Garden and pets

We planted all sorts of vegetables and filled up the garden. We faithfully watered, but we didn’t feel like it was all that important to weed while the house was super flooded, and after that there were too many and we were still super busy so we got discouraged and didn’t weed any. Our peas were great there were a ton. We also had a million raspberries, but we stopped picking them after 4 batches of jam, 12 bags of frozen raspberries, and Lindsay getting bit by a horsefly resulting in a week of swollen foot and a week of antibiotics. But the Clarks and Israelsens still pick them once in a while.

Our carrots are kind of shrimpy but they taste good. We’ve got potatoes and onions too. Our lettuce and about half of our cucumbers tasted bitter. The Clarks had success with tomatoes, but Lindsay doesn’t like tomatoes, so we don’t eat them a lot. Our pumpkins are looking good too. We’re also excited for apples and plums. We got pepper starts from Lindsay’s mom, but a weird thing happened. The plants didn’t grow once they got outside, but the peppers did. So we have puny little plants holding pretty big peppers.

Things that failed: beans, they didn’t even pop out of the ground. I guess that’s what happens when you go searching through the garage for the seeds for your garden. Also corn. . . It was looking great until we went to Europe and according to Grandpa they got too much water while we were gone. So now they are all white and wrinkly.

I would say it wasn’t too bad for our first gardening experience.

Pet update: the cat is still alive despite all our efforts. It likes to sit outside the office door like a creeper and waits for us to come out of our room. Also it still hides in the back of the bathroom and when you least expect it, the cat comes out and starts rubbing your leg while you are using the toilet. It creeps Lindsay out, and I’m not such a big fan of it either.
The fish: At the moment there are three fish living. All the flood contractors and painters think the plecostomus looks prehistoric.

The horses: dead, no just kidding, how do you kill a horse. I’m starting to have to feed them and i’m not looking forward to it so much.

Nate’s cows: Nate’s 3 cows live where the dogs used to live. They are getting pretty big. Nate is planning on selling them in October so he doesn’t have to deal with them while he’s getting married and such. Turns out his profit will be a grand total of. . . . $50.

School and such.

So school started a few weeks back.  I am doing fifteen credits, five classes with three credits each.  See I can still do math.  All of my classes are Monday Wednesday and Friday, so on Monday mornings, I get up at 7:30-7:55 am  depending on the day.  Usually it is Lindsay who starts pushing and poking me saying “You have to go to class” “I’m too tired, just a few more minutes” “No, get up now.” “Okay. grumble grumble.”  Then I turn on the sink and shower.  This is a requirement with the tankless water heater, because for some reason the shower doesn’t pull enough hot water to turn the water heater on.  Then I wait for about 5 minutes for the water to heat up.  Finally I leave, hopefully before 8:10;  I park at the bottom of Old Main Hill and make the walk up it and to the engineering building.

At 8:30 I have ECE 5530 Digital System Design.  The professor is this nice little ?indian? guy.  His  english is good, so that works nicely.  The class is fairly “easy” compared to some of the others, and focuses on designing digital systems (duh.) like counters, adders, latches, and flip-flops.  I have a lab for this class Thursday morning at 7:30.  We use a Linux-based design suite. (You will see this as kind of a trend.) Some notable people in my class are Zeke Susman, who I work with and has kind of been my trainer on the internship thing I’ve been doing.  Also Nathan Breitenbeker.  I have been with some classes with him in the past, but never really got to know him.  You will soon find out why he is a notable person.

At 9:30 I walk clear across campus to the institute.  I am taking the Gospels.  I have the class with Lindsay.  It is good.  I kinda like her a lot.  She is very cute.  We are going through the four Gospels by author, which I am a fan of.  We had to choose as a class between the “harmony” or individual approach.  A=We are taking it from Brother Harding.  He is  a good crazy guy.  Also in my class is a kid named Nathan Breitenbeker.

At 10:30 I walk back across campus to the engineering building.  I have ECE 3620 Circuits and Signals.  I fairly much hate this one.  It is a bad mix of differential equations, electrical circuits, linear algebra, and hard.  My professor is named Chet Lo.  He is from Hong Kong.  He also speaks mostly well.  I have been able to do the assignments that we get once a week, but they take a goodly amount of hours.  Nathan Breitenbeker is taking the same class at the same times as me.

At 11:30 I get a little break from all the exercise and only have to walk a short distance to the fine arts building.  People there look weird.  Well, I guess in the engineering building, people just look different levels of the same goofiness, but in the fine arts, you might see long wavy blonde haired boys in rocker attire (complete with skinny jeans),  sad introverts with cutoff jeans, long white socks, and cowboy boots,  girls seeming to be having make-up contests (see who can where the most…). etc.  It is always exciting.  I go there to study and appreciate the “Masterpeices of Music” (MUSC 3010, which I am taking for a depth creative arts credit.)  I also have this one with Lindsay.  She is still cute.  Our professor is a nutter.  She is a music lady, who talks like she is teaching preschoolers.    We spent a few days with the elements of music (forte means loud…) Then watched some sweet and by sweet I mean lame VHSs about non-western music.  One memorable quote.  They were talking about a Japanese musician.  They said “He died just a few years ago, in 1959.”  Now we are starting Medieval music, like Gregorian chants.  It reminds me of evensong.  Mostly Lindsay and I play computer games.  It is a good break.

At 12:30 I go across campus again, this time to Old Main.  I have CS 3100 Operating Systems and Concurrency.  Our professor is American.  He speaks alright and isn’t even too0000 weird.  Everytime I go to class, I remember why I am not a computer science major.  Those guys are NERRRRRDY.  In this class we do all of our programming on Linux.  Some of them look and act like they are in love with it.  They are dressed like geeks and lack social skills and stuff, but the class is pretty fun.  There is one boy in my class named Nathan Breitenbeker. He isn’t too nerdy.

At 1:30 I trek back across campus to the engineering lab building.  I have ECE 5930 Computer Systems.  It is kind a weird thing, because it is also a distance education class, so all of the lectures and stuff get recorded so one person in some other place can watch and participate.  It is a good class and I am learning a lot about assembly language, compilers, how computers work and all that stuff.  Our first lab homework was to solve fifteen “puzzles” where you could only use bitwise operators and no flow control statements, like if-else statements, for loops, or anything like that.  I spent a lot of time on it, like at the family reunion, and in my other classes, in the car, in the shower, during runs, etc.  Lindsay can probably attest to the random mutterings of things like “100010001, wait, that doesn’t work,.  0100101010, ah, that might be better.”  Kind of annoying, but she’s the one who married an engineer, not me.  Our next lab is a data bomb.  He gives us an executable (aka program).  It asks for six passwords to defuse the bomb, or else it explodes and sends him an email and we lose points.  I have to decompile it and then examine the assembly code and figure it out.  It takes my whole brain.  If Lindsay talks to me while I am working on it, sometimes I freeze up and have to reboot.   My lab partner is someone by the name of Nathan Breitenbeker.  He is sometimes helpful.  Also, we use the Linux Lab computers.

After all these classes, I sometimes go back to the Linux lab to work on one of my many assignments. Then I walk all the way back across campus and to my car.  Six trips across campus per day.  Who needs to exercise.  I go to work if it isn’t too late, usually one to two times per week, for two hours.  I come home and do other stuff and homework.

On Tuesdays, I get up fairly early because Lindsay has an early lab, and I go to work.  I work 8 or so hours and then come home.  It is good.  Right now I am starting this little project to research and find a replacement embedded real-time operating system for our VCUs.  Embedded systems and real-time operating systems are two classes that I still have to take in the future, so I am kind of swimming in deep water.  I mostly understand what I am doing, at least enough to do it, and I keep asking questions so I don’t get too lost.  Also I work for 6 hours or so, so I work between 15 and twenty hours.

So that is school and work.  The end.

Spite

Today, Alyna made fun of me for not blogging more.   Also she complained about not being on blogspot, because I put her on wordpress.  So this is my last blog ever on this site.  Now I am using blogspot.  It is superbriscoe.blogspot.com Visit me there.

I’m Back

Well, it has been a few months since I wrote on this thing.  I guess I kind of started a revolution, seeing now as everyone, including the more unlikely candidates such as mom and Lisa, have blogs.  What a wierd wierd world we live in, but that is okay.

Life is going good.  The official count is down to 763 hours.  That isn’t too much, so I am pretty excited.  Right now school is going good and I am able to pay at least nominal attention to my classes.  We will see how long that lasts.  I have microprocessors, which is having me feel a little bit nerdy and not too happy financially, after having to buy $125 worth of electronics parts, as well as a book.  Also they are outdated models, which aren’t actually used in industry anymore, so I have a hard time understanding why we use them.  I am taking an Institute class of  the Miracles of Christ.   I really enjoy it.  Being a little slow as I am, I finally caught on that it is wise to choose classes by the teacher, not the subject.  Last semster I had Parables of Christ, which has so much potential, but I didn’t like our teacher at all, so it wasn’t so good. Then I have Family Finance.  It is the biggest class I’ve had ever, but fairly easy.  Garrett is in the class with me, and we usually play Pocket Tanks (fun) or do our homework (not fun) as well as copy down the lame stuff from the powerpoint slides.  After that, three times a week I go and pretend to swim.  I amn’t so good at it, but I get my breathing and heart rate up and feel the workout in my arms and legs.  Also I am getting better, so my brain doesn’t panic from lack of air when my head is in the water.  The first day I did it, I threw up afterwars, but it is getting easier.  Then I have Intro to Probability, again with Garrett.  It is MATH 5710, which is quite a high level math class.  It has been pretty easy so far, but I think this week might be the last where I can say that.  We are starting into more obscure concepts.  My final class is Data Structures and Algorithms.  My professor is a chinese guy who doesn’t speak to well and explains a little worse.  I find the material boring and think that the class is going to be tedious and painful.

So my day at school begins at 8:30 and I get done at 2:20 without any real breaks.  Then I eat something on the way to work.  Salad has been good this last week, spending $3 on a good sized bag of it and about $1 on my favorite creamy poppyseed dressing.  It is very significantly cheaper to take leftovers or homemade stuff than buy fast food.

I get to work by 3 and work until 6.  Then I go home, which takes about half and hour.  On good days, Lindsay will meet me there and we will do something for dinner and then start homework.   Then I usually work with Garrett for a little bit on homework, maybe clean up around the house or my bedroom, play games, take naps, feed the animals, or other things.

That is kind of a normal day.   On Tuesdays I have Microprocessor Lab at 7:30 Tuesday morning, which lasts about 3 hours.  Then I go to work and am there from 10:45 to 6.  On Thursdays. I go to Lindsay’s apartment in the morning and then we go snowboarding for part of the day.  Saturdays are  pretty similar.

I will write later about the story of my engagement, with all of its exciting preperations and all that stuff, but now I am finally out of lame Data Structure class.

Adieu

Stupid Spammers

So, I am injured.  Yeah, I noticed.  There really is no need to rub it in.  People have different ways of helping out.  Some people bring balloons, some people come keep me company, some call and wish me well.   These things are awesome and I hugely appreciate them.  You guys are the best.

Then, there are the type of people who cut you open and pour lemon juice down the hole.  The people who thrive on adding insult to injury.  It is the people like this who I detest.  Its the spammers..

So I am looking around my blog…I notice, “Hey it says that there are three comments awaiting approval.”  Great, someone likes my horrible life enough to write about it too.  So there I am.  Wait, they are marked as spam.  I look a little closer and they are all from the same website.  one is from health@seniorcommunityliving.com, another from assisted@seniorcommunityliving.com, and the third from adult-day-care@seniorcommunityliving.com.   What a giant blow to the ego.  Add that to the list of injuries.  It like yes, I know I had an accident, but I don’t need flippin adult day care.  How cruel.

But if you are looking for adult day care look no further.  I have a great link you can follow.

I mean Nikki is the BEST!

Nikki is the best friend ever! She brought me food and a great movie that is 7 hours long! the 10th kingdom.. so far it is a little strange but I am bored. She has been doing all these super nice things like tieing my foot to my crutch and making LAME jokes.. ha ha.. pun intended!

Another Trip to the Emergency Room

This is the second section to the events of July 8th 2008.

Soon it was decided that Andrew would need further medical attention.  So Andrew, Court, and Dad got in the truck went to the Emergency Room.  Andrew hobbled in, as people looked on amused, or so he thought.  They check in at the receptionist desk and then Dad left to run some errand in town.  Sitting nearby was an elderly woman bleeding considerably from her leg.  She refused help from the receptionist and all of the sudden got up, supposedly to go to the bathroom.  So off she went, leaving her first trail of blood of the night, but certainly not her last.

Andrew was called back and he and Court went to the patient room and the nurse asked what was wrong.  Andrew listed the injuries and exchanged his shirt for one of those remarkably flattering hospital gowns.  They began cleaning him up, and then he got wheeled off to have x-rays taken of his feet and ankles.  As he was there, he heard a disturbance from the next room over.  It was none other than Ms. Crazy Elderly.  “Don’t move your leg.” “No, put that down”  “I need you to keep you leg very still”   “We can’t do these xrays if you don’t stop moving”  This went on for a full five minutes or so.  The xrays were finished and Andrew got wheeled back to his room.  As he was positioned he looked out into the hallway and lo and behold, there was a complete trail of very bloody footprints.  The nurses and staff were working to clean it up as quick as they could.

The doctor came in and gave Andrew the results of the xrays.  “Your right ankle is just sprained pretty badly, and your left foot is pretty suspicious.  I want to get a CT scan on it so that we can be sure of what we have.”  So a few minutes later, in comes a cool dude: facial hair, giant earings, funnily fitting hospital clothes, you get the picture.  He wheels Andrew off to the CT room and tells him “Okay I am going to need you to switch into this other platform. “  He wouldn’t let him take the one step to switch, but instead took the time to manuever the beds to touching. “I’m not going to have you walk at all, because if the doctor is having you do a CT, then something is screwed up in there.”  So there he was for what seemed like forever and then got wheeled back to the room. Soon our elderly friend came wandering out again, complaining to the staff that the doctor was taking too long.  They guided her back to her room for the last time. So, goodbye Elderly Loon.  After a few moments, the Tech, a youngish man comes in and finishes treating the scrapes across the back.   Then, several of the most choice moments of all.  “Has your hand been cleaned up yet?”  “Nope it still hasn’t”  So he squirts some local pain killer on it.  ” Rub that in, and then go scrub it in the sink.”  Andrew looked over his shoulder and found the sink to be about ten feet away.  “You’ve got to be flippin’ kidding me,” he thinks to himself.  Instead of straight obedience, he just pulls the little cart over and uses the solutions and gauze pads to get that cleaned off.  The Tech came in again and explained to Court how she should take care of Andrew’s wounds.   “You should probably put neosporin on his scrapes about twice a day, and if they start to scab up, wash them in 50/50 hydrogen peroxide/water.  Both Andrew and Court kind of smirked because of the hilariousness of it.

The doctor came back in, puts some staples in Andrew’s head and then left again.  A moment later he was back.  “Did you hear anything about your CT scan results?” “Nope” says Andrew as he thinks “Flip, I’m toast.  My foot is destroyed.”  “Okay.  There are at least 4 broken bones down there, so I am going to have you go see the Orthopedic Surgeon to figure out what to do about it.  But for now we’ll get you a splint and a brace so that the swelling can go down.”  So they did all of that.  And Andrew was free to hobble out of there on the crutches.  They found Dad in the lobby, working on his computer and headed home.  That was the excitement of the day.

To Make Things Exciting:

1.   Normally when people sprain there ankles, they get crutches to keep the weight off of them.  Instead I am told I can’t put any weight on the other foot, so therefore my sprained ankle, becomes my “good” foot.

2.  Right where you are supposed to hold onto the crutch, my hand is all scraped up and hurts to touch anything, let alone put your weight on it.

3.  I discovered that the most convenient way to move around my bedroom was crawling.  However, my left knee is bruised pretty badly, so even that hurts.

4.  Being bedridden isn’t fun enough.  If you are considering it, I recommend also scraping your back significantly, so that any movement whatsoever makes those hurt.

4b.  Also, to make it even funner to ride your bed, make sure that you don’t cut your head open on the side of your head, but do it straight in back, right where you would like to lie your head down.  Just like that.  Perfect

5.  What a joke.  “When you do go to work, you need to keep both of your feet elevated”  How in the world are you supposed to pull that one off.

6.  As we were coming home, we ran over a nail and the horse trailer has a flat tire.

That is all.

What an exciting night.

A day at the Rodeo

Once upon a time, Andrew decided that he wanted to go horseback riding.  He called Court Hahne and asked if she wanted to go with him.  She responded “Heck Yes!” and before you knew it, they had the horses loaded up in the trailer and were headed towards the beautiful Millville Canyon. He had been there a bunch of times before, and really enjoyed the ride.  This time however, events led him in a different dirrection.

He unloaded the two horses. Almost immediately, Molly broke loose and ran and got with some other horses that were acting up on the other side of the fence.  She started to follow these other horses along the fence line.  Before anything could be done she was three hundred yards down the fence.  Andrew analyzed the situation and decided that the best idea would be to finish saddling and preparing Dancer and then ride him to go get Molly.  So Andrew got everything ready, or so he thought.  As he started to climb into the saddle, Dancer took off, while at the same time relaseing the breath he had been holding.  This led to the saddle slipping to about a 45 degree angle, with Andrew holding on and trying to decide what to do while Dancer ran willy-nilly toward Molly.

A moment of decision came and Andrew bailed for his life.  He landed on his feet with cat-like skill and promptly crumbled to the ground and continued to bounce and skid through the dirt and rock until at last he came to a stop.  Court screamed and asked if he was okay.  Andrew, not wanting to worry her unessecarily stood up and started walking towards the horses.  OUCH.  Both of his feet really hurt; and his head kind of hurt, and his hand was filling with blood, and his knee stung.  From there he walked down about 300 more yards until the horses stopped scampering away.  Court came down as well and when she was close, Andrew turned his head. Court gasped, “Andrew, we need to go to the hospital.”  “What?  Why?” as he put his hand to the back of his head and felt the sticky goodness of fresh blood.  Oh wow,  hmm what to do, what to do.

Andrew and Court began the long walk back up to the trailer.  The rough terrain sent shots of pain through Andrew’s feet and legs.  Finally they arrived and got Dancer loaded into the trailer.  Then they loaded Molly in.  As Andrew went to close the back door, Molly bolted, ripping out the lease that attached her halter to the trailer.  She went off running at the other horses who had started this excitement.  “NOO, not again.  I can’t do this again” thought Andrew.  He started limping towards her and managed to catch her before she got too far.

Finally Andrew and Court were ready to go home.  On the way, Andrew tried a few unsuccessful phone calls to his personal physician of small accidents, Michelle Israelsen.  Also he called home and told Mom to get ready for some medical treatment.  When she verified that it was him that needed it and not Court, she was greatly relieved.  They arrived home about 9 o’clock and Dad took care of the horses while Andrew went inside as best as his feet would carry him.

To see how the rest of the night played out, please refer to “Another Trip to the Emergency Room”