sick

well it seems like it 'tis the season to get sick. Apparently someone had the flu when we got to grandma and grandpa's, so pretty much everyone got it. Kirstyn, Shawna, me, Steph, Mom, Aunt Sue, Auntie Bert, Grandma and Grandpa, and four of Uncle Steve's kids caught it. I spent all of last night up-chucking. seven times. Eew. Steph only once. But I'm supposing that you don't really want all of the gory details...

Anyway, we're currently parked at a Super 8 in Missoula. We actually got here last night, and planned to only stay one night. Plans changed a little bit. Pretty sure dad didn't want to have two sick kids in his car. So we're leaving tomorrow for Oregon. Pretty 'cited!

Well, I'm off to check on our laundry.

Ta.

X-mas at the G-folk's

Well I guess I haven't posted since last Saturday or something.


So we cleared out of Shawna's Monday morning, which was really easier said than done, seeing as we had filled her entire living room, as devoid as it was of furniture, with our monstrous suitcases, an inflatable air mattress, various amounts of snow clothing, and some other misc items that prolly could've stayed in the car, but didn't. From there it was about a three hour drive to Steve and Julie's. (I think...I'm getting all our travel times mixed up)

We spent a few days there, shopping during one of them. I had the funnest time at Michaels with my gift card. =) I hope you never doubted my ability to spend all of it at once, because I most certainly did. Of course, some of the things I got were considered frivolous by my darling Amber. Her favorite remark (as it's been repeated quite a few times) was "You bought a $5 shoe box?". Well I beg to differ. It's a photo box with seperators. And besides...last I checked, shoe boxes didn't come in decorator colors! So there. =P

The rest of our time there was spent pounding away on the piano, which seems to be as much their hobby as it is mine. We get along so well.=)

We headed to Gramma and Grandpa's on the 24th...I think that was Wednesday. From the moment we got there Grandpa was on us to play him some more music. Good thing there were about 4 or 5 of us players...we managed to keep the music going almost non stop. Methinks it was pretty impressive. Thursday everyone got to go ice skating on the pond that Grandpa had just cleared off for us with his monstrous tractor. (He loves his toys) I tried the whole skating thing for a while, but when I discovered that I kept better balance with the full surface of my feet on the ground, I opted for the picture taking role instead. They had fun playing crack the whip, and I had fun video taping it. The whole escapade was called off pretty suddenly tho, when Amy's hand connected with someone else's skate. Cut it pretty deep. Oddly enough, the circumstances were in our favor, because we had two at least partial nurses in our party. Mom and Brend both insisted on looking at it. I insisted on leaving, because I have a very low tolerance for blood. Go figure.

The meal was scrumptious, of course, mostly because we had 30 ppl and most of them brought their own dishes. Dad made some sort of spare rib or something that was pretty good. I think it could've gone longer, because it covered my whole plate in blood. Needless to say, I ate around it. The mashed taters were a work of art tho.

The next day I got the nurses all twitterpated again. For some reason I passed out while Kirstyn was doing my hair. Still can't figure out why. I think Kirstyn and Amber got the most excited about the whole thing, although not in a good way. I woke up to Amber practically yelling "What are you doing, Kara? What are you doing?"

Well I don't know! I sure as heck didn't do it on purpose!

Word spread fairly quickly, and I still had people asking me today if there had been any more "Fainting Spells". No, thank you very much, there have not. =P

Thursday Friday and Saturday our crowd of guests changed little by little. Some people would leave, only to be replaced by another crowd. Friday, a family of violin players came over. I was pretty much amazed by the whole thing, because the youngest girl, who's four, has started playing a little while ago, and the 8 year old has been at it since she was two! I got a video of her and her mom playing a couple duets, but they'll have to wait until later to be posted, because I'm currently on Kirstyn's computer and my camera is in the car.

So pics and videos later.

We're gonna head off on our first part of the trip to Oregon sometime tonight.

And I'm off to take a nap.

Montana Part I

We're officially in Montana, and to tell the truth, it kinda sucks. At least the weather part of it, anyway. I don't think we've seen a positive degree since the last hour of the drive yesterday. It got down to 25 below yesterday evening, and you all know that I'm just a wimpy Cali person...cold should STOP at 20 ABOVE!

But did the weather get that memo?

Nope.

Anyway, we ended up leaving at 8 on the dot Friday morning...something we only managed to do because we were trying to leave a little earlier than that. (Just for the record, I was in the car by quarter till warming my buns on that loverly seat heater) We stopped at a gas station on our way out, and I decided that I really really was in dire need of a doughnut. So I got one. Of course, it took me five minutes to find out where the glazed ones were actually kept. When I found them hiding by the cash register, I bought one and headed back out to the car with it. And then I discovered that nothing is more disappointing than biting into a long awaited doughnut and finding out that, no, it isn't glazed, and yes, it has the consistancy of a brick coated with uncooked egg whites.

Yes, ladies and gents, that week old doughnut was coated in honey. It was disgusting.

After I had been revived we got back on the freeway. We actually made it past Colfax before the snow started. But I feel the need to throw in some version of "When it rains, it pours", only in something better suited for snow. Like, "When it snows, it snows hard." Anyway, it was definitely pouring in the snow sense all the way up the mountain. We made it without much incident. We all had lots of fun pointing and laughing at all the people without 4WD lined up along the side of the road in the snow putting on chains.

It snowed the whole stinking day. Which, of course, meant no driving for Kara. But that's okay. It gave me more time to sleep and work on Shawna's blanket. It's almost done, btw. (I showed it to her when we got here, even though it wasn't finished, and informed her that she wasn't allowed to have it until we see her again at G-ma's for X-mas.)We stayed in a hotel that first night and finished up the trip yesterday morning. Got here around three-ish. Tomorrow, it's off to Great Falls to see the Steve and Julie clan. And Kirstyn, if she asks nicely. =)

Ugh

Snow day on Monday. Definitely floated my boat all the way down any river. That meant no more Loftis than absolutely necessary, and a day of just generally sitting around and doing nothing. And even better was that I was at dad's where it didn't snow, it RAINed.

Have I mentioned I don't like snow?

It disgusts me.

Sure it looks pretty falling from the sky, and then you realize that it's going to make any sort of outdoor movement a pain, whether it be by car or by foot. Anything else is just completely out of the question. Take today for example. Firstly, I wasn't allowed to drive, because dad didn't know how icy the roads would be. Bah. Secondly, I wore flats today, and the people who cleared the sidewalks at school apparently like to see the smallest amount of space that is required for a school full of kids to walk. So even though there are actually thousands of square feet of pavement, only maybe ten were cleared. The rest was covered in half melted and refrozen snow. Flats didn't help at all. By the time I got home, they were soaked through, but that was partially because no one bothered to clear off the side of the road that I had to walk down. Apparently they thought that that was where they were supposed to scoop the snow from the road. Completely inconsiderate if you ask me. Just not even cool.

So yes, I froze all day. Methinks I'm gonna wear rubber boots tomorrow. Maybe I'll turn into John Lawson, who has actually earned the nickname Boots, because of his apparent lack of anything else resembling a shoe.

The only upside to the snow was watching some kids go sledding during lunch. It was definitely interesting. This is the one time of year that all the hills around campus are actually good for something. Someone smoothed a path down from the side of E, down the hill, across an ice patch on the uncovered part of cement, off a jump on the other side, and down towards D where they had to either get up or keep going down the stairs, through the quad, down more stairs, and out onto the road. I bet they could've done it if they had tried hard enough.

Arright...no more officially's. I promise.

I'm going to try to make it though a whole post without saying the "O" word. (it's in the title, if you don't get it)

So it was Madrigal weekend last weekend. It was definitely very much fun. I volunteered/got volunteered to be a head server all three nights, which turned out to be a bit much, to tell the truth. My arms hurt incredibly bad from lifting all those plates, and for some reason (don't ask me why...we were walking on flat floors the whole time), so are my legs. But not from lifting the plates. I dunno why.

Anyway, Friday the show had a few minor glitches. One being that the star of the second act went missing about a quarter of the way through the show. Turns out he spilled some water onstage, got yelled at by some chick, and high-tailed it out of there.

He got kicked out of Chamber.

So they made it through the rest of the night, stalling a ton. They had Tarney and her mom go up and play the harp and flute and drum and all that. It was cool.

Saturday, Mom volunteered, so I got there at four instead of five (well, that definitely guaranteed me to get a good costume...except that they all consisted of white shirts, black skirts and a sash. Not much origionality there...). I talked with Adam for a little bit before going off to help out somewhere. That's actually when I found out about the whole Bobby incident the night before. Turns out that Adam got to take over for Bobby, which meant learning a new part overnight. He had the part of a Scottish sheriff trying to find out "Who Killed the Kilt?". So not only did he have to learn 20 minutes worth of dialogue, but he had to do it in a Scottish brogue. He pulled it off amazingly well. He only said "Was I supposed to say something?" about three times, but it didn't really matter, because it just made the whole thing even funnier.

And he managed to pull off a skirt.

Not entirely sure how those Scottish people do "jigs" in skirts tho...Adam demonstrated one for us. What we saw was almost too much.

Sunday evening was great too. During the interrogations, a slightly middle-aged lady who was dressed almost granny-ish was called up onstage.

"Where were you, madam, last night between the hours of six and ten?"

"Well, watching a movie!"

"A likely story!"

*shrug*

"Then tell me this...Have you ever been into LeeAnne's Britches?" (The store that apparently sold the murder weapons...a darning needle and a seam ripper)

"No, I've only ever been in my husband's britches!"

*Uproar of hilarity, mirth, laughter...whatever you want to call it. Lasts about five minutes.*

a/n: It would've been easier for me to get under control a little sooner if I hadn't been trying to place a plate in front of a guest at that exact minute. Thankfully I didn't drop it, but I didn't try picking up a plate again until all the laughing had died down again.

*Trying to wipe the smile off his face,*

"You disgust me."

*Of course, more uproarious laughter follows.*

Anyway, that was the end of the Madrigal. Now we have concerts Wednesday and Friday, Finals next week, and I have a cello thing on Monday that I'm not quite ready for.

It's going to be an exciting couple of weeks, that's for sure.

In fact, even today was exciting. Well, kinda. Mom woke me up at five to seven today. She announced the time and I sat up, probably too fast to be healthy, to tell the truth. Yup, I was late. It wasn't until a little later, though that I realized that I was supposed to be out the door the minute mom woke me up.

Can you say over-drive?

But I managed to make it to the bus stop a minute early (don't ask me how) where I proudly announced to one of my friends that I had just beat his waking up late record. Ha. Beat that Carey. Of course, I hadn't actually done squat to my hair and my contact case was riding in my pocket, so that I could put them in sometime after I got to school. But I managed the whole escapade without forgetting a single thing, which is more than I can say for a normal morning.

That did leave me in a fairly grumpy mood all morning thought. And of course, it didn't help that my cold finally caught up with me. Humph.

Well, I'm off. I've got a lab to finish. Bah.

Ta.

Weekend

Well it was Madrigal weekend. It's officially over. I'm officially dead on my feet. (that's what I get for serving all three nights)

I'm officially going to bed.

I shall very officially write more tomorrow.

'Cause I'm pretty officially tired.

So officially, ta.

Pre-concert pics

She thought she would go out on stage like this.












I was only allowed to post this because I didn't put her face in the pic. But I thought it was pretty funny. =)




There were only a few pictures of this concert that I was actually allowed to post. Anywhere. Thank you Laura for being a sport. =)



Awwww...look at the cute little penguin!