Fall

I always have mixed feelings on the season. I love summer, I hate winter. Spring is what leads into summer so it's okay in my book. But fall leads to winter. Bleh.

I love the colors of fall. The deep oranges, maroons, reds, yellows & browns. I love the smell of the first fire being lit in a home. I love that I get to pull out my sweaters, cardigans, hoodies, boots, mittens & scarves. I get to enjoy hot chocolate, football games and jumping into piles of leaves. I love the crisp mornings of the first frosts. I always look forward to carving pumpkins (I once carved Shakespeare!) Vanilla chai lattes and bowls of chili help round out this season. Oh, and can't forget Halloween & Thanksgiving, too.

The movie American Beauty has a line that explains exactly how I feel right now...

"...but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."

Here are some pictures of Kentucky in the fall. They aren't wonderful as I took them with my phone. The colors of fall are magnificent.



<3,
Rose

May Day

Today when I flipped my Elvis calender (yes, I have an Elvis calender. It's not even that I particularly love Elvis, more along the lines of I don't want one of those lame ass cat and dog calenders in my cube. No offense), I noticed it was May Day.

Now this had me thinking. I've heard of May Day, I know it revolves around some sort of pole dancing and that is about all I got. So I did what I always do and wikipedia-d that shit. Here is what I came up with:

What is May Day:
May Day is exactly half a year from November 1st. It is the celebration to the end of the winter months. And a bunch of other shit

How is May Day celebrated?
Ok, supposedly there is a May Day basket. You put a basket on someone's door step, ring the doorbell and run. When they walk out and see a basket full of goodies they are supposed to go chasing after you. If they catch you, you get a smooch.



Now first of all, I've never heard about this May Day basket business. Second of all, I can't find anything on these on wikipedias May Day site. Maybe I'm thinking of a different holiday:


This holiday is crap. Apparently it isn't important because I'm in the office.

Just little random tid-bit:
Today is also LAW DAY. It is meant to show how the law is the foundation and its importance. Whatever, I've never heard of that either.

I did however find this during my search of May Day. Apparently, I missed a rockin' good time last year:



Happy May Day! (I guess you wish that to people)
Rose

Here is a lovely waste of 2 minutes...You're welcome =]

Hey Y'all!

Sorry, I've been a blog procrastinator, again...

Not a lot has been going on here in Kentucky, minus the weather!
It seriously was 70 degrees one day, the next it was 30 degrees and snowing!! Talk about messing with one's allergies, mine have been all over the place for the past two weeks.
Today it's raining and we have the chance for severe storms.

Hope you enjoyed the weather report...

I'm pretty stoked because the Avett Brothers are coming to my hometown in June! I've been needing to go to a show, and this one will be a great one to get back into the swing of going to shows! Plus--I got second row seating!
If you don't know who the Avett Brothers are, you should. Check them out on Myspace, or you can go here.
Here is a picture of them...



If you can't tell, I'm in a really good mood today. Today, being Good Friday, I only have to work a half-day. As of right now I have 2 hours to go! I get to get out of here at 11am, kudos to me for getting here at 7am this morning.

I know this has been a really random post from yours truly, but thank you for sticking with me. I'm trying to get back into the groove.

-Jill

*brrrrr*

This morning at 3:10, I heard my tv make a pop. It’s a pretty old television (it’s had parts replaced and been fixed!), so when I heard the pop, I knew what happened. It had died. Well, I thought that was the problem. I got out of bed, turned on my floor lamp & tried to turn the tv back on. Then I noticed that my space heater and fan were not on…

I sat back in the bed and the lights started flickering. Thinking quickly, I was able to light a candle. But the power didn’t go out. All of a sudden everything in the house went berserk. All of the lights dimmed to practically nothing, anything that was on turned off and I could hear a strange beeping.

I walked out of my bedroom and went downstairs towards the beeping. It was the stove. I decided I should go ahead and tell my parents about this. I walked in their room and told them I think we have a problem. Something is up with the electricity. Before turning on the lights, my mom said “Yeah, it’s called a brownout. It’s similar to a blackout, but your power stays on, just at a low voltage.” I told her that I thought the house was getting cold.

Apparently, during said “Brownout” the only thing that continues to work are lights. Furnace and everything else was off. Mom told me to get into her bed because it was still warm from her electric blanket. She went to watch the temperature in the house, which had already dropped almost 10 degrees.

I heard her yell upstairs to T to tell him to come down and get the kerosene heaters to warm the kitchen room up. I hear her say “We don’t have power… sort of” and T responds “Um, yeah we do!” I busted out laughing. I’m sure that he thought she had gone nuts.

I go back upstairs and try not to freeze. My alarm went off at 6:15 but I couldn’t get out of bed until 7 because it was so cold. Apparently between my snooze at 6:45 and my alarm at 7, our power shut off for good. After I rolled out of bed and dressed my candle light, I looked at our clock/thermometer. It was -9.3 outside and less than 50 degrees in the house.

After calling our electric company, they explained that 48,000 of the 150,000 homes didn’t have power. I’ve heard that some parts of Kentucky won’t get power back until mid month because of the ice/snow storms this week and last. Luckily, my sister's house has a working fireplace (the 4 in our house are closed) and we have the kerosene heaters. My parents have already brought my 96 year old grandfather over; he lives on the farm as well and has no electricity.

I hope the electricity is on by the time I get home from work because I want to watch the Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice thing. This is going to be a lovely (and very, very cold) day. I hope everyone else stays warm!!

<3,
IDK, a freezing Rose?

Snow Blows

My car has been stuck since Monday night. I parked it in the grass, not even thinking about it. When I woke up on Tuesday, the roads were icy and I needed to be taken to work in something with 4 wheel drive. The roads were even worse on Wednesday, so I didn't make it to work at all. Wednesday night I cleaned off my car (The snow and ice) so I would be ready to go bright and early for Thursday.

Thursday morning I got dressed and went out to my toasty car (I start it early every morning. I hate a cold car). I got in, put that bitch in drive and pushed the gas down. Nothing. Okay, there was something, I like to call it a slight roll forward. I hit a big mound of snow and rolled back. I tried again. Then I got my not so happy ass out of the car and tried to dig out with my ice scraper. I dug and dug and dug. I got back in the car and tried to go and obviously went no where.

I went in the house and my Dad said "I was wondering how long you would try before giving up!" So my sweet as peaches little brother drove me to work.

Last night Sam told me he would help me get my car on the driveway so I could actually drive myself to work today. Sam acesses the situation while I try not to freeze. This is how it went down:

Sam: Rose, get in the car and don't do anything until I tell you too.
Rose: Uh, okay.
S: Roll down the window
R: *Opens door because window is frozen shut*
S: Now give it a little gas

Mud, water and snow go flying. Everywhere. Even on Sam (I got a good chuckle out of that one)

S: I said A LITTLE gas, not a lot. Stop.
R: Oops, sorry
S: Okay, I'm going to try to push you out now

I'm sitting in the car while Sam is pushing it and it's rocking. So I start to rock with the car hoping it will help. We finally get over the snow drift just to fall back down.

S: Rose, did you have your foot on the gas?
R: No...
S: I told you to give it a little gas!
R: You told me not to do anything until you told me to.
S: I told you to!
R: But then you told me to quit
S: Yeah, but then I explained a little not a lot. So I've been pushing your car for the last 15 minutes for nothing!
R: Well, I suggest you go get T (my little brother) to help

T comes out, T & Sam push and I go fishtailing, then slam on the breaks and come to a jerking stop... but the car was out!

Now, when people say I don't listen, I don't believe it. Sometimes I listen a little too well.

I need to get out of the apartment!

One roommate, 2 cats, 1 dog and 3 horrible days of snow later...I feel like I've been run over by a train. Every muscle in my body hurts.
Sunday Meg moved in. It's pretty nice. I love having her here. Her stuff plus mine and Rach's stuff just makes for a homey little apartment. As a friend of mine said "She came with baggage." Not like bad baggage though. She has 2 cats and a dog. It has been great entertainment trying to get the animals to like one another. They will be fine for a few hours, then all of a sudden it sounds like a cartoon. You hear a loud scream, a bang and then scurrying a cat then goes flying across the room with either another cat or a dog following it. Quite entertaining. Trust me.
Monday I went to work. It was just like every other day. I spoke to a few of my claimant's on the phone and worked on a few cases. Fun times. Again, you will never know what I do for a living. Just remember the consequences.
Tuesday I wake up, look outside and see that we have a ice and snow sandwich. When I went to bed it was raining. All the rain froze. So there was an inch of ice, followed by at least 2 inches of snow with a final layer, an inch thick sheet of ice. I didn't go to work.
Wednesday was much the same ordeal. It was so horrible outside. Pretty but horrible. Trees had broken and no one was able to get out again. I decided that since all the precipitation had stopped that it was a good idea to go clean my car off. 1.5 hours later I returned to my warm abode. It took me that long to clean my car off.
So, this morning I wake up thinking, "Hey, my car is cleaned off, just go out and start it. Let it warm up." Before I went outside I had the genius idea to call work. See how the weather is 45 minutes from my apartment. No one answered. I figured that because my supervisor and my supervisor's supervisor wasn't there, it was not necessary for me to trot my happy ass into work. I went back to bed.
Here are some pictures of what it looks like here...

Today I have cleaned and smoked a bunch. I need to quit smoking. I love it so much though. It makes me happy. It makes me not kill people. Smoking calms me down. For real.
Speaking of which a cigarette would be nice right now. Cigarettes and coffee. Or Cigarettes and chocolate milk. Just call me Rufus Wainwright.
Hope you all are having better weather than here in Kentucky.
Maybe I'll actually get to venture into the outside world today.
Wish me luck.

-Jill