Gross.

Tuesday night was the first hockey practice of the new season. Our gear hasn't been worn since April, so that's 4 1/2 months of sitting.

Well, Shannon's didn't just sit. It grew some wicked stuff. Yes, grew.


This is his Rebel's jersey. He wore it at practice. I believe all the black is some sort of mold that like hockey. It was on both shoulders, but this side was worse.

After practice we came home and I washed everything that could be washed. The jersey went through the wash twice. Thank heavens for Spray 'n Wash Dual Power Stain Remover! That stuff is awesome! After one it looked better...


After two it looked wearable.


The jersey has been retired since it's last outing. It now hangs cleanly in our closet.

Not everything could be washed in the washer though. So, I pulled out our scrubbing brush and got to work. I scrubbed everything that didn't go in the washer with the brush and laundry detergent. Wow. That took over an hour, but it was worth it. This is one of Shann's gloves before I washed it.


They are his old ones, but still. That is tape across the palm that used to be white. It is black mostly from the dye in the leather, but it is definately white mold on top of the now black tape. It was really bad on the inside. Well, I scrubbed the snot out of those and they looked less gross when done.


That isn't even the worst. Shannon didn't show me at practice, but he said his helmet was even worse. Guess what we are gonna buy Shannon next time we are at a hockey store.

Also, the whole experience was so gross, I had to take a second shower when I was done washing it all.

The lettuce in review.

I've been working on various parts of the Renaissance Faire costumes for Shannon and I. I have looked for a good leather belt to use for my own, but I don't wanna spend 35+ dollars on one. So, I made myself a more humble belt. I took 4 strips of fabric that match my costume and wove a belt for myself.

I learned how to braid with four stands from Luis Ortega. Once I got started, it was very simple. The belt is long, when tied around my waist both ends are about 5" above the ground.

We're gonna rock down to...

School began on Monday. I have 3 classes. STAT 860: Linear Models I, STAT 725: Introduction to SAS programming, and STAT 716: Nonparametrics. Good times. 860 is going to be hard. The other two shouldn't be as bad. 725 only goes for 5 weeks. That is nice.

This is my book cover for 860. A clever name for a book indeed. Not to mention the author was one of the people interviewed for our department head.

Creepy Nature

This is one of the neatest (yet creepy) things I've seen first hand.

I was walking to school and noticed a bug in a spiderweb. That bug was a sad cicada. I was all like "wow, that is a big bug to get stuck in a spiderweb! Some spider is gonna be full." Then I look to the left, and this awful-butt large spider started to crawl towards the cicada. It was so creepy, yet really really neat at the same time.

I was too scared to get much closer to get a better pick, all I had was my phone. But it's still neat!

Also, there are like a ba-gillion cicadas this year. They are so loud.

Its a chocolate mold for pretzels.

My hands are dry.

Maria got her wisdom teeth pulled last Thursday. Last night she said her mouth hurt so she wanted ice cream. So, Shannon, Me, Jenette, and Maria went to Baskin Robbins to get some ice cream. It's not as good at Cold Stone, but they were closed.

While we were there, we saw this huge spider. You can't really tell (anything) from the pic, but he was big and it was gross.

Glacial Mango

The drive from Wichita to Tulsa was about 2.5 hours. I was pleasantly surprised by this and the landscape around Tulsa. There are hills and trees. It frequently reminded me of driving around Pennsylvania.


Sunday night Shannon and I ate some yummy pizza at a restaurant in RiverWalk. It was nice. Monday we had interviews. Shannon and I each met with 3 different groups of people. It was a good time. Everyone seemed really nice. We ate lunch with 3 people from the company, including Jennifer, Shannon's friend from grad school.

That evening, Shannon and I drove around and looked at houses. We found a really awesome place to eat while we drove around. We picked the place because the parking lot was packed at 5:30.


Ted's Cafe Escondido. We got seated in about 5 minutes (even though there were a lot of people there, the place is huge). Then, our waiter brought us free chips and salsa AND queso!! Awesome. Then we got free tortillas, not sure what for... I got a huge chile relleno and Shannon got a beef tamale and a chicken tamale. Never had a chicken tamale before. It was pretty good. After we were full, our waiter brought us our free sopapillas. It was fabulously delicious. And they had coke.

Tuesday we drove straight to Manhattan. That took about 5 hours. So... yeah.

It was a good time Now we all just wait.

More Travels

After going to Newgen's, we came home and spent another 3 nights there. Then, Wednesday was my niece's birthday and Jayme was throwing her a shindig in Wichita. So we left to go to Wichita again.

Jayme did a good job with the party. There were about 20 people there, some family, some coworkers, and some friends. It was a nice time. There was plenty of food (not unexpected) and Jayme even frosted Nicole her own princess cake! But... one of the dogs (Atari?) got on the table and ate about 1/3 of it! She was so mad (as she should have been). But she cut off the dog part, so we could still she how hard she worked, and mom bought one from Wal-mart or something to replace it. Silly dogs.


I made her her red dress for her birthday. It was rather large on the small child. But that just means she can wear it for a while. Well, after the party, we all hung around for a day and then Thursday, I went shopping to buy and outfit for my interview on Monday.

We left on Thursday after meeting up with Rhonda and Michelle in Wichita for dinner. It was a nice short trip.

Then Saturday was our 6 year wedding anniversary! Mom bought us a cake and candle so we lit it and ate some cake. How cute. After eating the cake, we packed up the car and went to Wichita (again). We figured it would make our drive to Tulsa on Sunday a little bit shorter.

I hate doing laundry.

After I returned from the land of family, Shannon and I came home. For the next 2 complete days (minus my teaching and some sleeping), we readied the troops for a huge (no huger) Warhammer battle.

Friday night we set up 17,000 points for evil and 17,000 point for good. We used just about all the models that Shannon and I, Jenette and Chris, and Newgen have. Old and new, good and bad. It was massive!


After setting it up, which took over an hour, we had some homemade pizza's. We were staying at Newgen and Andrea's new house. It was quite fun. Saturday we started to play. About 7 hours all together and we completed about 4 of 6 turns. That night we had 6 types of fondue. 6.


Sunday we finally got to finish the game, it took another 2 or so hours. Turned out to be a minor victory for the good. It was a massive, but fun time.


Greater Demon of Khorne did very, very well. Giant Mummy Frog did really well too. After cleaning up, we went home. For another 3 nights.

We are at a restaurant that gives free salsa, Queso, and soppapillas!