lots and lotsa jumpin

Today was our Fall Picnic at ICC. This is a Freshman guy named Caleb jumping off the top of the cliffs.

Gracie has no fear of leaping into the lake after sticks.

I got to take my turn wakeboarding this morning.

Nicole, Tim, and Matt (aka Moose) do their version of a 3-high

Now you see where Gracie learned it from! Andy Wade (fr. Bible/PE teacher) dives off the dock.

This is my softball team captain, senior class president, brother of my worker . . . David, taking one for the team as he competes in the bellyflop contest for the senior class.

Kelby gets in some extra gymnastics time while at the pool this afternoon. I have a whole sequence of him doing these. They're pretty cool.

feelin' hot, hot, hot

Here's my first Sabbath random nature picture of the week. I know you all wait anxiously for these. What creature(s) have appeared in Carrie's yard this week?

This guy (or girl???) was lurking above my head when I ventured out to refill my bird feeders and go for a walk at 6:30 this morning. It was staring at me.

The sunset was really pretty as I was walking up to vespers. They decided to have an outdoor vespers up at the field. It's finally getting cool enough (at night) to have a fire and kind of enjoy it.

Jifer brought her dog, Trip (it has 3 legs), and Randy brought Abner. They had fun running around and terrorizing the kids. The seniors left around 5:30 this evening to go on their senior retreat at ICC (Indian Creek Camp), so we have the other dorm kids that stayed here still on campus. We're all going Sunday to ICC for the Fall Picnic. It's a required school day, so we should have most people there for it.

Our vespers theme for the evening: Hell (JUST KIDDING)
This is Corey. He's a new freshman/sophomore (I'm not sure which). He's in my faculty family. I kept waiting for him to turn his head sideways to get a good profile shot, but he never did. Unfortunately, the fire died down after this and wasn't as good for taking these kinds of shots. Flash was pretty much out of the question, because I kept blinding people. I wouldn't have wanted anyone to walk into the fire or anything . . .

You can pick either of these pictures of the fire as your favorite. I give you permission. (???) The first one is 1/320 sec.

The second pic is 1/2 sec. I like this one better, I think. It doesn't look real. The great thing about photographing fire is that it provides its own light. It's way better than trying to do the same thing to water. =)

Michael Smith looks more like a firefighter than a chaplain in this picture. He was beginning his worship talk about Peter. I thought he looked more interesting as a silhouette with his baseball hat than a person with no hat would. I'll put these and more pics up on the Highland event pictures site eventually. I spent several hours working on that section today. It's still not working right. =(

why am i awake?

So I changed my profile picture to something funny, but you can't even read it, so I'll have to change it to something else. Bucky loves to eat monkeys, so in the picture, he's going "mmmmmonkeys . . ." This is kinda like Homer Simpson's "mmm . . ." statements. I just think they're funny. Anyway, I'll change it when I get around to it.

I got my chaise lounge yesterday, and only my chaise lounge. The couch didn't pass inspection for some reason, so I was informed that they have to order it all over again!!! I don't want to wait another month to be able to sit down in my living room. :(

Well, since I'm up, I'm going to take a stroll around the "block" before I have to actually get ready.

I don't know any Turduses

Ok, here's your answer. You'll have to click on the comic to read it.

Taxonomy and Nomenclature

	Kingdom:	Animalia
	Taxonomic Rank:	Species
	Synonym(s):
	Common Name(s):	American Robin [English]
		merle d'Amérique [French]
		Mirlo primavera [Spanish]

e is for ediot

I think this Get Fuzzy cartoon is hilarious. (You'll have to click on it to read it, probably.) I wonder where he's going with this one . . . ? Anyone want to comment on which bird they think is Turdus migratorius? Kudos to the first person with the right answer! NO GOOGLE-ING!

We had a Highland alumnus die in a motorcycle accident this weekend. He was being chased by the police down near Chattanooga. They chased him for a while and then let him go. They found him and the motorcycle in a ditch later. His brother is a junior this year and his two other brothers go to the grade school. I played softball with the two youngest ones and their dad this summer. We're shutting down school for the memorial service on Wednesday from 2-3p so the students can go if they want.

FYI - I left my cell phone at Jaclyn's this weekend, so for the next couple of days, you'll have to call my Cingular number if you want to reach me.

I like these funny t-shirts they have in the What on Earth? catalog. I would rather have most of them for signs in my office, but I think I'd get in trouble if I put them up. What do you think?

too tired to think of a fun title ; )

Well, you've probably already read Mary Jane's and Jaclyn's blogs about our weekend. We headed up to the Ocoee river yesterday afternoon to cool off a little. We ended up needing all that cold water to help slow the swelling of our injuries! Jaclyn fell down immediately upon stepping into the creek. She was holding her side in this picture as she regained the ability to breathe using both lungs! Notice that Randy and Mary Jane look worried.

These waterfalls aren't as fun to slide down as the one at Stone Mountain, NC, but we had fun anyway. The water felt really good, so we took advantage of it. The expression on my face is from hitting my rear end on the rocks in the very shallow pool at the bottom. Amy, Jeremy, and Randy didn't come dressed to get in the water and Jaclyn didn't feel good enough to get in. Mary Jane was satisfied with getting her feet and legs cooled off. There were lots of little fish biting our legs and feet. Stephanie wasn't too thrilled about that.

Stephanie was sure reluctant about sliding. She wasn't looking forward to sliding down fuzzy rocks into the water. I had a hard time getting her to even let go of this rock! I finally convinced her to take the plunge.



I had to hold Stephanie's hand to get her to slide down with me (ok, not really). The worst part about sliding is that your heels hit the rocks at the bottom. I noticed that when I put shoes on today, my feet were kind of sore.

What really made my foot sore was getting stung by a yellow jacket. I had forgotten how much that hurts! Jaclyn and I hit the ibuprofen as soon as we get back.




The drive back tonight was pretty uneventful. I should have taken a picture of the traffic backed up on I-24 going east right around the river south of Chattanooga. There must have been an accident, although I didn't see one. It was really foggy because it had just finished raining/storming. I kept my camera out and managed to snap this picture without veering off the road or sideswiping anyone! I almost caught the engine going across the bridge.

cat nap

This makes me think I might be part cat . . .

no comment

I removed anonymous commenting from my blog because I'm getting several comments from non-humans every day and I'm tired of it!

i have a blog in my front yard

HA staff 06-07

today's staff pic

they don't make the white shirts anymore, so those of us new staff had to wear HA t-shirts instead. i used my camera and tripod instead of the office camera. it didn't come out very clear and i'm not sure why. i probably should have set it for a narrower aperture to make sure it all was in focus . . .

Today was regular registration and handshake. We have 119 students registered at this point, I think. That's 4 more than we budgeted for, so we're glad.

This is Don shaking the hands of some Collegedale boys. The ones to the left and right are guys I tutored in math at Spalding two years ago. They still can't do math. =)


I like this picture of Jan Rogers trying to tear off a student's hand. She's so funny! Don introduced her tonight as the official Highland hit-person. He said "if Ad Council can't get you, she will." She works in the cafe.





This is most of the student body, minus SA, who were up front at the time. It's also missing the people I cut out of the right side!

I had fun taking pictures of the fountain with the shutter speed set slow. It was set at 1/2 second for this shot and I just held the camera against me. It was still light enough that the rest of the picture wasn't that hard to keep in focus.

Olivia thought it would be funny to get in a locker. She didn't think, however, that shutting the locker would be very fun. She's not very terrible for a 2-year-old. She likes to steal my keys, call people with my cell phone, and push the shutter button on my camera.

splash!

After the 3:30 meeting this afternoon with the parents of new students, I went for a walk with some of the other staff and their dogs. Chadd & Nikie came, Steve & Janelle brought Marley, Andy brought Gracie, and Randy brought Abner. I'll explain who the 4th dog is further down.

There is a pond out in the field behind Don & JP's that we took the dogs to because they like retrieving sticks from the water. Andy claims there is still a racquetball out there somewhere too that Gracie wouldn't bring back from the last time. This first picture is Marley. She's a lab mix and used to live in my apartment with Steve & Janelle.

Andy and Randy's dogs are both Weimeraners (sp?). Gracie is Andy & Becky's dog and she is VERY loyal and always wants to know what Andy is doing. She's on anxiety medicine b/c she goes crazy when Andy leaves the house.

She definitely gets the "Best Jumper Award" for chasing sticks in the pond, as you can see in the picture (click to enlarge). She took a flying leap every single time. Andy said she's a lot of fun to throw things for off of a dock because she still jumps way out. She and Marley came back holding onto the same stick one time! Marley likes to be the pirate of the pond and steal the other dogs' sticks.

This is Abner. He's Randy Bishop's dog and is quite a bit larger than Gracie. He's not really this red looking, but was in the evening sunlight, so it masks his gray color in the picture. He doesn't take flying leaps, but charges right into the water after the sticks. When we walked through the woods, he would pick up small logs and want us to throw them for him.

We took a pretty good hike from the pond down into some of the trails on what they call the "Back 40." We walked until we got to a big rock/small waterfall thing in the stream. The dogs had fun running and jumping on it. Gracie likes bounding over the trees that have fallen over the trail. In this picture, she cleared a branch 3 feet high and then over a couple of other parts spread out over about 5 feet. She's crazy! I had to use flash b/c the woods were so dark.

And the last dog . . .

He's our resident stray dog. He has a collar on, but no tags. This is kind of funny because a student made a tag for him today that said "Take me home Carrie" that several people saw. He's still a puppy and likes to chase cars and bark a lot. I think Steve and Janelle might keep him to have a playmate for Marley, and will call him Harper. I'm not attached to him, but I did feed him 3 pieces of bread and part of a donut! ; )

after the rain

We have had a couple of days of rain and thunderstorms. The birds seem to be more hungry after it rains.

I hid from the hummingbird and it still wouldn't come drink with me standing there.

The goldfinches were out in full force this morning. I had 6 goldfinches on this sock at the same time. I saw at least 7 in the front yard at one time and they were even eating off the ground. I got more thistle seed yesterday and they really appreciated it, I think.

These flowers guard my tomatoes (they were already here when I got here) from bugs, I guess. They were still full of water from the rain.

I have all kinds of finches in the front yard and they get along ok for the most part. At one point, I had 5 female house finches on this feeder and there are only 4 perches.

I thought this spider web was cool. It stretched all the way from the ground up to one of the branches on my walnut tree.

Anybody know what kinda vine this is? It's growing on my front "porch" and just started flowering. The hummingbirds don't seem to care about the flowers, but maybe that's because I have their feeder right next to the vine!

going home time . . . and back to work

Today was the last day of meetings at the Opryland Hotel. This picture is of the lobby outside of the Delta Ballroom, where all of the general session meetings and some of the bigger breakout sessions were held. There is a nice view of the Atrium from up there. Ryan and I were up above it for a breakout session so I snapped a picture on our way down the stairs.

Pretty much everyone has been walking around with their phones stuck to their ears (or using Bluetooth earpieces). It's the best way to find who you're looking for in a place this big.

I didn't really get to say goodbye to anyone besides dad, Mary Jane, & Randy. I didn't feel like looking for them and my ride was leaving. I ran into Moffits today and saw their new baby girl.

Sorry this isn't a self-portrait, Jaclyn, but it's the only picture of us from today! We've gotten spoiled getting to be around each other this much. I won't see Ryan again until September break when we go to Collegedale together. =(