Tennis and Teeth

Yesterday I played tennis for the first time in a few years. I used to play a lot, even though it was just a side hobby. My brother-in-law Allen, is really good and we would play. I also played with other friends of mine: Mike McAdams, Matt and Allison, and a couple others. Right after my mission, I moved to Douglasville with my sister Rachel. I enrolled into the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, and I soon moved there to be closer to the school and also the guy I was dating at the time. I moved in with my best friend Rebeccah Ewell and then later moved into a little house with my friends Wendi Camp and April Davis. Those years will hold some of the best memories for me. I had great friends, some who aren't together anymore :( , and some I don't get to see but maybe once every two years, and some I get to see at least once a month at Game Night. It was in the house on Brown Street that I started dating Adam. We had gone on a couple of dates while I was living at Beccah's, but hadn't hit it off yet. We were getting close, and he asked me to marry him and he got to know my room mates and the guys that they had started dating. It's funny. We three moved in single and wound up breaking our lease right before a year was up, because we were all engaged to be married. It was two weeks before the wedding, and we were hanging out with Matt and Allison playing tennis- or maybe it was just us, anyway... he sent a great return over the net and as I went to swing at it, I smacked myself in the mouth. Yep, right in the kisser! And I remember reaching up and feeling my mouth and thinking, "Man, the racket broke in my mouth... OH NO! That's my tooth!!" I had broken my front tooth and I was a basket case and crying... well, this was mostly after Adam had gone home. I was crying on the phone to my mom and the next day we called to make an appointment with the dentist. Talk about hysterical, I was really upset. It turns out that when Adam was little, he broke the same front tooth off in another boy's head- yes, head. They were playing some really dumb game of crossing your arms over your chest and running at each other. The boy had turned around and Adam ran at him, but some how it went wrong and Adam lost part of his tooth. He also remembers that the boy got money from the tooth fairy for his tooth and I don't think he got anything, lol. So, Adam and I have more than just matching personalities... and names for that matter. We have matching fake teeth.

Prince of Persia

Went and saw Prince of Persia last night with Adam and a group of friends. It was a really good movie; I was impressed. Not too cheesy and they didn't have to find the nearest girl and force a crazy love romance scene into it. Okay, well they did find the nearest girl and make her a love interest, but it still was very tasteful. I suppose Jake Gyllenhaal made up for Brokeback Mountain, which nobody could ever pay me to go see, so well done, Jake. Then we made our way over to Stake and Shake where we talked till the wee wee hours. Thanks to my mom, who made date night possible, because she even watched Chrissy for us.

props for the poster

The Art of Projecting

Last week I bought an overhead projector off of ebay. I'm hoping that it will make painting murals a lot less time consuming and more accurate dimensionally- I mean, most of my time goes to painstakingly getting the proportions correct and what can I say? I'm a realist. If it doesn't look exactly like the photo, I'm not satisfied. But that doesn't mean I'm not an admirer of impressionism and abstract art, although I really can't stand contemporary all that much. I remember thinking that Monet was just an old guy that didn't have enough energy to paint all the details, so he scribbled here and there and from far away, you could see what he painted. UNTIL! I went to a Monet exhibit at the High Museum, and I was totally educated in the life and works of Claude Monet. And upon learning that he painted rather well in detail, he was a hottie in his younger years. Most of his works are some of my favorite paintings and I have dabbled a little in impressionism myself, but I prefer watercolor over other medium, which makes it easier to manipulate a picture.

I went out to water my garden today, not that it really needed it with all the rain we've been having this week, but it was time for some Miracle Grow. I got two yellow squash out of the garden last week, and they were very tasty- Tripp even ate some. I'm just waiting for the zucchini to produce so that I can make some zucchini bread or use them in stir fry, oooh yummm! I found some weird growth in the garden soil by some tomato plants, and upon urgent research found that it was something called Wolf's Milk slime mold, or slangily called bubble-gum mold. It eats decaying matter, but isn't fungus, yet still harmless to plants. They are a pinkish orange color and when they dry out and turn brown, they puff spores out into the air if you squish them, or water them too vigorously.


Erick has a humongous fever blister on his lip and it ran up onto the roof of his mouth. He has gotten them before, but never this aggressive and the poor little guy is so pitiful with a swollen lip. He makes it worse every time by feeling it with his tongue, thus making it bigger. The doctor gave him an anti-viral medication as well as some cream for his lip and already it is looking much better. This cream is some pretty potent stuff too, so I'll be using it when one of those suckers tries to pop up on my lip.