who needs sleep anyway?!

here's me and cassidy, one of my nieces, cheesing it for the camera. i just had to put this picture on here because i thought that we were so darn cute! :)

anyhow, i'm now on my way to arizona and am at the portland ariport for about 7 hours until my flight leaves. i am sooo tired! i am strictly an 8 hour sleeping schedule person and, unfortunately for me, i only got about three hours of sleep last night. i really should've taken some benadryl to knock me out before i got on the plane, but i thought that i was tired enough that i should've dropped right to sleep. and i did. i fell asleep before the plane even took off but then they turned on the air conditioning. or at least that's what it felt like. the plane had a pleasant temperature when we were waiting at the gate but then someone in the cockpit must've felt like they were dying of heat and so dropped the temperature in the plane to just above freezing! i know that it was above freezing because the ice that i had in my complimentary cup of orange juice was melting. it was melting very slowly, but it was melting. as soon as the temp dropped i woke right up and tried to control my inner coldness. i had the little air plane blanket all stretched out so that it could cover me from shoulders to feet but i think i probably would've needed a thick mink blanket to keep me from freezing. eventually i did fall asleep but it was a fitful one.

this kindof reminds me of church, sitting in sunday school. almost without fail every sunday someone in the back decides that they are just burning up so they open the window in the middle of winter. you can imagine how i just cringe and get goose bumps and shiver. then i wait until the person leaves for a bit and sneak over and close the window. the whole class then heaves i gigantic sigh of relief... until the person comes back and opens the window again. if only i remembered to bring hand warmers to church!

in phoenix it's like this too. you go outside and the temp is above 100, which can be toasty. then you go into a store or a movie theater or a restaurant and the temp drops down to just above freezing! the people that do this are the self-same locals that complain when it gets below 80 degrees! i have to drag around a sweater with me so that i can be warm inside. weird, eh?

this wasn't supposed to be a downer on all the people in the world who have high body heat production. it's simply a statement of jealousy and envy that i can't be one of the few, the proud, the comfortable...

Baldy...

yesterday morning me and my dad went and hiked up mt baldy. funny name for a moutain, i know. i was so glad that we went because i needed some well-deserved exercise to burn off a bit of pent-up energy. before we left i grabbed a thin fleece just in case it got cold up at the top, all the while listening to my dad say that i wasn't going to need it. dad's always know best and it turned out that i didn't need it. don't you just hate it when your parents are right?! :) the temperature was probably in the upper sixties and i was in heaven. i even got a little hot. you're probably asking yourself "how in the world is she going to make it in the desert?!" the answer is, simply and honestly, i don't know. i'm just hoping that i adjust to heat as well as i did when i was younger and would visit arizona every summer. we'll see!

anyhow, baldy is a hike that my dad does once a week for the duration of the summer, so he gets pretty fast by the end of the summer. he made it to the top in 31 minutes and i was a little behind at 38 minutes. that time is something that i can be pleased about for a first summer jaunt. i'm a slower hiker, slower walker, slower biker... just ask shawn about walking with me. i feel like i have to run to keep up with him and am always asking him to slow down. i guess i just have a different pace, but i will get to the end and that's what counts - more the journey and not the time. or maybe i'm trying to justify my slowness...? i also haven't really done too much hiking during the winter so it's time that i kick those legs into gear.

before i leave on tuesday i hope to hike up baldy again and see if i can be more dedicated and beat my time of 38 minutes. i'll be sure to report on it if i beat my time. if i am actually slower you probably won't hear about it beacuse i won't have any bragging rights. :)

and hopefully i'll remember to bring my camera so that i can show you all how impressive the view is from on top!

A few pictures...

these pictures are primarily for shawn, but you others may look as well. :)

04/26/08 - my last day at our house :(

04/26/08 - shedding a tear for our rental home

04/15/08 - me and shawn in texas, before he took off to iraq

view from my parents house 05/19/08

view from my parents house 05/19/08

First Post

so shawn, here's where it begins. i'm now officially a blogger. hah! and now i can post pictures for you to see over and over and over again. aren't you so excited?!

and for everyone else, take a gander and enjoy. for those of you that really know the real becca, you know that i'm not all that great at emailing and answering emails... unless your name happens to be shawn and you happen to be married to me. priorities! i'll tell you what! :) so i'll try to keep this so that you can keep tabs on me, only if you want to keep tabs on me. this way i'll only have to write everything once and you'll be the ones with the responsibility of checking to see how i'm doing. i don't want to say that i'm selfish, but more that i'm lazy and forgetful. yep, i think those are good words for it! and you may have noticed that i'm not ashamed about that either. maybe that defines a character flaw that i have, but as long as i'm not guilt-ridden, then i'm okay. hah!


so today was my last day of my day job. hooray! it was really supposed to be last thursday but i couldn't get everything done on that day, so i just added one more day. so i now am free... almost. i still am working another part time job but will soon leave that one behind as i step on the plane next tuesday. and then i'll be off for an adventure - to occupy my time in a new place until shawn comes home in the fall. if i stayed here then i would just go crazy waiting for him to come home, so off to arizona and the cuckoo birds. yep. and i'm not kidding either. i was telling this to a friend and for some reason she equated the word cuckoo bird with dodo bird. so she told her daughter that i was going to look for the dodo bird this summer. hilarious! but no, the cuckoo bird is, in fact, living and i promise that i won't go around looking for those birds that reside in cuckoo clocks. imagine knocking on someone's door and asking if they have any cuckoo birds residing in their home. ya know, i don't imagine that i'd get the best reception for that question. probably a loud guffaw and a door slammed in my face. not for me, no sir-ee. i plan on looking for the real bonified yellow-billed cuckoo bird. i don't know too much about the bird as of yet, but i'll do a bit of background research this week and will get to know a lot more as i'm down actually communing with nature. summer job, here i come! :)