a school lamentation

school school go away, come again another day....

i'm a proponent of school - i really am. i want to teach elementary school and instill a love of learning in kids. i just don't want to go to school tomorrow. i'm excited for new classes, but not for 2 and 3 hour classes... and i don't feel like i remember enough about independent study to go back to work there. luckily i will probably get to spend some time talking to tech support getting all my passwords reset...

on the bright side, this is my second to last semester (on campus)... and maybe some day i really will be done. for now i will brace myself to be on campus from 8 am to 7 pm tomorrow. that is all my classes and work. don't worry, i do have one 50 minute break in there... i'll live. : )

also, tomorrow is alan's birthday! everyone loves a birthday and everyone loves cake (ok, not everyone, but i do : )

i still need to write down where tomorrow's classes are and find all my stuff. no, i don't know what i'm going to wear... clothes... : ) more later, it's a school night...

last hurrah for Los Alamos

I haven't posted anything on this blog yet, and I decided I'd better get with the program and write something before the summer is all over. we're down to just a few more days in Los Alamos, then it's back to Provo and school, college football, and civilization, just to name a few of the changes we'll have to go through. it'll be different to no longer live on Central Avenue at the center of the (Los Alamos) universe, but we'll survive. luckily our new apartment is right across from the Wymount creamery, so we'll still be able to buy milk at a moment's notice.

today we went to Bandalier National Monument, which is nearby. I've been here for two summers and still hadn't been until today...shame on me. but, since our friendly neighborhood National Parks Service decided to make today a free fee day, we decided today was as good a time as any, plus, it's not like we can go next weekend. (we'll be at Mesa Verde and Arches and on the road back.) last time it was a free day we went to Carlsbad Caverns, but unfortunately we got there on Friday and the park was only free on Saturday and Sunday. so we paid and our admission was valid for Friday and Saturday, but since Saturday was free anyway we unfortunately did not get the freebie. so today was a triumph of sorts for us, finally getting something for free. (plus, it was founder's day at Smith's today so we got free sandwiches, wraps, bakery goods, chips and salsa, fruit, punch, shrimp, roast beef, chicken...the most extensive grocery free samples I've ever seen. they were even giving free samples of chardonnay. we didn't have any, but we were pretty surprised that it's legal to do that in a child saturated grocery store...)
so after driving behind several bikers for a while (several of whom were probably at least four times as old as I am...well close) we made it up and then got to climbing those ladders...

so for those of you who have never heard of Bandalier, its main feature is several hundred cliff dwellings built by the ancestors of the Native Americans who live in the pueblos around New Mexico. most of them are of the "do not lean on, sit on, stand on, walk on, touch, etc." variety (we did see one younger kid (and his harried dad) get the wrath of our usually mild-mannered, grandfatherly park ranger for violating this policy (the walking on part) - it scared us enough that we resisted the urge to do any of our own unapproved climbing), but there are a few that have been reinforced with concrete which are accessible to the average park visitor. if there's a ladder leaning against one of them, it's fair game. so, we took advantage.




















here we are inside one of them. apparently the rock inside was blackened by the ancient inhabitants. (actually it was only a few hundred years ago, so I don't know if they can be called ancient.)

after climbing a few ladders with five or six rungs, we decided we were up for a challenge, so we hiked a half mile or so to the base of the "Alcove House", where we were greeted by four or so more substantial ladders similar to this one...

so we ascended 140 feet and saw some other cool stuff, like little cavities in the rock we could hide ourselves in.


the pictures don't show it, but it was actually pretty crowded (since it was free day and probably the last hurrah before summer's end for a lot of the locals, since school is starting next week for the Los Alamos schools and some other districts have started already. luckily our last hurrah doesn't come for a few more weeks.) have you ever seen a traffic jam of fifteen or so people waiting to go up a ladder when fifteen or so people are coming down said ladder? especially when the path leading to/from the ladder is approximately one and a half feet wide? it's not pretty. we decided not to take a picture, though, to spare our loyal readers the trauma.

so that was probably the highlight of the day (since the rest of the day consisted of thoroughly cleaning our kitchen and bathroom. we don't think they've been thoroughly cleaned since a time long ago, predating by far the day when we first moved in. that both incriminates us and the previous tenants.)

in other news, we changed our blog template (hopefully to one that will allow comments.) so feel free to comment now.

at the rate that we've been posting over the life of our blog....we'll let you know what's going on in our life sometime in late September!