My Top Ten

Relyn has the best lists ever. I have serious list envy here. So I am stealing her top ten college classes list and making it my own. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. Chemistry 101 - Technically, I learned absolutely nothing new in this class. I tested out of it on the high school AP test but not the lab portion. I was a little too little fish in a big pond to figure out how to just sign up for the lab and not the lecture. Which turned out fine. I never opened the book, barely took notes, sat in the back of the class....and loved every minute of it. Dr. Lemay was an amazing teacher. Also, it was the first time I'd ever have a random guy point-blank tell me three weeks into class that A.) I was radiating smartness, and B.) I was cute - which translates to: he was going to sit by me whether I liked it or not the whole semester. Imagine my surprise, four years later, when I walked into my very own dining room to find that exact same guy and Jacko studying biology together. Whatev - we all know I'm smarter than Jacko and he met me first.

2. Calculus II - There's some kind of comfort level knowing you are going to have ten math problems every night for homework. It's even more rewarding when you can figure most of them out on your own, when the professor grades on effort not answer, and that it all means you don't have to take the final. Damn those Dam problems.

3. Organic Chemistry Lab - Lets see: consistently having to stay in lab until 10pm without dinner, having to wear those freakishly, geeky lab glasses, TA from Hell. Why is this one on the favorites list? It was good old, fashioned Chemistry bench work....I like that. It was taught by Dr. Rose who still whole-heartily believes in only assigning two As for the whole class....I worked my ass off and got one of them. I shared a lab bench with a train-wreck of a girl.....and we got along famously. I did all the chemistry so she wouldn't mess up the experiments and she entertained me with stories about how she actually showed up and completed an ENTIRE physics lab in a class that she wasn't even in. True story, Hilarious, and the best part is she was all kinds of cranky because her lab partner wasn't there so she had to do the whole thing by herself. hahaha

4. Museology - 100%, undeniably a filler class. I should have graduated a semester early but I didn't have good advising and I needed something to take. Should anyone ever need a museum curator or a taxidermist - I'm your girl. (I think I mangled preserved for life something like 15 kangaroo rats.)

5. Organic Spectroscopy - Hands on learning of mass spec techniques. A nice way to sum up years of book learning into something actually useful.

6. Anthropology 201 - the HARDEST freaking non-science class I've ever taken in my life. All in the name of core curriculum. Pre-requisites be damned. Apparently. I decided I didn't need to take them. I put in so much extra effort into this class, but in the end I actually found myself enjoying it. Something about studying the people you came from so you can see where you are headed in life. Very Earth Children series meets Three Cups of Tea.

7. Western Traditions - Not so much the content but the professor. Bernie Schopen. No need to say more. He was entertaining in every single class and I don't think he was trying to be. I loved him enough that I took the first two classes my freshman year and then refused to take the last required class until I could fit it into my schedule. I had to wait until senior year but it was worth it.

8. The Social History of Medicine - Black Death, Small Pox, STDs, influenza, you know - all the good stuff.

9. Biochemistry 400 - The class in which I gained all sorts of seemingly random facts. Like how Viagra was discovered. Do you know?? I do! Or the difference between NSAIDS and COX II inhibitors - think pain pills here. Or best fact ever.....did you know that if you have something sugary with your caffeine you will actually get a better caffeine buzz. True fact. Something about the glucose in your blood stream making the caffeine harder to absorb so it stays in your system longer. This would also NOT be class in which the professor asked me a completely easy, everyone should know the answer to this question-question in front of the whole class. Want to know what it was?

Dr. Schooley: Rebekah, how many volts are in a AA battery?


Me: Eh...Umm....(shrug)...."What is - I don't Know for $1,000, Alex?"

Not. Even. Joking. Do you know? Just off the top of your head like that? Am I the only one who doesn't just know these things? I do now, of course.


10. Intro to Biochemistry Lab - The class that weeds out the biology majors from the biochemistry ones. No joke. Wimpy biology students run for the hills when they get to this class. It was hard. The only Lab I had a practical in (Translation - in ADDITION to the cumulative final we were at random required to perform a biochemical lab technique and prove we know how to do it, no notes, no lab partner. Get it right you pass, get it wrong a big, fat ZERO on the final.) No joke. But really I learned everything I needed to know to be a good lab rat from this class.

Brad Paisley - The Highlights

Someday, I will figure out how to make fun videos with music and everyone will be jealous.
Today is not that day.
Or Timbra could figure it out and teach me how.
Or Alaine could just volunteer to work her iMovie magic.
Any of those options are just fine with me.


So this post is kind of sort of late. For the above reasons and I couldn't decide how I was going to handle the plethora of pictures I took at the concert. So here are just a few:




There's Bradweiser - for obvious, The Boy's work related reasons

There's Heidi Jo and I (still sporting the back up glasses - apparently I cannot be motivated to put the screw back into my current pair so the lens won't keep popping out...not even for Brad.)

There's Taylor Swift playing guitar hero, which is probably as close as I ever will come to seeing T.S. in concert. And she lost, I believe, for the record.

There's the Twin Towers

There's Baseball

And There's Andy and Heidi in all their cuteness. And Andy, before he quit smiling because the music was too loud.

Notice there is no Chubby Bekah picture here...I prefer to leave those on FB for all sorts of strangers to see. (Sheri's lucky I love her).

Content-wise two thumbs up. This was my first concert at the new convention center in Reno. The sound was crappy - not sure if it was just a fluke or if all concerts would sound like that there.

We even ran into one Miss Kayla J. The Boy was ecstatic because she actually said Hi to him and hugged him in front of all four of her girlfriends. Which according to him means he's the Favorite Uncle.

Reason No. 7 Why Bobbo doesn't need his very own puppy

Just look at that face!! He is going to Grapes of Wrath love that puppy to death.

Today, God Told Me to Grow Nuts

I ran across this poem in the gardening book I just finished. I liked it. I've heard the whole teach a man to fish bit, but this one was longer. So now, I am spamming you with it.


If you give a man a fish, he will have a meal.
If you teach him to fish, he will have a living.
If you are thinking a year ahead, sow seed.
If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree.
If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people.
By sowing seed once, you will harvest once.
By planting a tree, you will harvest tenfold.
By educating the people, you will harvest one hundredfold.


anonymous Chinese Poet, 420 B.C.

Kind of bittersweet to find it now, amid all the education cutbacks that just rolled out.

But.....the point....I'm thinking about planting a nut tree. Is that an option? What kind? I think I'd love a pecan tree but they must only grow in the south. maybe. The book I was reading was really about subsistence farming. Growing all the food/meat you would need to be self-sufficient. Not for me. But a nut tree might just be.
Maybe I should see what the fruit trees do this year first (While I research my possible Nut tree options). Mini-me has been scouring the pages of that gardening book too. Yesterday from the back seat she called out, "Mama, can we grow cherries?"
To which I replied, after the scowl crossed my face, "I think that's what I'm trying to do."

Because it is. Lets review:
Attempts at peach trees - 2
Number of peaches grown in the last 4 years - 1
Attempts at Cherry trees - 1
Number of Cherries grown in the last 4 years - 2
Number of Fruitless Mulberry trees purchased - 2
Number of Fruitless Mulberry trees that died and came back as a Fruiting Mulberry - 1

Reasons:
1. Supposedly fruit trees need a few years to establish themselves
2. Those cursed and all too frequent late frosts
3. God's trying to tell me to move on to nut trees?

Regardless. This year I'm going all out crazy with the strawberries. Why? Because I can. And because last year I think I got two total all summer. Those 'helpers' of mine were out in the strawberry bed every night eating every strawberry that was even the lightest shade of pink.

A little bit of heaven right in my own living room

Shocking right? It can be hard to spot amidst the clutter of toys, markers, rock collections, etc. But it's there.

And it looks like this:



I am actually a little ashamed to admit that it took me six long winters to figure this out. But should one decide to take one's well loved, faded old blue nintendo chair out of the closet, set it up in front of the fireplace and kick one's feet up on the hearth stones - that certain someone would find an itty bitty piece of heaven right there.

Oh, I have cozied up to the fireplace many a wintry day since we moved in. But it has been a love/hate relationship. I love how toasty warm it is, until that instant where I have sat there too long and my back starts to feel like it's on fire and I am jumping around all crazy-like trying not to let the fabric from my shirt touch my back. Then as soon as I've cooled back down to room temperature I scoot myself right next to the fire again and the dance repeats. But, I have discovered that if you turn around and sit with your feet closest to the fire - it doesn't happen. ever. Maybe your bare feet are tougher, I suspect mine are.

It really is amazing. I could nap right there. I could sit there all day and read, knit, day dream, the possibilities are endless. Except that my children would not permit me staying in one place that long. So really I haven't experimented with how long I could actually park myself right there. And lets face it, at some point I would have to take myself to the kitchen for sustenance.

If you should call and I don't answer, odds are I'm relaxing right here....




p.s. I am aware how freakishly long my feet look...Its a Newman thing.

The hidden dangers in brushing your children's teeth

I must have skipped over this part in the Parenting 101 presentation.

The part that says if you kneel on the linoleum in the bathroom floor in such a way that you would be able to see into your child's mouth and thus confirm that you are actually brushing their teeth properly, then the blood vessel(s) that run across your knee cap will EXPLODE.

Not even joking.


And that the very nearly asleep current husband will crack one eyelid, mumble something about his wife being a hypochondriac and pull the covers up a little higher over his shoulder. So I sat for a bit with scary veins throbbing and burning and watching my knee turn purple, knocked out some Dr. Oz dvr events and went to bed.
One a side note: This has happened once before. once. And that time involved same current husband, a fierce competition, and a bright yellow tennis ball hurtling toward my ankle at who knows how many million miles an hour.
And that was my own fault because I looked at said fast moving ball, thought "My husband would not really be trying to hit me with that" and stood my ground. I didn't move an inch. Which I probably should have because that ball collided with the knobby little bone on the outside of my ankle, exploded the blood vessel there and felt exactly the same as what just happened to my knee.


This is what it looked like in the morning.




So weird. I was sure when I told my mother about it the next morning she would be all kinds of concerned and have very motherly advice on why it happened and how not to let it happen again. NOPE. Verdict from the mom column: It happens, get over it.

So. I'm glad it's not shorts weather outside. And don't you think that knees are kind of ugly and strange looking anyway, aside from the giant purple bruises?

Broken Arm - Take 2

second verse
same as the first,
a little bit higher
and a little bit worse.





This is what happens when little 3 yr old girls try to fly like a fairy at the neighbor's house. I don't think enough pixie dust was used. Obviously.

Three more weeks and we should be good to go.

On a separate note, isn't Em's rock collection lovely. Now if only she would be happy keeping it somewhere other than the kitchen counter.