Well, the plan is now that I live in the terrace apartment on the backside of the house. It was in pretty rough shape. The guy before us had tried to make it livable, but apparently without any building skills what so ever!  It was pretty bad. I really should  have taken a picture of it before I even started working on it. It had really gross vinyl tiling and carpet that was ripped and had general grossness on it.

So the first thing was to rip all of it up. The carpet was a orange greenish brown colored as if someone with the stomach flu had eaten carrot cake. The guy had put masonite up for ceiling with about 9 screws per tile! I got to work on my upper body strength to get all those screws out! Masonite was made back in the 60s or 70s. Apparently it doesn't react well with water and since it's considered environmentally friendly/Go Green, I had to agree with someone else to 'Go Blue' and  so I burned that stuff! Whenever I finally ripped a tile down, I would get showered by dust, crap, and snakeskins. Thankfully, this whole place was sprayed a while back so this is just the remnants. The walls were in the wrong spots so I ripped off the paneling and knocked down the studs. Mr. Wonderbar was become my best friend in this excursion. This whole place is one big electrical no-no. There are outlets hanging out of the wall and random wires hanging exposed. He also tried a makeshift shower which was utterly gross! But I had a lot of fun knocking the cement blocks out with a sledge hammer.  Thank goodness for HHGG collection on audio or the whole experience would be without humor.

Anyhow, everything is torn out and knocked out now. I took measurements and drew out a scaled idea of where I want everything and took a can of spray paint to put where I want the walls  and a few other things. I got a little carried away with the spray paint those. Also, I felt it was extremely necessary to label stuff to clear up some things.  I pretty much have all my furniture except a couch. Probably going to get a futon or sofa bed so that I don't have to sleep with every guest I have anymore. I have some pretty good ideas about what I will  do for design that will go in occasional other blogs.

**These words will substitute the dumb remarks about how it's been a while since I wrote and all the dumb excuses that I could put here***

Well, now that I got that over with...life has been pretty awesome as usual, busy, and frustrating. So yes, I finally graduated!  To quote a friend of mine, "Gosh Rachel...it's about time! You're like what 25 now??!!!" All I can say to those years that everyone tells me I'll mist--Good Riddance! It had to have been the most boring ceremony I've ever had to sit through. My only comfort was this would be the last time I would be sitting with these people listening to a long alphabetical list of our names and the fact that I found a sparkly bouncy ball. After that, Melissa (quickbuild buddy) and I headed out for Florida for the Urban Dare which was pretty hot but a lot of fun. We almost killed each other at one point, but I think the fact that we were about to have a heat stroke might explained our flared tempers.  Anyhow, Florida was great--Rockband Parties, Volleyball games, Beach Days, Purple Corn Juice, and a Flat tire. Good times! Came back for my graduation party and another party. Went to work just that Monday then left for Russelville, Al for a quickbuild. I don't mind a 5 hour drive except on the way back...OMG..it was so hot! We had no brick laided at all on Thursday! I ended up having to do a lot of the wall ties. You have to mark every 16 inches all the way to where the soldiers will be and then chalk lines all down the wall--then mark 16 inches off the studs.  Shoveled some good mortar and sand (sand is so easier even though you have to be quicker--it's used for mixing the mortar--3 buckets of sand:1 bucket of water:one bag of mortar  ;-) Keep that in mind in case you ever have to mix any). I learned a new trade in landscaping--laying down sod!!! Green side up!! Also there a clean cut edge and a 'fuzzy' edge--the key is to have a fuzzy side meet the clean cut side. Anyhow, they need to be staggered like brick--basically meet to make a 'T' shape. It starts catching up and meets end-to-end because each piece isn't the same size so you lay it right, fold it over, and continue. Then come back later with a machete and fix it. Anyhow, it was fun. Came back and the next Friday and Saturday I had to go to Gainesville to get my Expanded Duties certification. It was a lot of fun and now I can do cool stuff like sealants, temporary bridges or periodontal dressings because I don't have enough to keep me busy at work (voice is dripping with sarcasm) I have to mention that I saw Kung-Fu Panda and it was extremely awesome: "There's no charge for awesomeness or attractiveness"! And now I've got to go to Kansas City for a week. The most exciting news is that I got my time in yesterday (Friday-the 20th). I'm auxiliary pioneering June, July, and August and then will put my application for Regular Pioneering in September. I'm starting school in Gainesville for Dental Hygiene--I have to take some core classes first which I'll star August 18! So there's my life in a paragraph, I thought about organizing it all nice and neat but then I couldn't say it's in a paragraph! Ok, now that my boring life is on display maybe I can starting writing regularly about insignificant stuff once more!

A friend of mine bought a bag of Bugles during early morning field service on Saturday. Bugles are those vaguely conical lumps of batter. There are always to crazy stupid, but funny commercials about them. Where something crazy would happen like a mermaid would appear and want a Bugle, but he accidentally eats all of them. Or where the guy is in a space ship with flashing lights and scary alien jumps out of a vent and does a crazy "I'm going to eat you growl". In fear, he puts a Bugle in the alien mouth and he stops growling. Then starts again...another bugle. Then they're laughing and growling at each other-playing around until he runs out of Bugles. Then the alien starts growling again and he starts crying. Anyhow, the main feature of these yum-yums was that you could stick on each finger and eat them off or do a scary monster impersonation. But now something is VERY wrong. You can no longer do that. They've lost their perfect shape and are now distorted---slightly flatter. THEY NO LONGER DESERVE TO BE CALLED BUGLES!!!! They must change their name, because it is false advertising. It needs to be called something like "Vaguely Conical Lumps of Batter". It's a big scam!!!

Yes, here it is. I betrayed my curls.

It was really really long. It's still is kind of wavy because I didn't have Tina's kick butt hair straightening products. But it worked for a Hippie. (I'll show the pix of that project later) My hair is kinky and frizzy again--back to being a beach bum.

Yes, I had to dumb down the quality of the video because I didn't feel like having the computer take up half the night to put a crystal clear video. Anyhow, here it is only about a minute long (the shortest video I've ever made..maybe)--enjoy!

IT'S A MUST SEE!!!  (well...maybe not..)