Emi's Journal

I feel so….. I dunno. I think I just wasted 50 minutes of my life. We just watched a movie in HE 275, and it was so full of irony…. It was all about health and depleting our environment…. Made me go “Huh?”.

For one thing, they were talking about using up all our water sources and giving all our water to grow crops to feed to livestock…. And how that farmland used to be forested, and all that junk…. And then they say “We can use that water to support more cities!”
More cities? Weren’t you just saying you should support forests? So supporting more cities to me means cutting down trees, using up energy, etc. How is that supporting forests?

They were also complaining about how animals are treated while being raised for meat. Now this I can agree with… That was cruel. But then they were saying we’re evil for growing so many crops for animals… Huh? We were evil for using our water for animals… Huh? Weren’t they just saying we should take better care of the animals?

I feel so… Filled with environmental trash right now. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to destroy the environment….. But all this just makes no sense to me.

And the library is closed on Monday! Day off! Woohoo! We’re still going to be going in today, but that’s OK. Rick (my mom’s boyfriend) is going to come see the library! Finally! And we’re going to go out to Dorena tonight! And Fernridge tomorrow. Rick likes sailing…. So we’re going to show him our local sailing digs. :p

And right now I just feel like using my funny icon.

I only have a picture of Little Jake uploaded so far…. But he’s cute.

I have a project going at the library…. Been working on it since the 16th. Basically I’m re-organizing and adding a label to every single VHS we have. It’s taking forever though…

First I copied all our VHS’s from Workflows (our software) into Word…. All 14 pages worth. Then I had to highlight them, designating which section they would go into… And now I’m into the labeling stage…. been in the labeling stage…. For at least a week. Ugh.
One of the problems is that because the library has been volunteer run for so long, volunteers have been cataloging. That’s all fine and well…. If they were consistent. But as most things are when you have many people doing it, they weren’t. You wouldn’t believe how many were even cataloged differently than they were labeled! It was crazy!
So I’ve been going through and fixing those…. Today I finished labeling our smallest section, general. We have kids (things like Barney, meant for young kids… Labeled in green), family (G or PG rating, labeled yellow), general (PG-13 or R, labeled red), and non-fiction (labeled in blue). General is smallest, and I finished those today. Non-fiction will be done within my next 5 label sheets. Kids and family still have a ways to go…. I spent most of my 7 hour day at the library today labeling. I took a break to work on a puzzle…. My “sanity” breaks. Preserve whatever sanity I may have left. I’ll need to start another puzzle tomorrow…. MAybe that Disney photo mosaic I’ve been wanting to do… Unless my mom wants to do that one with me.

Umm…. I don’t know what number we’re on. We “moved” again yesterday to another house sitting situation. One of the volunteers, Lenny, headed down to Arizona with her mom, so we’re holding down the fort….. With her two donkeys, two sheep, and three dogs. Plus our one dog and three frogs. Fun stuff. :p

So this place is amazing…. A farm, of course. I love it. We’ve got her three dogs to take care of: Thor, Lily, and Minnie (who incidentally is the biggest). Also the two donkeys: Little Jake and Agustina, who is pregnant. Last but not least we’ve got Bummer and Cupid, the two sheep. Also along for the ride are Retnuh (my dog), and Tad, Polly, and Pog (or Pogwog), our frogs that we got at one of the Thursday morning story times at the library. The person who plans it brought in Tadpoles and gave them out, so we got a few.

So obviously we’re overrun with critters here, and of course I’m loving it! The donkeys are ADORABLE! The dogs are getting along pretty well, though Minnie and Ret will bark at each other, and Thor growls at Ret sometimes.

We also set up Wireless here, so all is well. Lenny said we can stay as long as we need to, so this may be our last move until the real deal! With Ret around and such a beautiful place, I don’t mind a bit.

Well, I think we may need to be getting the sheep and donkeys bedded down for the night pretty quick. So I guess that’s it for now.

Guess what I did on Sunday…. I went to my mom’s graduation! It wasn’t terribly exciting, but it wasn’t as boring as her last one…. Otherwise I would have played Gameboy through the whole thing.

After the graduation we chatted with people for a bit, and then left. It was my grandma, Rick, my mom, and I that were there. We then decided to go eat! We went to Bridgeport Village (in Tualatin/Tigard) and my mom chose to go to McCormick & Schmicks. I had a yummy burger… And stole one of my mom’s shrimp.
After dinner we started to leave, and suddenly it started POURING! Not a regular Oregon rain… It was heavy heavy rain! It looked like the parking lot was bubbling. We decided to wait until it let up a bit, because we had parked in the parking garage on the other side of the mall (open air mall). Finally it let up a bit, and Rick offered to go get his car. We said we would go with him, but he said we should wait because it could get nasty again fast… As soon as he opened the door it started pouring again. Even he decided to wait a little longer. He finally did decide to go though, and he was soaked when he picked us up. That was very nice though. :p

My mom and I dropped my grandma off in Salem, then we headed back down the road to Creswell. Along the way we noticed an odd cloud…. It was very flat. Something about it didn’t look right, but oh well. We kept going.
A little while later we saw another strange cloud… This one kind of freaked us out. Infront of us we could see hills, and it looked like the cloud was reaching down to the hills. Soon it looked like we were driving towards a mountain, but it was a cloud. As far as the eye could see it was grey. It was about then that we started losing K-Love, so I started turning the dial (yes, we have an old car) to try to find the Eugene K-Love. In my search I heard a voice that just sounded to me like the voice they use for emergency warnings… So we tuned in to that.

A severe thunderstorm warning.
It was only the second or third time I’ve heard one. We just don’t get those in Oregon. Nickle sized hail, heavy rain, wind… The works. And it was in the Eugene area, set to hit around 7:00. It was probably about 6:50, and we were approaching the Coburg exit… Just north of Eugene. We listened to it again, and then before we knew it, we couldn’t see. The rain was coming down so hard and so loudly. It was amazing. We were tempted to pull off, but my mom was afraid the people behind us wouldn’t see, and would crash into us. When she saw the person behind us pulling off though, we followed suit. So there we are on the side of I-5, rain coming down, wind blowing like crazy, hail pounding… It was impressive. My mom said some of the hail was about marble-sized. We both had moments where we thought the windshield was going to break. It was scary. But it passed quickly. It passed as suddenly as it came, leaving startled people and many branches on the road. We slowly started getting back onto the road, and decided not to get off at the next exit, like we had originally planned. A lot of people chose to do that. Even those that stayed went slowly though. People who had just been going 80+ weren’t going over 40 or 50. I was very impressed.
As we drove on we saw branches and leaves littering the road. It would have been pretty easy to guess where it had started just by that. South of Eugene the roads looked almost dry, so it was clear that it hadn’t hit down there.

I know storms like that are normal in some places, but there is no way I could do that… We thought there must have been a funnel cloud or something, but there was none reported. To think about a storm WITH one, how much stronger it would be, scares me. As I think back, I remember the green line I saw in the clouds, and just the bizzare way it all looked… That alone is enough for me to say that’s enough!

How’s this for irony? We just had a sudden downpour, and then it let up real quick. No hail involved.

Ah man…. That dinner was good! My grandma insisted on making dinner, so we went over there for the usual feast…. And then…. And THEN……. STRAWBERRIES!!!!! But not just strawberries, of course. Strawberry shortcake! Heavenly heavenly strawberry shortcake! Oregon berries….. Now that I’ve been home from Japan for so long I can’t really compare them to Japan berries….. Just having berries is heaven to me!

My mom is at a board meeting right now, so I’m using the internets! At the library, of course.

Our house (the one in CG) had its inspection today, and it passed with flying colors! Which is VERY good news!

Besides that, not much…..

Oh yeah! I got new rollerblades on Sunday! Really nice ones. And I really need to find alternate ways to brake, other than falling down.
But anyway, I tried on two different ones, and decided right away that I didn’t like the second ones I tried….. Right away was when I realized I couldn’t get it off…. My mom couldn’t get it off…. And the sales rep couldn’t get it off. I was trapped!
Fortunately my mom figured it out while the sales rep was getting another person to help……. Then it felt weird to be free…. But a good weird. :p

Now I just have to learn to use my blades well…. Mainly in the stopping department.

Anyway, I’m here at the library…. Just me and my homework. Really… Everyone else went to lunch. What’s up with that? Oh well. It’s me and my homework here. I’m proud of myself too. I’m doing an outline! I used to hate outlines, but now I’m doing an outline! I have this slight addiction of complicated outlines though. If I’m going to do one I want it to look all fancy. :p Thought I’d take a break to post this though… Why? because I felt like it. Ha.

This is the best homework station ever. I’m in the back corner where there’s a catalog computer. I stole the ethernet from the computer, hooked it up to my laptop, so now I have internet on my laptop. I also have access to the library catalog (not that I’m using it, but if I were it would be useful! :p) right on the other computer, if I re-attach the ethernet… And I have my book, notebook, and requirements laid out here too. It’s pretty nice.

Now I think I’m going further than I need to….. Oh well. Overachiever in me. My outline is almost two pages and I’m still on the second of five roman numerals….. Yikes. I’m not even into the third part of the second one yet.

Well, the Chamber of Commerce lunch just started…. That’s where everyone went, and why I’m on my own. That means I have an hour left to work… Nice.

I like the icon stuff…. Now I nee to find funny pictures. I only have two right now, and only one of them is funny…. The one of Matt. Sometimes I love camera delay….. I’m sorry, Matthew…. I had to use it. :p

My default is of my puppy as a baby though….. Awww….. I need to upload the one Kento made for me too.