She knows just what I like, the angel on my bike.

The Wallflowers put on a pretty stellar show, as I was expecting :).
We didn't get to be in the middle, but we were in front, just off to the left a bit. So the view wasn't bad. Shayla got caught recording part of a song on her camera though, so this big, annoying security guard yelled at her, and stood a foot and a half away from us on the other side of the metal rail for the entire rest of the concert. It was ridiculous, and kind of put a damper on the whole evening. The sign on the door even said "no flash photography", and she wasn't doing that. However, people around us were snapping shots left and right, which the guard must've obviously seen, or he's blind, but he did nothing, just continued to make us feel annoyed and uncomfortable, stalked, the whole time. So because of him I don't have any nice pictures to show you all, sorry :/.

"Brrraaappppp"
Hah, in case you didn't guess, that's the dirtbike noise. Since I've been spending a decent amount of time with Tom lately, the morning after the concert and today, I haven't been a stranger to these two wheeled speed machines. After going to the hardware store to pick up his shock, we went back to his house to work on it in the shop. As I've mentioned before, there's just something I love about helping him work on things down there. It's in the bottom of a barn, so it's alot cooler than the outdoors with the lack of natural light and the cement. So it's comfortable, and I just like learning about what he's doing, and testing things out myself. We had to take apart some things in order to put the shock in, which required unscrewing and screwing of bolts, I helped by greasing certain tools up, and finding him what he needed when he couldn't leave what he was holding/doing on the bike. So I was semi-useful. I even figured out where this one thing went, when he wasn't sure himself. It took quite a bit of tinkering before it was ready to start up again, but we finished it after awhile, and he took it for a spin around the house and back yard. Personally I've never ridden one :P, I've never had the chance to really, and I'll face the facts, I'm not a daredevil. Another thing I like about working on things with him, is that we usually wind up having good conversations. We talk about the government, how the direction we're headed in can't be good. And how a vast majority of the human race is well, stupid/ignorant. We talked about alot of good things, but I won't elaborate further because that would probably be a borefest. It was nice though.
The way he talks about his dirtbike, and how he loves riding, makes me think there's alot more heart behind the sport than the stupidity people generally associate these kind of things with. There's a science to it. You have to get a feel for the bike, and learn when to break, what pressure to apply, where to go slow, and when to just haul, hahah. He's had his share of failed attempts, and has to deal with the painful, nasty rashes and sores because of it :P. It requires alot of time and care too, and knowledge about what's best for the machine. I guess my point is that everyone has their passions, and even if it's a dangerous one, it's better than not having one at all. Also, there's science and reason behind all sorts of things, sometimes we just need to venture outside of our own safe, cozy box, and catch a glimpse from other perspectives.
As for me, I'll probably stick to the excitement of reading :). But I find it invigorating and fun to explore new ideas and test out different waters.

So aside from all that jazz and excitement, I've been keeping myself busy. This morning Tom came over and we fed the calves for my mom, since she had to take my Grandma to a doctor's appointment. Those chores were actually pretty easy. Then we went to the carwash so I could vaccuum out my car. It's ridiculous the amount of rocks, dirt, and junk that have accumulated into my floor. So I put in a dollar, and it allowed us four minutes to complete the job. We rushed, vaccuuming at top speed, and we had sucked the dirt from the last floor mat right when tht time ran out. Conclusion: We would dominate on a tv game show ;).
Then we went off to Home Depot for bolts, and I wanted to look at paint. In case anyone was wondering, I never got my bookcase, because the table saw he was using to make it broke, so my present is on a little hiatus. I'll get it eventually though. After a quick stop into Walmart we ate lunch at Subway, mmm :). I'm growing addicted to that place, I need to cut myself off, hahah.

It turned out that the weather wasn't good enough for hay today, so after Tom took a nap and I sat beside him watching an episode of Dead Like Me, I brought him home. Tomorrow we plan on unloading three loads in the morning, and however many they can bale up for us in the afternoon. Oh boy..
As promised, here's a picture of a parked haywagon that's awaiting us for the morning.



Once I was on my own I did a substancial amount of cleaning, that really needed to be done. I always feel accomplished when I get things nice and tidy. As farmers, that's not the top priority of my parents. They're good, hardworking people. A little dust here and there, and clutter, doesn't bother you when you've spent all day dealing with large, smelly farm animals. You just want a place to rest. So I kind of take alot of the cleaning on as "my thing" because it matters more to me.
I apologize if this post basically sucks. It's past midnight and I'm at the brink of complete exhaustion. I felt like I needed to update this though, and keep my blogging moving along at a more frequent pace. So if it seems like I've been droning on or rambling throughout this---whoops :P, I'm sorry. I'm just typing whatever comes to mind. I anticipate a more thought out, concious post in the near future :).

♥ Olive

Seven, Seven, Oh Nine :)

It's just unfathomable to me just how quickly summer is slipping by. It's only the "beginning" for me, but I realize soon enough will be the middle of July. Then it's only a few weeks til August, then September. I feel like I need to scramble to accomplish all of the ideas that have been swarming, spinning around in my head. So, like any dutiful blogger I'll go all out and list the things I want to do, right here in plain sight. That way, if I allow myself to fail to do them out of laziness, I'll have to shamefully inform you all that's what happened :P. Eh, just a little motivation I presume.

SUMMER PLANS.
* Educate myself better on the things they don't really teach at school. I want to research more about government and the economy, but I'll take a class on that next year. I still want to understand it myself, first. As Hannah was saying, as the next generation, we must be informed. Or we're doomed to epic fail. Also, I want to learn about different places, master geography, and just pick up on whatever interesting information I can. I want to learn about mechanical things too, so I can actually comprehend how things work.

* Purchase a laptop and internet. In doing this, I plan on being a smart shopper, not just getting what "sounds good", but I really need to understand about the processor, how much memory I should need, and what isn't going to screw me over. Plus I don't want to spend a fortune. Then I need to protect it an anti-virus program, a really effective one. Any suggestions for that?

* WRITE. I claim this is my future career. I'm so sure I'm going to publish books, yet I don't even write in my spare time. It makes me feel like an imposter. Just because I can rip through essays for school, always earning a mark high in the 90's, or a 100, doesn't mean I'll be a writer. I need to get creative, really own what I love. I think I'm afraid that if I try now, it'll turn out disasterous. But oh well, I need to do it anyways. I have an idea for a story, it's about a girl named Josephine. I just need to start it on paper.

* Finally get the Spanish language through my head. I can never separate the different tenses and their endings. This summer I'll put an end to that, so I can really understand spanish, and hopefully progress to teaching myself new languages. I want to eventually be multilingual :). I plan on travelling when I'm older, and when I do, I do not want to receive the "dumb tourist" treatment. I want to know how to speak, listen, and navigate my way through the beautiful countries in Europe. England will be a piece of cake, hahah.

Those are my "set in stone" kind of plans, the ones I really hope to accomplish, atleast to an extent. Otherwise, I really just want to enjoy my summer. I love seeing my friends pretty consistently, it's good to feel like there are people you can always call up and find something to do with. I've also been trying to better my health lately, eating more natural/organic products, trying to balance things back out from all of those appetizing graduation party foods I binged on. And I've been walking daily with Candy, whenever I've been home. If I don't take her out, I feel like I'm letting her down, and being "mean" :P, so that gets my butt outside. I want to go bicycling more too.

Time to recap :).
I really enjoyed my little trip out west. As in west, I mean the western part of the state, hahah. But it was nice. I actually like long car rides. I could look out of the window for hours, and I did. Plus I listened to my ipod, and let my mind just wander. Driving and having to pay attention to the road has made me forget the pleasantness of just riding, I always felt most insightful while I tuned everyone out, sitting in the window seat of a car. I finished Impossible by an author named Nancy Werner, I think. Something like that, Julie has the book or else I'd look. It was a nice little fairytale-esque story. With a modern setting. I thought it was a little stupid at times, but it was pretty okay overall. Now I'm reading On the Road, by Jack Kerouac. I've heard good things about it, and it's a pretty reknown piece of literature in history, so it's worth a shot. I'm liking it so far. Some of my absolute favorite books, like Water for Elephants, are told back in the early 1900's. On the Road is more towards the middle of the century, but still. I like reading about that era. Back when you could hop on railroad cars, and it was normal. When hitchhikers weren't assumed to be evil molesters/serial killers. Back when we had an ounce of faith in humanity.
The house we stayed at was nice. A log cabin on the lake, with a yard for the guests to pitch their tents on. We put outs up near the hottub. We spent alot of time playing games with eachother, the younger ones :P. Most of the people there were adults who all knew eachother. So Julie, John, Amanda, Julie and John's cousins Jack and Maggie, and myself played Palace, Kings in the Corner, Yahtzee, Mancala, Scrabble, and then some. I never knew how to play Yahtzee before, but I won the first time ;D. Pretty cool.. haha. I desperately want to teach myself how to play chess. I always knew checkers, but noone ever taught me chess. Unfortunately, LuLu didn't own a chess board, or Jack and Julie would've shown me.
It was freezing cold for the beginning of July. We expected to spend alot of time out in the water, but that didn't quite happen. It was a beautiful view, I'm awful for not taking more pictures of it. We did go swimming once, and it was fun. We jumped on the water trampoline and projected ourselves out into the dark blue abyss. I'm not a good swimmer. That's another thing I need to work on. Sure, I can manage, and keep myself above water. But if you dropped me in the middle of a lake, I probably would die :P. I guess it depends on the size of it, and adreneline would come into play. But point is, I need to swim more.
Being out in the woods persay, made me long to go camping or hiking. Being in someone's backyard doesn't constitute as the real thing, and I've never gone camping, for real. I think I'd like it though. I've hiked before, but not recently. I want to go again. I told Tom that, and now we're hopefully going to go one of these days :). I like adventure.
So the trip was good, the food was mainly organic, and delicious. And the people were all fun. It was basically a gathering of past/current hippies, alot of which used to go hiking together as a group called the "Sapper Knackers", hahah. I thought that was a cool name. Of course they used to do the typical hippie stuff :P, but I still think it was a cool idea. Being there made me think about friends, and how we'll be in the future. I honestly hope and believe we'll still be close, atleast my closest of friends, and I hope we have little camp out get togethers when we're older. It's nice to see examples of people who haven't lost eachother over the years.

My Independence Day wasn't too crazy/exciting. The night before, Lulu have us glow in the dark jewelery and wands, haha. But on the fourth, we went outside for awhile, and it was just too cold. So we went inside and watched Wall-E, hahah. It was still a nice time. We could see some of the fireworks through the window to the loft.
I was home Monday, just in time for the first load of hay! In case you don't understand, as farmers we mow and bale our own hay, so when they square-bale it, it's flung into huge wooden wagons, and we have to manually move it from these wagons into the barns for storage. Tom always helps with this, so he came over and together we tackled 4 loads, I believe. I'll post a picture of exactly how big these wagon loads are, eventually. Let's just say for now, it's alot of work. It was nice being able to hang out with him though, after not seeing him for awhile.
Tonight I'm going to go see The Wallflowers in concert, with Julie and Shayla. We're buying tickets at the door, I hope they won't be sold out. I'll tell you all how that goes in the next post :).

Pay it forward!

This is incredible overdue, but I just wanted to publicly thank the lovely Hannah over on Sixteen Going On Seventy..., for her wonderful gift :). She held a contest awhile back, and I entered and was selected, so she sent me this wicked nice journal. She has great taste, doesn't she? :D. I'm actually planning on using it to start the story I was talking about in the beginning of this post. So thank you, thank you, my dear Hannah :).
But anyways, as the contest goes, I'm the next one up to give a gift of my own choosing. So if any of you are interested in entering, just drop a comment saying "Count me in", or something indicating you're cool with being in the drawing. If anyone signs up for it, I'll probably put names in a hat or something :P. If you're not okay with the whole address thing, or you know your parents woudn't be, it's cool. I'll have you know I'm not an old man, and I lack the energy required to stalk someone, hahahah. Kidding, but really. I'd only use it to send you your gift.

So I guess how it works is I pick 3 names from the draw, although I'm not really expecting many enterees, because I don't have a huge following or anything, but I'll choose the winners at random. Then once you receive something, you then go and do the same :). Ta-Da.

Well, off to see The Wallflowers I go!
Have a wonderful week & such.
♥ Olive

Mini vacation of sorts.

As if my blogging habits weren't awful as it is..
Hahah :P. Yes, I'm going to be gone for four or five days. All of which I'll be alienated from internet connection, unless I get ambitious and use my cellphone. Anyways, don't expect a post in the mean time. I'm going with Julie to visit her Aunt, who isn't really her aunt, just a family friend, hahah, and they live up on a lake. It's nearly six hours away in a car, and I believe we'll be sleeping in a tent, maybe. I'm kind of excited :).

So it'll be me, Julie, her brother John, her father, and Amanda. I hear that swimming, waterskiing, and tubing may very well be involved. But I'm not 100% sure of what to expect. I suppose I'll quit guessing and just tell you all about it upon my return. So I'll be there for the 4th of July, I hope you all have an enjoyable one yourselves!

Oh, wow. I think today may have been the very first day all summer that I haven't seen my friends. Like not leaving their house in the morning, getting together during the day, or going to their house for the evening. Nope, I was completely alone today. I didn't really mind though. For me atleast, I need a day for myself every once in awhile. Just to chill, veg out, and not worry about anyone else. I watched a few episodes of Dead Like Me. I highly reccomend that show to anyone who hasn't already watched it :). Unfortunately, my internet connectivity has been less than stellar lately.. So it's a struggle and a test of patience every time I want to do something. Every day I want a laptop more, hahah. After speaking to my parents, we decided it may be possible for me to use my savings bonds to purchase one. Originally these were for college, but all together the oldest, most valuable ones have accumulated about $1300. So my mother atleast, doesn't think they'll add up to enough to really make a dent in the college funds, so I'm free to use them for my education in other ways. Now I just need to revisit the suggestions you guys gave me, read up on some reviews, and choose what I want. The vice about laptops here is the inaccessibility to cable. Therefore, in order to have highspeed, I need to fork over $60/month. Outrageous. :/. But nothing else is cheaper.. so hmmph. I'm thinking about getting a usb connector from Verizon, so I have internet wherever I have cell service. I need to learn more about this stuff though. Well, I'll blog again, and hopefully better, when I come back :).

♥ Olive