I know how I'll be spending my summer

When James first told me that our university housing complex offered garden plots to residents for a small fee, I was really excited.  My mom had plot at a community garden when I was growing up, and she started a small vegetable garden in the small patch of her backyard that gets sun.  I always enjoyed going with her to work on the garden, even though I mostly played in the dirt with the bugs and worms, rather than actually being helpful.  I filled out my application for a small plot as soon as they became available in December.  Today, we received our plot assignment and went to check it out after I got off of work.  And then I realized that I know absolutely nothing about gardening.  I guess it's a good thing that, in addition to the gardens themselves, the university housing people also offer an online manual about organic gardening in Wisconsin.

We got lost on our way to our plot.  It was actually a lot closer to the entrance and the tool shed than we were expecting, which is nice.  It was also completely covered in dead plants from last year's growing season.  There were a few green shoots of something, I have no idea what, poking up, but other than that, it's pretty brown.  The positive side of this is that most of the (ex)plants, having died and lost most of their roots, seem to be pretty easy to pull up.  I'm pretty sure it's not necessary, but we opted to have our plot rototilled, just to make things a little easier.  However, before that happens we need to clear out all of the dead stuff and any weeds currently living in our plot. 

 After we took a brief look at our plot, we went bowling with some friends, and then headed to Target to buy some gardening tools.  The people who run the gardens provide the larger tools, like shovels, rakes, and hoes, so we just picked up some gloves, a pair of clippers, and a gardening bag that came with a kneeling pad, a trowel, and this three-tined object that looks like it was stolen from an amputee pirate (okay, even I know it's a cultivator).

I was hoping to go back out tomorrow and get started clearing all the dead stuff out, we're supposed to be getting some thunderstorms tomorrow, so it may have to wait.

I fell down. A lot.

In my last post I said my next post would be about Middlemarch.  I lied.  This weekend my dad came up from Chicago to go cross country skiing.  I figured this would be much more interesting to read (and write) about than my reactions to a book that countless other people have read and thought about.

The first time I went cross country skiing I hated it.  I was about eight years old and my whole family went to a place in Mansfield, Ohio.  I was really clumsy as a kid, and on top of that, the equipment they gave me wasn't the best. I couldn't stay on my feet for more than a few minutes.  At some point I fell and broke one of my flimsy bamboo poles and was forced to ski the rest of the way with one pole, worried that the guy who rented us the gear was going to kill me.  He ended up being very nice about it, but I decided I never wanted to cross country ski again.

I few years later my Girl Scout troop went on a downhill ski outing, which I really enjoyed.  I only fell a couple times, and I didn't have to ski uphill.  I also took up cross country running and liked that as well.  I figured if I liked both downhill skiing and cross country running, I should give cross country skiing another chance, and I'm glad I did.

In the days leading up to my dad's visit, I was worried that we wouldn't even be able to ski because temperatures were predicted to reach 40 degrees. However, when we set out at 7:00 on Sunday morning, it was plenty cold.  We drove about an hour to McMiller Sports Center, which has shooting ranges in addition trails for skiing.  After we got there and my dad had paid the parking and trail fees, we put on our skis made our way to the trail head.  There were several different trails of different lengths, which all shared one side.  We chose to start with the red trail because it was the shortest. 

The only one of us who actually knew what he was doing

 I started out doing pretty well, except that I wasn't using my poles correctly, either because they were too short or because I'm still really uncoordinated (probably both). Because of this, I had a lot of trouble climbing hills.  There were little bumps on the bottoms of ours skis that were supposed to grip the snow, but mine definitely did not.  Despite my short poles and slippery skis, I managed to go longer than I expected without falling.  James, on the other hand, had some difficulty with the downhill portions of the trail, which he made up for by going really fast on the other parts.

Then we reached the first really big hill.  After seeing James completely wipe out at the bottom, my dad told me to put my weight on the outside ski.  I started down the hill.  I was already starting to get warm, and the woosh of the air on my face felt refreshing.  And then I was on my face, legs splayed at a funny angle because of the skis.  My dad had already started down the hill and fell on purpose so he wouldn't run me over.

Even though I probably fell going down most of the hills, I had far more trouble with the uphill portions of the trail.  There was one hill that, had my dad not not been behind me, I probably would have slid right back down.  The second time going up there was no one behind me, and somehow I forced myself to the top.  On another hill, shorter but steeper than the first, all three of us had to turn our skis out and dig the edges into the snow.  My dad and James made it up fine, but I was stuck. Every time I would go to take a step, my back foot would slip causing me to fall.  At one point I got down on my knees and tried to craw up, but it was no use, the snow was too slick. My dad talked me through where to place my poles, and eventually I made it to the top, but it was one of the most physically difficult things I've ever done.

Eventually I got the hang of using my poles and had a little less trouble with the hills.  I managed to make it down a hill that caused me problems earlier because it didn't have any tracks for my skis after the first few feet.  I was also able to swerve around James when he fell as I was already coming down a hill. With my new pole-using skills I ended up almost catching up to James at the end.  At around 11:30 the weather had warmed up considerably and the snow was becoming sticky.  We did three trails for a total of 9.87 kilometers.

I turned out to be pretty much correct in assuming that cross country skiing  would be like a combination of downhill skiing and cross country running, except with more falling down.  It provided an excellent workout while still offering exhilarating downhill portions.  I even started researching skis as a possible Christmas present in the future.

James and I getting ready to leave

The rest of the weekend pretty much consisted of eating.  On Saturday we went to a Mediterranean and Turkish restaurant called Husnu's.  We each got some form of lamb on a stick, and everything was delicious.  On Sunday after skiing, we went to a tapas-style restaurant called Eno-Vino.  I got the chance to try scallops on their own, instead of wrapped in bacon or stuffed into a piece of fish. I'm really glad I'm not allergic to them and also kind of angry at Red Lobster for making my mom think I was.  We ordered way too much food at Eno-Vino, so I got to eat it again the next night.

So, all in all, a pretty fun weekend.  We got to visit with my dad and found something really fun to do in the winter when normal outdoor activities just aren't possible.
 

I have a confession to make

You know that smart girl who always has her nose buried in some ridiculously long novel?  That wasn't me. In fact, until recently I didn't find reading particularly enjoyable.  I remember my mom reading to me all the time as a small child, and I had no trouble learning how to read.  When I was about six, my mom came home to find me reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  She asked me what I was doing, and when I told her I was reading, she said, "But that book has no pictures in it." To which I replied, "I know, I'm reading."

I'm not sure what eventually caused me to give up reading as a form of recreation.  Maybe it was the traumatic experience of having my favorite book about sharks at school cut up for use in someone's project.  Maybe after being forced to read Where the Red Fern Grows, which I thoroughly despised, I thought of books as schoolwork instead of fun.  Or maybe I was just lazy and preferred to watch television and play video games.

Sure, I read things like Harry Potter, and as I got older, young adult novels aimed at teenage girls, in which the heroine always ends up with the guy she has a crush on (or someone even better if he turns out to be a jerk).   However, as hard as my mother tried, I just could not get into classic literature.  I thought, "Why do I have to read this? It has absolutely nothing to do with how people act and speak in the present."  I couldn't get past the sentences that seemed to go on forever or the pages of description that did nothing to advance the plot.  It didn't help that my school put much more of a focus on writing than on literature in its English classes.  In elementary school, we only read short selections out of a textbook.  In high school, we finally began reading books, but most of them were relatively short.  The only books I actually remember liking were To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, and a book by Ernest Hemingway (I can never remember which one).

About the time I started college I realized that literature does have something to do with the present.  Besides the fact that it often hits on universal human themes, intelligent people often reference literature, and it would make me seem more intelligent if I understood those references.   Unfortunately college students, especially ones pursuing liberal arts degrees, are already assigned more reading than is realistic, so I never had time to read novels for fun.  I would start one in August promising to finish it before I had much schoolwork to do, but it never happened.  Robinson Crusoe and Crime and Punishment are still sitting half finished at my mother's house.  When it became clear that I was going to take some time off before continuing my education, I decided to read as many novels as possible to make up for what I had missed. A few months ago I made a list of 101 things I wanted to do in 1001 days.  I set a goal of reading 50 novels and 50 works of nonfiction, which will never happen at the rate I'm going (all of the novels so far have been over 400 pages), but I can try.  My new reading habit has been made easier and more affordable by the discovery of a public library relatively close to where I work and do my grocery shopping.

Books I read recently and didn't hate.

So far I have read Moby Dick, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, and Middlemarch by George Eliot, which I just finished today.  My next post will most likely be about my reactions to Middlemarch, not necessarily a book review, just some things I thought about while reading it.  I will try to write similar posts about each book I read.

Writing from beneath a mountain of snow.

Well, not really, but pretty darn close.  Almost as soon as we got our car up and running again, we (and almost the entire country, from the looks of it) were hit with a monster blizzard that left our area buried under 19 inches of snow.  I like snow.  I like playing in snow and looking at snow from inside my apartment.  I do not, however, like driving in snow at night.  Which is exactly what I had to do to get to and from work on Tuesday night during the worst of the blizzard.

I had to close that night at work, and it was really slow because no one wants to be stuck at the mall during a snowstorm.  Because it was so slow, they let us out as soon as the store closed, instead of making us stay an extra 15 minutes to close our registers.  The drive home was fine until I got to the first (and smaller) of the two hill I have to climb to get home.  My tiny Honda Civic is built for fuel economy, not power, and it hates going up hills even when the road is completely dry. Adding six inches of snow makes it almost impossible to get up even the tiniest hill.  There was an SUV right on my tail, which made it even more unnerving.  James had said something about putting the car into 2 instead of drive when climbing hills for more power, so I tried it when I got to a stop sign.  The engine revved, the wheels spun, and I was stuck.  With the SUV still too close for comfort, I put it back in drive and got moving.  All that was standing between me and home was a giant hill, a mountain, compared the the first hill.  As I started up the incline, my car began sliding all over the road.  I had to turn the steering wheel really hard to keep from plowing into the woods on either side.  I normally keep both my hands firmly on the wheel, but at one point, about halfway up I  grabbed on to the door with my left hand and began praying to any deity that might be listening.  Somehow I made it to the top very slowly, even though judging from the position of my steering wheel, I should have driven right into a tree.

When I got to the parking lot, I realized that I would probably need to dig out my space, so dug enough so that I thought I would be able to park my car.  I noticed this guy on the other side of the lot having trouble and offered him my shovel.  I got back into my car to park, but it wouldn't budge.  The guy who I had tried to help came over and started digging me out.  After about 10 minutes of me trying to park my car, I went to get James, and when I got back, I found that the guy had gotten into my car and parked it.  I was kind of embarrassed that I couldn't even park my own car, but also really grateful to the random guy.  Especially since it looked like he was trying to go somewhere.

Yesterday, James drove me to work.  It had stopped snowing, and the roads were mostly clear.  There were still very few customers, so they let us go a little early again.

I had the day off today, and my only responsibilities were to pay the rent and mail some DVDs back to Netflix, which I did.  I took some pictures on the way back to show just how much snow we got.

Snow...man?

It was actually much deeper than it looks here.

Somehow I don't think this swing set will be getting much use.

 I have the day off tomorrow as well, and I need to get up early so I can make the most of it.  So, goodnight.

Don't move to Wisconsin without snow boots...

...because one morning your car won't start and you'll have to walk to work in the snow.  It all started Monday evening when I pulled into our assigned parking space and the car wouldn't turn completely off.  I figured the wheels, and therefore, the steering wheel, were stuck because of the snow, which sometimes makes it difficult for the key to turn in the ignition.  So, I turned the dome light on to see what I was doing and backed out so my wheels weren't as stuck.  I successfully turned the car off and made sure the the headlights were off as well, but apparently I missed the dome light.

The next morning when I went to turn the car on, nothing. I thought maybe I had damaged the ignition the night before, but the lights wouldn't turn on either, so I decided that something must have drained the battery.  It wasn't until later that I remembered the dome light being on.

After that unpleasant discovery, I called my manager and work and informed her that I would be a few minutes late.  I pulled on the only waterproof footwear I own, red wellies with little moose all over them, and began the 1.841-mile hike to work.

The car is parked in such a way that it would be very difficult for another car to give us a jump unless one of our neighbors were gone.  James searched online and found a box (essentially another battery) that we can charge up and use to jump our car.  It was relatively inexpensive and has the added benefit of not forcing us to ask a random stranger for help in case this ever happens again (which knowing me it will).

Fortunately I get to walk through a very nice neighborhood, which is actually a wealthy, independent village surrounded by the rest of Madison (kind of like Ottawa Hills is to Toledo). I brought my camera with  me on Saturday and took some pictures along  the way.  They are pretty terrible because I felt kind of weird taking random pictures, and I didn't want other people to notice.

Inappropriate footwear

Snow-covered path out of Eagle Heights.  Super creepy at night.

If you're from Northwest Ohio you're probably like "what's this." It's called a hill.

Outdoor ice skating rink.  It's right next to a school.

Random park right before the running path/glorified sidewalk that follows some railroad tracks.

A picture of the mall where I work from across the street. And some guy.

I haven't been working out much lately, so it has been nice to get outside and get at least some exercise.  I only wish I didn't have to spend eight more hours on my feet after I got there.

Today I finally broke down and got some winter boots when I was at work.  They aren't exactly perfect, but they are comfortable.  And furry.

As I was walking home tonight I decided to find a route that would not require me to walk up a creepy path through the woods.  At the top of the big hill (third picture) there was a path that looked promising, so I followed it.  I took the same one last night as well, but I thought it just led into another part of the neighborhood, so I went down the hill a different way and walked up the creepy wooded path to my apartment.  Tonight I was feeling a little more more adventurous, and I noticed that what I thought were houses were really apartments and that the path continued through the apartment complex.  Some of the buildings in Eagle Heights are joined together on the second floor and form kind of a covered patio/storage area on the first. The sidewalks that go between different buildings pass through these covered areas.  The path I followed came out into the covered space of building 919.  It was actually kind of surreal, sort of like Alice going through the looking glass, or children stepping out of a wardrobe and into Narnia, except kind of opposite.  One moment I was walking through a completely unfamiliar apartment complex, that I had no idea existed, and the next moment I stepped through an opening in a fence to a place I recognized.  I did not take any pictures of my return trip because I was carrying a pizza in one hand and my cell phone in the other.

Tonight when I got home, I saw that the car jumper thing had come in the mail, so hopefully this means I will be driving to work tomorrow.

Hi!

In less than a year I graduated from college, got married, and moved to a brand new city.  Despite the fact that all of these occurrences were extremely positive, as with all life-changing events, they have presented some challenges.  I have had to get used to writing my new last name, working instead of going to school, and being a "real" adult in the "real" world. As if the chaos of starting a new life in a new place weren't enough, I decided to change my life for the better in other  ways, like eating healthier foods, reading more books, and forcing myself to break out of my comfort zone more often.

I wanted a place to write about starting life as an independent adult living as simply as possible, not just out of necessity, but because I believe it is best for the planet and ourselves.  This blog will also serve to chronicle my adventures exploring my new city, as well as my journey to becoming a happier, healthier person.

Enjoy!