That was heavy!

Apologies, that last post was a little heavy for this blog! I need to remind myself to keep this one light and fluffy!

Mom and Dad came to visit, and we all went shooting! Fun! Here's some happy pictures! :)

The Beginning of the End

Summer is coming to a close, and I start school on Thursday. I am taking Multigenre, New Journalism, and Creative Writing Seminar. (With Martinez, Guylas, and Westoff, respectively).  


This is the beginning of the end. 


What does that mean? I have 2 more quarters left. That's approximately 25 weeks until commencement. I will have my BA English, Creative Writing emphasis. I will have nearly 19 years of school under my belt. I will have a husband. I will have opportunities. I will have decisions. 


My mind is spinning. 


My purpose has always been to move forward. That seems like a common thread among humans. We want to move forward. We want to get to what is next. 
When we don't know what is next it is scary.


I think it's true even more so for girls. We are always looking forward to the next thing. Life is happening around us, but it will be so much better next year. It will be so much better when this happens. 


Does it ever get to that point where you're not waiting for the next thing? You're looking around you, thinking about your life, and saying, "I can live with this. Just like this. Forever?" 


Why not?

Woah!

Today I realized that we went from this:

To this:

And we managed to take Will Smith seriously. You go dude.

It's been too long!

Wow have I been busy or WHAT!

Insane!

But I won't leave my small amount of readers hanging.

In the beginning of the month, I went and shot Marissa's senior photos. She is being my Senior Model this year, hoping to get me more business.
Here are some awesome proofs :)


Next, Les had his last day at Jiffy Lube, thank goodness, and he's going to work for Innerpole now. He'll also be working for the neighbor mowing lawns and such.

That Friday, we went Kayaking, and Les kayaked FIVE MILES!! Then he said he was done kayaking for the rest of forever lol.
(I'll put a picture here when I get one off Les's phone.)

Then we went to Wild Waves on Saturday!!

That was so much fun! Jay was afraid of the wave pool at first, but he got the hang of it and loved it. I also went on some water slides - very unlike me - and actually had a really good time! Well, except the one that Les told me I had to come down to see him, and I didn't know what it did... and then I shot down it and free-fell into the water. Sweet... NOT! :P Talk about a wedgie!!

We went to my mom's so Les could do some work for my parents, and we were back by the next Friday.

Simba

I started taking pictures at the humane society of animals that are available for adoption. That's Simba; I think he's been adopted already.

We rushed back to mom's on Friday when we heard Buddy was not doing well... I won't go into the sad details, but Buddy isn't with us anymore :( 

My beautiful boy is in heaven now with my grandma and grandpa and Sweetheart... <3

We went to Jaysen's birthday party, and he had a great time opening presents and playing games at his beautifully done spider man party. Great job, Eryn!

My Grandma Karen is visiting now, and on Thursday we went and had a tour of Fort Worden and Manresa Castle. We've picked a wedding location, a wedding theme, and we are working on out outfits! :-)

That's about it. I'm home, now. I gotta go to boot camp today, at 8:30, then take pictures at the animal shelter this afternoon. I start school in a few weeks. How has your August been?

Let's play catch-up!

I am writing so much that when I think of writing a blog I get this weighted feeling that's kind of hard to describe, but imagine having a thought and someone then handing you a bag of sand. There. That's similar. 


However, I have people who wonder "what the heck is going on?!" so I figure I had better spill the beans!
I'm going to use pictures from my cell phone to play catch-up since it's been a while since I've actually updated you.

We've had some warm weather, though not super warm, but I enjoy it every chance I get. 

I took Waylon to the dog park (It was raining that day.) and he was SO good!! It was a really good time! :) 

Someone threw one of the AWFUL little writing desks into the fountain on campus! (I'm pretty sure it was a broken one anyway that had been sitting outside the classrooms waiting for someone to decide its fate.)

 Apparently, we have a NEW cereal ladies and gents. It's called "Life." See? NEW ITEM! I can't wait to try it!

 Waylon is a HAM.

I went to Sequim and spent some time with my family. I also did a few photo shoots. Fun times.

This is us at dinner, drawing on our super fancy table cloths. 

 We started watching this funny show called Testees. Hahaha it's about these two guys and they work for a testing company called "Testaco" and they are the "testees" that get to try different products... :)

Les and I took a trip down i5 for a date. It was so fun and wonderful!! And he renewed his proposal 

<3 <3 <3 <3 

(I can't make enough hearts, so live with four lol!)

Les and I cleaned the house, because #1 it was a mess, and #2 his mom decided she changed her mind and came up last weekend instead of this coming weekend (and called us on Saturday to tell us that.)

The animals chased each other all over the house while we cleaned hehe.

Les's mom got here, and she visited with us. I talked to her a LOT and didn't get a whole bunch of my homework done, so I have tons left to do (that's right, I should not be doing this right now, as per usual lol). She also helped and cleaned even more! <3 Yay for mommy love!! :D

Oh, and also, it rained yesterday when I took my scooter to school. I drove it home anyway, super careful, but I thought it deserved a photo :) 

p.s. I love Les. Do I say that enough? ^_^

Feelings ;)

This is how I feel!

Plus what?

Yep, it's hitting people's browsers. It's hitting them fast. Well, first it hits their inbox, then their browser.

What?

Google+

Ok so you might be tired of hearing about it already. Or, maybe you haven't heard of it yet. Regardless of your status in this thing, it is most certainly a thing. Like planking. Planking's a thing whether you like it or not.
I think I would define a "thing" as something that can be googled. Memes, websites, trends... they are all "things" that can be googled. Google+ can be googled, but it won't get you very far.
You'll arrive at a page that shows you some of the cool stuff that it does, a "demo" if you will, or pictures or video of people who are in the beta... but right now you won't get in without an invite.

I was invited by a friend. I'm not going to pretend that I was "cool enough" to be invited by Google themselves... though Canvas picked me up themselves. I must be only kind of cool. Underground cool. Right then.

So what's the big deal?

"It's just FACEBOOK with Google's FACE on it" - Les, the love of my life, griping about google+

...but... I say... it does more than Facebook. When asked what it is, many peoples first words are "it's like Facebook, but Google made it... and it's got some different stuff."
That doesn't glorify the situation at all.


Facebook will probably catch up and incorporate these features eventually, like how they picked up on a lot of cool Myspace things and Myspace picked up on a lot of Facebook's things... etc.

There's something about originality, though, that makes some people true fans. Like Nintendo fans. Yeah. You guys get it.

Uhoh, it's getting too boring. Picture:

So what's different? Lots of people talk about circles, but I'm going to talk about "hangouts" first. Well + (that's what I'm going to call it. Don't be confused) has these things called "hangouts" that are pretty cool. If you are familiar with "google talk" you know that in your gmail you can chat, and video chat, with anyone who is also on their gmail.This is kind of an extension of that. Now you can video chat with anyone who is on + but not JUST video chat with one person, but with anyone in any particular "circle" that you want. Here's a video where someone "hung out" with iJustine (a popular vlogger on YouTube)

The hangout window has a cool feature where you can watch youtube videos together. It will probably incorporate more cool things that you can share (maybe google docs?) eventually. All these things you see are still in beta. (Which is like... a rough draft.)

Also, there's circles.

"Who CARES? Facebook has GROUPS. Same thing."

Nope.

Groups allow you to only share certain information and photos with certain people, sure. They can also be public or private. However, they are more like message boards. It's like going onto a separate facebook, or a separate newsfeed, to share with these people. Also, people can see that you are in a group, even if they can't see what group you're in. So if you really want to join the group "Pokemon Addicts," or if your friend puts you into that group cuz he likes to share his pokemon stories with you, that's gonna show up on your profile... even if the actual content doesn't.

Or if you make a group called "best friends" then that friend who thinks they are your bestie is gonna be really sad when they're not included.

Circles are different. Only you can see the names of your circles. You can put all your friends into a "friends" circle. Your geeky friends into a "geek" circle. Your mom and dad in their own circle. Your boss in his own circle....
That might sound hard, time consuming, whatever, but it's just drag and drop.

Boom.
Then when you want to post pictures from that party last night, you share with your friends circle, but leave your boss out of it. If you are selling a graphics card, you can post it to your geeky friends and leave your normal friends out of it. If you want to tell all your close friends you're NOT pregnant after all, just share with the besties, and no one else will know.

Win.


...have I convinced you it's cool yet?

There's also these things called "Sparks" that I'm still trying to figure out exactly... but here's a video: