Vacation Pictures

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our vacation to the Smoky Mountains in June.


These photos were taken at Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains National Park.



















We went to the Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg one day.













What a cute kangaroo..



We took a nice hike to Laurel Falls.







We also hiked to the top of Clingman's Dome. It was too foggy to see much.







We stopped on the way down to the Smoky Mountains to vacation with Mike's parents in Fairfield, TN.





We also hiked Porter's Creek Trail. There were many historical artifacts on this trail that were interesting and a geocache!







This is an old fireplace that is just off the trail. We also found a very old stone wall and stone steps built by pioneer mountain people, a cemetery and pieces from an ancient model T Ford.



This is a 130 year old barn that we came across on the trail.





Random Mountain Scenery. Pretty, pretty.

New Name, New Look

And more posts coming to a blog near you.

Meow 1 and Meow 2

Came home to this today. Cutest things ever.

Earth Day 2008

Please take a minute and ask Congress to stop global warming and to reverse the extraordinary environmental destruction that is taking place around the world. Sign the Sky Petition!

Job Applications and a Recipe

So I pause from my pile of job applications (complete with essay questions!) to bring you a delicious, new recipe that is great for leftovers.

Cuban Pork Sandwich

Hamburger buns
Yellow mustard
Mayo
Leftover pork roast
Sliced deli ham
Sliced swiss cheese
dill pickle slices
2 T melted butter

For each sandwich:

Spread mustard on one half of the bun. Spread mayo on the other. Layer pork, ham, cheese, and pickles. Put buns together and flatten to about 1 inch thickness.

Brush tops of sandwich with melty butter. Cook like grilled cheese sandwich.

I don't know what makes it a Cuban sandwich, but it was surprisingly good. I had to microwave mine for 20 seconds after I grilled it to get the meat in the middle nice and warm.

Yummy Hummus

Super quick, easy, cheap, low-fat, and yummy!

Hummus

1 can garbonzo beans (chickpeas), drained
1/4 c olive oil
1 small clove of garlic
1 T lemon juice
1/2 t salt
pita bread, pita chips, or veggies

Place beans, olive oil, garlic, lemon and salt into food processor. Blend on high speed, stopping to scrape sides occasionally. Blend into a uniform consistency. Store in tupperware, in fridge.

Serve with pitas, chips, veggies or whatever.

RIP Homer the Gerbil

The best gerbil ever.

I saved him from a family who wanted to get rid of him because they were tired of him. They told me I could do whatever I wanted with him... not a good thing if you are a gerbil. So I brought him home 3 years ago and he has been part of our little zoo of animals ever since.

Even though most people might think that just he's a gross little rodent, he was my little rodent... and I will miss him.

...

Spring Break Countdown

Only 3 days until Spring Break woooooooo! Good thing too, because Mike and I could both really use a week off work!

Unfortunately, we are not doing anything especially exciting this year. A trip up north and then a tentative geocaching adventure in Brown County are in the works, but that's about it.

But I found out today that we ARE going back to the Smoky Mountains again this summer!!! YAY!!!

Check out where we are staying!

We'll be there during the first week of June. We get to bring the dog, celebrate our first anniversary there and hopefully do a lot of the stuff we ran out of time to do last year.

So exciting! Let the summer vacation countdown begin!

I Couldn't Resist...

From a funny little email I got today...

Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM
with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children
X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!

The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

WHAT A DEAL!!!!

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Chock Full O' Update

Work:

Lots of snow days and delays have our schedules and students in complete chaos. Mike hasn't gotten paid a lot due to the school cancellations since he is an hourly worker. So that is pretty sucky.

And then certain people I work with (who shall remain nameless) have not been doing their job, and things are getting ugly. The proverbial poo is going to hit the fan very soon I think. Things should be interesting.

Saying that I can't wait for spring break is an understatement. Only a month away!

Home:

No news on the house contract... surprise surprise. I am so over it.

Our trees, cars, and other outdoor items survived the ice storms that came through this way. Our neighbors didn't fair as lucky. They had several limbs come down, including one on their roof, and two that were mere inches away from their cars. Yikes.

We ordered seeds for our garden this spring! We're doing carrots, cucumbers, squash, spinach, peppers, leaf lettuce, and tomatoes. I'm excited to get started on this. We can start planting the spinach in mid March, but I think we're going to wait until the first of April due to all this wonky weather. I want to try out this rainwater watering system idea I have, but we shall see how the planting goes first.

Mike bought me a Fiestaware spoon rest out of the blue one day. I heart Fiestaware. And Mike.

Other news:

We've done a lot of geocaching lately. We try to get out when the weather is nice-ish. We went out and found 5 this afternoon. Much better than the other day where we looked for 6 or 7 and only found 1. We have found 39 total so far. Our enthusiasm for our new hobby has gotten both sets of parents and siblings interested too. We are planning to do some more geocaching on spring break as we make our merry way around Indiana to visit friends and family who are scattered about. Can't wait!

INDIANA BASKETBALL = AWESOME. Even though this coaching fiasco has put a damper on the season, it's got nothing to do with the amount of sheer talent that we have on the team. And once IU gets it act together and hires a decent coach and gets rid of their lousy athletic director, there will be no stopping them. GO HOOSIERS!!!

Mike and I have recently decided to "go green." I really really despise that saying. Loathe. But it gets the point across. We are both interested in actively changing our lifestyle so that we have a lower negative impact on the environment. I could go on and on about what we've been doing and how we feel about it, but I'll save that for another time. This is just an update, you know!

Um... I can't really think of anything else.

Over and out!

Snow Day Cookies

Not so much Snow Day Cookies as Ice Day Cookies since there isn't a flake in sight, just freezing rain and a sheet of ice covering the roads. Whatever type of wintery precipitation it is, these cookies hit the spot!

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies with Coconut

1 c. butter, softened
1 c. granulated suger
3/4 c light brown sugar
2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. salt
2 eggs
2 c. flour
1/2 c. baking cocoa
1 t. baking soda

Reminder: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. (I ALWAYS forget to preheat... my cookie baking time is always doubled because I'm a ding dong.)

Beat butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and salt together in a large bowl. Then add in the eggs and beat until creamy.

Stir together flour, cocoa, and baking soda in a different bowl. Add this mixture gradually to your butter mixture. Blend well.

Now this is where you can get creative. Add whatever extra goodies your little heart desires. I had white chocolate chip and semi sweet chocolate chips on hand today. Mike requested coconut, so I sprinkled some on top after I had spooned the cookie dough on the baking sheet.

And speaking of cookie dough, someone really needs to make cookie dough ice cream with this stuff. I think I enjoyed it more than the actual baked cookie.

But if you prefer your cookies Salmonella free, you should bake them on an ungreased cookie sheet for 8-10 minutes. They are so good... perfect with hot chocolate on an icy day at home.

Calm Before the Storm

Just a Few...

Just a few pictures from yesterday. It was the first time I busted out the camera in awhile.



Sunset through the trees.



Near an old cemetery


I love pictures of wintery trees.


I really love black and white pictures of wintery trees.


I could have stared at those clouds all day.



Sunset. Kind of crazy.

We went geocaching again this afternoon. We found all of them that we went hunting for. Got a little toy camel for our efforts today... sweet! I'll definitely be doing my research this week so we have a bunch more to find next weekend.

Treasure Hunting

Mike and I spent the better part of our day today geocaching. It's basically a GPS treasure hunting game you play with people from all over the world. Someone creates a stash, registers it online with its GPS coordinates, and lets other people find it. Sometimes they have little treats and toys inside, sometimes it's just a piece of paper where you can write your name and the date you found it on. Wikipedia can explain it alot better than I can. Check it out if you are interested!

Today was our first time out doing this. We went looking for 6 different geocaches located in different cemeteries around our area. We figured that cemeteries would be a good place to test the waters since we could park and wonder around freely without looking too suspicious.

We didn't do too bad... we found three of them, plus another one we accidentally found while looking for another one.


Here's Mike with one of the caches. He ended up finding all them. I just took the pictures.


Here's a peek inside one. We took a compass keychain and left a squeezable rubber chicken.



Another peek. In this one we took an army man and left 2 poker chips.


This is one that only had a paper to sign. Tricksy to find something so small.


We could have probably found the others too, but one place was totally submerged in water from this week's downpour of rain, and another place had a freaky deer skeleton around the place where it was supposed to be hidden.


Once I saw that, I was out of there. Plus it was getting really dark and I didn't want to be in a creepy old cemetery at night anyways.

We had a great time today. We had perfect weather and good luck finding things. We were out at a place where we had a beautiful view of the sunset this evening. I have more pictures to post, but I'm too sleepy to work on them tonight. Another night, another post.