Two weeks ago, JJ and I went on the hunt for a new dresser. The one he had was falling apart... there were handles missing, a few of the drawers either wouldn't open or wouldn't close and because of that it was a pain for JJ to get anything out and more importantly, put anything away! So there are constantly mountains of clothes on the floor. Most of the time I can't tell what's dirty and what's clean but it's a system that has been working for him for awhile so for the most part he knows where things are. Well, a few weeks ago, JJ got up early, scouted out Craigslist for all the local garage sales and then off we went on the hunt! We came back empty handed that day. (Well, not totally! I did find a nice white board for one dollar for work!) But two weeks ago a patient of ours brought in a flier about a huge local garage sale so I thought we should go check it out. I got up early and scouted out the other garage sales in the area just in case and I'm glad I did. We ended up at a garage sale that was a benefit for the homeless shelter. All proceeds went to the homeless shelter for everything that they sold AND there was another organization that was going to match the amount of money that was made and donate that to the homeless shelter. We found a dresser! It's in great shape! Just needs a little sanding and staining and it'll be ready to go. We paid $40 for it which was a great price for us AND that means the homeless shelter will get $80! I also dropped $5 into there donation jar before we left. It was great to find a wonderful dresser and I was happy that we contributed to a good cause.
As a funny side note, after we bought the dresser we dropped it off and went around town looking at the other garage sales just for fun... Well we pulled off the road to turn around after visiting one garage sale and JJ's car got stuck! It was a little sandy and we were just spinning our wheels! Literally! So as we are standing there trying to figure out what to do these two little ladies came by (they were probably in there mid-60's) and one of them said, "Well how much effort do you think it would take to push it out?" We weren't sure but I hoped in the car to give it a little gas and guidance while these two ladies helped JJ push from the front. We were out in no time flat. Not 15 minutes earlier I had put that $5 bill in the donation jar at the homeless shelter fund raiser and here we were chasing in on some good karma. Haha. Have a great day everyone! I hope your progress is still coming along as well as mine is! =)
~Wendy
Friday, July 30, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Visit 10 New Places I've Never Been
Well hello fellow 2010-ers! I'm still alive! Yes, it's true! I'm afraid the past few months of school and other activities kept me so busy I didn't have a chance to blog! But I'm very excited to report back that I have contributed to my list by going somewhere I've never been before!
Living on the central coast is amazing! There is so much to do and so much to see! Ever since I moved here I've been hearing about this area on a beach that's right off the 1 where all these elephant seals come every year. So a couple weeks ago, JJ and I got in his T-top Camero, took the glass tops off, and drove up the 1! It was a beautiful day! Sunny and warm, wind blowing in my hair as we drove... It was perfect! We drove up just passed Hearst Castle and off to the left is a parking lot that we pulled into. The way they have the whole thing set up, you can't actually get down onto the beach with the elephant seals. There's a fence and where people can stand is up above them and set back a little bit. So anyway, when we first got out there I saw A FEW elephant seals on the beach and I thought, 'Hey this is really neat!' (Because we were SO close to them!) And then JJ said, "Yeah but look over there..." And I turned to my left and looked down the beach... MILES of beach COVERED with elephant seals! And I know you're reading this thinking, 'Yeah okay lots of elephant seals.' No no! This is something you need to see to understand. Lucky for you, I took pictures! Hehe.
So this was neat and I was excited...
Then I saw this and my jaw hit the ground!
It was an amazing sight to see! They are on the beach all year round pretty much but there are different "seasons" depending on what you want to see. The ones that were there when we went were just the females and the juveniles. In a couple months the big males will be back and I guess they are just massive and they're load and they fight over the females and what not. Apparently very impressive so we are going to go again in a few months to see that. At other times you can go when they females are giving birth and stuff like that. There was a cute little volunteer there that gave us a flier that has all the season's on it. I put it on the fridge. As a side note, the volunteer was so cute! She was this little old lady out there with her oxygen tank! She was dedicated! Anyway, that's 1 place, 9 more to go!
I hope things are going well with both of you and your lists! I have more to tell you about but I thought I'd wait a few days and then move on to a new topic! See you sooner rather than later this time ladies!
-Wendy
Living on the central coast is amazing! There is so much to do and so much to see! Ever since I moved here I've been hearing about this area on a beach that's right off the 1 where all these elephant seals come every year. So a couple weeks ago, JJ and I got in his T-top Camero, took the glass tops off, and drove up the 1! It was a beautiful day! Sunny and warm, wind blowing in my hair as we drove... It was perfect! We drove up just passed Hearst Castle and off to the left is a parking lot that we pulled into. The way they have the whole thing set up, you can't actually get down onto the beach with the elephant seals. There's a fence and where people can stand is up above them and set back a little bit. So anyway, when we first got out there I saw A FEW elephant seals on the beach and I thought, 'Hey this is really neat!' (Because we were SO close to them!) And then JJ said, "Yeah but look over there..." And I turned to my left and looked down the beach... MILES of beach COVERED with elephant seals! And I know you're reading this thinking, 'Yeah okay lots of elephant seals.' No no! This is something you need to see to understand. Lucky for you, I took pictures! Hehe.
So this was neat and I was excited...
Then I saw this and my jaw hit the ground!
It was an amazing sight to see! They are on the beach all year round pretty much but there are different "seasons" depending on what you want to see. The ones that were there when we went were just the females and the juveniles. In a couple months the big males will be back and I guess they are just massive and they're load and they fight over the females and what not. Apparently very impressive so we are going to go again in a few months to see that. At other times you can go when they females are giving birth and stuff like that. There was a cute little volunteer there that gave us a flier that has all the season's on it. I put it on the fridge. As a side note, the volunteer was so cute! She was this little old lady out there with her oxygen tank! She was dedicated! Anyway, that's 1 place, 9 more to go!
I hope things are going well with both of you and your lists! I have more to tell you about but I thought I'd wait a few days and then move on to a new topic! See you sooner rather than later this time ladies!
-Wendy
Monday, April 19, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Get a Tattoo
I can now officially cross something off my list!
#7. Get a tattoo.
And ta-da! Here it is:
So, I feel this deserves a little bit of an explanation, mainly because some people have expressed some shock that I would actually get a tattoo. No, this was not a drunken, spur-of-the-moment decision. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile now.
Here's the back story (Warning! There is a dash of nerdiness ahead).
Remember back in the early part of the last decade (that seem weird to say) when the Lord of the Rings movies were huge and Orlando Bloom was the newest heartthrob and Dominic Monaghan had yet to become a Heroin addicted island castaway? "One ring to rule them all"? Right? Okay. So, I remember reading that the nine members of the cast who had been a part of the Fellowship had all gone together to get elvish "nine" tattoos. Up until that point in my life I really had never had any sort of interest in body art but something about this story peaked my interest. I thought it was sort of awesome that these nine people shared an experience that meant so much to them that they wanted to chronicle that experience in the form of something so permanent.
I however, have never been part of an epic, billion-dollar movie franchise (I know this is shocking, calm yourselves) so when would I have a chance to do something like that?
Then a couple years later a friend’s tattoo gave me further inspiration. This is actually the little brother of a friend of mine who died when I was in college. The brother now has a tattoo on his back in honor of my friend. As soon as I saw it something clicked in my brain. If ever, God-forbid, something were to ever happen to one of my sisters, I would do the exact same thing.
Queue more thinking. ( I think A LOT. It’s just something I do. And in this case, in something pertaining to needles and permanent body ink, thinking is good). And I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to just sit around and wait for some horrible reason to do this. Hello? Morbid.
So here we are today (or two weeks ago) and in honor of my 27th year on this earth, my little sister and I figured, why wait? Let’s do this.
Actually getting the tattoo wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t completely painless – that sucker hurt. But it was more irritating than anything else and it was over really fast. Much thanks of course to Todd at Nathan’s Tattoo for being so awesome with a couple of first-timers.
And so now I have a tattoo! I haven’t quite gotten used to it yet and I keep wanting to look at in the mirror. It’s still in the healing process though and right now it just sort of itches like crazy. But I’m happy.
This is something that will mean something for the rest of my life. So many people in life come and go – co-workers, acquaintances, friends, boyfriends, etc. but my sisters have been through it all with me and no matter what, no matter how much we annoy each other or piss each other off or tease or whatever, we will always be sisters. So to them I say, this is for you. - Shannon
Sunday, March 28, 2010
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CUPCAKE!!!
Happy, happy birthday! 
|
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Great Gatsby
So the last time I checked in about my reading list was at the end of January when I had just started Anna Karenina. It has now been two months and I'm STILL reading the dang thing. Seriously, this book is a beast. Seven hundred and fifty-four pages of a whole heck-of-a-lot of words. ( FUN FACT! I just checked, the seventh Harry Potter book is seven hundred and fifty-nine pages. I'm pretty sure I read that one in about eight hours the night it came out... Maybe I should change "Fun Fact" to "Total Wizarding Nerd Alert).
Anywho, I began to get a little frustrated at my lack of progress on Anna Karenina (I am now on page 491) so this weekend I put it aside and read The Great Gatsby. I had read this one back in high school some time and while I remembered the basic story there was a lot I forgot. In particular, how gut-wrenchingly sad the whole story ends. Sorry if that's a huge spoiler for anyone.
I'm guessing, that as a sixteen year old, a lot of things didn't resonate for me back then. But this time I was struck by the loneliness of the book. Here are these characters who are caught up in the extravagant and frivolous world of the 1920's, drinking and smoking all day, throwing lavish parties and gossiping mercilessly - and yet they all just seem so lonely and secluded. Especially the title character of Jay Gatsby. He's at the center of this world, the center of gossip and rumors and he's the man everyone wants to know and yet at the time of his greatest need, everyone abandons him. It's just sad.
I could go on and on about what that all means and what Fitzgerald was trying to say about society but I don't particular feel like writing a paper on it all, and hey, I'm not in school anymore so I don't have to! Whoo! But there's my mini little book report.
Despite the sadness, I did find myself enjoying the book more than I did when I was in high school and I would recommend The Great Gatsby to anyone, especially for F. Scott Fitzgerald's brilliant way of saying so much with so few words.
. . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
I seriously read things like this and wonder, what's the point in writing? How could the beauty of that one paragraph every be matched? Ah well.
And because I love crossing things off a list:
1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7.The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Oooh boy. Nine left. I'm really rollin' now.
--Shannon
Anywho, I began to get a little frustrated at my lack of progress on Anna Karenina (I am now on page 491) so this weekend I put it aside and read The Great Gatsby. I had read this one back in high school some time and while I remembered the basic story there was a lot I forgot. In particular, how gut-wrenchingly sad the whole story ends. Sorry if that's a huge spoiler for anyone.
I'm guessing, that as a sixteen year old, a lot of things didn't resonate for me back then. But this time I was struck by the loneliness of the book. Here are these characters who are caught up in the extravagant and frivolous world of the 1920's, drinking and smoking all day, throwing lavish parties and gossiping mercilessly - and yet they all just seem so lonely and secluded. Especially the title character of Jay Gatsby. He's at the center of this world, the center of gossip and rumors and he's the man everyone wants to know and yet at the time of his greatest need, everyone abandons him. It's just sad.
I could go on and on about what that all means and what Fitzgerald was trying to say about society but I don't particular feel like writing a paper on it all, and hey, I'm not in school anymore so I don't have to! Whoo! But there's my mini little book report.
Despite the sadness, I did find myself enjoying the book more than I did when I was in high school and I would recommend The Great Gatsby to anyone, especially for F. Scott Fitzgerald's brilliant way of saying so much with so few words.
. . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.
I seriously read things like this and wonder, what's the point in writing? How could the beauty of that one paragraph every be matched? Ah well.
And because I love crossing things off a list:
1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7.
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot
Oooh boy. Nine left. I'm really rollin' now.
--Shannon
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
HAPPY BIRTHDAY WENDY!
Happy Birthday to you,Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Wendy,
Happy Birthday to you!
Sending out a HAPPY BIRTHDAY to one of our very own 2010 Project participants, the fabulous Wendy! Have a completely awesome day girl. You deserve it.
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