so it rains here all the time, well, thats only partially true, i dont think it normally rains this much here but supposedly we just had the rainiest may in the history of wichita or something like that, i heard it rained 9 inches this past weekend, which is kind of ridiculous actually, now this isnt really that big of a deal, i like rain, and almost every night there have been awesome thunderstorms, and so i open up the blinds on my enormous bedroom window, and i lay there and watch the lightning and the rain which i enjoy, it gives me something to do while im laying there not falling asleep... so what is the problem with all of this rain? well, there is the fact that i keep having softball games and tourneys postponed and canceled, which is lame, but not what i am going to talk about right now, the real problem is i keep getting soaked walking from my car to work in the mornings, for whatever reason, my assigned parking lot is no where near the building i work in, its over a 5 minute walk (it took over 10 minutes earlier this year the day after i started doing squats at the gym again) so that is plenty of time to get wet, even when walking quickly, and you are probably saying, "you idiot, why dont you just use an umbrella?" well, i dont own an umbrella, ive never really had a need to, back in new mexico it never really rains that much, and whenever it does if you have to go out you just hurry between the car and wherever you are going and its not really a big deal. and even when i was at purdue, it rained more but it still wasnt a big deal, cuz i could always just take the tunnels or hurry from building to building and it wasnt that bad. but like i said, it rains all the time here, and i have a nice long walk from my car, and then i have to site in my cubicle (a whole other issue but we're not going to talk about that) with my work clothes all wet, and every time this happens i think to myself, i really need to invest in an umbrella, but then of course the weather always gets nicer and i forget about it until it rains on me again, but this past weekend i set out to find one, and i found lots of them, everywhere i looked had tons of those little compact pop out ones, you know, the kind that fold up all small and you push a button and they pop open automatically, and they are real nice and small and practical and convenient and utterly unappealing to me. the kind i want is going to be tall, preferably black, with a curved wooden handle, a nice classy umbrella, because to me an umbrella is so much more than keeping the rain off of me, i want to be able to lean on it or use it like a cane when its not raining, and maybe i'll twirl it around jauntily as i walk along with a folded up newspaper under my other arm. sadly, i did not find what i was looking for, although dillard's had one that was pretty close, the only problem was i didnt care for the wood of the handle, it was really light and specked, it almost looked like cork, it needed to be stained a nice dark color, so my search for the perfect umbrella continues and i guess i will just keep getting soaked until i find it, which in my opinion is much preferable to those silly little compact pop up things that everyone around here but me seems to like
now the guy from the travelers insurance commercials has a nice umbrella, although arguably its a little big...so the other day i saw the new indiana jones moovie, which i enjoyed, and i have to say, it made me really happy that indy and marion ended up getting married at the end of the moovie, and there was the one scene where they are arguing, like they always do, and she says something like "oh, im sure youve had your share of girls since then" and he says "yeah, there were a few, but they all had the same problem. None of them were you" and she smiles at him, and then he climbs out of the top of the little vehicle they are in to go fight the russians, and i though to myself aww, they still love each other, and it made me happy, and i have to say it made me much happier that they got together in the end than a lot of movies ive seen, ive seen tons of more romantic type movies and things where i really could care less that the two people end up together, but i like that it happend in indiana jones, which i realize makes me a huge dork, but thats ok, and not totally unexpected. i do get a lot of my romantic ideals from kids moovies and things like that, there is a scene in Snoopy The Musical where charlie brown and peppermint patty are talking that i really really like, and actually, i just watched it and there was a part in the song that i had forgotten that is pretty much exactly what im looking for. of course, j is the only one who knows what i am talking about. and then of course, there is the wedding song from The Muppets Take Manhatten that i want to have in my wedding, (i also have to convince my future wife that bobby darin's beyond the sea is a perfect song for our first dance), of course, that all depends on me getting married before brother does cuz he wants to use it as well, which reminds me, before i moved out here j and ash decided that since my "type" is plain midwest girls, and i was moving to kansas, that i was going to be engaged fairly soon, they actually set the over/under at 18 months, and everyone that they told took the under! all of our friends, and ash's mom, and i think both of my parents and everyone. Johny and Ryan Page and Kelsey were the only people who agreed with me and took the over, and i have to say, ive been out here for about 5 months and if anything i am further from getting engaged than i was, although you never know i guess, i might find that girl that actually fills my ridiculously long list of criteria that i have, speaking of which, i was thinking about this the other day, the kind of girl i want would be equally excited if we were going to go on a date to either a baseball game, the symphony, or the zoo. well, maybe not equally excited, cuz i dont know that i would be trully equally excited for all of those, but all of those would be pretty sweet dates i think, and if you were to add iced cream to each of those, oh man, even better
speaking of iced cream, the other day after watching fireworks at riverfest we went to this place in oldtown here , cafe moderne' or something like that, and they had the coolest (no pun intended) ice cream machine ever!! well i guess technically it was a gelato machine but whatever, look how awesome this thing is
its this big huge shiny machine filled with yummy iced cream, and the lady there says would you like to try any and you name a flavor, and the machine spins around so that the lady can give you a sample, and its all very exciting, i read in some article they had posted on the wall that the machine cost $30,000 and they imported it from italy, it was pretty fancy. now, if you know me you know that i can sometimes tend to be a little excitable, and so you can probably imagine the look on my face as i stood in front of this wonderful contraption, im pretty sure i had my mouth hanging open and i had what my friends at purdue called my "pj excited eyes", and apparently the lady there noticed too because she said something to the effect of "you can relax, its just ice cream"heres a couple other real quick things
im running low on shampoo so i was going to get some when i was at the store, although, because im an idiot i got conditioner by mistake cuz i dont pay close enough attention to things, so if you happen to see me and my hair looks strong, silky, and smooth, but not necessarily clean, thats why...
speaking of the store, while i was there i also got some toilet paper, i only mention this because this is the first time ive had to buy any since i first moved out here, and that was like 5 months ago, which i think is a bit crazy, and its not like i had gone to sams club or something and gotten 100 rolls, i just got a 6 pack. granted, they were "mega rolls" or something like that, and they supposedly have more paper than normal rolls, but it still seems like a ridiculously long amount of time to last...
i was at church this past sunday, and they had a baptism, and like most baptisms they give a candle to the person being baptized, or in cases of babies like this one to their parents, and so the mom of the kid was holding the candle, and she was also holding what i assume was her other son, probably around 3 or so, and after they were done with everything she told the kid he could blow it out, and he tried and tried, but he couldnt do it, he kept blowing on the candle but he couldnt blow it out, and after a while his mom got frustrated and just blew it out for him, and this cracked me up, because i started thinking of the time at state when our hockey team was helping at the Halloween carnival, and we had set up a booth where we had jack-o-lanterns with candles in them, and we gave the kids squirt guns and they had to try and shoot the candles out, and it wasnt really hard, we didnt make them stand behind a line or anything, they could stand as close as they wanted, and some of them practically put their hand in the pumpkin to shoot out the candle, which is fine, but for some reason some idiot kids could not shoot out the candle for the life of them, and whenever this happened eventually one of us would get tired of waiting for the kid and would just blow the candle out. we were dressed as all the characters from the ninja turtles so whenever someone had to blow a candle out for a kid they would yell "shell shocked!" and we would all laugh cuz we knew that meant some stupid kid couldnt figure out how to work their squirt gun, and then we would give them one of the andes mints that kent had brought, cuz for some reason he thought those would make good halloween candy... so i was remembering all of this while watching the kid in church, and i was cracking up, but it was the middle of church service so i was trying real hard not to laugh, and i ended up doing one of those stupid half try not to laugh things that only makes things worse, i dont know if anyone noticed or not...
and finally, this is my new favorite restaurant
I should say its my new favorite restaurant that i most likely will never actually eat in, my good friend kelsey sent me this picture from her trip in south dakota
