So Here I Am

One reason I haven't been writing as many blog posts is that I have to write them on my MacBook Air, or my desktop. My desktop doesn't have a real desk yet, so I'm confined to the laptop, and even though we have the fastest Internet and the modem/router is upstairs where we hang out, pages load very slow on this. My phone and ipad are fast, but not this thing. If anyone knows how to help me speed page loads up, please email me to walk me through it-- mindyfausey@yahoo.com.

So, let's see if I can catch you all up. I've been selling a few things on eBay. I sold the Highwayman painting for twice what I bought it for. I'm sure we'll make a profit on the Sharp and Sloane, but we may have to take them to a more distinguished auction than eBay. Lol. I've also got a lot of little things for sale--stuff I found when going through my garage. I still have quite a bit to list, but am working on several projects at once, so I'm trying to get a schedule going, and make it a habit.

The schedule includes 100 laps in the pool every day at 11:30, but sometimes it doesn't quite work out, because afternoon summer storms are impatient, and can't hold off til 3:00 or 4:00 like they're supposed to.

The other day, I had two laps left when lightning suddenly struck not too far away. I don't think I've ever moved faster than I did getting out of that pool. Anyway, I like the changes I'm seeing in my muscles. The tan is nice, too.I've been  taking pics after my swim every day to show the progression of my body over time...I think it's coming along decently. The only Photoshopping here is changing the "film type" to Patisserie and cropping out anatomy no one gets to see, lol:

And with just minimal cropping of my arm:

Callie is here until August 9th. She did great at Brown University, and she thinks she might want to go there for college, which would be awesome. We went to the movies and out to eat last Saturday. Baby Driver was listed as an action comedy, but it wasn't exactly funny. The way the music was interwoven throughout every scene, including the gun shoot-outs, was pretty cool. And the audio effects, like the subtle and sometimes not at all subtle ringing in the ears Baby suffered, were done really well.

We still have two movies left to see--Callie wants to see Valerian, and Joe wants to see Planet of the Apes. 

I took the kids to one place I absolutely hate--the mall--on Monday. I was surprised to see people still go to those things. I bought Callie a couple things, and bought Joe a few brand name shirts that were 40-60% off.

I saw these very cool sneakers that I really want. I've always wanted a pair like this:

Yesterday was a relax kind of day--I took some pics of ebay stuff and worked on a few household things. I swam laps, and then watched TV with the kids while researching some things on the Internet. Callie likes a show called PD 99 or something like that, and I've discovered Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So, we take turns picking the show.

I love Charlie on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. His little movements and the noise he makes when he's frustrated are hilarious. We all laugh out loud.

And he's adorable, in a weird way. You just can't help rooting for him. His illiteracy should be a sad thing, because reading is awesome, but he makes it cute with the way he does his darndest to communicate. These are the lyrics to his song, "Nightman:"

Anyway, it's a good show. You all should watch it.

Friday, we're heading to Orlando to have some fun. We were planning on Universal Studios, but Callie is sick of Universal, because they have one in CA. Instead, the kids want to do an escape room, then Dave & Busters, then Medieval Times. We'll stay the night somewhere on International Drive. I still wanna go to Universal because James has never been there, but we can do that any time.

Wow, it's only 9:30 am and I hear thunder. Hopefully, there won't be at 11:30 swim time.

Here's a blast from my past. When we were in our teens, Lyndy (my best friend) and I would draw pictures for each other and pass them back and forth. Sorta like old school Vlog Brothers on YouTube. Except we used drawings and captions instead of video to say what was on our minds each week.

She texted me the other day and said she had boxes of these. She sent me some, and they made me laugh. I can't believe some of the things I wrote. Two weeks ago, if you had told me I loved the TV show, Growing Pains, or that I'm a cat lover, I might have punched you in the face for the insult. But, what do you know? I did love Growing Pains and cats when I was sixteen. Geez, I was a dork. Maybe I still am. But wow, Lyndy and I were still kids then. Today, sixteen year-olds are much less naive, and less innocent, it seems.

Anyway, time for me to get to work...I'll try to post tomorrow! :)

Quick pic

Me and my Callie at the movies with Joe and James...we saw Baby Driver. Very intense movie, but pretty good! I should be able to post a longer blog tomorrow...

Escape to White Mountain

So, I'm finally writing about the White Mountain portion of our trip in June. I've been pretty busy, and don't really have the time to write this, but I'm going to anyway, since it's storming outside and I can't swim.

Okay, let's see if I can remember anything.

We'd just experienced the awe-inspiring Boar's Tusk in south- central Wyoming. The mosquitoes were out in murderous force, and more than willing to drive us away by sending in kamikazes in ridiculous numbers.

So we made our escape and headed for White Mountain. The mosquitoes followed for a bit before giving up the chase and returning to their beloved boar.

We parked at White Mountain, and purposely walked off the path, enjoying the cooler, bug-free breeze. Well, I walked off the path, anyway.

I didn't know much about White Mountain before we visited, and I regret not researching it beforehand, because it was amazing.

White Mountain is member of the Green River Formation, and part of the Rock Springs Uplift. At 7,263 feet, it is within the range of the treasure chest's location.

It's hard to imagine that this place used to be a lake in times far past. Ancient seashells still dot the ground, and if you're lucky, you might find one.

But, if you hike up to the imposing, 300 foot cliff face, you're guaranteed to find remnants of a way of life much different than ours. Local members of the Shoshone tribe consider White Mountain to be their sacred ancestral home.

I can see why...there are hundreds of petroglyphs carved into the cliff face. Some modern graffiti is also peppered among the ancient writing. Like this makeshift ATM...

 

There wasn't any money in it. James tried to bust through it with a truck, but had no success at all.

Next to the stone age money machine, there were a couple interesting modern carvings. Like this "W":

 

And this twin peaks kinda thing...

Around the corner, the petroglyphs were less compromised. It was easy to imagine a young Indian brave excitedly carving the story of the day's hunt into the relenting stone. And I was thrilled to have the chance to read their stories.

We slowly walked past each drawing, marveling at the artist's ability to capture our imagination and carry us into this ancient thrill of the chase.

The petroglyphs were carved anywhere from 200 to 1000 years ago. Some were very curious to me, and pretty amusing as my imagination provided explanations that most likely are far from accurate. But hey, who knows? Maybe this does depict a monstrous fish latched onto an Indian's wiener:

And maybe the artist who was in charge of making tally marks drew how his fingers felt at the end of business day:

And maybe while out enjoying a day in their boat:

...they would see things like fish, and otters, and beavers...and possibly, a dolphin...

There were actually all kinds of animals represented, like this elk:

And whatever this monster from my nightmares is:

Indians often used symbols in their rock language, and these symbols were scattered seemingly haphazardly all over the cliff wall. Crosses, the zigzag water symbols, arrows, bear paws, and even an asterisk tightened our focus into an attempt to decipher meaning:

Here's a short video of James and I exploring:

 

And then we found a cave. It was very cool to see the bird tracks and bear paw carved into the entrance...

 

Here's a couple still pics of the cave:

As we exited the cave which probably gave me the infection that caused a nodule on my lung, we saw the moon had come out to say his nightly "hello."

We decided it was about time to head back to our hotel in Green River, but not before I checked out this rock that looks like a skull:

 

And this interesting window-shadow:

And these carvings that reminded me of photos in TTotC:

And this guy:

And these, too:

And then a plane flew by the moon:

And this shrub caught the light so nicely...

 And yeah, James had to physically drag me away from the place...so what?

Working On It

I'm still unpacking boxes, setting up things, trying to get a bunch of listings on ebay, and writing an article for a publication, so I haven't had a lot of extra time. I've had a lingering cold that just seems to have spread back to my right eye, so I'm scrambling to find a doctor that can see me today. I am really over these eye problems. They are the worst.

I'm also trying to get weeds pulled in the front yard. I've cleared about half of the mulch beds, but I want to do the backyard too. The backyard should be much easier. James is almost done painting the outside of the house, so I'll have some help with the yard soon. And I'm gonna get Joe outside to help too.

Callie is coming for a visit next weekend after she finishes her class at Brown University, and my niece and nephew (Kiele and Makai) might come too! I'm super excited for that. I miss Makai calling me "Aunt Betsy." Lol.

 Not much else is going on...just a lot of unpacking and assembling and writing and selling. I will get back into the habit of writing every day soon!

Preliminary Parsing

Here is a color coded preliminary graph (I have not triple-checked the accuracy yet) of the parts of speech of every word in the poem, precisely as it was written in the book.

LEGEND:

Nouns --yellow
Subject --red text
Adjectives--blue
Adverbs-- purple
Verbs-tan
Noun phrases-- green text

Prepositions--turquoise
conjunctions—pink
pronouns—green
fsucs-red
Determinates- light green

The Oreo

New Hot Spot is up!

www.fennhotspot.com

Still settling in...

I'm still working on getting a routine established. Things of course, are much different, and such a huge change.

I've been staying up later, and sleeping later. I do my household chores in the morning, swim at 11:30, then do a few more chores in the afternoon. I've also been trying to get in at least 30 minutes of piano practice every day, if I can.

With just a few boxes left to unpack, I haven't been able to work much on our new businesses and websites yet, but I have started getting all my ebay/auction/web gallery stuff in one place. I just have to take pics, describe each one, and list them.

We bought some new furniture, so some of my time goes to putting those things together.

Joe's coming home on the 17th, and Callie's coming home on the 21st, after her summer course at Brown. I made Callie's room really pleasant, but Joe is sorta picky, so I'm holding off on his a little until I know exactly how he wants it set up. We bought him a new desk and bookcase with plenty of room for his books and Lego Star Wars creations. I'm even going to buy some fishing line and suspend one of the star fighters from the ceiling to give it the illusion of flight, turning it at an angle so that it looks like it's banking hard to return fire. Yeah, my imagination goes crazy with Star Wars. Lol.

James also bought me a bookcase. The bookcase at my old house was pretty cheap, and James didn't want that monstrosity in his house. It also was woefully too small, with books on top of books, and the larger books piled on either side and even under the bottom shelf. I have some of my larger books in this cool old antique James already had. 

We had a great weekend. James is painting his house by hand, which is an amazing feat, and paints a little every day after work, and a little on the weekends. It's almost done, and looks great. James has a really good eye for decorating.

Anyway, Friday night we watched The Accountant. Ben Affleck plays an autistic (probably Aspergers) guy who kills bad guys after his amazing math skills expose some corruption in a company. I thought it was pretty good, but the representation of Asperger's was from a boy's perspective. Girls with Asperger's present much differently.

However, at the end of the movie, they showed another boy who had lined up plastic toy animals in a long line. That struck a chord with me, because I did the EXACT same thing when I was a kid. I remember sitting outside on the driveway, lining those suckers up like they were in a Russian food line.

I remember asking for those plastic animals EVERY Christmas. They were always in the JC Penney Christmas catalog, and I would neatly but urgently circle that item with bright red pen. Lol.

On Saturday, we did some shopping, ate out, and finally saw Wonder Woman. I liked it, except the ending was maybe slightly too much. The movie, despite being 2 1/2 hours long, felt a little rushed, like they spent too much time at the beginning explaining Diana's origins and childhood.

When Diana, after marching straight through hundreds of flying bullets, deflecting each one with her gauntlets, literally single-handedly laid waste to a battalion of German soldiers occupying a small town, including busting through the top of a brick and stone tower to stop a sniper, the hero, Steve Trevor, tells her she can't go to a gala because it's "too dangerous."

Wait, what?!! Are you kidding me? She just BUSTED THROUGH a very solidly built tower like Godzilla sitting Miley-Cyrus-like on a wrecking ball. There were dead or unconscious German soldiers littering the street. And he had the gumption to tell her a party is too dangerous? LOLOL!

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, but less time could've been spent on her childhood and more time developing other characters and showing how incredulous everyone should have been after witnessing her powers. As it was, Steve and his friends were like, "Oh. Wow. Diana is sorta cool, demolishing those Germans with her super human leaps and scandalous outfit. I don't need answers. She could be an alien or from the future--it doesn't matter, cause she's pretty." They all accepted Diana's miraculous super powers with the casual indifference of the freaking Accountant!

They should've been more like, "WHAT THE HOLY HELL IS THIS WOMAN?!! AM I ON DRUGS,  OR HALLUCINATING, OR DID THAT WOMAN JUST MARCH THROUGH NO MAN'S LAND AND DEFLECT EVERY BULLET WITH HER ARMS?!"

And later in the movie, "DID THAT WOMAN JUST LIFT A TANK AND THROW IT? AND WAIT...IS THAT LIGHTNING SHE'S FLINGING AROUND LIKE A YO YO?!"

But nope.

When we got home from the movie, we played ping pong and pool...three games of each, and the person that won the most games was the champion.

It was me. I was the champion. Lol. I won three ping pong games and one game of pool, but I really think James let me win that last pool game, so I conceded the championship to him. Just because he's so great.

I celebrated by doing a running flip into the pool with my clothes on. James followed. :)

Oh yeah, I found a little ringneck snake in the pool the other day, and got him out by myself, using my hands, and I only half screamed like a girl once. I didn't think ringnecks were venomous, but after reading about them online, I discovered they are slightly venomous, but their venom apparently doesn't affect humans. I don't want to test that. But if I knew how reluctant they are to bite when I was trying to get him out of the pool, I would've been more relaxed and less timid. The next ringneck I find, I'm going to cuddle. Lol.

And yes, I know in the video, I said, "Non-poisonous, and I know that's wrong. Venom and poison are different. I'm not sure why I said "poisonous," because I'm usually sorta meticulous about that. Oh well.

James went to work early today, so he'll be home early. Maybe he'll bring home some fireworks that we can use to explode some things. Lol.

Oh yeah, I've recently discovered Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and I have to say, that guy is hilarious. And right.

Okay, I promise I will write about White Mountain tomorrow, or maybe tonight!  Sorry for the delay!