Updates!

I haven't blogged in a hot, hot minute. I was busy. Gimme a break. So, what better way to reintroduce myself than to do an update blog?!?!?!

*First and foremost, I passed that GD math class! I didn't get the grade I wanted, but I passed with a "C" so I never have to take it again! YESSS! It was an absolutely miserable experience. Did I mention that I HATE MATH??? Cause I do.

This is how math equates in my brain. Moving on...

*We planted our garden. It's a work in progress..that's what we'll call it. The broccoli plants are kicking ass (and yes...taking names!), the carrots are doing well (or at least they seem to be), but the onions, tomatoes, and peppers...I don't know about, yet. Just in case, this past weekend at the Broad Ripple Farmer's Market we bought two tomato plants to put in our garden.

*I will be taking my last two classes this summer at Ivy Tech! I technically only had to take one, but since I was taking one, I figure why not take two? I'll be taking a exposition/arguments writing class and a sociology class called "social problems." I'm a total nerd, but I just LOVE learning about people, hence the anthropology major. DUH. Making this doubly awesome is that I bought BOTH of my books for the semester for less than thirty dollars! WOOT!

*I'm all set and ready to go for IUPUI, almost. Just when I thought math was O.V.E.R. I had to take a placement test before I can do orientation. Whatever, I guess. It was only 7 problems, so I did really well or really shitty. I'll find out in orientation on June 9th. I'm stoked for my classes though! I'll be taking the following: human origins and prehistory, world geography, advanced spanish I, and beginning guitar.

*I'm starting to do some fund raising for the mission to Nigeria. I'm so excited to go back to Africa, and to be a part of something so amazing. Plus, I will get to visit with Lindsay since she will be there for six months.

*We bought a new mower that I'm obsessed with. No, really. It's a reel mower, also known as "hey, 1953 called and it wants its' mower back." This is what it looks like:
Awesome for many reasons, but mostly because it uses ZERO gas, so no nasty fumes and loud noise when I mow. BEST. MOWER. EVER. And no, it isn't difficult to use.

*In the midst of all the craziness happening in the world right now, Lindsay and I are just as in love as ever! I love the family and love that she and I have created. It's comforting, warm, and where I'm supposed to be.


Hope everyone is well!

A year of travel--reviewed.

I haven't written for a while, I'm a busy person. I decided that since it's officially been one year since Lindsay and I took our very first trip together I would celebrate with a post dedicated to some of my favorite photos of us and a bit of reflection. Here goes...

The very first trip that Lindsay and I ever took together was to Tennessee for my 28th birthday. I'm not gonna lie, it was a wreck mess because we couldn't get it together, but there were some good times (as always, duh). We rented a cabin for my bday and off we went.
Gatlinburg, Tennessee 02.09

Chillin' on the balcony of our cabin.

Being incredibly in love.
We ultimately had a good time on this trip. It was just a little rough. We had only been together for about three months and we hadn't figured each other out, yet. We still made the most of it!



Chicago, Illinois 04.09
This is one of the shortest(two days), fun-filled trips I have ever been on in my life. Lindsay and I went to Chicago for her first Girlyman show. It was fantastic. We saw Millennium Park, I rode a train for the first time in my life, the Girlyman show was excellent, and we did some touristy stuff, which actually was really cool. By the time we took this trip, we had our shit together (finally) and realized that traveling together made for the best times.
See us? :)~
On Navy Pier. I LOVE this picture.
Our last day in Chicago.




Portland, Oregon 8.09
Since Lindsay was gone nearly six weeks out of the summer, we decided it was time to take a real vacation. We didn't have any particular place in mind...just somewhere that neither one of us had previously been. We googled a map of the U.S. and after lots of talking we decided on Portland, Oregon. Excellent choice! We had a blast...although people rave about the food and we didn't understand why (with the major exception of VooDoo Doughnut). Portland is super clean, very GLBT friendly, easy to navigate, and gorgeous. Rent a car and go explore, it's awesome.
The world famous maple bacon bar from VooDoo Doughnut. Absolutely delicious. We waited in line for 45 minutes for these little gems. Worth every second of it.
At the Washington Zoo. They had a ton of animals and exhibits. We loved it, of course.
Wakheena Falls in the Columbia River Gorge. Gorgeous waterfalls all around us.
Let me tell ya, Mount St. Helen looks much closer than it is when you start driving towards it. GEESH! When we had driven as far up as we could go, there was a state park-ish thing. We just walked in (hello, it was open to the public, no gates, no one taking money except inside a building) and took a look at our surroundings. Lindsay was convinced we were going to get kicked out, so the experience was short lived.
Ridiculously in love. Watching the sunset in Astoria, Washington on the beach. This was my first time seeing The Pacific Ocean. It was COLD!!!!



Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 11.09
Lindsay had an APHA conference to attend in Philly in November, so we decided that one of our friends and myself would tag along. Bad idea. I should have stayed home. I got the stomach flu the night we arrived and was sick as hell the entire time. It was awful. However, I still managed to go out and see a little bit of Philly.
Star fish at the New Jersey Aquarium! Yep, that's my hand. Brandi and I went here and acted like five year olds while Lindsay was busy being a big brain.
Thanks for still loving me babe, even when I'm sick and we are traveling. :)






Senegal and The Gambia, West Africa 1.10
It just kinda happened that I got to go on the trip to Africa with Lindsay. I had never been on an international trip before and still to this day, can't believe that we had such an amazing opportunity to share this adventure. I'm honestly still in shock about how inspiring this trip was, so I'm still processing. I got to see things I could never dream of. A couple of things I hold near and dear to my heart from this trip: it opened so many doors for me and my eyes at the same time, made me want to learn Spanish (we had a layover in Spain, plus pretty much everyone speaks Spanish), the trip made me want everyone to SLOOOOW DOOOOWN, and last but not least it inspired me to study Anthropology. Here are just a few of my favorite pictures from the trip. You can check out Lindsay's post to get a more in depth review of our trip.
Welcome to Banjul! This was taken from a tower in downtown Banjul. I composed myself and picked up my jaw long enough to snap this little beauty. :)
BEACH!!!! Did you say beach? The Gambia is landlocked on three sides by Senegal (take a peek, here) but luckily we were staying on the coast, so I got to see (and play in!) The Atlantic Ocean from Africa! HA! As you can see, it was gorgeous.
Lindsay with her favorite thing ever, solar panels. We visited a HUGE hospital out in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (no seriously) that uses solar power for 90% of it power.
Dream come true! I got to hold this cutie little African baby. He wasn't so sure about me, but let me hold him anyhow. This was taken in a remote village.
A different village with LOTS of kiddos. This is our driver, Yabo's village. The very tall white man is Dr. Nagengast, the man who made all of this happen.
Lindsay and I near a HUGE koi pond at The Gambian President's resort. Just keepin' it classy, as always.
Cattle, just crossing the road. No bigs. This happens CONSTANTLY in Africa. If you don't stop for them and you hit one with your vehicle, you have to find the farmer it belongs to and pay him for his loss.
I found this very interesting. It's just a bore hole to get water from, but I'd never seen anything like that, so I was amused. One of the students lowered a bucket down into the water, pulled it up to our level, and then transported it up a sand hill to the main water pot that the residents use for daily cooking, drinking, etc. NEATO-O.
The group.
We visited a slave house on an island in Senegal. It was uber creepy. This is me in solitary confinement. I was being bad, apparently.



New York City, New York 1.10
Our flight from Africa arrived in NYC later than we could catch a flight back to Indy, so we just stayed there! I had only been once when I was much younger, less traveled, and it was a really bad experience. Lindsay wanted to show me that it's not so bad. She was right! In about 6 hours, we saw Ground Zero (BOOOORRRRRING), Times Square, and Central Park. Oh..and we got lost (kind of). It was awesome.
Ground Zero. I told you it was boring.
Times Square was fantastic! Soooo many people and places.
Excited to be in Central Park. It was nice to escape the noise for a while and see what the hype is about. I figured it out....it's HUGE.
Me and Lindsay in Central Park. We were judging people. =D




I've never traveled this much in one year, ever. It just kind of happened for me/us. As you can see, I've been so many places and met so many people in the past year. I'm so fortunate to have Lindsay in my life. Without her, none of this would be possible and so many other great things wouldn't have happened (going back to school, believing in myself, this deserves a whole other blog post). Our travels will continue and I will always try to share them with you. Stay tuned!

You want me to do what??

Brilliant idea to go stay in East Lansing, Michigan this weekend with Lindsay's sister (Hilary). The events (thus far) have included meeting the world's largest dog (Diesel, a 140lb great dane),a wonderful Girlyman show (where I was once again so happy to see Ty AND she remembered my name), lots of fire building in the fireplace, a brief tour of the Michigan State campus, lots of shopping(including a fantastic new pair of Keen's for me!), and a breakfast made caveman style.

Caveman style breakfast?? What does that mean, you ask? Did you hunt a rabbit, skin it, then cook it over an open flame?

NO. THIS WAS WAAAAY WORSE. :)

Sidenote: Lindsay and I have a Sunday morning ritual, providing I am not at work, where we make the best best eggs ever; Sunday Morning Eggs. They are fairly labor intensive considering they contain many veggies.

Sooooo....we purchased the ingredients last night when we got here, making sure to ask if Hilary had each and every staple item we needed (i.e. eggs, butter...not margarine, salt, pepper, veggies, a pan). We did this only because Hilary is a college student, still living the pretty simple life.

Anyhow.....so this morning comes. We wake up, talk for a little bit, build another fire, and then realize we are so hungry we could eat a hippo. That's my cue...I'll start cooking now, thanks.

So I start rummaging around in the kitchen looking for a pan, a cutting board and a knife...only to discover that two of these items aren't available: the knife and the cutting board. HOLY CRAP! Is what I was thinking. How can someone have a kitchen without a knife and a cutting board? I mean, you might as well just install a hot tub where the kitchen once was if you don't have a KNIFE and a CUTTING BOARD.

GEESH.

Anyhow, we made due with what was here. Let me tell ya though, chopping bell peppers, onions, and garlic with a butter knife and pizza cutter on a slippery ceramic plate is not something I ever want to do again. Here is a little glimpse of the madness...



Me looking a little freaked out by this beast of a dog.

Excited and nervous to be talking to Ty, again. Did I mention she knows my name? Lindsay and Hilary got ROASTED by Ty. She looked at me and said "Angie, right???" HAAAA!! They didn't believe me. Little do they know...

You want me to do what??? Okay...I'll give it a shot. (Props to Lindsay for helping out!)

Speaking of helping...someone else was willing to lend a paw.

Here's the finished product!!!

Strangeness.

So I am completely STOKED that we are leaving for Africa in less than a week. LESS THAN A WEEK! Anyhow...I'm having this strange feeling that I don't know how to pinpoint. The best I can do to explain it is that I have never been in this position before. I've known plenty of friends who have traveled internationally, so I have always been the one asking questions about where they are going, what they are doing, etc. Now that the tables have turned and I am the one being asked the questions, it's completely different. Don't get me wrong, because I totally dig it. I know we are going to have an absolute blast in Senegal and The Gambia and I can't wait to share that experience with anyone who inquires about it. This is so new for me and I can't actually believe it's happening to me.

I'd rather die than do this again...

Last week, I was the best partner EVER. I nearly froze to death and now have the worst case of poison ivy in the world. More on that later...

The privacy fence in our backyard had some brush, dead trees, and just general debris hanging out behind it. We knew it needed to be cleaned up, but decided to wait until the "winter" so that things would be dead and (in theory) easier to remove AND because there wouldn't be as many bugs and gross things to deal with.

WRONG .REALLY, REALLY WRONG.

Well, partially anyway. The actual removal of everything wasn't terribly difficult. Lindsay's step dad, Dale came over with a chain saw and cut down the really big trees and was nice enough to hook me up with a pair of lopping shears. These things are nice to work with because they can cut anything. Literally. ANYTHING.


This is the damage when we got done cutting everything down. I recommend clicking the picture, it really brings into perspective how much junk was there.











We cut everything down into even smaller pieces, loaded it into the truck, and took it to the dump, which by the way...is the sickest place in the world. Luckily, it started raining.




So...anyhow this is a really crappy picture (taken in the GD rain) of the cleanup. I wish I had a picture of what it looked like before we started chopping things down. It was a disaster!!!



Now, to my favorite part. I am HIGHLY allergic to poison ivy. HIGHLY. I don't even know what the heck it looks like, so I usually just stay away from anything green and leafy in the summer time. And with it being SO COLD...I didn't even think twice about poison ivy. TOO LATE.....cause now I have poison ivy on my hands, wrists, chest, neck, and even on one of my legs. OH JOY. To my surprise, I actually had my grubby little gloved hands ALL OVER some dead poison ivy. This is what dead poison ivy looks like. I recommend staying light years away from it.




It makes me itch and my skin crawl just looking at it. GROSS.

Further information for anyone interested, yes, clearly you can get poison ivy regardless of the season. You get the rash on your skin anywhere from 12 hours to 3 weeks after exposure to the OIL that is found on the plant. The oil that is found on poison ivy is incredibly potent. Trust me, I know. After a trip to Urgent Care on Saturday night where I received a steroid injection and some oral anti-itch medicines AAAAAAAND a lovely trip to a dermatologist on Monday where I received not one but TWO different topical steroid creams and more anti-itch oral medication.

I think my new ideas about mother nature are rapidly changing. If it isn't paved, I'm not going there...and if there is ANY potential of leafy thing, definitely count me out.

A great ending!

Yes, it's been a hot hot minute since I posted anything. I've been keeping busy, that's for sure. In the past few weeks, I went to Philly (and was sick as hell the entire trip...boo stomach flu), moved out of my place into Lindsay's (officially), been vaccinated against damn near everything, worked, celebrated Thanksgiving with friends and family, and tried to keep up with school. Sometimes I feel like its A LOT and other times I think I could handle more. I dunno.

My focus at this point is finishing out the semester and getting all A's! I finished one class about two weeks ago and totally got an A. I'm doing REALLY well in my Anthropology class and I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoy it. My only complaint is the MASSIVE amount of work that I have to do. It's really good practice for writing, but DANG! Sometimes I just don't wanna write anymore. Anyhow, I'm totally going to get an A in that class too, no questions asked. My only other class I have is Sociology. It's been kind of nice taking Anthro and Soc. in the same semester; they contain a lot of the same information. My instructor in my Sociology class is a weirdo though. He grades things weird, he assigns random things, and he is UBER religious so I get a strange feeling from him. Whatever. My guess is that I will be just a few points away from an A, so a B is prolly coming my way. Meh.

I recently got accepted to IUPUI! WOOT! I'm excited about it and am most excited to be DONE with Ivy Tech. I've been at the Tech for waaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. By the time I complete my degree this summer, I will have almost 90 credits. Geez. I can only transfer a max of 60 of those to IUPUI though, so this week I am going to speak to an advisor and see what else I can get to transfer, how long my intended program will take, etc. Speaking of program, I'm applying to SPEA. I finally figured out that I don't think health care is REALLY where I WANT to be. It's great to help people and make a difference, don't get me wrong. What I have decided to do is get a degree in non-profit management with a focus on environmental science. I'm so interested in saving the Earth and making it a better place for everyone, and I'm not a greedy asshole...so this works out for me.

Wish me luck!

October is coming out month!

If you didn't know already, October is coming out month. According to Wikipedia, October was chosen by Missouri high-school history teacher Rodney Wilson as the month for the celebration. Why? National Coming Out Day was well established as its own event on October 11, and October commemorated the 1979 LGBT march on Washington.

I know first hand, that every single person who comes out has a story to tell. I would share my entire story with you, but it's a pretty personal thing that I don't want posted on the internet. Basically, I wasn't accepted by my mother (whom I lived with), she didn't speak to me and ignored my existance for over 2 weeks, called me terrible names, and destroyed my bedroom in anger. I felt completely isolated from reality. It was one of the most horrific times of my life.

My dad, who lived 50 miles away, wasn't nearly as abrasive (to put it nicely) about my recent announcement. All he had to say was "at least she isn't pregnant."

Coming out is a very crucial time in every person's life, and not just with sexual orientation. Clearly this applies to every aspect of humanity. A person can come out as many things in their life. I will always have an open ear and heart to anyone facing any kind of struggle. It's unfortunate that some folks feel they can't speak with their loved ones about issues in life for fear of being judged, humiliated, or even worse...shunned.

If I had it to do all over again, I'd do it in a heartbeat. My sexuality does not define me or who I am. It's part of who I am. Just like my blue eyes and smart ass attitude. I can't change the fact that I am lesbian, just like I can't change my skin color.

Luckily, all is well now, and has been for many years. My mom ADORES Lindsay (and myself of course) and even though she claims she can't "accept" my sexuality for "religious reasons" I know it's all a bunch of B.S. I wonder if I should tell her that in ancient Greek times, homosexuality was the the most common display of male hierarchy??? Nah...I'll just let her read it for herself. :) :) :) (Mom, click on "ancient Greek times...you will learn a thing or two!!)

Anyhow, happy coming out month!