Today wasn't quite as brilliant as yesterday, but still managed to be quite  nice.  Church was good, I helped lead singing again with David and Todd, which is always a lot of fun.  We had Dad's black bean soup for lunch, whihc is always very yummy.  then Dad left to go golfing with Greg, Pastor Rich, and David, so it was just us ladies for the rest of the day.  We played some card games, then Mom, Naomi, and Helen went swimming while Sonia and I made fruit smoothies for everyone.  I also got to just hang out and do some reading and tried to call Robbie (which didn't work :( ).  All in all, the weekend has slipped by far too quickly.

[Note: Both today's and Friday's blogs were actually written out the old fashioned way and then typed in on Sunday - just to explain any discrepancies between posting on the internet while complaining of the lack of a computer...]

Today was absolutely fabulous.  I woke up at 9 (after about 10 hours of sleep) and the weather was beautiful - everything was beautiful.  I spent the day reading in the warm sunshine by the lake, playing games with my sisters and Grandma, swimming, and eating good food.  The only sad part was my growing conviction that the cabin is the best place in the whole world durning the summer, coupled with the knowledge that my grandparents are planning to sell it next year. 

'Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.'
-Robert Frost

Bah Humbug to phone companies! They all try to trick and squeeze more and  more money out of you than they say they're going to take.  I've got the phone card blues...  I tried to shop carefully, found a card with no connection fee, etc.  But the minutes just seem to mysteriously vanish.  And now, when I'm up at the cabin and don't have access to the internet to buy a new card [see note on Saturday's post] the darn thing tells me I've got 33 more minutes left to call Robbie's number, and then cuts me off after 4!! Grr..  I didn't even have time to say good-bye :(.  I should be able to get over this and be happy with what I've got, lying comfortably on the swing out in the porch, watching the hummingbirds, but I'm miffed. 
The hummingbirds are rather fun though...

Stiff, sore, scratched up, and bruised - I can't believe I'm only getting paid $10/hr. for this while last summer I got paid $24 to sit around and do a whole lot of nothing most of the time!  Oh well, it's something to do, right?  I sure hope all of these interesting experiences come in handy down the line.  It's not all that bad though, all of my opening sentence was true, but honestly, it's a lot easier to work moderately hard all day than to sit around and do nothing while trying to look useful.  Leaving the house before the sun rises however, really is that bad.  Sunrises are pretty and all that, but I'd just as soon be in bed.  Actually, getting up for the sunrise and then crawling back into bed wouldn't be too bad.  Well, at least tomorrow is Friday and payday and we're going up to the cabin! So, no blog entries tomorrow or Saturday, I know this will just ruin all of your weekends, but it can't be helped, so try to bear up and hang on til Sunday.  Have a great weekend everybody!!

It's hot today, so this is going to be quick - I'm going swimming.  Not much to report about the day.  The morning was pretty long, I was stuck doing a very simple, very repetitious task.  I actually was doing that most of the day, but it didn't seem so bad once I got to talking with the person working next to me and also found out that the parts were really needed (I was starting to feel like they had just stuck me there for lack of a better place to put me and then forgot about me, I was seriously making boxes and boxes of the dumb things and just stacking them up).  Also I had a bit of a break running around helping put owners manuals into a bunch of boxes that had gotten packaged without them (we had run out of one of the parts that goes with the manual, so they just made them without rather than stopping the line and having nothing for everybody to do).  Well, that about covers my day, I've been really sleepy all day, so hopefully I can get to bed on time tonight. 

Whew, made it through another day.  It's HOT here, and very humid, it feels like you could bottle the air and use it to water your plants or steep coffee in or something.  I finally got my room assignment, just as I was beginning to worry, I'm back in Fowler 405 again - this time with Julia.  I think that will be a lot of fun, all of her silliness should make me feel right at home (just like my sisters).  Well, that's all for now, got a phone date in a few minutes ;).

Bunches of good happenings this weekend!  I finally got to talk to Robbie, half an hour yesterday and an hour today, and my $5 calling card still has 211 minutes left (I got it from http://pinonsale.com/ in case anyone's interested).  Anyways, he seems to be doing well, keeping pretty busy and all.  My parents came home from their conference safely and had a great time. And I got a new mattress on my bed, so I no longer have feel like I'm sleeping on a prison bed ;).  All in all, although not ecstatic or anything, a pretty nice relaxing weekend.  Well, it's off to work again in the morning, so I've got to go rustle something up for lunch...

SATURDAY! Yea :).  AND I got a phone call last night (about 2 am) from Robbie's sister who was calling to give me a phone number where I can call him (it's a shared phone since he's still in temp. housing, but better than nothing). Hm. When I started, I thought I had lots to say, but now I've stalled...  Well, sister week is drawing to a close, today the parents return (I don't know if I said anything about this before, but my parents have been gone all this week, at a conference down in the Chicago area).  It went fine, was a little more work than last year when it was just me home alone for a week, but we had fun.  We've got our little pool set up and had a campfire and roasted marshmallows last night.  Ok, I'm not going to drag this out any further, I'm just not feeling it.  Adieu.

And life plods on... No further messages from Robbie, I hope he gets a phone soon, I'm all ready for him, found a good deal on international phone cards (Portugal, as it turns out, isn't too terribly expensive to call). Work is about the same, not fantastic and exciting, but not deathly dull or in any way horrible. I dread getting up so early in the morning, but not really going to work, which is a good thing. I do hate however how it seems like I have so little time left between working and sleeping. It doesn't seem so bad when you're thinking eight hours each: work, sleep, and free time; but it doesn't work out that way, I have to figure another forty-five minutes at least commute (total, thank goodness), plus up to two hours sitting reading waiting for my ride (short but dull explaination), and about 20 min getting ready in the morning - which doesn't count as free time since I don't enjoy any of it... sigh. Actually though, I'm making it sound a little worse than it is, since the reading I would want to do anyways, so who cares where I do it, and since I carpool with someone I really like talking to, that almost counts as free time too - except that although it's fun, it's not really free since in either case I'm stuck. Tonight I am quite set on getting to sleep on time, which I think I'll actually be able to manage if I can drag myself away from the computer in some sort of timely fashion. Today is the fourth full day with out the parents, I think we're doing pretty well, but maybe getting a little tired of it, everyone seems a little tired and cranky today, we'll see how things go tomorrow...

Ok, now a little about today. I got up early (after staying at the wedding until 2:30am last night) so that I could help lead singing at church, and actually even ended up picking the music (we usually do that ahead of time, but everyone's been busy with the wedding). That's so much fun, I love singing. After church we went over to the Sandenos and watched the new Mr. and Mrs. Schultz opening their presents. That was when I really missed Robbie, seeing them just in ordinary clothes sitting all snuggly next to each other having fun and talking and everything, but I had plenty of fun anyways.

Wow, weddings CAN be fun :). Yesterday was Steph's wedding, for those who don't know Steph is one of the Sandenos, probably my family's bestest friends; she also used to play all the time with my little sister Naomi, and used to be one of the kids I'd babysit all the time. And now she's Mrs. Zack Schultz! I didn't go to the actual ceremony, they only had immediate family at that part, but the reception was a lot of fun. I helped get the food ready, and Naomi made all the desserts, and it turned out great if I do say so myself. The reception started at 8:30 pm, so we just had appetizers and desserts, teriyaki chicken skewers and shrimp and several interesting salads and little mini-cheesecakes and much more. There was way too much food, which I think is usually the better way to go. It was a pretty young crowd for the most part (Stephani is only 19), so, although the setting was actually quite beautiful and the decorations elegant, the party wasn't overly formal. Everyone seemed to have a good time, there was lots of dancing and laughing and talking. I learned some swing moves and just generally had a marvelous time. I of course missed Robbie, especially during the slow songs ;), but at least I had a partner for the last song - another of my former babysitting kids, Steph's older brother Joe :). He turned out to be a really cool guy, I'm impressed. I'm wondering how long it will be before we're going to his wedding (he just starting going out with a girl a week ago or so).

Ack. I'm falling apart. I thought I was coping well with the whole Robbie going off to Portugal for two years thing. Coping, hah - denial. Well, he's currently on his way (today he flew from Mississippi to Atlanta and is on the Atlanta to Baltimore flight as I write this and will leave from Baltimore to Lajes Field tomorrow at 1:40pm Eastern time) and so denial just ceased to be a viable option. I'm trying to come up with another workable option, but my usually inexhaustable well of happy thoughts is suddenly coming up dry - I can come up with happy thoughts, but they pretty much all just link back to him which consequently just makes me sad again. I'm only just starting to realize how much I've come to rely on being able to talk things over with him, all the little things in life that beg to be talked out but don't really interest anyone but you, and if you're lucky, someone who really cares about you. Hopefully I'll be a little better tomorrow after I get some sleep, I only got maybe 4 hours last night because we went late to the airport to pick Sonia up after her 6 weeks in Bangladesh. I should be really happy about having her back, and I am, but right now it isn't as much fun as it will be since she was travelling for more than two days straight plus having to adjust to an 11 hour time difference and is consequently not a whole lot of fun yet.

I still haven't quite gotten over the whole shock of him leaving so soon, he wasn't supposed to go until the 16th, but he graduated early and they decided at the last minute to put him on tomorrow's flight over to Lajes (he had like 3 hours to pack!). So he called all of a sudden (while I was helping get food ready for a friend's wedding tomorrow) and told me he was on a plane. My first thought was that maybe somehow he arranged to come back up here, which made it even worse... Sigh. Sorry to be going on and on about this, but it's rather traumatic for me and hey, you were warned (see title of blog...). Probably I'm just being overly dramatic about the whole thing. I'll be busy most of the time with school and stuff, have some fun times and some sad times, talk to him and email and stuff as much as possible, and eventually he'll come back. Just reminds me of a song I know though, '...I'll smile from time to time, and sing a song, cause life goes on, but it won't mean a thing, without you and the love you bring...' which is of course a rather melancholy song... Man, I can't believe I'm sitting here quoting songs and all that sappy junk, I'd better stop now before I start making up my own poems or something...

So, if possible, I'm even worse at this than I expected. In my defense, I'm overworked. Well, ok, maybe it's more that for the first time in my life I have a 40 hour/week job that actually takes some real effort and I'm a wimp! Anyways, the aforementioned glamourous job is assembling paint sprayers for a company called Graco (not the guys who make the baby stuff). It's an all right job, working on an assembly line is supposed to be about the most boring thing there is, but actually I think that there were a lot of weeks when I got much more bored back when I was working as an intern at ATK. That job was a lot of fun when it was fun and just awful when I had nothing to do. It is surprisingly difficult to sit and do nothing for eight hours, even with a computer hooked up to the internet. At least at Graco I'm actually producing something! I feel useful, but I come home bushed, and haven't really even thought about coming down and getting on the computer. Maybe the fact that I'm on today means that I'm starting to adjust (either that or I'm just stalling before going to help clean the house to prepare for my sister coming home). My other excuse is that I spent the whole holiday weekend (including Friday and Monday) up at my grandparent's cabin spending time with my family and Robbie (sigh, that was nice, hard to drop him off at the airport - 'Good-bye honey, see you next May'). One interesting part about that airport trip though, we stopped in at the 'Armed Forces Service Center,' it was a really nice place: cushy leather furniture, free everything - food, pop, cookies, shower, bunks, satellite tv. Well, that about brings everthing up to date.