May 28th, 2011

You know what sounds like a fantastic time to me? Driving 14 hours crammed into a Traverse does!  My family drove me back to Minnesota today.  I believe the trip is a bit over 14 hours.  I could look up the mileage and tell you but I'm extremely lazy and don't feel like looking that up. : ) 

It was too terrible of a trip.  The wind was blowing but I think it stayed behind us mostly.  At least I didn't notice it pushing us sideways.

One thing I have noticed from traveling with people during this stretch of road is that it seems to go faster than when you are by yourself.  Even if you were to drive faster yourself and take less breaks I'm sure it would feel like it took longer than with people. For one, you don't have to drive the whole time so you can nap and time flies when you nap.  Secondly, you have someone to talk to so you are not slowly going crazy.  Last time I took that trip was with my gerbil.  That is company but he can't drive or talk back...so that kind of renders him useless.

When we got in to my apartment place we were greeted by something pretty unexpected.

Some fire suburbans and soon a fire truck! My best and most likely right guess is that someone burnt something and decided that they should open the door to the hallway to clear it out instead of their patio door.  This makes the most sense because the apartment place smelled like burnt food once we got inside. Oh it's good to be home, right?

May 27th, 2011

My last day in Montana for my vacation.  It was a nice relaxing vacation for me.  Well, despite having to help my mom with some trophies and awards work.  It wasn't terrible to help out and at least I didn't forget how to do any of it yet.

I got to look through my families cupboards and snatch a few things though.  I mostly grabbed things for my kitchen.  Awkwardly enough, right now my kitchen has the least amount of space in my entire apartment, but is more for the future when I have to find a new place.

I'm hoping that I will be able to find a nice place that is with in my budget soon.  I don't really enjoy sitting around wondering if I'm going to be able to afford my next place.

Enough of that talk!  Back to what else I did today!  I had a fun time with my old friend Scott.  Not old as in age, but as in we've known each other since we were wee ones old.  He had never used the kinect before so he came over and played that with my brother and his brother.  All I can say is I'm glad that no one was filming it because I'm sure we looked pretty foolish at times.

It's hard to leave a place like Montana but when life and opportunities are pointing me towards Minnesota you can't really turn your back on that.  Maybe some day I'll come back to Montana. We shall see.

May 26th, 2011

Simple life lessons I have learned today.

Firstly! Don't ever trust a cat.  No matter how well mannered they seem and even with years of good behavior they could still lash out at you at any moment!  I have proof that at least my parents most recent cat, Turbo, is insane.

Turbo was being just as nice as could be.  He would cuddle up to me, and lay on my legs when I didn't want him in my lap while I tried to work on things.  Then all of a sudden he was laying on the couch next to me while I was searching on my computer and out of no where he decides to full on latch to my arm, teeth and everything.  His teeth and front paws dug into my arm while his hind feet began kicking and scratching my arm without mercy.  I of course promptly removed him from my arm and spanked him before tossing him out into the garage.  I mean I was nice enough to put him in there instead of out in the rain.  When my father found out he wasn't as nice and made him go outside in the rain.  I guess he is going to be an outdoor cat now instead of a half way cat.  Can't really feel bad for him.

Oh and here is my evidence.

 Look at him laying so nicely.  Just hanging out.

Now my arm is covered with scratches!  The other side of my arm has dots where his front paws dug in.  The top part of the arm is his teeth marks and then the rest at the bottom are just from his hind legs attacking.  So yeah, do not trust cats! But you can compliment me on my phone cover I got last week or the week before...I forget.

Ok and the second thing I learned was never expect things to always be fixed the way you want them to, but don't necessarily be surprised when they don't.  Does that make sense?  I say this because I had a massage today from a massage therapist in hopes of helping get some kinks out of my back but it's still achy.  So I know that massage isn't going to fix the problem.  Ah well.  It was nice though.  Felt good for awhile afterwards but now as I type this lying in bed I can feel a dull pain in my shoulder and my back.  Just sitting there.  Hanging out.  Oh and a nice headache coming on, most likely from my neck.  I'm just broken, but lets not listen to me whine about how broken I am.  Lets get some rest so I can pack and do a bunch of stuff tomorrow before I leave.

May 25th, 2011

Today was a day to travel to Billings...or at least do our very best to get there!  We knew there was water over the road but I don't think we expected as much as we saw.  The man claimed it was over a foot deep of water.  You can't really tell very well in these pictures how deep it was but it was pretty deep.

 
The water was going pretty quickly over the road too.  We had some time to prepare ourselves while two other vehicles went before us.  The flagger told us to keep our right wheel on the center line and maximum of 5 miles per hour.  The black truck looking thing at the end in the pictures above was how far we had to make it.  Kinda crazy? Yes, yes it is.

Here is some of the water to the sides.  The left side was the side the water was running too so it was just pouring over the edge.  I'm just glad we made it across.  I didn't get any good shots of the road in front of us so you could see how deep it was.  I'll just let you know that we couldn't really see the center line while driving so my dad had to look ahead and just hope he was matched up with it.

More shots of the same.


It's like we are sitting in a lake isn't it?  I'm just glad we were able to make it across safely and get my parents to there check ups in Billings.

I wish I would have gotten pictures of the smaller water crossing we had to do on the way home but my phone was dead already.  Oh well.

May 24th, 2011

There is way too much water!  I saw plenty of flooding on my way to Montana, but now I've seen it around my home town.  This is a crazy amount of precipitation we have had this year.  I don't like the amount of tornadoes we have had in MN either!

Today I helped my mother out with some work around the office and part of what we needed to do was go an pick up a package. On the trip there we encountered some water over the road.  They had a flagger and they were only sending traffic across one side of it.  It was the first time I have ever actually seen water running over a road.  I don't think I even saw something like that when I was living in the F/M area and I was right up in the flooding there.

It is kinda of crazy to drive across the water but we did it.  I'm afraid of how it is going to be tomorrow on our trip to Billings.  We have heard bad things about the road to there having flooding as well.  Lets hope we can make it there and back with out any hiccups.

I couldn't get my phone out fast enough to get the truck driving through it before this car.  They made a bigger splash that looked cool. Oh take notice to the guy to the far left for another picture I'll show you. (Click on the pictures to make them larger if you want.)

The water we had to drive over.  It was moving pretty fast too.

 Remember that guy in the first picture?  This was where he decided to walk.  Crazy fool.  There is never water in this area.  So the river is really high.

I appreciate the green-ness that comes from all of this moisture but can we please have a break from the water so the water can go down?  Thanks.

May 23rd, 2011

Coming home always seems to give you a chance to do some remembering.  My mother pulled out a box full of things she saved from when I was little.  That specific box was mostly papers, drawings, and some class pictures.  It's kind of interesting to remember the simpler days.  When your day to day issues were picking out what color of crayon to use, or what 1+1 is.

I could go for some simpler times in my life right about now, but being an adult you don't get that luxury. However, I do have a respect for the simple things in life that make you happy.

I know you are totally jealous of my awesome craft skills back in the day.

 Check out that awesome skill.  That is quiet possibly the scariest haunted house ever.  Let me get you a close up of the moon.

Just look at that emotion, the anger, and anguish in the eyes of that moon!  I should have been an artist. :P

May 22nd, 2011

Happy Graduation to my little brother!  He is now officially out of High school and moving on to the world of College.

It's kinda crazy to think that my younger brother is out of high school.  I know I have friends in the same situation.  Feel old now guys? Haha.  I actually don't feel old because of that.  I think I'll feel really old when he graduates from college.

Even with my very recent birthday I don't really feel older.  I suppose I can give it some time and then I'll probably feel super old.

They graduation was nice enough as high school graduations go.  Had a nice time chatting with various people at one of the graduation parties.  It's always nice to be home to talk to everyone again.

This little vacation I got going is pretty nice so far. : )

My graduation outfit.

May 21st, 2011

Montana.  It is definitely God's country out here.  Being on the train and getting closer to it today some how seemed to be magically taking away my stress.  I wasn't even really concerned with the train being behind.  They had to slow down for the flooding areas in North Dakota.  Which makes sense to me...especially when I looked out my window and saw the water was all the way up to the train tracks.

Is it just me or are we getting a crazy amount of precipitation this year?  First snow, and now rain.  I can't figure out it if I think it is a good or bad thing yet.  All I know is that I am not looking forward to when the mosquitoes finally get to hatch from all this standing water.  Bleh!

I decided to eat on the train for once.  I normally pack myself a lunch but all I had brought with me were some cherry tomatoes, bananas, pop chips, and some kudos bars.  Lets just say I wasn't finding them too filling.  I spoiled myself and ate lunch in the dining car and met some nice people.  There was this nice couple headed to Seattle from Connecticut.  The one guy kept gushing about how much he loved shopping at the store I work at and the other guy was pretty quiet.  Oddly enough they had actually shared dinner the day before with the other man sitting at the table.  He was apparently from Canada.  So it was a nice conversation meeting some new people.

It is good to be home to Montana for my brother's graduation though.  I get to see my family, friends, and some I would consider to be a second family.  It's always nice how you can kind of just fall back into chatting with these people like nothing has happened.  I mean now-a-days the conversation revolve more around playing catch up.  I'm going to do my best to enjoy my time here. : )

Lets hope graduation goes well!

P.S. So much for my diet this weekend! Oy...

May 20th, 2011

No better day to return to my blogging than my 24^th birthday, right?  I thought so too.

I took a break from my daily blog posts shortly after my grandfather passed away.  I think I was struggling to see the purpose of doing my blog when I lost someone in my life that has always had meaningful purposes. (Farmer, father, grandfather, etc.) Now that a few months have passed I have realized how much I miss doing my blog.  It may not serve any purpose other than to help me remember what’s going on in my life and help others keep in touch with, but it means more to me than I figured it would.

In the past few months of not working on my blog I realized that I would often mentally write a blog anyway.  I know that sounds kind of strange but I would often think “oh I should take a picture of this for my blog…oh wait I’m not doing that anymore.”  Finally I decided I would make a comeback of my day in the life blog on my birthday.  I can’t say that the posts will be on time (as usual), but I’m going to do my darn-dest to do it.

I also kind of came up with a fun idea to try to see “everyone” of my facebook friends before my next birthday.  I would of course take a picture with each one to put on my blog to keep track of who I met up with.  It might be a bit difficult because some of the people are in other countries, and states.  Also some are really only acquaintances so they might not even want to visit me or be visited.  It’s all in the starting stages and I’m not sure how it will work out, but we shall see.

I have a new found hope for this blog and I hope it works out well. : )

Oh and my birthday was great.  I got to spend a little time with Sarah and Kelsey. I saw the new POTC (Pirates of the Caribbean) movie; which was decent,  I went to the Mall of America and road on some of the rides for the first time ever, and lastly enjoyed a meal at the Rainforest Café before I hopped on the train to head home to  Montana for my younger brother’s high school graduation.  They grow up so fast!