there's a police car outside my apartment

there's a police car outside my apartment...it's been there since I finished mowing the back yard. there are two cops inside. they're just sitting there. I of course spent as much time in the driveway as I could and have since opened the front shades so i could watch all that went donw.

should I be concerned?

they just stopped a big black truck and talked to the guy. They've now pulled away after this conversation with the black truck as if they weren't where they were supposed to be and the black truck man directed them around the corner. I'm tempted to go for a walk just to investigate.

I live on dove drive. how can you have a crime happen on a street called dove drive?

things are supposed to get easier with time

they claim that things are supposed to get easier with time. that the more we do something the easier it should be to do. this apparently doesn't work for all things. somethings, like saying goodbye i've found get harder the more often I have to do them. the more I say good bye, the more people i have to add to the list of people i hope to stay in touch with, but know the likelihood of times in the future like times in the present is slim to none.

as i am preparing for another big move i've been going through old things and finding all kinds of new things that i want to do before i leave kansas city and head northward to my new life in chicago. my possessions are being split into piles to be left at my parents house and those that will come with me, which makes this move again feel like a temporary one but a move nevertheless. and a move from the things of comfort; living with friends of the past 10 years, an hour and a half from home, having space to carry with me all the stuff I've accumulated over the years, being able to run home for a weekend of being taken care of or some TLC for my car to a world of the new and unknown.

not that I am not looking forward to the move and putting an end to another of the things that has become harder with time. every time i've had to leave chicago and say goodbye has been harder then the time before. even though they i know they are only temporary good byes. every day a little longer between visits as i count down the days till chicago life will be my life and other places my visits.

i'm at a place where i have to plunge forward, trading comforts and old friends for new adventures and new people (though never loosing touch with what's important from this life) it's time to grow up go out and conquer the world.

it's a trade i'm willing to make since what and who waits for me i wouldnt trade for the world.

memorial to a friend

my plants are my friends...they are even getting their own special car ride to chicago where I will entrust them in the care of my boyfriend for a month. this is a scary thought to me. but really how much damage can he do in one month, as long as he remembers to water them on occasion. his cat has lived for a year alone with him now. I have faith.

but as of today I will officially be one pot lighter on the move. I have officially declared my christmas trees dead. I re-potted them last week, and apparently this was too traumatic for their little tree sprouts. they will be missed. the package promised in several years I would be able to hang ornaments from them. their little lives ended before they knew what they could be. (I do have several more tree seeds in the package, but it just isn't the same, I failed my baby trees)

do nothing days

basically my summer is consisting of do nothing days....unless I make myself do something. thus I'm committing myself to being school related productive all day on tuesday and thursday in exchange for do nothing (except for things that HAVE to be done) days on monday, wednesday and friday. this way I make myself get stuff done since just about everything is more exciting then reading another article about integrating math and science classes. here's some of the list of things I'd rather be doing then homework

• sorting through things deciding what to send where
  
• packing
• organizing my life
• planning for my classes in the fall
• putting together my picture album
• completing one of the many sewing projects I got at the end of the school year
• tending to my plants (nursing my gerber daisy back to helth)
• reading my book
• watching a movie

basically everything....thus the difficulty focusing on school

easily molded

they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery or something like that. I apparently wish to flatter anyone who I spend a prolonged amount of time with. My roommate has recently been pointing out to me the random things that I have started to incorporate into my daily life and has questioned their origins. this has made me start to think and I've come to the realization that I adopt sayings, mannerisms, behaviors, and sometimes even accents from those that I spend time with. I used to work at a girl scout camp and we had a saying, "take only pictures, leave only footprints" well my friends I have taken much more than pictures from those that I have spent time with. below you can find a collection of other things i've gathered this summer and a small tribute to those who's individuality I have borrowed and molded into my own ...

• "whatevs" - a common phrase in my vocabulary, borrowed over the past year from my boyfriend I believe, one that drives my roommate crazy
• blogging - thanks to the boyfriend's sister for providing me with this past time to well pass time this summer
• "for reals" - again stolen from the boy, and annoying to the roommate
• watching bad TV (or not so bad TV depending on who you ask) - my roommate and I waste MANY hours watching things like so you think you can dance
• "the libs" - a short lived phrase picked up from the chicago kids, currently purged from my vocab, probably due to return in early August.
• g-mail chat - used now more in my life than aim or ichat. never used before my most recent chicago trip
• "mad skillz" - a frequently typed phrase...attributed to many e-mails and g-mail chat conversations, adopted again from the boy

father's day

apparently I post here when I am bored. apparently that's why I started this when I did. and well my massive undertaking of a father's day gift has filled my time keeping me from being bored. well that and being sucked into watching So You Think You Can Dance with my roommate. but the father's day gift. my dad, like most dads has always imparted on us certain phrases and words of wisdom that we incorporate into our lives. so here's my recollection of my dad over the years. some have truth, some just his craziness.

nourishment

in an attempt to survive I ventured out to gather nourishment from two equally important locations....the local public library, and the grocery store.

my brain needs to be stimulated with fascinating tales of literary escapades and the lives of those more adventurous than myself who is stuck in town taking a single course this summer completing my masters program. a single course in which the first assignment was to read a chapter of a book that I have already read at least twice before in each of the preceding two required courses for my program. needless to say not a course that will feed my starving brain. (hence the immense amount of free time and the frequency of postings) the books of choice.... the next three novels in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, in which literary detective Thursday Next lives in a parallel world to ours where people are passionate about literature to the point of legally changing their names to those of their favorite authors and some like the lucky Thursday Next have the ability to travel within books and interact with everyone's favorite characters.

the grocery store was next...my first trip in weeks due to my apparent inability to spend any time in my apartment and frequent travels home which return with a fridge full of leftover home cooked meals. coming back to spoiled milk and the barest my shelf in the fridge has been in months however signaled the desperate need to make the journey. and so I did.

on the way home it was confirmed that the gas gods HATE me. On the list of things I do not enjoy is going to the gas station. so I try and put it off. this normally ends up with me getting screwed when the gas price jumps 20 cents the day I finally decide that my car has been on empty far too long and the incessant dinging which is supposed to be a helpful reminder to get gas has thoroughly driven me mad. today however I decided to attempt to appease the gods and decided to get gas on my way home....before my car even had one chance to ding. needless to say this decision caused the gas prices in lovely columbia to jump today.

and so my car will go on for days longer before I choose to sacrifice myself to the gas gods one more. I chose to feed myself rather than feed my car.

I dont have pets, I have plants

on a whim I bought a pomegranate tree (and a blueberry bush but it's not being exciting yet) a dwarf pomegranate tree I'm not crazy. pomegranates are one of my favorite fruits and well since the tree cost me $5 it will practically pay for itself if it gives even 2 fruits. well in 2-3 years it will pay for itself. but it has been an enjoyable activity watching it grow from the tiny twig the company sent me and now it has flowered.

when I was little I used to tell people I didnt have pets I had siblings instead. apparently now I dont have pets I have plants instead. the aforementioned pomegranate tree and blueberry bush, 2 african violets, a gerber daisy, a jade plant, a shamrock plant, a 3 ft tropical bush of some sort, some baby christmas trees, a spider plant that has long since outgrown its pot and is still hanging in my bedroom window at my parents house and a out of control plant of some sort affectionately known as medusa



I'm not a crazy cat lady, (there is only one of those in my life on a part-time basis) I'm a crazy plant lady.

my new favorite

it's funny how things can be right in front of your face for so long but you don't discover them for many months or even years after they originally came into your life. my new favorite discovery...the dictionary/thesaurus software on my computer.


I'm a terrible speller. that has long since been known. my little sister who is six years younger then me could always spell things I never could. this always concerned my mom, but my teachers always told her "we're focusing on ideas, the spelling will come later" except that it never came. I discovered and loved the little red dots that underline my misspelled words in all programs, a feature that came with the newest computer purchase, the day that I opened the box. but it wasn't till last week while flipping through OSX for dummies wondering what there possibly could be in there that I saw the dictionary program page.

this makes my random word of the day discoveries even more accessible. and has given me a quick and easy searching method, as the list of possible words shrinks as each additional letter is typed, when my creative spellings are just too far off from the accepted methods of the rest of the world and the little red dots just can't seem to offer any suggestions.

round two

so I had one of these once...but then I stopped posting to it so I forgot it and well here I am again. round two. I never told anyone the address of the last, since it was mostly a place for me to post thoughts. never meant for anyone in particular to read. just out there. I'm still in debate about this one.

these things keep appearing in my life. I thought I needed to jump on board. a good place to sound off about my life to no one in particular, not forced upon anyone to listen, not forced upon anyone to read just me and my thoughts on my day to day life.

now that I've started this I dont know where to go...this may be enough for my inaugural jump into round two.