Unquestioningly updated

Things are going relatively well here. Derin (correct spelling) is doing well and trying to help me deal with the heat as well as possible. It's been in the mid to upper 80s for the past week+ and I'm realizing more and more that redheads and heat don't mix very well. I've definitely gotten more tan in the past couple months than I think I have at any point in my entire life...even when I was 8 years old and outside for hours and hours at a time. So far haven't gotten sunburned *knock on wood* and it's strange, but, when we're in the car and the sun is shining through the window onto my bare arm, I can actually feel a difference in how hot it is compared to the same situation driving in MN. I definitely see a close bond forming between myself and a bottle of sunscreen this summer.

Work is going well for him. I've been helping him lay out a humongous house. I mean, this place is gonna be so big that it'll have an elevator in it. How eccentric is that? We have one more trip out there and then we're done, but the last trip will be the hardest. Putting over 100 nails into hardened concrete where you can't be off your mark more than a hundreth of an inch of so will make that probably a 3+ hour job.

Our puppy is as sweet and perfect as ever. She likes to snap at the wood bees that fly around her, but yesterday it was some other kind of bee that was hangin' around. D said it was probably a queen wasp or something cuz that thing was huge. What was cool though was that, when the puppy saw it, she knew it wasn't some harmless wood bee and she hopped up, dove into the room through the open door and proceded to stand guard between us and the offending bee. :-) How sweet is that?

Work at Lowe's is going alright. Not too, too many crazy busy days, but I'm sure that'll change once it's consistantly warm and non-rainy. I still get ever so irritated at the people that come in 5 min. before closing and then shop for a half hour, but hey, what can I do? I'm still not officially past my 90 day evaluation period, but they've pretty much just started scheduling me as running the self-checkout when I work so I take that as good news that I have an "assigned post" as opposed to just being used to give people breaks and fill in where they need someone. Plus, I work with a lot of really cool people. The environment is really cool because pretty much everyone is friendly with everyone else or at least says good morning and asks how things are going (there are always a couple people that seem in a constant bad mood, but you find those everywhere).

In other news, so far no baby squirrels have found their way into my care...but I'd bet I've seen as many possums as I have squirrels. In fact, I think I mentioned about the possum we thought the puppy had gotten...well, it was gone when we got up the next day but we woke up a few mornings later and found a dead one in the yard. D thinks one of the dogs in the neighborhood was leaving a present for the puppy. D got rid of it and then about a week ago we found a dead baby possum on the deck steps. I don't know which is worse, seeing a dead possum or seeing a live one skulking along the side of the road at night.......they are ugly, creepy little vermin.

Um...what else...Mother's Day was a subdued affair here. Since there are three moms in the family we all ('cept one of the moms and I'm not sure where she was) went out to Cici's Pizza for lunch. Before we went, D and I made a quick trip to Lowe's and got a huge hanging fern for his mom to hang on the car port. She'd had two up, but then we had a frost where it got around the 20s and 30s for a week and a half so they ended up dying. So, we got her a new one. :-) I think she liked it.

Well, that's about it I think. Time for coffee.

*insert subject line here*

Sorry, too tired to think of a witty subject for the post.

Anyway, things are pretty much same old, same old here. Still working and having to get up at 5am some mornings. It's not too bad. I work mostly evening (4pm-9:30pm or so) shifts, but it sucks just a bit when I work the evening shift one night and have to work the morning shift (7am-noon getting up at 5am) the next day... like today. But still, I can't complain since I have money coming in every two weeks.

D's still doin' what he's doin'. I helped him lay out stakes for grading last week on this huge house he's working on. We ended up having to move the house about 10 feet or so earlier this week, but it wasn't as bad as first laying it out. Although, the final stage of putting nails in the concrete for the masons to lay block down will involve over 100 point (nails in the concrete). I'm not looking forward to that. It'll probably take us at least 3 hours stretched over two days if the batteries on his equipment don't hold out.

Let's see, what else? Um... D's started teaching me some martial arts. We've done a little bit here and there since I moved down here, but more just situational type stuff and what I could do to fight someone off...but yesterday we actually started in on the first part of the first Kata in the form of Ishinryu. D and his cousin studied for years under some of the best instructors (one of whom actually trained with the creator of Ishinryu)... and now I get to learn. :-)

We're planning on spending an hour a day practicing, though how practical that'll turn out to be remains to be seen. Still, I'm looking forward to it and once we get into it more, it'll be a tremendous workout.

Oh, I think my mom is talking about visiting in early July. *cheers* That'll be cool. She's not expecting me to take time off work for all the days she's here so I have to figure out which days will be good to take off and which shifts I should try and request for the day(s) I might end up working. I also gotta find some stuff for her and my brother to do while I'm at work. It shouldn't be too hard since we're not terribly far away from Pigeon Forge (Dollywood and tons of tourist spots), but I still gotta figure out where she'd like to go and get directions for her and all that, plus possibly looking at places for them to stay that are relatively close to the house here since we're kinda out in the boonies now. But it'll still be really cool to see both of them.

Well, that's it for now. Think I'm gonna go take a Vivarin before I head to work in about 20 min.