www.laurelch.blogspot.com/ - www.twitter.com/hulmerous - www.laurelch.com
I liked the designs of both (sort of), and really didn't want to redesign either. Plus, my former design for twitter was fairly awful. An attempt at being artsy gone wrong, in fact. But now *evil laugh* they relate! Designing things [successfully? <- I only mean that in a fist-in-the-air-"SUCCESS!" kind of way] makes me laugh evilly? At least tonight. Maybe it's not evil. Maybe it's smug (unjustifiably so: none of the designs is particularly great).
So, normally I'd just push all this aside and say, "well, I'll do it later." But as I'm leaving in September to embark on an LDS mission to Poland, and will have no access to these things for 18 months, I figured I should pull things together so I look at least slightly professional while I'm gone. I'm supposed to be working on my website too. I downloaded a trial version of Dreamweaver and installed it on the computer that has enough space and not too much attention, but I haven't used it yet. I'm hoping that the trial only starts when you first use the program. Otherwise... that was a huge waste. I'm also hoping to do some designing while I'm at BYU-Idaho visiting, since the computers there have Dreamweaver installed, and they're huge pretty iMacs that are much better for designing. I just want my website to look good while I'm gone, in case anyone looks me up. Which is super unlikely. Anyway, it still has crappy stuff on there from Visual Media--honestly, my worst work. I really need to fix it. I wish I had time to completely redo it and even make my website completely flash-based (I don't care what She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named says, it looks more professional, and anyone I care about seeing my website has fast enough internet that they can deal with the flash). I did design a Favicon for my website! I really need to get it up, but I'm afraid of tripping the activation on DW. I spent quite a while on it, trying different designs and seeing what I could do to tie it into my theme, even though it's so tiny. I finally got one I love, and I just need to get it up asap. *Smile* I quite like my twitter page now. And it brings me great satisfaction to flip between my website, my twitter page, and my blog.
You know, I REALLY do hate that word. "Blog" blogblogblog. Say it out loud. It's disgusting. Despicable. Wow. Oh wooow. Spellchecker still insists that I capitalize internet. Well, forget it. Back to the horrible word "blog." Say it quickly, say it slowly, say it once, say it over and over. It doesn't matter how you try to say it. It will always come out sounding like the result of a stomach illness. *Shudder* For those unaware, it comes from the word "weblog," which is a decent word--not spectacular, but decent. And it makes sense. That's not essential, but it gives it a little something extra. I insert here a hunching over and resigned sigh. I may be giving in to using the word "blog." I know I sound ridiculous when I say, "weblog" or "[web]log" but it's become a matter of pride, I think. Maybe I'll just let it go. It's such a commonly used word now, but I guess someone could use that against me when speaking of some swear word that I find offensive. Yes, BLOG has almost become offensive to me. I know, I'm ridiculous. At least I match my mannerisms. I may just begin forcing "blog" out, the way a child stuffed full forces cold mashed potatoes down their throat. Wow. I didn't mean for this ........ ugh..... blog post to become so editorial.
Okay so that's about it. Random stuff for me to talk about after not posting in such a long time.
Oh, I could write about the awesome Arroyo Seco water-boulder-hike-swim thing that I did this weekend. I bought a disposable water camera and am getting it developed tomorrow. I'm pretty sore, and my knees are shot. Yeah Arroyo Seco OWNED me, but I still had an amazing time. I have never done anything like it before, and it was quite the experience! If you don't know ("you"? who am I talking to? my imaginary readers!), it's this hike that people do down the river/through the canyon, so it's more like swimming. We hiked on the trail though going upstream because we never would have been able to do both in one day. That part (3 miles) was FREAKING HOT, and pretty grueling only for that reason (very few trees, super dusty, etc.), and all I wanted was to jump in the river--too bad it was thousands of feet below me (I was thinking, "wait why did we decide not to go up the river???"). Obviously 3 miles is nothing, but it becomes a lot more of a something when it's that hot.
So that only took us about 30-40 minutes, right? As far as I know, we were all surprised by how fast this was going, and were thinking that we'd be done by 2:30 at the rate this was going. Well, not so. Going down the river back to the cars took us SIX HOURS. By the end, we could not believe that we weren't there yet. But I don't want to talk about the end yet. So we finally got to the trail marker that said "Arroyo Seco" 3 miles, so we knew we'd gone the distance, and there was a trail going down to the river. THAT trail was dang long too! I was so hot and just wanted the water sooo badly. (insert: I LOVE MY CAMELBAK) So three of us got down there first, and I just walked straight into the water. It felt amazing. My fingers, by the way, tend to swell up pretty badly when I'm hiking in hot areas. I laugh... they were so huge... Anyway, I tried to catch some fish with my hands but they were a little too fast. I was wearing sneakers, board shorts, a swimsuit top and a tank top. It was pretty good for this type of hike (if any(female)one wants to do it, that's what I recommend). We all blew up our kiddie rings (heehee) and set off on the second half of our adventure. Or maybe you could say this is where it started.
(the gorge from above, usgs.gov)So we just waded in the water (I had no idea what to expect!), and sometimes it would be ankle-deep, sometimes waist-high, and sometimes we were swimming. It was a huge relief having those inflatable rings though, because it would have been exhausting if we couldn't float sometimes. Paul jumped off every high rock he could find, into the deeper pools, and he was really funny about it. Alan was hilarious too--he didn't bring anything. Just went on his way with his unexplainable hick accent, no shirt, and a pair of red shorts. Chris got to come with us which was really awesome too, because we've been meaning to do some hiking (still planning on Skyline to the Sea!) all summer, but haven't got around to it yet. Tricia is my new favorite friend, so I was sooo glad that we got to hang out on this trip! And I got to know everyone else pretty well too. Crazy N8 had some unfortunate trouble with his electronics.... hey, they SAY not to put electronics in those drybags... But his
We stopped halfway to eat something and dry off on the rocks, and then started up again. The second "half" (way more than half...) was WAY harder. Or maybe I was just tireder. There were so many rocks that we had to climb over, and they're SO mossy and slippery... bah. It got to be quite a pain. My knees are totally bruised up, not even from falling on rocks, but from scraping over them as I was swimming. Worth it, though. So... what else? We all started to get REALLY tired, and just wanted the end to come. Even though we were having fun, we were like, "what the heck we've been out here five hours already, how long can it take?" And we still had another hour after that, haha. But it makes sense. We really were going terribly slow on the river, plus we had the extra distance of it winding around. We started walking on the banks as often as possible to save us time (faster than trying to work our way over giant slick rocks).
All in all, it was an amazing experience. There were some places where the walls were completely sheer on each side of us, and those were the most beautiful, I think. Other parts, we could have a little fun boulder-hopping, and other places were gushing water with currents so fast that they dragged us under and on their path. Those were marvelous fun, though often painful (hips! ow!). I don't know what else to say about it! I didn't even mention camping the night before--campfire, s'mores, sleeping under the stars, toilet paper pillow--but I'll say now that that was really fun too, and the perfect way to begin the adventure. I have a great singles ward, and it's a lot of fun to make new friends. Everyone I talked to today was sore, just like me :D But I've been worse.
I highly recommend this experience though. It'll definitely be a few years before I'll want to attempt this again, though. As Paul said, it's like ice camping... takes you 10 years to recover from. Haha, nah it was great, just intense and a big commitment.
Hey coool, my only spelling errors were nonexistent words! I love that! Well, I ended up writing WAY more than I planned... I actually initially planned to write only my current tweet, "K twitter is officially my link between blog and website. ...Yes, I used the word "blog" even though I hate it. I may be giving in..." but WOW, I wrote a lot more here. I guess blogging does that to me. I start, and just decide to write about more things, which remind me of other things.
Okay, I'm going to bed. I can't wait to live in Poland!
LCH
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