Hell, Damn, Shit

I'm really annoyed and freaked out both right now. Some of this is really personal so if you are reading this (yeah right, I know no one reads this) and you don't want to know personal stuff, stop now.
So anyway, I was on depo-provera shot for like 8 years, then my doctors find out that I don't drink milk and that I am vitamin D deficient so they take me off of it and since then I have been on about 6 different birth control pills, all with some blah side effect that made me change.

Well, I started yet another new one a couple weeks ago, this one at my request, its a progestin only "mini-pill". I haven't been able to sleep, I am having off and on severe "groin pain" (told you it got personal), I am so jittery I have to move some part of me all the time, tap my fingers, move my foot, something. I have tingling almost all over my body. I feel like crap and it scares the hell out of me. I took one about 6pm today, I'm not going to take anymore and really really hope this goes away. If not then something bad is wrong and I don't want to think about what it could be. All of this is giving me panic attacks which is making all of the above worse.

There and Back Again

Apparently this is turning into a travel blog, I only post when I travel, but I am not consistent even then. Oh well, no one reads it anyway. We left for Walnut Grove, Minnesota a little after 4pm on Wednesday to go camping for the weekend. Here we are crossing the Boone bridge, just getting started, its about a 10 hour drive.

It got dark pretty quickly, but the drive was not bad. We had planned to stay over in the Comfort Inn in Mason City, Iowa, but when I called about an hour out, they were completely booked. I called the Country Inn there and they said they had 6 rooms left. We arrived in Mason City about quarter til 12 right about the time a huge storm was getting ready to let loose, the lightning was streaking across the sky like crazy. There were 2 other people waiting to check in when we got in, and their computer was acting up, so it was 12:30 before we got to our room, just ahead of the rain. We slept well, got up about 9 and headed out again. .

It was a dreary day, but other than a heavy mist it didn't rain on us

It took another 3 hours to get to Walnut Grove, we got there just after 12:30 on Thursday. Matt dropped me off and picked up John and they went to get the camper we were borrowing for the weekend. I sat in the sun and got a bit of work done while waiting on them to come back. While waiting on them I heard a commotion at the campsite across from us, where Jim and Carol were staying. I went over, it was a baby mouse. This thing was TINY! barely had its eyes open. Carol wouldn't come near it, Lynn and I finally took it out in the woods, hoping it would find its nest. Matt and John came back with the camper and lunch
.

More nature at lunch, a chipmunk rushed Matt and he screamed like a little girl. Then I found a Cicada which hadn't come out of its shell yet.
It took us awhile but we finally got the camper setup.
by that time the Cicada had come out of its shell

It later got stepped on, I didn't take a picture of that.
Later that evening we sat around the campfire for awhile then headed off to bed.

A board was missing in the camper where one of the seats makes into a bed, so I slept on a smaller than twin size "bed". Every time I turned over during the night I felt like I was on a spit. It was also cold as a witches' tit! We froze our asses off all night. I actually enjoyed the push the button shower, at least it was hot!

Friday was relatively uneventful. We went into Tracy to get groceries and to the hardware store to get a board so I didn't have to play turkey on a spit again. Came back, attempted to make some pizza pudgie pies. Burned the first batch, Mark made his perfectly on the first try of course, we ate the burned ones anyway and made some more. Took a walk down to the lake with Charlotte, Amabelle was already down there swimming with Carol and some of the cousins.

Oh, I almost forgot all of my "injuries". I had smashed my finger trying to get a cast iron dutch oven out of the truck on Thursday evening. Friday, after getting the board for the bed, I was trying to get it in place ans cut my finger just above the cuticle, that hurt like hell. Then while building a fire for the pies, I shoved a splinter under my fingernail. That was the extent of my injuries, Ama burned her hand and fell once, a few of the other kids had minor falls but overall no major injuries to anyone. John and Ellen had to go to his 45th class reunion Friday night so we were left in charge of the dog. Friday night we sat around the fire, drinking beer and shooting the shit. It was not nearly as cold as the previous night.
Saturday I decided to cook breakfast over the campfire when I got up (well it was about 10:30 before I started cooking). It took me half an hour to get a fire started because the wood we had was green. Finally got it going, and cooked some sausage in a cast iron skillet. That was fine, other than the fact I almost died from the smoke inhalation. Then went to put the eggs in it, they were frozen. Well, only two frozen, the rest were just very....cold. finally got that made, and ate, along with quite a bit of ash. Jen and I then took some of the kids and the dog down to the lake for a walk
We saw some interesting 'artwork" on the benches.
Lucky Ama got a piggy back ride on the way back to camp.
Jen and I then went into Walnut to go to the liquor store. The lady there told us we smelled like camping. Got the booze (long island ice tea, Margarita, 3 kinds of beer and mike's hard lemonade). Came back, had lunch (don't remember what) and started drinking (yeah, it was about 2pm). None of us got really drunk but we pretty much drank solid the rest of the night.
Mark and Matt played some beanbag toss They won, Mark always wins at games.
Did some more campfire sitting Saturday night
Sunday we got up about 9 and started packing up. We left to take the camper back to Cottonwood about 12:30. We stopped at John and Ellens to work on their PS3 and computer, then headed back to the campground to say goodbye to everyone.
We got on the road a little after 3 heading back to St. Louis. 10 hours of corn fields
bean fields and wind farms later we got home about 1am. We didn't unload anything, we went directly to bed. It was nice to be home.

weird

well didn't land until almost 9:20 mountain time (10:30 central), so almost an hour late, then the got my bag, the car rental guy was weird, and the car a long walk, they free upgraded me from a economy to a caravan (that's a VAN). then the weird car guy left his "lunchbox" in the car, he called me and i Had to turn around and bring it back to him. GPS sent me some weird way to the hotel, but then, you can't really call it a hotel. Its obviously old 70's (or earlier) apartments converted into "suite" hotels. dirty. smells. dark. scary back of building where my "room" is. one internet connection is wired and in the kitchen. bed has two small lumpy pillows. ick. So i called the Marriot and have a reservation for there for the rest of the week, too late to change tonight. so i'll get a few hours sleep and then check out of here tomorrow and go to training and checkin to the marriot after that. hopefully they won't give me any greif about checking out early.
ugh, its after midnight my time now so i'm going to get some sleep.
ttfn.
more tomorrow.

On the road again

Sitting in the airport, waiting for a flight to salt lake city. Dinner was a jr whopper. I really need to find a way to get over this travel anxiety, its annoying to me and everyone else.
Training starts at 8:30 tomorrow morning, I really hope everything is not over my head.
My backpack is coming unsewn around the back zipper this makes me very sad, I love this backpack. Guess its from stuffing too much stuff in it to travel.
That's all for now, more later.
I sent this from my blackberry, so forgive my typos

-Kristi

St. Louis Flooding

I drove downtown today to take a look at the flooding. The water is up to the bottom steps of the arch, and has covered the street along the river (lenore k. sullivan blvd).
















Washington Avenue is partially flooded as well. (This is from the top of the 2nd street parking garage looking towards downtown)


















The park ranger I talked to said he didn't see what the big deal was, that in '93 it was over halfway up the steps to the arch. This picture was taken standing about halfway down the arch steps looking towards the Poplar Street Bridge (downriver).




Apparently a muskrat burrowed under the levee in Winfield last night and caused it to break, the quickly built a second barrier but it broke as well, Winfield is now flooded. Many other towns upriver are flooded now or in danger.

Canada Recap

Okay, so the blogging day by day while in Canada broke down when I actually prioritized sleep over blogging :)

So Monday was no Whales. Tuesday: went to sessions, some good, some not so good. Went to vendor fair and lunch, got some cool stuff. Left that early (saw everything already) and Pierre and I went walking around downtown for a bit, then drove over to the botanical garden. Turns out the garden is a 1.5 mile hike down a hill, we didn't go.

We did meet a nice young man, singing in the park, his name is Sean Wesley, he told us he made it to the top 60 on Canadian Idol this year before being kicked out (we agreed its rigged).






I then dropped Pierre off on campus and headed back to the hotel, but got distracted. Parked and walked up the pedestrian bridge over the river and took some pictures, then went to the hotel to pick up Christine. We then got stuck in traffic and were too late for the closing ceremony.





So we headed back to the hotel for an hour or so then went down to Officer's Square for the closing dinner. We were looking forward to the lobster, but turns out its COLD and is not as fresh as it should be. Christine was a little put off by the whole lobster thing. We ate, watched the changing of the guards then went off down to the Snooty Fox where we had a few drinks and called it a night.

The flight(s) back were not as bad as the ones to get there, at least I knew about the whole bag thing this time, which I had to do in Toronto. We had lunch at Tim Horton's in Montreal airport where the menu was all in french, but boy do they have good doughnuts. We had to do Toronto at a brisk walk to make it in 50 minutes but we did it without many issues. Got back to St. Louis about quarter til 5, got my back super fast and Matthew picked me up and headed home.

Overall it was a good trip, tiring, but we learned a lot. I'm home for a week then I head out to Salt Lake City for training.

canada, no whales

had breakfast in the hotel, no weird pancakes
went to good session on wikis and another on downloading.
had a very quick lunch. got on the bus for whale watching, rode 2 hours to St. Andrews, got on the boat. it was VERY foggy.








Didn't see any whales, much of anthing actually, except for herring and salmon farms.








came back (2 hrs on the bus, i took a nap), had a snack and a drink and am now going to bed. Not going to edit photos tonight, too tired, so the ones I uploaded are SOOC.

Fredricton, Sunday

Today was rather uneventful. Slept fairly well last night, considering. Went to breakfast (pancakes were weird), went to opening speech, which was great, the guy talked about all the things I was working on already and is a Flickr 365'er on top of it! ate fruit. went to a session. ate lunch. went to a session, came back to hotel for a nap (didn't get to sleep but did get to rest). went to the pub for drinks. ate dinner. did the t-shirt exchange (mine has a devil goat on it). went driving around with some others a bit, got caught in an infinite loop around/across the river. went to the pub for drinks and 2nd dinner (didn't eat much at the first one). There is a great beer, Rickards White, yummy. Don't worry, pub is in walking distance of the hotel, less than a block away actually :)
Going to make a couple phone calls and call it a night, try to get some more sleep.

Canada 2.0

Well Montreal airport is now my least favorite. Tops Denver and Cincinnati and LAX for its horribleness.

The day started off early, up at 4am, at the airport at 5:15, flight left at 6:50. First leg was to Chicago, it was fine. We were a little worried because we had less than an hour to change planes, but we had plenty of time.

2nd leg was to Montreal. First off we de-plane in the middle of nowhere and have to walk a long ways to get to customs, where we stood in line not long then went through to "connection" to get our next flight. We were in good shape because we had 2 hours here, and were looking forward to getting some lunch. Well, at the "connections" gate the guy tells me that I have to go pickup my check back (that i had checked through to fredricton, btw), and re-check it through customs. Well, I go where he told me to go, had to wait about 15 minutes there for my bag, then the customs guy asked me 'why did you forget your bag'?!?!? Then we get the run-around from 4 different people on where I am supposed to take my bag to re-check it. Finallyget that done (thanks secuity guard stranger who finally helped me). By the time we got BACK through security (where they took my $3 water), we had only 20 minutes to get a somewhat stale sandwich and get the plane. (lovely little prop plane, but I did get a nap).

We finally got to Fredricton, and thank goodness it was a a very small airport. Got my bag (yeah!), got the car and go to the hotel, which is nice!









Checked in for the conference. Went to a short reception thing, then came back to the hotel.

I took a short walk along the river, then came back to the room, played a couple games of Fluxx with Matthew and now am getting ready for bed. The time zone (2 hrs ahead) is messing me up, my 6:30am wakeup call will be like 4:30am for me, and since I won't get to sleep til late (I know me in hotels), I will be tired tomororw. This is a pretty place though.

More tomorrow.

playing in a traveling band

lots of traveling coming up soon.

I'm leaving for Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada on Saturday, coming back on the 25th

Then the family is coming down from MN for the week of the 4th (get to see the baby!)

After that I am leaving for Salt Lake City, Utah on the 7th of July until the 11th.

Then going down to Mom's sometime later in July.

Random Bits from my life 6/14 edition

hope you are having a good weekend. here is some randomness from my life.

The squash and gourds I planted in those pots out back are starting to bloom, and I haven't touched them since I stuck them down in the dirt!

The stella's look a little worse for wear from all the storms, but are very pretty anyway.

The Yucca's look nice this year

And remember how I told you I wanted some poker plant? Well it seems I have some and didn't know it!

My rose out back bloomed, but only stayed pretty for a couple days and got rained off

There was a red-tailed hawk sitting up in a dead tree right outside my building the other day at work, I got some shots but they didn't turn out great