They All Must Die

If you have been to my place in the last 3 years, then you will know I have a serious weed problem, and that is has been getting worse each year. This year I'm taking care of business. I have vowed to kill all (or at least 95%) of my weeds. This is all new to me. I never have needed to take care of a lawn, and have never learned how, which is I suppose why mine has gone to pot.

I'm not sure if I'm doing anything right, but I gave the whole lawn a dose of weed killer this afternoon. I plan on hitting it every weekend until they are gone. I will have my vengeance on them. I will be victorious.

My only concern is that with the amount of weeds I have that once they are dead I might have a lot of bear spots. I'm not sure what my lawn/weed ratio is, but I would think 50% is generous. We will see by week end what is left!

Sushi

I made my first sushi roll yesterday at a friend's place. There are some pictures of what we did on Karin's blog entry. Mine looked very similar to the picture of her's. Anyway, it was surprisingly easy to make it. Simply layer and roll! How much easier could it get? I'm not a big fan of fish, but there is something about sushi that screams "cultural experience" so I couldn't pass it up.

Dogsitting

I've always wanted a dog. Ever since I was a little kid I've loved playing with them, taking them on walks, and seeing their excitement when they see me. This weekend I had the chance to take care of my friend's dog and it reminded me again about those childhood dreams. It also reminded me that I don't have time for one. Every 8 hours or so I had to come home to let her out, something I needed to consciously be aware of. I had to remember that if I was out for the day I needed to come back for her, take care of her. I think that's called responsibility.

I find this to be interesting in that after living on my own for so long I just have to think about me all the time. It is a rather selfish existence. Not that it can be avoided when I'm on my own, but it is something I never really saw happening. I know the dog analogy is a little strange, but it got me thinking.

Mother's Day Corpses

In traditional Mother's Day form, I went to look at corpses with dear Mom today. It isn't quite as bad as it sounds, we went to the Body Worlds exhibit at the science museum. They are real corpses that have been treated by a plastics process to preserve and pose them in an effort to display various parts of the body. It was absolutely fascinating. As a nurse, my mom loved it. I found it a bit disturbing, but at the same time was mesmerized.

One of the more interesting things to me, was how they displayed the circulatory system. They pumped special plastics through the blood vessels, let it harden, then placed the bodies in a solution used to burn away the flesh and bone. The result was a complete body shaped construct consisting of every vein, artery, and capillary in the body. I had no idea this type of thing was even possible to do. Amazing.

There was also a pregnant woman, with her stomach cut away so you could see the baby curled up inside. It was bizarre just to know this was all real. I couldn't help but wonder what each one of these people's stories were as I was staring at their skinless bodies.

One of the most surprising things to me, was that most of these bodies were out in the open, no protective glass or anything. While there are signs indicating not to touch them, there was nothing from stopping you. I imagine glass isn't required for this type of thing since most people, myself included, aren't overly excited about touching dead people.

In addition to the full bodies, there were organs throughout the exhibit that were partially dissected to look at. I can't think of an organ that wasn't on display individually. If one wasn't on display, I'm not aware that it exists. This was truly like slicing apart the human body yourself and digging around without getting your hands soaked in blood or having to do 20 years to life for doing so.

I'd highly recommend you check out this exhibit if it is in your town.

How About That Weather?

Holy Moley! That was a serious storm tonight! My whole house was shaking with the thunder and the yard was filling with hail. Here you see a picture of my deck. Hail is just too cool. Aside from the millions of dollars in damage to everything it touches, how can't you love it? The concept of balls of ice falling from the sky seems so strange. That there is enough wind in some of these storms to keep ice whipping up and down through a system long enough for it to get that big is the kind of thing that makes a guy wish he was the small town local TV meteorologist that the whole city makes fun of.

To the left you can see my steps. This happened in all of about 2 minutes. That is another interesting thing about hail, it comes down in no time flat. One second it is raining, the next you have this much ice on the ground. Then, just as quickly as it started, it is over. Have I mentioned how cool hail is?

Where I've Been

There is a lot to say. My girlfriend has been in town for the past two and a half weeks, so when I haven’t been working, I’ve been hanging out with her. We have been crazy busy. There have been nights of meeting up with her friends here, a grill out at the lake, a day of canoeing with my Dad, a weekend trip to Omaha to visit her Mom, dinner with a few of my friends, an evening out for chocolate fondue, an evening in for a neighborhood walk, my cousin’s concert and a wedding (in which she did an awesome job singing, you should hear her!). That is the short of where I’ve been the past couple weeks.

As you may have guessed, it has been awesome having my girlfriend around for the past 2.5 weeks. That is the longest period of time we have been able to see each other on a regular basis since she left for NYC 8 months ago. Although we have been able to visit each other quite frequently considering the distance, it isn’t the same as just living life within 25 miles of each other. I must say, after the past couple weeks I’ve learned I like 25 miles a lot more than 1,200! There is too much to say about the last 2.5 weeks to detail it here so I won't even try. If you want to hear about it, call or email me.

My sister just became SCUBA certified last month and has the bug big time. She went to Belize this past week, and has some amazing stories from it. She has now seen the stuff I’ve only dreamed about seeing. It doesn’t seem right since I’ve been certified now for 7 years. There are few things in this world I enjoy more than SCUBA diving, and there are few things in this world that I do less of. I guess it is a combination of cost and location. Expensive equipment and cold murky local water slows down the SCUBA process.

I’m also getting the bug to get back into playing guitar. I’m not sure how much time I’ll actually have to do it, but I’m going to try to play from time to time. Don’t be surprised if this is the last you hear of guitar playing, it might become less of an option in about a month once I’m drowning in school work.

I registered for classes last week for the summer and am ready to roll! I’ll be taking Operations Management and Financial Management. I’m starting to feel the hurt that is tuition, I just need to keep reminding myself that it is an investment.