Good Job

We got another call yesterday! Things are slowly picking up for us despite the bad weather (we flew in light to moderate drizzle yesterday) We transported a very cute little baby. So here are some more pics of me at work...hope these aren't boring all of you.

Me and Janelle






So tiny







Kristi our lead pilot







Probably doing something SUPER important

The irony has not escaped me...

...that schools in Texas (even southeast Texas, elevation 1/2 inch) were closed last week, some for days, because of snow, ice, and other abnormal winter conditions. Was it cold here? Yes, in the single digits. Did WE get snow days? No...we are called the "high desert" for a reason, and the precip passed us by. But we ARE high, and they keep saying there's a good chance of snow in the "higher elevations," "high country," etc. on the news. I looked at the weather, and for this week we have three days of a 60% chance of snow.

If any of you know me well, you know I love a snow day just as much as any of my students. Chad and I have interesting reactions to the snow: when it snows, I don't go to work, and I am happy. When it snows or is icy and he goes to work, they can't do anything, and he is not happy. Well, Chad works two days this week, and both of these days it is supposed to snow...so I guess we will be keeping our fingers crossed for different reasons.

Please don't remind me of Murphy's Law and the fact that if I really want it to snow badly enough, it won't. Also, please don't remind me that I used to refer to Murphy's Law as Newton's Law, which is in fact something entirely different and actually scientific. This mix-up is proof positive that teenagers do NOT know everything.

One more thing...two blog entries in one day dictates that there will probably not be much blog activity later in the week, so I don't want you guys to get disappointed at the lack of random thoughts.

Happy birthday to Emily, Bonnie, and Matt B., who all had birthdays in the past 7 days. That's it for now!

Our weekend

Random weekend happenings...

We went to Jerome (a little artsy ghost tourist town) to go to a place called the Haunted Hamburger on Saturday. Best onion rings we've ever had. Worth the drive. We went to the antique stores in Prescott and Chad bought a cast-iron skillet...he'd been looking for a good one for a long time. Still in search of one with the corn molds for cornbread. Went to church on Sunday. Had roasted chicken with cheesy potatoes for dinner. Back story about the chicken...every time they are having one of those really good deals on whole chickens at the grocery store I buy one. This one was a little over two dollars...for an entire chicken! As Josh would say, AWESOME! Anyway, I roasted it all day in the crock pot, then we're cleaning up and Chad says "let's dissect the heart, it'll make good pictures for the blog." Well, I got out what I thought was the heart and also the liver. We dissected the liver first and let me take this time to say if you eat chicken livers you are gross, and that is not up for discussion. Then we dissected what we thought was the heart but it turned out not to be. Thus, no pictures of dissecting chicken parts on the blog. I know you are all disappointed. I was hoping to receive "Return to Oz" from Netflix on Saturday but I guess it's coming today. Remember that creepy movie from the '80s? Yeah, they don't really have it at any video stores. I can't wait to relive the creepiness.

That's all for random weekend happenings. Chad is meeting with his prof at school today because he is the TA for his last class that he has to take at the college. He is teaching a class in Cottonwood this afternoon to some firefighters, I think. That's it for now.

More work Pics

We woke up last Sunday moring to a surprise snow storm that came through. The bigger surprise was that we got launched for a call (we got cancelled enroute though)

This is all the snow we kicked up when we took off.

The artichoke: a mystery wrapped in an enigma

Last night, for the first time in my life, I cooked an artichoke. I have to say that I figured it would be very good because I love artichoke hearts on pizza and in salads and whatnot, but I had never had a whole artichoke and I must say I was a little nervous about cooking one myself. So last night, I got out my three favorite cookbooks and read in each of them how to cook an artichoke. They all said something different, so like any good cook would do, I combined all three instructions just to make sure I covered all my bases. So I washed and trimmed the leaves and cut down the stem and top leaves like it told me to do, and away I went. Let me just say the cooking was the easy part. Once I got it out of the pot, I set it in between Chad and me to share (this was not the only thing we were eating for dinner!). Chad at first looked at it and said he would not try it, but I finally coaxed him enough and he said it was good. I have never been so confused as to what part of a vegetable I should and shouldn't eat. I know you are supposed to scrape the meat off the bottom of the leaves with your teeth, but I think I did something wrong because there wasn't much meat to scrape. Then, after all the leaves were gone I took out the stringy stuff (the choke, apparently?) and what was left was the heart, I think. I couldn't quite figure out the whole thing, but I think I will be trying this again because I liked it. So, is there anybody out there who reads my blog and is good at preparing artichokes that can tell me how to eat it? Until I figure out a different system, I guess I'll just be buying the already prepared hearts in the jar.

Cold and dry

Well, it's cold here (it's been in the single digits most nights for the past few days), but it's dry. I heard on the news last night from our weatherman that Texas is getting "hammered" with weather. I am trusting that my family in Texas is staying inside and avoiding the icy roads.

Also, I had some technical difficulties when adding Erin's new blog link to my page, and now it appears to me that all my links are at the bottom of the page and I don't know how to fix it. Blogger is more difficult because when you are editing your template you actually have to type amongst the HTML code and I am never sure if I'm going to do it right or not. It's been 5 years since I've done anything with HTML code. Maybe I'll just change templates and start over again.

Chad has a busy week. He worked yesterday, is in Phoenix today for a class to study for the flight paramedic exam (will the tests ever be over for us?), Thursday and Friday he will be teaching a class for Wizard a few hours away, and Saturday he works again. All this while working on his senior project...what a busy guy!

That's it from here. I know it's pretty boring stuff so don't feel like you have to comment.

You ask, I deliver

So, there have been more murmurings about not enough posts and I was trying to think of interesting things to post about that I wouldn't mind the whole world reading. Here are a couple of other pictures we took on Christmas. I thought maybe someone would be interested in my new dishes. I love the colors and get excited about which color plate I am going to pick to eat on. Lame, I know. I loved my dragonfly dishes but they did not like being used so much. The bottom bowl is purple in case you can't tell. My screen is kind of weird so it looks black to me. The other picture is me with my new sewing machine. I'll let you know when I learn how to use it and actually sew something. I've got a "how to" book on its way to me. The last picture is of the new coat Chad gave me. It came in handy on our backpacking trip. Somehow I didn't get any pictures of Chad with presents, only video. And I can't do any of that fancy video uploading nor would it be very interesting.

bouldering

look at her go!!!! she's like a spider!!!

Backpacking

Keeping up

I guess I am now the person in charge of keeping up with the blog since Lesley is too lazy. Just kidding. It is our 3 year anniversary today. Lesley is working and I am starting to get sleepy since I was woken up at 4:00 for a call and haven't had a chance to sleep since. Any who......here are some pics, cause I know that reading blogs is boring. Some are from San Diego, our backpacking trip, and then others are random. Enjoy.