Thursday, December 25, 2008

Random Christmas Quiz Time!




Your Christmas is Unique



Your wish for the New Year is more happiness.



For you, Christmas is a spiritual holiday. You can't separate it from your beliefs.



You are patient when it comes to Christmas. You don't celebrate too early, and you don't like seeing holiday decorations in October.



Christmas traditions aren't all that important to you. You participate in the few you like.



You have some preferred ways of celebrating Christmas, but you're open to compromise.



You enjoy Christmas, but you find it to be a bit of a burden at times.



You try to give as much as possible during the holidays. You are quite generous.







You Are Socks!



Cozy and warm... but easily lost.

You make a good puppet.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Visiting Family Fun

So, my Mom and little brother Jon flew into New York for the weekend.  I was able to drive up and hang out with them.  Fun times all round.  Plans for the day included some christmas shopping and instead of saying, "wait a minute, maybe we should take two cars" we decided to take one.  That decision meant the opportunity to squish in the car and try take fun pictures.


Just in case you haven't ever 'met' him, this is my littlest brother Jon.  He is now taller than me.  I'm kind of bummed about that.  Jon and I are 14 years apart in age, the year I graduated from high school he graduated from pre-school.


For the last picture of today, I present an attempt to dress my niece.  The onesie didn't quite fit on her head and I was laughing too hard to do anything but take a picture.  Then, making sure that she didn't fall off the table I texted it to my sister.  Her text back?  "Step Away".  It was fabulous.  Obviously she wasn't too worried or she would have busted into that place in a heartbeat.


You know you think it's cute, and funny.  Enjoy.


Thursday, December 4, 2008

Gay Marriage Can Save the Economy

Great video I found surfing around the net tonight...


See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die


NPH is great!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Wednesdays Are Hard

Grumpy tonight.

Some days feel like this...


Ah well, tomorrow is another day.  Sleep sounds good right now.


Peace, love and hot buttered biscuits,
Alex

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Just Thought It Was Cool...

I'm considering the possibility that I abuse the power of three periods in a row '...'.  More on that later.

Tonight randomly searching the web I found a cool news story that I thought I would share.  First, Take a gander at this proud soldier:


Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce you to Gen. Dunwoody.  She is the first female four-star general EVER in the United States Army.  Even cooler than that though are some of the quotes:

"There is no one more surprised than I — except, of course, my husband. You know what they say, 'Behind every successful woman there is an astonished man.' " Lieutenant General Ann Dunwoody

Friday, November 21, 2008

Sunday, November 16, 2008

My PersonalDNA

Apparently I am a 'Benevolent Inventor'.  
Check this personality thing out, it's pretty cool.



If you think you know me then try the 'psych me!' thingy.  (click it, I dare you)

Saturday, November 15, 2008

page 56

I saw this over at the Swandive.

Rules:
  • Grab the book nearest you.  right now.
  • Turn to page 56.
  • Find the 5th sentence.
  • Post that sentence along with these instructions on your blog (or facebook wall).
  • Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, or the most intellectual, use the CLOSEST.
"Suddenly ordinary people could get the benefit of computing without being programmers."
The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman

Oddly enough, I haven't picked up this book in a while.  It was the closest because my family just sent some more things from Colorado and box (still mostly unpacked) is in the living room.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Big Suprise & A New Addition

I came home tonight and Sara was all sorts of giddy about some crazy thing.  Apparently she spent a decent part of the day researching my birthday present.  Lucky me she is worse than I am at keeping surprises.  So I got my birthday present much earlier than I thought I would.  I would like to introduce you to Divot, he is a baby guinea pig.


I'm super excited.  Obviously.


This whole crazy idea happened when I met my friends baby guinea pig a little while ago.  He is so awesome and so much fun!  The guinea pig in the last picture is my friends, he is actually litter mates with Divot so we are going to arrange plenty of play dates.



Friday, November 7, 2008

If You're Tired at the End Then You Probably Did it Right

Tonight YMCA Camp Bernie hosted it's annual fall festival.  It's basically your standard family fun thing complete with a haunted hike, apple cidering, pumpkin hunt, and a chance to climb the tower in the dark.  It was a long day, most of us worked from 8am-11pm with maybe an hour break each.  At the end we were of course tired, but it was worth it.

This was the set up for the pumpkin hunt.  I was curious about how popular it would be with such a simple precept.  Find a pumpkin - get a piece of candy.  No worries about over-simplicity there, it was a popular activity.


Of course we all jumped at the opportunity to get in costume, here are some of my favorites:


At the end of the night we were wicked exhausted.  Fortunately, we have a pretty cool boss and he got us pizza.  I think it was a great impression of a zombie pizza party.


Oh yeah, there were some pretty cool pumpkins that got carved up too.


Sunday, November 2, 2008

Snowstorm

There has been some crazy weather out here in joisey.  In fact, we had snow.  About six inches.  In October.  While there are still leaves on the trees.  Snow and leaves combine to make a really bad mix.


Bad things such as:

Trees falling down.

People digging their cars out.  (Reminds me of home a little bit)


Heck, we even had trees on power lines.  In fact, the power was out on camp for almost three days.  No water, no power, no heat.  Good times all round.  I'll tell that story later though.


What tools did we have to deal with this?  Two snow shovels, three lamps that apparently I am the only one who knew how to light them, some creative thinking skills, and of course our good looks.



Saturday, October 25, 2008

Travesties According to Me


I get the opportunity to work with and teach a lot of different types of students.  Most are in elementary or middle school, some have ADD, some are scared of spiders (or any bug for that manner), some have been to other camps and are fully confident in all of the activities I can offer them.  Some of the students are from this general area, the kind of suburbia that I grew up in.  Occasionally though, we get students direct from the big city, New York.

By the way, it is still completely obvious to anyone that I just moved here when they tell me that the group is "from the city" because I invariably answer "which city?".  Apparently their is only one 'city' around here.  Whatever.

The last group that I worked with, however challenging and rewarding as it may be was one of the groups from the city.  Brooklyn, not that this detail particularly matters.  For this group I even got to help run their campfire.  You know, sing some songs, make some s'mores, that sort of thing.  The biggest challenge of the evening?  Not the fact that it's hard to make 120 sixth graders be quiet.  No.  A large majority of these students (and even teachers and chaperones) had no idea what a campfire/s'more was.  Tragic.

So in short, I would say that this past week my greatest accomplishment was introducing city folk to the joy of burned sugar, melted chocolate and graham crackers.  That night there was one students expression I hope to never forget, even if he was challenging in every class I taught with that group.  

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Rummage Sale!

Today I had quite the adventure, not only a shopping trip, but a shopping marathon.  Normally I'm not the shopping type, but today somehow we managed to shop for about four hours.  I was hanging out with a person we'll term 'C' for the next little while.  We found some pretty sweet stuff, including this sweater:


I'm telling you, this sale was the holy grail of all things kitchy.  Who needs fine art in your bathroom when you can have something as great as this?


In addition to kitchy things there were also multiples of just about everything, check out the insane amounts of little play stations:


Trivial Pursuit anybody?  Don't worry about not enough playing cards.  With 13 sets we can keep, oh, say, an entire football team occupied for a decent amount of time.


To finish off the tour of random and odd things, here is a sketchy creepy doll that I found.  I don't know if you can read the label on the tag, the first time I read it I thought it said "... needs new balls".  When in fact it reads "... needs new batts", as in batteries.  I don't even want to know what this thing can do when it's charged up.


Friday, September 26, 2008

I Love My Job!


So if I haven't written about it before, big things have been happening in life lately.  I didn't ever go back to Colorado, I purposely missed my plane back and stayed here.  It's a good thing to because I got a job.  If I had gone back I wouldn't have the money to come back out.  This not only means that #1-I am now employed.  #2-I've been living out of my suitcase for the past 3 weeks.

My job is great.  Technically my title is Program Associate, but it's almost like two jobs in one.  During the school year I teach outdoor education classes with groups that come in, during the summer it's a residential camp.  The groups typically are in 5th or 6th grade, but college students also participate.  Some groups come for the day, come stay for a couple nights.  So far my favorite activity would probably be the night hike, it's a good time.  Lots of really cool activities that people have fun doing and also are able to learn cool things.  Today I shadowed the outdoor survival class, that is where the picture comes in today.  I'll try to get more pictures posted up of camp.  It might take a little while, so you've been warned.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

A Sense of Accomplishment


Today I was sitting on the couch bored and decided to make bread.  It's a tasty thing no doubt.  It also happens to be a dense tasty thing.  Perhaps next time I'll mix in some standard white flour instead of using only the whole wheat flour.

In other news I feel the need for outside socialization.  I enjoy hanging out with the people that I work with, but it's not a bad thing to try to have a life outside of camp.  Right?  
The challenges:
  • Anywhere away from camp takes approximately 20 minutes to get to
  • I don't have a car
  • Sara's car, when I can use it gets really bad gas milage
  • The ever present lack of funds issue
Any suggestions?

Friday, September 19, 2008

For The Record



I will never, ever, ever go to an optometrist that refuses to spell the word Doctor correctly.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Driving Frustrations


I'm visiting friends on the eastern area of the country right now.  My little sister lives in New York, a friend is currently based out of Maryland.  Where I am, New Jersey, is a convenient place right in the middle.  Now if only I could get used to things like paying for driving on certain roads, roads being named three different things, roads that curve constantly but there is no hope of seeing twenty feet off the road because of the density of growth.  I have been lost four times in the last two days.  The worst part?  Today I didn't even know what state I was in.  So.  Incredibly.  Frustrating.  Particularly when my special lady friend could only laugh at me when I told her what was going on.  Tomorrow?  Headed out again.  Oh happy day, more driving.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Quick Update

So for an update, I'm still out and about wandering.  In fact now is when I'm going to fill in the basics.

Over a sweet three week period I get to travel and see some beautiful people and National Parks.  Here's what has been going on so far.


Yellowstone:

Yes, they are both totally cliched photo's.  I'll put up better one's later.

Next stop - Grand Teton:

The best part?  I get to spend it with my awesome (& cute) girlfriend!


Wednesday, August 13, 2008

What I Can Do



What can you do with an afternoon, three dollars, orange spray paint and the powder from about ten shotgun shells?  Well, aren't you lucky?  You get to see.

Today was AWESOME!  I got to learn how to shoot real live "don't point at anything you're not willing to destroy" guns, that was fun.  Here's a couple pictures:



Yup.  That is what happens to Jager bottles people put in recycling.  Today at least.  
I shoot them.


Just messing around.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Oh Duct Tape... How Useful Thou Art


I was going to upload only this picture.  Then I realized how creepy it might seem.  Don't worry nothing illegal is happening, just a series of pranks with some friends.


Sunday, August 10, 2008

Fun in New Places!

I visited a different church today.  It's nice because I get to see many different groups of people, interact on a lot of different levels.  However, it's also kind of hard because I'm missing out on community.

Anyway, here are some pictures from the church I visited today, Holy Cross Lutheran Church:


I've found that banners are a frequent staple in all of the lutheran churches I've been fortunate enough to visit.



There was some beautiful stained glass windows in the sanctuary.


Saturday, August 9, 2008