Happy Early Birthday to Me!

I learned a few things on my mission. I learned that ALL Dutch people love windmills and Delft blue pottery. I am, of course, not exaggerating. I also learned to love tea. As a result I love teapots. My friend/mission companion/maid-of-honor/former roommate found this for me.

It is actually a clever salt and pepper shaker. Isn't it adorable?
It utterly and completely fulfills my need to surround myself in Dutchness.

Do I Work Too Much?

On Saturday, I was walking back to work from my lunch break and standing at the corner of a very busy street waiting to cross. I knew it was going to be a minute so I moved into the shade. A moment later, two boys and their mother approached carrying McDonald's food. The boys were typically developing young children and as such were kicking each other.

Trying to escape, his older brother, the smaller one moved closer to me. He was probably five, but seemed very small on that very busy street corner. He had a round face, round glasses, and his hair was cut to look like a bowl. He stared up at me in almost amazement. This was our conversation.

Boy: Do I know you?
Me: Do you go to the library? I work there.
Boy: I go to the library all the time!
Me: Well, then you know me.
Boy: Mom, look! There's the lady that lives at the library?

Water Conservation Garden

Last weekend, I visited my friend Stacey in San Diego. In El Cajon, there is a lovely water conservation garden. It is filled with lots of interesting tidbits on water usage and other "Green" topics which I mostly ignored. I just thought it was pretty.
I wandered around the lovely gardsn, ...
felt very "Monet" by the tadpole pond, ...
admired the purple flowers, ...
admired more flowers,* ...
learned about recycling lightbulbs, ...
and finally took a nap.

* Confession: I truly love and admire almost all flowers, but I know next to nothing about them. If you were to ask me a flower's name, I would be wrong 9 times out of 10.

Curling

For a faithful account of my curling adventures please visit E-Procrastinator.

A Portrait of a Librarian

A few Saturdays ago, a cute little girl was at the library. We each have a different version of her name not that I would share it on my blog anyway. She was bored waiting for storytime, so one of our pages suggested that she draw a picture of me. She ran into the meeting wide-eyed and glowing with pride and presented me with a portrait of myself.
I'm not sure when I went bald, but I guess I should take what I can get.

Engagement Photo Fun

On Valentine's Day, Jerry was in town and we took out engagement photos. We had tons of fun doing it. The photographer was a lot more artistic than I expected him to be. Here are tow of our more unusual photos. I think they are very cool although they probably won't end up on an announcement.


Bryce, my photographer, asked me ot ut a link to his blog Fisher Fotographie. I'm not sure if our photos are up there or not.

I Love Cacti

I have found that when I visit a new location, I become obsessed with the native vegetation. On my recent trip to visit Emilysa and her husband in Tucson, I searched high and low for some vegetation, and I found the saguaro. I love them, but I don't love them nearly as much as the sequoia. With that said, they are still fascinating.

Look how excited I am to be in front of the cactus. I tried to hug one, but saguaro are rather unfriendly plants.
And, finally, we have the traditional self-made photo of Emilysa and me. I love Emilysa more than I love saguaros and sequoias combined.