Popham Beach Pictures

It was very windy on Sabbath. You can see all the waves the wind kicked up.

All the sand is covered by water at hight tide. There is a bit more sand on either side of the picture. This is the farthest out we have seen the tide.

Drift log that I tried to take an artsy picture of. If yo look in the right hand corner you'll see someone in pink. That would be Mom.

On the far side on the island there were some pretty amazing waves crashing to the shore. That's me watching them come in.

One on the waves curling towards the shore.

Dad and I on the island watching the waves.

The waves we were watching.

Mica in the sand makes everythink shiny. Even feet.

Ahhh, summer

Summer has officially started. I have now been to the beach. In fact I went not once but twice in as many days. Dad and Mom and I decided to go to Popham beach for our after lunch Sabbath walk. It must have been an astronomical low tide because I have never seen the sandbar out to the island so wide. It was about 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile across. We sat on the top of the island with the wind strong in our faces and the sun shining on us for I don't know how long before we headed back.

On the way home we picked up medication for the cat (she injured her paw and it's infected) and stopped by Ally's to visit and practice some music that Dad and Ally were thinking of doing for special music one Sabbath. While we were there, or maybe when we were talking on the phone after, Ally invited me to go to the beach with her and Missy on Sunday. I accepted with pleasure.

So yesterday I packed up a beach bag and a cooler with food and the tree of up headed off to Popham. When we got there the parking lot was full and park wardens were directing cars to an alternate parking lot a mile away. That was full too. We then turned around, went back to Bath and took the road to Reid State Park.

Reid State is not as well known as Popham is, and with some reason. The sand is actually tiny pebbles that cause great discomfort when you walk on them and the beach isn't as long, the longer side is only a mile. However to make up for that there is waves. Waves like Popham only dreams of getting during a storm.

After walking down the beach at the waters edge where the sand isn't so bad and back calf deep in water we decided to play in the waves. Call it body surfing or wave jumping or whatever. It's fun.

Missy was the first one to get dunked. There had just been a huge wave and we (I, at least) hadn't figured out that big waves come in sets of two. It swept all of us down but Ally's and my head stayed out of the water. (That makes it sound like we share a head but I can't quite figure out how to fix that problem.)

By the time we were done all three of us had been soaked and were so cold that all our joints ached. We laid in the sun for half an hour trying to get warm again while we listened to music and ate cotton candy.

After we were done and went to the bath house to shower off I saw the sign that said the tide times (it was coming in) and the water temperature. For an hour we had been thigh-deep and head-deep in water that was 55 degrees! Are we crazy? Yes we are! But it was such a fun crazy that being sane can't be half so nice.

We had to leave at 3:30 because Beth and I had a dinner date. Oh, before I go on, photo credits. They aren't mine. I didn't take them and Reid really didn't look all empty. I found picture of the beaches in question online and that was the best I could do.

Dinner, right. We were planning on going to a Tai restaurant in town. We forgot to see if it would be open on Sunday. It wasn't. Neither was most of the other restaurants we have it town. This, we decided, was because of the blue laws.

When we moved here Sunday law (called blue laws for some reason I have never understood) were still in place that didn't allowed businesses to be open on Sunday. I think it was in the past eight years that that law was eliminated. I still remember that it was a big deal when we could go grocery shopping on Sunday, because before we couldn't go all weekend because of Sabbath.

Anyway, almost all of the restaurants were closed so we choice to go to an Indian restaurant. There are two in town and we kinda randomly picked. I love Indian food. I discovered it for the first time in April when the choir when to DC to sing and I stayed with an Indian family. They made the best. Food. Ever. I had Indian food before, a few years ago when Beth and Mom and I were going to England and we heard that Indian food was popular there. I liked it but it didn't go beyond that. Now? It's my new comfort food. Forget pizza, takeout Indian for movie night!

After dinner we proceeded to Pickard Theater. There we would see Miss Saigon. It is Madam Butterfly set in Vietnam. We cried through the whole second half.

It was a good day.

Oh Yum!

At 6:30 this evening Mom, Dad, and I headed out to Crystal Spring Farm. This is the farm that has the CSA program. That's community supported agriculture for all you poor uninformed and un-fruitified people.

Yes! There is fruit! Specifically strawberries. Fresh, juicy, eat from the plant ripe strawberries. We plundered, raped, and generally decimated those bushes. Dad guesses that we got about ten or twelve pints and now Mom is saying at least nine quarts.
When we got home Beth deloused, I beheaded, and Dad disemboweled. To normal, sane people this translates to washing, de-stemming, and chopping. (I have a disturbed imagination, especially when I cook.) Most of it will be frozen with sugar, but some was mashed into teeny, tiny pieces and will later be made into jam. I can't wait.

The most beautiful part of all this is that Sunday we get to do it All Over Again! And again on Tuesday and Friday and...

I hope the fruits and veggi-ta-bulls don't decide to revolute. It would be quite, quite gruesome.

Glory Hallelujah

I got my grade back for Micro today. The teacher provided envelopes and we self-addressed them and gave her money for postage. I got an A. In Microbiology. During the summer. I got 98 on my final. I am very happy. I wish that it was closer to an A+ than to an A-, but I'm still happy!

I took the above photo during Beth's graduation dinner. Just a reminder of where I will end up in a year. And it's pretty.

In other news, completely non-related to anything, Beth and I will be going Out this Sunday. We shall go first to dinner at a Tai restaurant and then we shall proceed to the theater. I am getting to go to two shows in a row this year because Dad wasn't up to going to his show earlier so I went to Swing. Miss Sagon is what I was supposed to see. I'm looking forward to it because I have heard the music for it but have never seen it.

We are also planning to go to Bath Heritage Days on the 4th of July. Lots of fun. It will be the first time I have seen live fireworks (not on TV that is) in about five year.

I'm done...

Yesterday at 2:12 pm I officially finished my Microbiology class. I don't know what my final grade will be although my lab/study partner, Emily, and I tried to calculate our scores. As far as I can tell I should get a high to middling B. Not the brilliant performance I would like but it's respectable.

I have always heard things like "Don't you feel better now that you've finished?" and some of the time the answer has been yes. Not this time. While driving the 40 minutes back from Augusta for the last time I tried to examine my reaction to having a class finished that I had been dreading for around two and a half years. I discovered that I don't feel any particular emotion about it's completion except for a vague worry that I completely bombed the final. If I did than I'm in Trouble as I can't start second year nursing if I don't have Micro completed. But I won't think about that.

By the end of the trip I was thinking much more about what I had to do now than what I had finished. For all I would love to believe that now the summer will all be days at the beach and books that is a daydream of the highest degree. I am planning to CLEP American History I before I get back to college and to do that I need to have studied American History I. I have one month to prepare for the test, counting the week vacation we have for the family reunion at Niagara Falls.

I also have to find something that will get me in a hospital using my skills from last semester. I had been hoping to have been working for the last 2 weeks. That hasn't happened. I don't know what is going on but every foray on my part to initiate contact has gone very wrong (I won't say disastrously because that is an exaggeration). The current plan is to see if I can volunteer or, at very least, job shadow the nurses.

I really can't see how this summer is going to turn out. It seems like everything I expected was turned upside-down onto its head. It makes me weary to think of all the scheduling and organizing and fitting that I'm going to have to do.

I sound so down, don't I? I'm not, really. I started exercising again. 2 miles brisk walk every morning with some jogging as tolerated. It wiped me out MUCH more that is should. I have gotten so, so out of shape. I have never had good stamina for exercise and I'm going to try to build it up. That is all well and good. I should be trying to stay fit as it is easier now that in will ever be. But, ohhhh, I'm so tired now!

Well, anyway you should see me more now, as I hope it won’t be quite so frenzied from her on out.

Campmeeting et al

I happen to agree with Beth. Campmeeting and I have never gotten along. I have very vivid memories of being forced to stay all day at campmeeting surrounded by black flies, hordes of people who are always talking, and heat. Always heat. There is no such thing as shade or breeze at campmeeting. Well, actually there is either heat of the kind that causes sunstroke in two minutes flat or torrential rain that you can't get away from because it seeps through every possible crack or crevice of the tents.

We always had our "campmeeting tree" that we parked under to try to catch its shade although that was scanty at best. When I was tired of being around people I would beg Mom or Dad to take me home (we only lived 15 minutes away) and I was always told to rest in the car. It was always shut up before I got there so it was always at least 125 degrees in there and the seatbelts always stuck into just the wrong places in my back.

All that isn't the point. That little bit of family history merely paints the background for the past week. The past week that was campmeeting.

I didn't go. Not even when I could have. The first weekend I went for church, the evening meeting and the Sunday meeting. At least I think I went to the Sunday meeting, I don't quite remember. Maybe I didn't. The next meeting I went to was on the next Sabbath for Sabbath school and church. I could have gone to the night meetings but it was hot. It was also the last meeting which means that everyone would be coerced into helping take down chairs.

In fact over this week I was incredible antisocial. (The next sentence is very sarcastic, so please infuse as much irony as you can into it.) Maybe that's because I was home schooled so I never learned to socialize. To make up for, not only not going to the other meetings this weekend, but for not going to the beach with a group of other youth like people even when I was invited by two people who were going in two separate groups I when shopping this morning.

Now if you know me you may know that shopping generally isn't on my list of top ten things to do. I mean, it is sometimes but that's true of almost anyone. Most of the time I stay away from Freeport like it's the plague. But I hadn't spent much time at all with friends so I was guilted into going. NOT by them, not at all! But by myself. Even when I'm on the final leg of my class--only two days left with quiz on one day and the cumulative final on the other day I decide to go shopping for the first time in about two or three months.

It was kind of legitimate. After two weeks (about) of cold weather it was HOT again and I really have no shorts that don't make me look ho-ish. I really hate how clothing designers assume that every female around that wears jean shorts must want to show all of her legs and some of her bottom to the whole world. Well, I DON'T! So make something I can wear without being embarrassed by being seen by someone from church already!

I found a pair for the first time in two to three years. After consulting with the parental units they have agreed to bankroll a second trip out to Gap to get two more pairs of shorts, one a size larger in case I can't find any more for a few years.

I also got four honey sticks. I love honey sticks. There's strawberry and peach and regular and one other else that I forgot the flavor of. Honey sticks make me happy. I like being happy. I have new shorts, friends, and honey sticks so I am very happy. And music. I was given a lot of music that's very nice. I like music too.

Oh yeah, Dad worked his last time in the ED and is now officially done with working at night and we had a party to celebrate. But that's not about me so I won't mention it. Right?




Yeah right.

HORRAYYYYYYYY!!

Hurray!

Micro Lab is done! This is cause for great rejoicing. At first I was looking forward to the lab because I was going to get to play with Bunsen burners and microscopes and junk like that. After the first class I was still excited about it because the teacher seemed to have the same teaching style as my anatomy and physiology teacher--that is to say that he didn't take the institution of microbiology too seriously but still knew his stuff.

Well, after the second class things didn't seem quite so nice. Instead of taking a more relaxed approach in his teaching style while still clearly conveying the information and in a way that made it easy to understand, he had a more fly by the seat of his pants style. This means that if you had a question it was generally ignored, disregarded, or obfuscated if it was answered at all.

Unless you were one of his favorites, in which case you got ten minutes of explanation while the rest of the class A) sat around bored and doing nothing because the question was asked during the lecture portion of the lab or B) sat around bored unable to finish what they were trying to work on because they had a question for him about what they were supposed to be doing and he would not stop talking to the people at the other table!

My lab partner and I were not one of his favored ones, in case you couldn't tell.

He also had really odd tests. One the final quiz we had yesterday he had questions like "Which of the following are not in Paris?” which, as you can see, has NOTHING to do with what we learned. Or he ask questions over material that was A) not in the lab book, B) not in the study worksheets that were paced out, C) not mentioned in the lecture, or D) if he mentioned it, it was in such a way as to say "don't worry about it, its not important".

I was so frustrated over the lab of this class. I retaliated by not studying for it more than a hour a week and still getting some of the best grades in the class (as far as I can tell).

The recap of all this is....I never have to take a class with him again. Not only that, but now I only have one week left of Micro lectures too! Oh, YAH!

Told You So...

The deer is back
Originally uploaded by Larry13.

You may (or may not) remember my posting a few weeks back that all nice things seem to happen on the Sabbath. (See here if you have no idea what I'm talking about.) Well, my theory has been right once more. This afternoon after we got back from campmeeting we saw a deer in the decimated woods behind our house. It was a yearling that visited here last year with its mother when there wasn't construction.

It was extra-special for me to see it because I was away at college when the whole family came a-visiting last fall.

Dad said that he has seen a deer when he was walking through the construction site last week. He held still while it walked across the dirt road 2 yards in front of him. It didn't even seem to notice him.