Well, we've been back from Ohio for just a little over a week now. It was a nice trip, a bit on the short side though, really. Six days sounds like a lot longer when you don't realize its split into two. Then it becomes really and truely rather short. Especially when you have to drive hourse between those two. But, overall it really was nice to see everyone again. And we got married.

The whole wedding thing was actually (in my mind at least) rather humorous. See, we originally ran into the Findlay courthouse on Friday and bought a Marriage License. We really hadn't thought we'd be able to get one that easy/quick but we did. They didn't even ask for our drivers licenses. Anyhow. We went back to his Mom's (Amy) house and talked to his step-dad (Tim his step dad is a preacher) with the assumption, that he'd be willing to marry us. But, he kind of balked. Wanted us to go through all kinds of marriage counseling, christian vowes, promise that we'd raise our kid(s) as christians, etc.... Needless to say, that isn't what we wanted, and I for one was a bit taken aback. We asked if it'd be better to just do a secular thing at the courthouse, and he said (I'm paraphrasing here), 'Well that'd be great, but its really quite hard to do. Only clergy and judges can marry people in the state of Ohio....' Which, I for one found odd... after all there've got to be a lot of athiests and such that don't want ceremonies, right?? So, I called my grandpa up and asked him. And he said that, well, no, its not that hard to do, and would I like for him to call around and see if he could get something lined up for like, Sunday. I said sure, and 4 hours later it was confirmed that we'd be married on Monday by the Mayor of North Canton.

When Amy and Tim found out, they were a bit upset, mostly because Amy really wanted to see her son get married (understandable, but still...). Tim then offerred to marry us on Sunday, but I didn't want to do that because a: I then wouldn't get to see *my* family untill Sunday or Monday (and we had to drive back on Tuesday), and b: we'd already agreed to Monday with the mayor. So in the end we settled for him "blessing the relationship" on Saturday at 5pm. Then we drove to my Dad's house and hung out there untill Tuesday. In the end Amy & Tim ended up driving over for it anyways, which to my mind kind of nullified the reason for the blessing on Saturday. But, then again, at least it all worked out in the end and everyone was happy.

Since we got back last Wednesday, we finished up Staff Training and since then Kevin's been working, and I worked the weekend. Its been pretty nice, and I'm enjoying it here... I have another doctors apointment on Friday with the OB/GYN so hopefully everything still looks good.

Stuff

So, Summer Camp's been over for a week now, and family camp is over now too (technically I have one more pony ride tommorrow morning, but I'm doubtful at this point that anyone will show up...), so life's slowing down. Happily slowing down.

Pregnancy is going OK... after a horribly sick, nasuea filled July, August has been WAY easier. Got in to see a doc finally a few weeks ago, and everything is looking just fine. All the blood work they took (and boy did they take a LOT), looks normal/good, and the ultrasound I had about 2 weeks ago now, looked good too (I should be around 10-11 weeks pregnant now.. I think. Something like that.). My due date is for around the 9-11th of March. So thats pretty crazy.

Kevin & I are planning on getting married sometime here in the next week or two, mostly (ok, only) so that we can live together here at camp, on-camp... And while up untill earlier today it didn't look like we'd be getting our own place, that is suddenly, quite possibly changin. Which means that we just might be getting to bring Loki back too! Which is awesome. Life would be great if we could live together with our dog. That would just be too good.

In anycase, we're driving back up to Ohio on wednesday (16th of August), for a week. Going to go to his parent's place first, and then on to my Dad's. It should be a nice, mostly relaxing trip. I'm going to trade my truck for dad's accord. Which is pretty cool, although I'll be sad to say 'bye' to my truck. ::sniffle:: Tis been a good truck.

Thats about all thats new here, my horses go back tommorrow afternoon ::sniffle:: I'll miss them. It'll be wierd not getting up and feeding horses every morning. Really, really wierd. But, then again I'm sure I'll slowly get used to sleeping in again =)

Hmm. Wow. Crazyness has ensued here at camp for the past several weeks. Its nice here... but my staff has changed completely since I started. Which is a good thing, not a bad thing... One may be coming back... we'll find out one way or the other later on tonight. Overall I really like what I do here, I've rememberd just how mcuh I love working with kids and horses both. Its a great job, and I could totally do it forever (just so long as I have staff that I can trust, that is...). Which is very nice to know.

Kevin seems to like doing the rock climbing thing still, though he's unfortuantly hardly ever here. He only sleeps on-camp 3 nights a week, which kind of sucks, but is mostly OK. I don't see him as much as I'd like, but its enough to get by.

But the crazyiest part of it all, is that I am, once again, pregnant :) And its wierd, we both agree, because we're both totally cool with it, totally OK, happy, excited about it. Its a totally different feeling than it was two years ago. And the handful of people who know, here, have been (thus far) super supportive and awesome about it. So who knows, maybe we'll stay on here for the fall at least so that we can save up some money and such, and then figure out where to go. Kevin was telling me today, that, the way he sees it... he really didn't have any idea what to do - was just kind of drifting, wandering around the world. And so now, at least, he knows what he'll be doing for the rest of his life - which he's really excited about. So thats awesome.

Anyhow, I just wanted to post about all that crazyness, so that I can remember how I feel right now, forever. Its exciting, it really is.

Camp

Well, first of all, I did not realize it'd been SO long since I last posted. Crazyness has ensued since then, starting with the Tae Kwon Do Tournament in Spain, and the exhibition there that I participated in (on my birthday!!), which was quite cool... The following day, I flew home from Spain to Pittsburgh, where we (dad & I) stayed at a friends house for the night. Got to see my old friend Jessie, which was very cool.

Then on the 15th of May I drove down here to S. Carolina to start work.. The camp is beautiful. Way up ontop of a mountain in the Blue Ridge, it has some amazing views. And, of course, its simply awesome to be with/around Kevin again.

My horses finally got here this Monday (21st), and so, ever since I've been riding and taking care of them. Which is awesome. They're all pretty good - both looking, and fairly well trained. I'm actually extremely impressed with their overall quality (especially for camp horses!!). Went on a trail ride today, did some crazy exploring and getting lost (which was, as always, fun). Tommorrow is the first time we'll actually give rides, so I'm kind of nervous about that. But it should be OK. I hope...

The kid I'm working with (the "assistant director"), seems pretty clueless. Apparently, he didn't realize that you need to clean the barn. Apparently, I have to tell him such things, or he just doesn't know. He also gives me the impression that he's scared of horses (takes 3-5 minutes to catch one in a box stall... and another couple to kick each one out after feeding. But, then again, I'm not really surprised about this, just highly disappointed. Was hoping to have somebody with a clue. The other kid is apparently a bit slow. Supposedly they also just hired a girl from Spain, though it sounds like she'll only be here for the first half of the summer. Which sucks. But, you'll have taht I spose.

Anyhow, thats about all thats new with me... We saw the DaVinci Code, which was pretty good, and then yesterday we saw Over the Hedge, which was hysterical. Hammy kicks ass... I think thats about it.

No more textbooks??

Working for Change has a cool article up about how Allegheny College in PA is trying to do away with text books. The first class (logically, I suppose), to do so was the Intro to Enviromental Science class. Instead of using a textbook, they developed a website with "readings" which linked to sites all over the web like the US Census Burae, the EPA, and the National Park Service. Its a really quite cool idea. As noted in the article, in the end it provides three things that textbooks do not, can not provide:

1 Saves Money. Average Enviro Science textbook cost? $100 Cost of the site? $0
2 Saves Trees. Apparently 20% of the paper the US uses every year goes to, you guessed it, text books. So thats 5 million trees annualy.
3 Accuracy. No textbook can possibly be as up-to-date as a website. Its just not possible.

Anyhow, check it out.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20743

Legos & Blackholes

Right nifty news on the lego front - LEGO has finally gotten around to opensourcing the MINDSTORMS firmware, which means that lego mindstorms will be that much more fun to mess around with in the future. Thats to say, you can now not just mess with the robotics/building part, but also with the software itself. Which is cool.
http://mindstorms.lego.com/press/2057/Open%20Source%20Announcement.aspx

As for blackholes... its mostly, actually, about the new LIGO "telescope" which is just now opening up - its cool, because maybe, with a bit of luck we´ll be detecting black hole mergers here sometime soonish. Which is cool, cause´with that knowledge, maybe we´ll figure out more about the universe, life and everything =)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/science/space/02hole.html

Language; starlings, monkeys and us

So, its looking like starlings have the capability to create/understand language. Which is really cool. Scientists created an artificial language, and then played it back to people, monkeys (cotton-top tamarin monkeys, to be exact), and starlings. People got it (80% of college students could figure it out), the monkey´s didn´t, and the starlings did.

Of course, everybody´s not in aggreement that this equals language, or that starlings aren´t just cheating, but you´ll have that. Here´s a couple of the comments =):

Dr Chomksy: "It has nothing remotely to do with language — probably just with short-term memory,"
Dr Gentner: "Chomsky may find this trivial, but that is a bit like saying apes use tools, but only the trivial kind that lack the sophistication of a tri-square or a laser level,"
Dr Hauser: "This shows a capacity that goes way beyond what we showed with tamarins. That's what makes it an important paper."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/science/02song.html