‘Spring’ Break

…or lack thereof.

My view this morning:

vs Gretchen’s view this morning:

I have nothing to say about this.

A Taste of Spring

The smell of campfire smoke has once again permeated West 392a.  However, it is mixed with spring air, so I am definitely not complaining.  Though I know the weather is bound to get cold again before spring actually arrives, this weekend tease was enough to raise my spirits quite a bit.  (side note… I wrote this on Monday… now that I am posting in on Wednesday, it is snowing again.  I’m hanging on to the blissful memories of warm weather now, and repeating over and over again that it WILL come back eventually.)  Anyway, our friends decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather as much as we could, and Saturday was spent hiking at McConnell’s Mill.  I failed to think about the fact that the sun would not be shining in the caves and they would therefore still be icy, but it just added an extra challenge… and some extra bruises.  Soon after we got there I thought it would be hilarious to break two icicles off the side of a cave and refer to them as my ‘ice daggers.’  (In case there was any question as to my age… I’m thinking 5 is a good answer.)  As I charged into the caves with a ‘dagger’ in each hand, what I assumed to be a puddle was actually a sheet of pure ice.  I pretty much face planted and my ice daggers shattered into a zillion pieces.  This may be the reason for the discrepancy in bruise number between Gretch and myself, ha.

After hiking around and climbing in caves I was near certain I would not fit through, we headed up to a field and laid on rocks in the sun.  I had to laugh at the fact that I went from wearing a coat in an ice coated cave to wearing a t-shirt in the sun within 10 minutes.  I am so thankful for warm weather and friends to enjoy it with.

Adventuring near the field led to the discovery of a dead deer skeleton, and a large drain pipe jutting out of the side of a hill.  Since we are easily amused, these both provided great entertainment.

The guys ripped the antlers off, and then Jesse used one of them to ‘hook the rib’ and throw the skeleton into a large puddle nearby.  Because, why wouldn’t you do that?  (Don’t answer that.)

After determining that, even if we all linked up, we would not be able to fit all the way through the drain pipe, we settled for simply throwing rocks toward the opening from 60 feet away.  (If you know me, you know I cannot throw rocks, or anything else for that matter, 60 feet.  So I did not exactly participate in this activity, beyond praying that someone would just finally make it so we could do something else, ha.)

Note the pipe they were aiming for circled in red in the upper right area.  After more than 20 minutes of trying, everyone finally gave up, and we moved on.

Thanks to Tim for taking and sending me the pictures from McConnell’s!

Sunday’s enjoyment of the weather came in the form of bible study outside and then a walk to dairy queen. Later on in the evening we took the first waterfall trip of 2013 and enjoyed a bonfire.

Shannon found a giant marshmallow in the foods while looking for firewood… Plugge was not about to try it.

Yes, those are the antlers from the deer carcass.  “I just want to be a full deer!”

The fire started as a small teepee, which eventually collapsed and turned into a log cabin.  Which eventually became a teepee again once more wood was put on.  Which form of fire building is better seems to be a much debated issue.

Someone roasted the marshmallow and then Peach tried some of it…

Overall, it was a wonderful weekend, and makes me so excited for when spring decides to show up for real.  Hopefully that will be sooner than later, because I am soooo over the cold.

Extremes of Life

People often talk about the highs and lows of life, but life is usually pretty high here on the fourth floor in 392A.  This past  week may have been a fantastic example of these ‘extremes of life’. MG and I must say we have had some moments of pride in the past week. We both made some solid plans for our futures and I chose a post-grad school. MG also succeeded in eating an entire bag of jelly beans and I downed a sizeable portion of Valentine’s M&Ms. (The M&Ms have to be finished once they’re out of style… it’s a hard task.)

However, the week had its fair share of lows and embarrassing moments as well. I would share the lows, but we’re sticking to the entertaining points of the week, so please just sit back and enjoy this week’s most embarrassing moment: the t-shirt ‘oops’. To give a little back story, I love designing t-shirts. I’ve done quite a few and spend an obnoxious amount of time on each design. Okay, now for the good part. My most recent design was one of my favorites… The organization leaders loved it as well, so 40 shirts were quickly ordered after the artist at the t-shirt company approved it. Now here’s a disclaimer- at least 5 people saw this design before it was printed. Yet, this is how it turned out:

How does this look to you? Put on your Sherlock brain caps and stare nice and hard at this for a moment. My embarrassment will be slightly eased if you don’t notice it at first… Yes… count those fingers- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… and 6. What?! May I add that I used my own hand as a model for this. Oh yeah, I’m also a biology major taking Human Physiology. No big deal. It just took me 2 weeks to notice the mistake (and by ‘mistake’ I mean my hidden artistic meaning) and by that time these lovely t-shirts were already being sold across campus. I am thankful for one thing though- I forgot to sign the design. I tried to keep it a secret, but I just couldn’t bear the thought of people 1. thinking that I had couldn’t count and 2. not enjoying my embarrassment with me.  So, there you have it- the t-shirt oops.