Haying

I was able to work a lot when I went to the ranch. I offered to do whatever, and after some basic mechanicing and helping Dad out in the shop, I got to go "swathing."

I spent every summer since I've been in high school cutting hay. Usually Thane would rake the hay after me, Grandpa would bale it, and Dad would follow picking up the bales. With just Dad and Cody operating the haying crew this summer, things have been busy, and I think they were glad I was able to pitch in.


And look at that grass! Beautiful tall meadow grass that was almost completely obscuring the wire fence! Yes, if you look closely, there is a fence there!

My Horses

Sunday after church I drove to Nebraska for a long weekend. I was so excited to be able to go back to the ranch, to ride my horse, to help dad with haying, and more importantly see my Grandma, who was receiving her diagnosis after two months of intensive radiation and chemotherapy. As I drove the four wheeler around the ranch, I saw my horses (I still claim the horses even though I haven't lived on the ranch for years). Seeing an opportunity, I rounded them up and moved them into the corral so we all could wrangle the horses and go riding the next day.

Here's Socks, trying to ignore me and pretend I'm not standing there as he sniffs the salt block.
Thane and I broke Socks and Flash at the same time when we were in 7th grade. Socks was first Thane's horse, and then I stole him away. Socks was always so gently and friendly, unless you fell off, and then he'd walk as fast as he could back to the barn, with the rider chasing behind. (This happened to me many times). Now Linzy rides Socks and occassionally my mom, or Rama when he comes to visit the ranch.

This is Buddy and Blaze (Buddy's the dun on the left). They were our first colts we had when we bought a stallion, Dial. These two were inseprable, true brothers. Buddy got ran through a barb wire fence when he was two, and cut up his right shoulder severely, but with tenderness and love, we got him patched up, and now it doesn't even bother him. I've ridden Buddy more than Blaze, who is Grandpa's horse. Buddy bucked me off once, my freshman year of college, and then ran off, leaving me to walk behind the herd of cattle for seven miles to the pickup... grr... But I still love him.

Dragons in the Park

So... Saturday in the park... with Dragons.

And after the dragon, came the lions...

And then my amazing, studly husband came out and with supreme strength and skill broke cement pavers on a teenager's stomach, without breaking ribs, or impaling anyone onto their beds of nails... Isn't he cute?

Dragon Boat

It's coming... this weekend, and Rama and I our gearing up for a fun filled Saturday in the park. Yea! the Dragon Boat festival, where white business professionals form teams to race dragon boats across the lake, and the city comes out to celebrate Pan-Asian culture... and of course the Shaolin Hung Mei Kung Fu school will be preforming! Fun stuff. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Thriller

This kept my office laughing for quite a while... I was a little too young to be forever changed by Michael Jackson's music video, (as I'm sure some were) but these are still cool...

Thriller from a Philapino prison: here

Thriller from India: here

If you can only watch one, go for the first... it's great!

GRE Study Plan

Okay, so the GRE Literature test that I HAVE to take in order to get in to grad school is on November 3, 2007. Which is 14 Saturdays from today! EEK!

So I'm compiling a study plan so I can get on board, and get a good enough score they'll let me into the PhD program here at the U.

I've broken the material into sections, and numbered the individual categories I have to learn! Eep! (ok I'm back, I had to go and breathe into a bag for a moment...)The good thing about all of this, is that since i ride the bus, and since summer's are slow at work, I think I'll be able to do some (all?) of my studying at work or at least on the way to work.

So here's my section breakdown... and all two of my readers, you can hold me accountable! I'll probably post what I'm learning on the blog too... so beware!


American Literature
1. Colonial American
2. 18 &19th century prose
3. 18 &19th century poetry
4. Modernist Poetry
5. Modernist Novel
6. Harlem Renaissance
7. Postmodern & Contemporary poetry
8. Postmodern & Contemporary novel & drama
British Literature
9. Medieval & Early Brit Lit
10. Renaissance
11. Shakespeare
12. Restoration comedy
13. Restoration Prose & Poetry
14. 17th & 18th Century Poetry
15. 18 &19th Century prose and the novel
16. British Romanticism
17. Victorian Poetry
18. British (and Irish) Modernism
19. Postmodern & Contemporary British Lit
Antiquity and “World” Literature
20. Classical Literature
21. Modern “World” Literature
Terms, Criticism, and Forms
22. Poetic Forms, Literary Terms, etc.
23. Sonnets
24. Literary Theory

Back to the Plan...

So, after a brief detour this summer, when I was trying to get a job at the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal system and was curious about getting into law school, I'm focusing back on English... again.

See, when I thought I was going to switch departments at the university I work for, I considered law. I realized that getting a J.D. doesn't mean I'd have to stand in the courtroom and litigate, wowing everyone with my vocabulary and eloquence (yeah right!) but in fact I could write, do a lot of legal research, etc. I even went as far as going to the law school admissions office and talking to a few of the ladies there. I took the LSAT in 2005, and my GPA was good enough in college that they weren't very concerned with my application, they felt I'd be fine trying to get into the program. The university I work for also has an amazing tuition waiver program, where I can go to school for free, as long as I am a full time employee (cool huh?) as well as a nationally ranked environmental and natural resource law program (Which I'd use to fight FOR ranchers, instead of against them).

So I prayed regularly about the decision. I put my future career and education completely in God's hands. I prayed that if He wanted me to purse law in that avenue, that he'd let me get that job, especially since I'd be the assistant of a big muckedy-muck here in Colorado (former Colorado Supreme Court Judge, daughter of an ex-governor, married to the president of the Colorado ranchers association). If I didn't get the job, I figured my calling was to pursue English and writing. To continue writing and attempting to get published, to get my PhD... it's all part of the plan. And it turned out that since I didn't get the job, now I'm working on getting into the PhD program again with full force...

GRE Literature test here I come!

For Thane, in Qatar

So my brother Thane is currently on leave in Qatar. He's taking a break from the deserts in Iraq to travel to the deserts in Qatar. While Thane won't take pictures for me in Qatar, I looked some up... a lot of white deserts, sand, blistering heat. Fun, huh?

So I thought I'd share with him some of the images I have to walk by every day... just so he knows how different Denver is than Qatar, just in case he was confused.

Six days Later...

(This post has nothing to do with the above pictures, I just thought the sunset last night was "down right purrty" so I thought I'd share it.)

So, late week, The Chef and I were hanging out in our new living room, (we just moved across the hall to a larger apartment) relishing the thought of spending time together, and watching the Tour de France --- which hubby is almost manic about, but that's another post--- as we were hanging out, we heard a big bang, and my first thought was that one of our neighbor's window air conditioning units had fallen out of their window. Like good snoopy neighbors, we both peered out of the slats between the blinds. It was not an air conditioner that made the noise, but a car crash.

It seems somehow that a car driving east bound on 50th Avenue in front of our house, somehow lost control and t-boned a car parked on our side of the street. The car driving east bound some how spun, and hit the car on the left rear door from behind, like it had been driving west bound. The car was going fast enough to deploy both airbags, and push the parked car (not a little one either, a Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera) four feet up onto the curb. The parked car belongs to our neighbors, well, the neighbor's girlfriend, who lives downstairs with our neighbor Sam and two other people in a tiny (seriously tiny) studio apartment.

Fearing there might be a brawl, or some other kind of unpleasantness, The Chef went downstairs to see what was up, and I called 911. There was no brawl, but three hours later a tow truck had to pull the two cars apart.

While this is an interesting story, here's the kicker. Up to the day before, The Chef parked his car in that exact spot. Because he has car trouble, our little Toyota sat in that spot for a week and a half, and Friday morning we took it to our mechanic. If our car hadn't been broken, it would be completely totalled now. So while I was complaining about a little problem, God was protecting us from a much larger one. How cool is that!?

Oh, and a week later, our neighbors haven't yet bothered to move their broken down car, get it towed, or at the very least move it off the curb. Ahh, North Denver, you've got to love it!

I'm Published! Well, I will be.

I was checking my email this evening, and as I was finishing uploading my webdesign homework, a little box popped up saying I'd gotten mail in Microsoft Outlook. It took me a few minutes to comprehend, the subject line was "The Cowboy Way" but wait, that was my subject line, the title of a non-fiction essay I'd written.

I had to read the email twice... well, here's the first little bit...

Dear Ms. Cowgirl, I hope all is well. I am writing to inform you that we are interested in publishing "The Cowboy Way," contingent on your editing the piece down to 15 to 20 pages. Your piece was exceptional in its capturing of the Southeatern Oregon ranchlands. There is also a rich element of honest and compelling storytelling in your nonfiction narrative.

So long as the story is still available and you are willing to work with us in editing, we would like to place it in our Spring 2008 issue. If this is amenable, we can begin to discuss the edits.

I got accepted in a literary journal! woo hoo!
The Cream City Review, out of University of Wisconsin, I guess, according to my boss, it's a pretty prestigious journal. I won't get paid, but at least, I can now officially say that I've been published (I don't think the Western Livestock Journal really counts.)