Not Much New

The pain of beginning another new school year is setting in: I just had my dad cosign my $16,000 loan, and I put $270 on my credit card in books (with another $100 one to buy still). Plus, I still have to buy things like plates, utensils, a toaster, pots and pans, and all that good stuff. This will be the poorest beginning of a year yet. It will also be the last beginning of a year, so I guess I can deal with it.

Only one week left until I find out once and for all if I am a good candidate for LASIK surgery, and hopefully only one week and one day until I get the actual surgery. I can't wait. My glasses are driving me crazy.

Nothing else new here. xo Rachel

Out of Boredom

...comes the thoughts that have passed through my mind in the past few hours:

1.) I can't believe how fast boredom sets in at work sometimes. I have been sitting here for the past two and a half hours, doing absolutely nothing. Yes, I have a book (Jane Eyre currently) and yes I have my computer, but there's only so long that I can sit on my computer looking at the same pages over and over again, and the two girls who are in here are making it hard to concentrate on Jane Eyre. I only have a week left here, and on days like today, I am totally okay with that. The worst part about it is that my whole family plus Grandma are up here for the week, and it's a beautiful day outside, and I can't be at home with them.

2.) I've been fooling around on facebook, looking up old classmates of mine, and it amazes me how connected they all are still. I lost out on a big part of the networking that went on senior year since I was at SCSU, but I never imagined that they would all still be hanging out together and dating each other. It's also fascinating to see who has stayed friends, and who has became friends with people they were never friends with in high school. Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I had been content to hang around Princeton...

3.) I have at least ten days left of wearing my glasses full time, but I'm ready for it to be over now. I love my glasses, but not having the vision range that I'm used to, as well as the discomfort of wearing them in the hot sun is making me very impatient for surgery. I'm crossing my fingers for a surgery date the day after my pre-op.

4.) It amazes me how different my siblings and I can be; after all, we all grew up in the same house with the same set of rules, and yet, we are so completely different. And not just the differences that come from being different people, I'm talking about differences in the way we treat other people and the respect we have for others. It baffles me.

5.) I am moving into an apartment in about three weeks, and I've been trying to figure out what all I need to bring with me/purchase before I get there. There's something that's eluding my mind, I know there is, and it's driving me crazy.

6.) I wish that I had a sewing machine up here. And a piano.

7.) I'm bored.

love Rachel

Facebook Statuses

I always have thoughts going through my mind about what I would set my Facebook status to if I had internet access, but I don't so I can't put them up. Here's a list of the ones that have gone through my head over the past few days:

* ... is SO happy! What a wonderful weekend it was!
* ... woke up singing "I Wish You Jesus" today
* ... came home to an infestation of carpenter ants :o(
* ... is beyond thankful for the gift of some amazing new friends
* ... will forever be grateful to the TEC 506 boys for reinforcing some important values
* ... thinks that the carpenter ants need to stop biting
* ... has two weeks left
* ... hates having to get out of the shower to answer the phone
* ... "freezie pops are addicting"
* ... is starting to realize how lonely this year will be without certain people
* ... is sitting four feet from the television watching Fantasia, just like a three year old
* ... can't wait to move into the apartment with Erin
* ... is looking forward to girl's night with Jeni and Claire
* ... dislikes not being able to do her own laundry; one of her sisters inevitably ends up with some of her clothing
* ... still hasn't stopped smiling
* ... has interacted with more spiders in the past three hours than necessary

I guess that even if I did have access to the internet, I probably wouldn't have posted all of these though. I really hate it when people update their statuses every ten minutes. Anyway, that's a good enough synopsis of my week, so my work here is done. love!

What a Day, What a Day

The exterminator came today... It turns out that we have carpenter ant colonies everywhere on our property! He showed me three nests that he had found, and that was before I left to come back to work; he hadn't even started in on the crawl space yet :o( Some other pieces of good news that he shared with me: the main support beam for our cabin is quite molded and he thinks there is a gas leak somewhere in the place. I'm not very excited about this whole situation...

That's all for now! xo

Ants and Spiders

It was like a horror movie: I walked into the cabin yesterday afternoon when I got home from work, and the place was FULL of ants! They were on the floor, on the table, on the counter, on the rugs.... they were everywhere! Huge ants; carpenter ants. I smashed as many of them as I could with my shoe, but they kept pouring out of all sorts of hidden places. Now, I'm not usually one to be scared of little bugs; in fact I saved a spider last weekend, but that's a story for after I finish this one. However, the fact that they just kept coming out was freaking me out a little bit (okay, a lot a bit), so I grabbed my phone, headed outside, and called my parents in a slight panic. I ended up walking down to Norm and Cathy's, where I got ant spray, and sprayed the cabin for them before heading outside for the rest of the evening. I was terrified of going to bed and waking up with them all over me, but as Ethan so kindly told me, I'm not sweet enough for them to crawl on me, so I made it to bed and fell asleep eventually. Now I'm just waiting to hear from mi padre as to when the exterminator can come.

As to the spider. We were decorating the dining room last weekend, and I found a spider in the sink. In my opinion, he wasn't that big (I had a huge wolf spider in my dresser last summer, and anything smaller than that is NOT big) but everyone else thought he was huge. In actuality, he was probably the size of my thumb between the tip and the first knuckle. Anyway. I just let him be and used the other sink, and he was fine until we started cleaning up after dinner. People kept dumping water on him and trying to kill him! I wasn't very happy about that, so I stayed by the sink and protected him until everyone was gone. As brave as I was acting about this spider though, I didn't really want to touch him, so I did what every woman does: I convinced a boy to take him outside for me :o) It made me very happy to see him crawl away outside, and that's the end of that story.

So it's been a buggy couple of days, and I'm hoping that I don't have to deal with any more of them any time soon. xo

TEC

I don't even know where to begin. Okay, how about... here: As many of you know (and many of you probably don't), I worked a TEC weekend this past weekend in Belle Prairie. Yes, I took off the busiest weekend of our summer here at the Resort to go to a church retreat, and I have ZERO regrets about it. This was my third time making an appearance in the old Belle Prairie school house, and it was just as great as the other two times I was there. I got very little sleep, but had tons of laughs, hugs, sways and prays, singing circles, cries, hours of work.... I could go on and on. I met over thirty new people this weekend, and left with at least twenty new friends. We worked hard, prayed hard, made a lot of people very happy, and had an all around amazing weekend. I can't even explain to you how wonderful it is to take a part in something that is so much bigger than I am, nor can you ever understand the intense feeling of peace that comes in such a short time (unless you've ever made a TEC of course), so I'm not going to try. Suffice it to say, that leaving the newest additions to my family last night was tough. It was hard to leave the best source love that I've ever found outside of my blood family to come back up here to my lonely cabin, and I'm already counting down to August 8th when I get to go back and see everyone again. I met a bunch of people around my own age, and a number of them live in the St. Cloud area, so I'll be seeing a lot of them when I get back to school- yay!- and I also met the Epiphany Church Ladies of Coon Rapids, and have plans to go down and visit on my short break in between work and school. But, as hard as it was to give those "one last hug"s and to drive away, it was still great to get back up here, call work, and find out how much I've been missed. These next two weeks will go by fast, and then it's back to school, so I'm going to do my best to enjoy the remaining time here. If you've never made a TEC, I strongly encourage you to consider it, and if you have any questions about it, ask me- I can talk about the TEC experience for a very long time.

I love you all!

Painting

This week has been an adventure at work unlike any other week of work here. If that makes sense. Anyway, we sent all of the guests packing early this week (aka they checked out) and haven't checked anyone else in. Except a little old man in his camper, but I haven't even seen him at all, so it's kind of like there's no one here. All of the cabins are empty, and things are super quiet around here, so we've been tackling jobs that wouldn't normally get done. I've done multiple small jobs: picking up sticks after the big storm that went through Sunday morning, hauling 40 lbs bags of softener salt, moving furniture, cleaning lots of box fans, and whatnot. But my big job for the week, which took up the first three days of it, was to paint. I let it be known that I love painting a while back, and since Bunny hates it, she took advantage of my love and set me to work. I started off just painting the bathroom in cabin 14, which was surprisingly harder than I had anticipated. Those bathrooms are tiny, and there isn't much room to maneuver. I spent a lot of time precariously balanced on a wobbly ladder, trying to make sure I wasn't getting the dark sea-green paint on the ceiling. I worked for a few hours, getting the first coat on, and then came back in the afternoon to do the second coat. The next day, I started in on the main rooms in the cabin. I spent well over five hours painting, up and down the ladder, trying to stay somewhat cool in the insane humidity.... I couldn't finish it all in one day, so I got up and came over in the pouring rain yesterday morning to finish up in the kitchen. It was satisfying, as painting always is, and I love how the place looks now. I got to bring over my iPod, and listen to music and dance around, when I wasn't on the ladder. My body is sore, and I have a big bruise on my left calf from where I had to lean on the rung of the ladder to keep my balance, and I would do it all again if we didn't have a gigantic group of people checking in on Saturday.

Three weeks left.

love Rach

Stuff

I have officially set the date for when I come home, and it is coming up way too fast for my liking! I am hoping to get LASIK eye surgery done before I go back to school, and my pre-op exam is on August 6th, which makes my return home date August 5th. It's still three and a half weeks away, but it feels like that's no time at all. Anyway. I'm in a list mood again, so here's my list for today:

* I am almost done with my online class (yay!) I just have the course final left to take and a short essay, for lack of a better word, entitled Taking Psychology With Me. I assume that this is just to get feedback on the course.

* The weather has been gorgeous other than the big storm we had last night that blew down some trees at the resort and left me without power once again, this time for six hours.

* I mowed the lawn for the first time in over a year on Friday. It wasn't my favorite experience in the world.

* I've been trying to get back into running for the first time since I quit in 8th grade. Any tips for making this an easier task would be greatly appreciated.

* Even though I don't really want to leave here, there are two things that are making it appealing right now. One is that I'm lonely. And a little bored. The other is that I'm really excited to move into my apartment and finally live with Erin again.

* As much as I can't wait to get back to school, it's going to be weird because a lot of my friends will be abroad. This fact is starting to sink in, mainly because my first friend to go goes tomorrow, and I really don't like it.

* It's also starting to sink in that this is my last year of school ever, unless I decide to go to law school someday.

* I'm sitting at work, completely alone, and I'm really bored but I can't think of anything else to add to my list.

So I'm done for now. Enjoy the weather as much as you can (I know it gets stickier the further south you go) and I'll see you when I see you. love to all.