Summer Fun


Portland -- 29 & 30
    Cousin visiting- Dinner Friday night
    visited with Friends

My 21st Birthday -- July 2
    My Parents came down for a surprise birthday visit.  They took me and my roommate Laura out for dinner and a drink.

Las Vegas -- July 3 -7
    My sister, mom and I drove 18 hours from Corvallis, OR and met up with my fiancé Karl in Las Vegas, NV (oof, what a drive) to celebrate my birthday.  I had really wanted to go there because I thought what else is there to do for your 21st birthday but drink and gamble; the only two things that you couldn't legally do before.  We spent the weekend walking around the casinos and sightseeing.
 
 


I got excited about a giant strawberry inside FAO Schwartz, so I stopped to play for a little while.

Farmer's Market -- every Saturday

daVinci Days -- July 20
    daVinci Days is a festival unique to Corvallis, OR.  There are booths, parades,  and contests celebrating creativity in art, technology, and science.
    I spent the day with family, saw my grandparents, uncle and his family,  my sister and parents.  We saw a kinetic sculpture parade and race (these are amazing human powered, all-terrain sculptures -- some are really a work of art).  These kinetic sculptures compete in a race that require them to pedal  through "10 miles of city streets; through 100 feet of deep, thick, sticky mud; down 2 miles of the Willamette River; across 3000 feet of sun-dried, clay pasture and over a 100-foot sand trap."  What we didn't know about the contest was that it's broken into different sections over the whole weekend so we only got to see part of the road race.
We also saw catapult competitions and raced around looking at what all the booths had to offer.  My little cousin, my mom and I even got to sit down and paint a ceramic tile.   daVinci Days was an event I would love to come back to someday.
 
 


My sister Atira and I

Moving Day-- July 21
    Laura and I moved to a new apartment.  This one is so much nicer than the other one.  It feels more like a home in one day than the other one did in 5 weeks.

Bought a Car -- July 24th
    I bought a used '85 Honda Accord from my neighbor for my birthday (Happy Birthday to me!)  and today I took care of all the little details so that I could start driving it.  I took it to DEQ (it passed!  yeah!)  and the DMV to get it registered and get new plates and stickers.  I wanted to get a license plate that said "mine" on it but to get specialty plates it would have cost an extra $50 every 2 years, so I thought, naww... forget it, maybe when I have a really good job and I'm in the middle of a mid life crisis I'll get it... but in the end I really lucked out because my license plate number is still really cute:  it even rhymes!  hehe...


YEA!  A car!  And it's all MINE!  :)  Muahahahah!

West Linn Fair -- July 28th

Abducted -- August 2-4th
    Laura had left to go on a camping trip with her boyfriend, and so I was sitting around the house Friday evening not really knowing what to do and bored out of my mind.  Then all of a sudden there's a knock on my door and it's my sister!  She said that she drove down to kidnap me for the weekend :)  ehehe...  So I spent the weekend up in Portland.  I made a batch of Marionberry jam and changed the oil in my car (with the help of Kate).  Then on Sunday I went over to Karl's parent's house.  Gayle had told me that Larry could help me change the fuel filters in my car as long as I bribed him with a six-pack of Stout.  So that's what I did and now my car is running more smoothly.  :)  Yea!

Painting a Plate -- August 9th
    Laura and I wanted something that we could keep to remind us of how much fun we had this summer.  So we got this idea to go down to the pottery store and paint a plate for each other.  We spent awhile trying to figure out what to put on our plates.  Since Laura's favorite color is yellow, I finally decided that I was going to make a lemon plate for her.  And since I love fruit, Laura decided to make a strawberry plate for me.  :)  After we finished painting our plates, we left them at the store to get fired.   Then a couple days later we went to go pick them up and take them home.  The plates turned out SO cute that I want to go back and make some more. :)   hehe...


These are our plates

Dentist  and Car Check-up -- August 14th
    Yea!!  No cavities!!  But, oh no, my car needed some serious work done.  Sigh.  and it's not going to be cheap.  :P  phooey, it's too bad that at times like these I'm not studying to be a mechanic that way I could just do the work myself and have it be cheaper.  hehe...

Home again -- August 17th
    Last time I was home for my dentist appointment and I was at the paint store with my mom and I picked up a paint strip and joked that if she were to buy this paint color that I would paint the bathroom.  I didn't really expect her to go out and bring home a gallon of that paint when I came home again even though I liked the color.  But sure enough, she bought it and so I painted.  Now the bathroom is a very pretty light blue with some wispy white clouds painted in the ceiling.

Lane County Fair -- August 18th
    My sister and I drove down to Eugene to go to the fair with our Aunt, Uncle and little cousins.  We spent the afternoon taking Sawyer around on all of the rides and then walking round looking at all of the stuff at the fair.  After we all got tired, Atira took me back to Corvallis so that I could get some work done.
about me mentor research journal final report summer fun my roommate and I