This is where we jumped off of the "cliff," I had been hoping that I would have a better pic of the drop, but you this one just has you looking out from where you jump.

view of mine pit





more mine pit.

I'm not in much of a mood to write, but I will say that I did not escape my little mishap unscathed... I have a pretty large bruise on my thigh (might take a picture if it gets colorful enough) and I bit my lip, so the inside is a little swollen. I will have to go back to try to capture how clear the water was, and maybe try to get a shot of the drop, although I bet it's more impressive from the bottom up and I'm not sure it will be warm enough for me to jump again.

fun weekend

Life got going again (my excuse for not writing), and there was a lot of it this weekend.

We had Dave's brother and sister-in-law as well as another couple come up to visit. His brother has two 4-wheelers that everyone got to try out and one of which I drove into a small group of trees. His brother (M) was a great teacher, going over the most important things to know and addressing issues as they came up. I just needed to practice driving on a slope without trees before going into slightly more difficult terrain. I tried to keep the steering straight, but it seems that you need to be turning up the hill in order to continue straight. When I started heading into the woods I panicked and actually gave it more gas until I was so close to the trees that death actually crossed my mind as a possible outcome (I may have been thinking over-dramatically, but it happened kind of fast and the only protective gear I had on was a helmet and goggles). At the last minute I let off the gas and squeezed the handle brakes. I still hit a group of very small trees but I didn't fly off the vehicle and seemed unhurt. M was good about looking back periodically and (to my dismay) realized pretty quickly that I had disappeared from view. He came back and pushed me out of the mess I had gotten into (I was now STUCK on the baby trees). Soon enough we were on our way out to the mine pit. The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful and I became more cautious and more experienced. There was a very frightening hill I went down, but no other mishaps on the 4-wheeler. There was a fantastic view of the mine pit (which has filled with crystal clear water) and even a 22 foot cliff to jump off... which I'm incredibly proud to say I did. I didn't plan on swimming but there were four people jumping off and I knew I'd regret it if I didn't give it a try. It was incredibly scary once I had decided and was standing at the top, but the scare made the water temperature nothing to deal with. It wasn't really cold in the first place, but I don't know that I would have noticed since I had the adrenaline going. M decided that he'd better try too, very exhilarating experience. We finally made our way back to the house where we bragged to the others of our amazing feat (yes, I'm still oozing pride, sorry).

This morning I took the canoe out on my own for a couple hours. It was very peaceful and I was able to take a few photos of a crane. Unfortunately it kept flying away so none are very detailed. I will add some photos later, I need to charge my camera.

I'm already sad that our guests are gone. There was lots of eating/snacking, and a fun game of Settlers (of Catan). Dave pointed out that I sure like to be around people for someone who's semi-anti-social. The truth is that I'm not so much anti-social as I am a homebody. I don't necessarily like to go into town unless I really need something.

Jobs... I've been putting this off for a long time so I want to at least give some details. Dave found out that rather than teaching 4th-12th graders, he will actually be teaching kindergarten through 12th grade. Everyone. He also found out that his high school band has less than 15 kids and there is a pep band performance/game every week. The good news is that he likes most of the kids, the school is pretty laid back and friendly, and it's more experience.

I am working at a pharmacy in town. Currently I work on the sales floor ringing people up, starting to fit them for braces/boots/slings, and doing paperwork. I really enjoy it because I am busy (no time to be thinking about other things I could be doing with my time) and I love the people I work with. They are good people and most have a great sense of humor which is always a good thing.

That's all I have for now, but I will hopefully add those pictures soon.

Dave's car

Another long pause in blogging. I'm going to set my goals low and just write about car stuff today.

Dave had (yes, had... I'll get to that later), a Hyundai Sonata 2002 that served him well for years. I wrote about some of the things that happened around the time we moved such as helping my mom with the garage sale in GR, cleaning the apartment, the trip to OK, and finally moving up here to live. Sometime in that time period something, or rather, multiple somethings, climbed into Dave's car. I started working at the Pharmacy before Dave had to go to school so he did things around the house like mow the lawn. The lawn mower ran out of gas one of those days so Dave got into his seldom-used Sonata to get to God's Country (our gas station name, no lie). As he got in he decided that the car smelled like dead fish (he doesn't like fish to begin with, so it was really bad). Despite that, he turns the car on and sees that the air coming out of the vents is providing tufts of fur, and now despite even that he travels to God's Country and gets the gas. When I get home he is telling me about this issue and we decide the next course of action is to get the car looked at. I go to work the next day and he takes the car in. Turns out there's a "rat's nest" in the air duct, full of dead animals. I put quotes around rat's nest because it could have been mice or other smallish animals, we will never really know. The smell was so atrocious that the first mechanic would not deal with the clean-up and found someone else (with a stronger gut) to do the job. Even after cleaning out the inside area of the car and Dave cleaning the interior, the car smelled a little rancid. Dave's solution... air freshener, but not just any air freshener, Peach. Since Dave had not begun the school year yet he decided not to be literate and chose the orange colored air freshener thinking that it had an orange smell. Not so, this air freshener was distinctly labeled "Peachy Peach." At this point the car started taking on an artificially sweet, fruity dead animal scent, so delicious.

The car also started making additional sounds coming up to stop signs. Dave's parents were concerned about his commute to work and suggested that he needed an all-wheel drive vehicle. We knew we couldn't afford one of those fancy hybrids (plus I'm not sure if they have AWD), so we started looking at Pontiac Vibes. Started looking at, and ended up buying over Labor Day. Honestly, I'm a little bummed about the money, loss of money I should say, but if it really helps Dave in the winter it will be worth it. Hoping to pay it off sooner than later. I just hope that he doesn't forget how to drive stick completely, being that it's our first automatic. I'm loving the automatic locks and spacious cargo room (when you fold down the seats, it's pretty regular size when they're up) of the hatchback.

Eventually I will get to talking about our jobs, at least I got the car news out of the way.

backlogged stuff

Some random notes to start... a few posts ago I referred to my grandmother's house as uninhibited, although it may be, I meant to say it had been uninhabited. My parents came up to stay a few times, but for the most part it would have been empty if Dave and I hadn't moved in.
I would also like to write a bit about leaving Duluth and our road trip. I had four days and three nights to clean the apartment and pack up the remaining items in our Duluth apartment. Calci started having problems walking on the 3rd night and we put her down the day we needed to leave. We still had cleaning to do after that and I had to be in the twin cities by 6pm. I remember realizing as I passed West Duluth that I was leaving this town for good (or at least for the foreseeable future). I said goodbye to Duluth and tried to mentally be aware of the changes taking place. So much seemed to happen in such a short time. I went to a seminar about money (not about making money) that evening and woke up at a decent time so that Dave and I could get ready to leave for Iowa. We did a few errands and then made our way to West Liberty, IA, which is close to Iowa City. I have a good friend that lives down there and that I don't get to see very often. We only stayed the weekend but were able to see "family life" since she is married with two children (they are the perfect little family of four, although I know my friend is super excited for her husband to finally be finishing his doctorate - he's on track, it's just a long process), we ate at the Hamburg, a delicious burger joint with pie shakes, watched Rambo (the last one), and visited around a fire(pit). Next we drove down to see Dave's friend and college roommate just outside of Tulsa, OK. It was very relaxing lying around and watching movies and South Park. I was happy to visit the Gilcrease Museum of art, and we had a lot of fun at Grand Lake (of the Cherokees) where we were able to take out wave runners on the huge lake. Unfortunately we were not able to get to the ice cream tour because they were booked, but we had fun visiting, seeing another friend who came up from Texas, and doing various impressions including the Kool-Aid man. After about a week we finally returned to Minnesota and began to actually live here in Grand Rapids.
Again, thought I would have more time, but I will try to write about the jobs tomorrow. As a final thought I will say that Kiki (the calico cat) and Lydia (the ferret) have made a little headway in their relationship. Lydia does continue to initiate play, however, Kiki declines with a double swat of her claw-less paw. Sometimes Lydia just checks in with Kiki, and Kiki seems fine with that, even shows some interest with a little amicable sniffing of her own. I will leave you with a photo of a staged cuddle between the two. If Kiki is repeatedly pet and Lydia is barely woken from a slumber, they can be placed next to each other.

Still getting settled

Dave and I have still been "setting up house," although I guess it's more that I am moving things around and he's playing Star Wars on the playstation. He did sweep the house, as in, he swept the siding of all the cobwebs - with all of the spiders around here I'm sure they will return soon. I was saddened today by finding that I had run over a huge caterpillar. It was minty green and about the size of my thumb in both length and width, I guess that's what happens when it hangs out next to the garage :(

Over the weekend I was able to organize the kitchen - was incredibly excited about that (especially about alphabetizing the spices), put books into the shelves, and got a patch of dirt on the side of the house ready for a garden next year. It was full of weeds and as I soon found out, slugs.

This is a picture of the area half-weeded.


...and here is a picture of it completely weeded.


...the pile of weeds I tore out (barehanded!)


and some close-ups of the slugs




I need to go to bed now, but I should at least note that Dave has started work this week (no kids yet) and that I am becoming more proficient at my job. I hope to write more about it tomorrow but I keep thinking I'm going to have more time in the evenings and never seem to. It reminds me of the quote, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Grandma's House

Dave recently found employment at a school. He will be their music/band teacher... literally, he will teach all music. There is no choir and the kids don't get general music until 4th grade (unless their regular classroom teachers decide to integrate it). Since the new career is somewhat near my grandma's uninhibited house, we decided to move in. My parents hope to move here when they are able to retire, so Dave and I will just be keeping it occupied. What we enjoy the most about the house is that it's on a lake. It has been somewhat strange for me that we continue to live here (day in and day out) since I'm used to staying for maybe a week at most to just visit. My grandma now lives in an assisted living facility near-by and I am able to visit her.

We are farther away from most of the people (if not all of the people) we knew, but we are both employed (I just got a job as a pharmacy tech/salesperson at a drug store in town) and are living rent free for now. It will be fun getting used to living in a "smaller" town than we are both used to, and at times challenging getting used to living a bit further from civilization (we are not technically living within city limits so things like delivery and internet service are compromised). I find it very worth the small "sacrifices" we've been making, but I'm not extremely technology-minded, which seems to be the thing most affected... technology.

On a somewhat random note, but as mentioned in the previous post, we adopted my Grandma's cat - Kiki. She is a large calico in her later years of life. Lydia is interested in her but unfortunately Kiki is not the most playful cat and finds Lydia's playful nips to be very perturbing. They have made some headway in their relationship, but I don't think they will ever be best friends.

I intend to write more about life at "grandma's" and the new job, but for now I want to get back to a book I'm reading called "Fairest" by Gail Carson Levine.

Calci's death

I haven't written in quite a while partially because so much has happened (you'd think it would be the other way around since it's nice to have something to write about). I won't be writing about everything that happened in this post, but I wanted to address the death of our little ferret, Calcifer.

Calcifer, or Calci as we more often called her, was born some time in February 2006. I gave her the birthday of February 23rd because it's Saint Polycarp day which I like to celebrate (I'm not kidding - maybe I'll write about it later). I picked her out at a Petco in April of 2006 to be a friend for Lydia (our other ferret who I've had since December 2005). Calci was a sweet little ferret and also a little demon at times, particularly when nipping our toes or reacting to the dreaded squeak toy. She and Lydia got into many battles and then cuddled up together during nap times. Almost a year ago Calci started showing signs of Adrenal Gland disease, which is a common problem for ferrets. After talking to the vet it sounded like the major options were surgery (2-3 thousand dollars) which may lead to other problems, or shots that would treat the symptoms but not the actual disease. Since Calci was not in pain we had her get one of the shots and then monitored her over time. In late July (this year) she began to chew more at her side but still seemed very playful. Then one day she didn't come out of her cage. I pulled her out and pet her. Normally she is too squirmy for much cuddle time, but this time she just lay in my arms quietly. After a while I set her down to see if she would play, this is when I found out that she couldn't stand up, her back paws wouldn't hold her. Something was wrong with her back. When we were able to get her to the vet, she told us it was likely that because of the adrenal disease, Calci had also developed (an) insulinoma. The treatments were a combination of surgery and steroid shots with hopes that she would live one more year, so we chose to have her put to sleep. I never wanted her to suffer but it was a very difficult decision. If you are a pet-lover you will understand, if not just think of it as a silent friend/family member that has been in your life every day for 3 years. It is heartbreaking to be the one to chose your pet's fate, and it doesn't seem fair to have to chose when the pet can't easily communicate how it feels or it's desires. I was lucky enough to have Dave with me through this experience. We kept Calci with us after they injected her. We told her how much we loved her, what a good ferret she was, and that we were sorry. Not much time passed before she closed her eyes. She looked very peaceful and sweet. She has left a void that I do not wish to fill. I do not want another ferret even though I care very deeply about her and Lydia. Although Lydia looked for Calci and now is alone in the cage, she is a very independent little creature and seems to be doing well. She also has a new cat "buddy" that she likes to torment (poor kiki). More about the cat in another post. Since I believe in heaven, I am choosing to believe that Calci is there. I know it sounds sappy, but how can a loving God exclude such a sweet innocent? I hope that if I was wrong, I can be forgiven. It sounds like life would have been hard if that's what we had chose.

In loving memory of Calcifer 2/23/06 - 7/30/09