophy, Economics and International Business. I know that they are all going to involve even more paper writing, which does not thrill me at all. However, I only have one class left after these three before I get my associate's degree in Business Administration. Then I go on for another two years to get my bachelor's. /sigh

Sad news

Matt called home the other day and found out some bad news about his mom. She has been fighting breast cancer for a few years now, and she has been through numerous treatments, both radiation and chemotherapy. After the most recent treatment, which ended only months ago, they thought that they had gotten it all. She went in to have her hip checked this week, and they discovered that the cancer has reappeared. It is in her bones and her lungs. Unfortunately, they are unsure whether or not treatment will be successful. From what Matt told me, they have given her a timeframe of no more than a year.

I have never been good in situations like this. I'm never sure what to say or do. Matt seems to be dealing with it fairly well, and he said that his whole family is doing well considering. I'm really not even sure what more to write about it. It saddens me - I hate to see this happen to anyone, much less a family member.