Some may find it odd that Facebook has been around for so long, yet I have not messed with it… until yesterday. I received an email from my brother, tagging me as being in a picture someone else had placed on Facebook. I created an account and started finding many old friends. When I say old friends, I’m not saying my friends are old, per se, but rather, I had not seen or heard from many of these friends in many years. Many of the friends I have not seen in over 20 years, which is over half my lifespan ago. I found friends from my childhood, when I lived at Monterey Bay Academy (MBA), from when I lived in Riverside and attended La Sierra Academy, friends from my senior year at MBA, friends from Pacific Union College, and friends from places I’ve worked. In less than 24 hours, I have confirmed friendship with 39 people, with more pending confirmation. I find it interesting to see where everyone is now and how our lives have gone different directions. I have also found friends from two distinct places that I had no knowledge would have known each other, do know each other. If anyone is reading this and has not played with this social networking website, I recommend it.
I Still Exist; Catching Up
For those few that actually check to see if I exist by looking at my blog, I’d like to let you know that I do still exist. There has been so much happening since the last time I posted anything here… so much that it would be quite difficult to mention everything. I’ll try to hit some of the highlights.
I believe my last post was just before going to Fish Camp. Thankfully, this trip went quite well. We were all energetic on our first full day, although our first night was extremely cold. On this first full-day, we went down to the Yosemite Valley floor and we made a big hike. We went up to the top of Vernal Falls, going up the infamous Mist Trail. We continued up from the falls until we met up with the horse trail that took us down to base of Vernal Falls. While some in the group had problems going up the hill, I had problems coming down the trail. My knee became very fatigued and painful. We were exhausted after this hike. After returning back to Fish Camp, we went down to Oakhurst to see if we could find any blankets to keep us warmer in our tents, but everything was closed upon reaching Oakhurst. We did find a Round Table Pizza where we had a nice dinner. The following day, the Curry clan arrived. The Ewing clan arrived on Friday of that week. We had a nice day on Saturday just hanging and hiking around camp. On Saturday night, we made ice cream in my new ice cream maker. The first batch came out fairly well, but the second batch didn’t come out so well… the bottom of it froze too quickly and froze the dasher in place. We started to break camp on Sunday, but due to an accident and lightning-caused fires, it was an adventure leaving for home.
In my last post, I was describing the bathroom renovations and hinted on a major overhaul in the house. That took place shortly after our Fish Camp trip was over. I also repainted the room that had been our dining room and we had new flooring for nearly the entire house. We had wood laminate flooring placed in this former “formal” dining room, entry room, kitchen dining and living room, as well as the hallways. The bathrooms and kitchen preparation areas, as well as the space where you enter the front door and in front of the fireplace were retiled. Finally, all three bedrooms were recarpeted. It was major overhaul of the house. We got all the flooring from R.C. Willey’s. The installer was a Ukrainian Seventh-day Adventist man who hired relatives and members of his church to help. I thought this was cool.
As the flooring was being done, we were preparing for Kellie to have foot surgery. She had had foot surgery in early 2006, but she needed the same surgery for the other foot, as well as remove a screw from the previous surgery. The surgery was supposed to be the week before my birthday and our 3rd wedding anniversary, but due to a problem with sterilization in the operating room, it was re-scheduled to my birthday and anniversary; July 10.
Kellie and I took several weeks off from school around the surgery, but we decided to take our electives at this time. Kellie and I had different electives we needed to take. Kellie needed to take three classes; two ethics courses and a communication course. I needed to take two math courses. These were the two easiest courses I’ve taken since returning to school. We have now completed our electives, leaving us with two classes left. Our current class is Nursing Leadership and Management in Health Care. We started this course on November 4th and it runs until December 8th. We will then be off until 2009. In January, we start our last course, a course called a capstone course. We will be finished in early February. Kellie and I are both looking forward to the completion of this. It feels like the spring of our senior year, where we start to lose interest in school and thinking of everything after school.