Poor, neglected blog...

Due to extenuating circumstances, this here blog has been sadly neglected for the past 3 months.  I do hope you have not minded incredibly much.  As is customary, I shall present y'all with pictures.  Of... scenery, mostly.  I know, I know, that's all that is ever posted on here.  If you want people pictures, you know where to look.  =P  

 Who ever said Kansas is flat??  I beg to differ.  What does this look like to you?  Flat?

 And who ever said Kansas has no trees?  What is that I see in the distance ...  monsters, maybe? 
Now, back to the earlier picture saying that Kansas wasn't flat; I shall insert a disclaimer.  Of course, there are indeed areas of Kansas that are flat, but that is perfectly marvelous!  Because, as you can see from this picture, flat is BEST for crops! 

Milo head emerging

 Rainbow after rain!  Yet another picture to disprove a common thought: that Western Kansas is a desert.  My dear friends, does it rain enough to make grass green in a desert?  In fact, is there ever even GRASS in a desert?
There is such a thing as plains, ya know.  It doesn't have to be either forest or desert.  There is a happy medium, and this happy medium is the marvelous plains of Kansas!  By the way, is there a town in Kansas named "Desert, Kansas"?  No, there is not.  Is there a town in Kansas named "Plains, Kansas"?  Yes, there is.  So, the logical inference from that is as follows: the land area is to be described as plains, NOT desert.

 I like rainbows... A marvelous reminder of God's promises and His faithfulness to keep them!

 Hmmm... what a muddy pickup!  (Ahem... does a pickup get muddy in a desert?  I highly doubt it.)

 Ah... ever so much better.  "A clean pickup is a happy pickup"!

 Yum, food.  =P  Chicken, zwiebach, green beans, and mashed potatoes (hmm... quite yellow mashed 'taters!).

 Supper, again.  This time, enchiladas, green beans, and rice.  (I'm sure you could tell, but I am having fun typing.)

 Mmmm.... lots of cheese!

 Kansas sunset!

All righty, maybe those pictures will last you until Thanksgiving break or Christmas break.  =)
-JJJJ

Scenery pictures

Delightful Kansas sunset! ... er... sunrise, actually. 

Eggs in a nest

Parsley

Guess! 

A valley

An old house

An old shed

Trail going across the Pawnee River... no water due to the fields up there being irrigated at the time.

Rain!!! photo courtesy: Irene

Rain, without flash =P photo courtesy: Irene

A swarm of nasty flying ants.  Photo courtesy: Irene

The grass is green!!!

Uh, I guess you can see this is a flower.  (Or several)

There, there's just one.

Ah, delightful green grass!

A slug/snail thingy I found in a corn field the other day.  I actually see a lot of them in some fields!

All righty, there are some pictures for ya!  I didn't take the time to auto fix them or anything, so I hope they don't look too bad! =P
-JJJJ

Mountain Lion!

Photo courtesy: North Dakotan brother-in-law

Pretty neat, eh?  =D

Dust storm plus some other pictures =)

Oh, I guess the pictures will come first!  I found this horse yesterday and took pictures because he was so friendly!  =)  Yay!  The first picture I messed with, and it looks kinda weird.

 This one I just auto fixed and changed the brightness and stuff.

 

Cows, for Patty!  =)

And here is the dust storm video, taken May 8.  Kinda nifty, huh?  There were some worse ones in 2011, though; we just didn't catch them on video.

Okay, now for a very lovely quote I read in a book ("There Have To Be Six" by Amelia Mueller) a couple weeks ago!  Kind of ironic after the above video, but it still holds true!!

"Occasionally a good man becomes dissatisfied with Kansas and moves to Oklahoma.  He takes good Kansas money and buys a farm which today is and tomorrow is not, because the wind has blown it away.  He tries Colorado and slushes mud trying to irrigate a strip of bottom so narrow a cow could jump across it. 

Then he hears of Texas and goes down to hunt the bag at the end of the rainbow.  When his money is all gone, he begins to feel like he did the first night he stayed away from home.  He yearns for good old Kansas and the yearn sticks in his throat and chokes him till the tears come to his eyes.  He would give months of hard work to see a cow standing at the bars of his old Kansas farm and hear the horn for supper...  And happy is the man who wakes to find that he has wandered from Kansas only in a dream!"
 Ah, how true! =D Dear ol' Kansas!

All right, I think that is all for the time being!
-Josie

Hooray! Yippee Ye Yi Yay!

Oh hoorah!  Oh, the joyful exuberance!  For two and a half years, I have been trying in vain to remember my favorite song to play on the cello, and FINALLY, out of the blue, it just came to me!  I was dreaming of it, and I woke up and found that I could sing the tune to myself ALL the way through in my head!  Then, just now, I went and fetched my cello and tried to play it, and I could!  FINALLY!  Oh joy, joy, joy!  I thought I would never remember it, and then I did!  Oh boy, it makes me so happy.  Just ask Ma and Irene, they saw how exuberant I was when I discovered I could play it!

And now, the time has finally arrived for me to do what I have been speaking of: the hilarious for me, boring for you post!  Hehehe!
 This, my friends, is what happens when I listen to a K-State football game!  A running documentary of every score, and any good play (and bad plays, too).  I picked this one to copy over here, because it is one of the most intense:
 
September 22, 2012 - Saturday - 6:53 p.m. K-State vs. OU
    All righty... here we go!  K-State started first, we're at the Sooner's 45.  Just threw wide right.  Ouch.  Time out, OU.  Ouch.  Short of the 1st down.  Punt.  We down it at the 9.  3rd and goal at the 11 for the Sooners...  Stop 'em D!!!  Yeah!  Incomplete!  Fieldgoal try... good.  3-0 OU.  We kept 'em from a TD though!
    Yeah!  We were 3rd and 9, then OU got a false start penalty (5 yds) and we were able to convert for the 1st down!  Oh yeah!  Keep on chuggin' away, Cats!  Oooo... ouch.  We have to punt.  Interception, we need an interception, D.  Come on D!  STONE WALL!  3rd and 2... stop 'em!!!  YES!  K-State's wall stopped 'em!  Punt!
    We'll start at our 29... Hubert falls forward to the 31.  Klein to the 35... 3rd and 4... Ouch.  Incomplete.  Punt.
    Hey!  They were playing one of my favorite songs one one of the commercials!  One from "Magnificient Westerns"!  Nifty!  I hope they play it again.  
    Haha.  OU penalty; false start.  HA!  Incomplete!  3rd and 13!  STOP THEM!!!  STONE WALL!
    YES!!!  YES!!! YES!!!!  The QB went too far back, and we hit him, knocked the ball loose, fell on it, and got a TOUCHDOWN!!!!!!!  YEAH OH YEAH!!!!  TD!!!!!!  7-3 WILDCATS!!!!  Oh man that was great!!!  Oh YES!
    OU at the 20.  Stop 'em D, stop 'em!  No, no, stop 'em!  Good, incomplete.  2nd and 10.  Oh... ouch.  1st and goal at the 9.  STONE WALL, D, STONE WALL!!!  2nd and goal at the 1.  Ouch.  Timeout Wildcats.  YES!!!  YES!!!  YES!!!!!!!!!  OU lost the ball, we recovered it!!!!!!!  OH YEAH!  OH YEAH!  GO D!!!!  Our D is the BEST!!!!  Klein runs to the 15 for a gain of 9!  "What do good teams do?  They respond; don't give up!"  Hubert takes it ot the 21!  Oh boy that was GREAT!!!!  Hubert ALL the way to the OU 43!!!!!!  36 yd. run!  YEAH!  YEAH!  Hubert for 2 yds.  Braden Wilson short catch.  3rd and 7.  Come ON, offense!  Timeout, OU.  Offense, you've gotta help the defense out, okay?  You gotta!  YEAH!  Klein to Tramaine Thompson to the 30 - good for a Wildcat... First down!  Oh yeah.  =P  Aw... only to the 27... 2nd and 7... 3rd and 5... Timeout (us).
    YES!!!!!!!!!  Klein to Lockett all the way to the 12!!!  Hubert to the 10...  Wow.. they say NO one has scored in the red zone against OU this season.  Well, we like to break records...  3rd and 3... come on gusy, come on!  Aw man... the ball got knocked away.  We'll try a fieldgoal.  Kick is.. oh man.  No signal.  Oh, there!!  GOOD!  10-3 WILDCATS!  OH YEAH!  Oh yeah!  Sorry for all the scribbles!  ={
    Hoho - incomplete!  3rd and 7 OU.  Stone wall, D!  Oh, too bad.. caught, caught again.  2 1st downs in a row.  Ouch.  Stop 'em D come on you gotta stop 'em.  Another catch.  At the 19.  You've gotta stop 'em, OU's got the ball to start the 2nd half... 1 minute, 3 seconds left in the 2nd quarter.  Oh yeah!  Nearly picked off by Zimmerman... why didn't you go ahead and catch it???  34 yd. fieldgoal... good.  10-6, still Cats ahead.
    Tramaine gets the kickoff to the 36!  Nice return.  Running out of time... 15 seconds... Klein to the 45 of OU, but the clock has run out, so no matter.  =(
    Half time!  Wow... we're ahead at half time!!!  10-6!
    3rd quarter starting.  Come on D!  Stone wall!  Yeah!  Incomplete several times and OU PUNTS!  YES!  Uh oh, flag... on OU though, so no matter.  
    Ouch.  3rd and 8 for us.  Ah.  Lockett caught it, just short of the 1st though.  Wow.  We're gonna go for it on 4th and 1...  Let's go CATS!  Come on!  GO!  YES!  Klein gets the 1st!  Oh boy here we go again.  3rd and 4.  GO GO GO!  Timeout OU.  Come on guys, come on.  Ah.  1 yd. short.  Timeout, us.  4th and 1... will we go for it again?  Hmm.  Not really. [Not really?] Punt.  =(
    YES!!!  YES!!!  YES!!! YES!!!!!  OU lost the ball and K-State RECOVERED!!!!  We RECOVERED it!  They're looking at it, but the QB (OU's) sure didn't hold that ball long enough, he lost it.  Come on, officials, please?  Won't ya keep it?  Pwease???  NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!  Those OU favoring officials!  They reversed it and are calling it an incomplete pass!  Uh!  Well, D, just stop 'em, 'Kay?  Stop 'em!  Nooooooo...  several 1st downs in a row, OU at our 41.  Come on D oooooo nooooooooooooo OU to the 14.  Guys come on, STONE WALL!  To the 9.  Gotta stop 'em.  Gotta.  STOP THEM!!!  Stop 'em guys.  NOOOOOOO... OU's got it at the 1.  Noooooonoooo nooooo.  Good.  OU pushed back to the 3 I think?  STONE WALL!  2nd and goal.  NOOOOOOO OU touchdown.  13-10 OU.  You gotta keep goin', Wildcats, gotta keep going.  Gotta get somewhere on this drive.  Offense, you have to help our D out here... you haven't gotten a single touchdown; defense got the only TD we have so far.  You gotta change that, starting now.  Remember your 4th quarter momentum in the last 3 games?  Get going in the 4th, offense, yeah?
    Lockett returns the kickoff to the 35.  Good field position, guys.  Get goin', offense, get goin'!!  Loss of 2.  Offense, that's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talkin' go forward, not backward.  Yeah!  Harper catches the ball at the 41!  The SOONER 41!  Aw man, overthrown at the 10.  Go go go!  NOOOOO incomplete.  Come on, don't get discouraged, you can do this!  Come ON!  GO!  NOOOO!  Incomplete.  Well, D.  What can ya do?  Ha, OU will start at their own 4.  Come on D, you can stop 'em from going 96 yds!  STONE WALL D!  1st down OU to the 15/16?
    YES!!!  YES!!!  YES!!!!!!!  INTERCEPTION by Zimmerman!!!!  INTERCEPTION!!!  3rd turnover on OU!  OH YEAH!  GO GO GO GOTTA Get it!!!! YEAH!  Catch at the 28... come on guys!  COME ON!  Klein to the 20... maybe 19... come on go come on go Hubert to the 8!!!!!!!  To the 8!  1st and goal at the 8!  Come on guys, 8 yds!  8 yds!  You've got this, come on!  To the 5... GO, GO, GO!  YES!!!  YES!!!!  YES!!!!!  KLEIN IN FOR THE TD!!!!!!!!!!  FIRST TEAM to score a TD in the redzone against OU!  OH YEAH!!!  17-13 WILDCATS!
    'Kay, D, you've GOT to keep 'em outta the endzone, you gotta.  2nd and 16.  Right here guys, right here.  Stop 'em.  Caught to the 38.  Ouch.  Still 3rd and long though.  GOOD, GOOD!  Incomplete!  YES!  OU PUNTS!!!!!
    'Kay, offense.  Now you gotta score again, to get some breathing room.  YES!!!!  Klein to Travis Tannahill to the 44!!!  GO!  To the 47... Come on, come on.  GO, GO, GO!  GOOOOO!!!  Ooooohhhh... 10 yd. penalty.  Ooooouch.  Ouch.  That hurts.  3rd and 12.  Timeout K-State.  Oh man come on K-State!!!!  You know how many years I've been waiting for us to beat Oklahoma???  9 years!  Nine!  Since we beat 'em in the 2003 Big 12 Championship, 35-7.  KSU, come on!!!  You can't imagine how happy I'd be if we could pull this off!!!  Come on, Cats, come ON!
    YES!!!!!!  1st DOWN to the 32!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  YEAH!  3rd down conversion!!!!!!!  To the 30/29... To the 22... 1st DOWN!  YES!!!!!!!  1st and goal at the 9!!!!!!  Tannahill caught it!!!!!  COME ON!  9 yds!  You can do this!  WILDCAT TOUCHDOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  YEAH!!!  YEAH!!!!!!!!  OH YEAH!!!!  K-State leads 24-13!!!!!!!!  (Hubert got it, btw)
    Kay, D, keep 'em out, keep 'em out!!  Come on DEFENSE!  Play like you're #1 in the country!  "You gotta beat these guys all the way to the end." - our announcers.
    !!!!!!!  Landry LOSES the ball!!!!  Oh, too bad -- KSU almost had it, but OU got it back, has a loss of 8 though.  Oh man, now a 1st.  Nooo...  To our 36.  D, STOP 'EM!  'Nother 1st down to the 24... K-State, STONE WALL!!!!  STOP 'EM!!!!  STOP 'EM!!!!!!  4:34 to go... OU to the 10... STOP 'EM STOP!
    NOOOOO!!!!!  OU touchdown.  Trying for 2... stop 'em.  Stoppage of play... OU timeout.  K-State, don't let 'em get 2.  Don't let 'em in.  STONE WALL, STONE WALL!!!!!!
    YES!!!!!  BALL DEFLECTED!!!!!  NO 2-POINT CONVERSION!!!!  24-19!!!  Come on offense, score again now and get this put away... come ON!  FIGHT, you K-State Wildcats, for Alma Mater fight, fight FIGHT FIGHT!!!!
    Ouch.  Loss of a yard.  Klein throws incomplete.  3rd and 11... Come on State.  YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!  YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!  FIRST DOWN!!!!!  3rd down conversion!!!!  YEAH!!!!  Gain of 5... Very short gain on 2nd down... OU timeout.  Come on K-State, come on.  3rd and 3.  GO!  You've got this.  Come on.  Timeout, us.  Come on, K-State!  YES!!!!  FIRST DOWN WILDCATS!  YEAH OH YEAH!  1st DOWN!!!  1 minute 10 seconds... Takes a knee... 35 seconds... takes a knee... 27 seconds... YES!!!!!!  OVER!!!!  OVER!!!! WE WIN!!!!!!!  24-19 WILDCATS!!  WE WIN IN NORMAN!!!!!  First time since the 90's!!!!!!!!!!!!  Bob Stoops has only had 3 losses at home out of 80 games!!!!  And we make it 4!!!!!!!  OH YEAH!!!  K-State Wildcats BEAT Oklahoma 24-19!!!!!!
    "WILDCAT NATION is HAPPY!!!!" - our announcers.
    YES!!!!!!  This is the best win of the season for me!  I don't much care what else happens... we BEAT OU!!!!!!!!!!!!!   OH YEAH!

There you have it!  GO K-STATE!

Averted and Unaverted Disasters

Well, I decided to post what I was debating about yesterday.  This isn't the hilarious one yet, though.  That'll be coming later.  =P

Okay, quoting directly from journal:
"Well, first off, I charged the 4-wheeler through wheat [don't panic, it was on a trail] on my way to get my NW triticale check (forget which #), and when I drew my sword out of its sheath ... (okay, okay, so it's just an Oakfield probe) I discovered to my utmost dismay (literally!) that my dagger (i.e. shovel) was missing in action!  I morosely traced my way back on my tracks, thinking maybe the tall wheat knocked it out.  Nothing.  I resolved to get my 2 checks and then backtrack to the last field.  I distinctly remembered digging up a corn plant to check its secondary roots being the very last thing I did at the last field, so I knew I'd put the shovel back.
Some agonizing minutes later, I trekked back to the ominous field, unloaded the trusty ol' 4-wheeler, and scouted out my tracks.  I found 2 sets; 1 would be when I went in, and 1 would be when I went in, and 1 would be when I went out.  I checked the treads on the tires with each set of tracks and determined which one was my "out" track.  I set out to follow it.  Not 5 seconds later my eyes lighted upon my dearly lost shovel!  I was ecstatic!  Disaster #1 averted!
         Several hours later, on my way to NW 24 (or 34?), a deer RUDELY ran out in front of me, forcing me to slam on my brakes and send everything flying to the front of the pickup.  I looked behind me and saw skid marks.  Ah, but some rubber worn off the tires is better than a smashed front end, eh?  Disaster #2 averted!
         Shortly thereafter, I returned to the pickup after checking NW whatever it is and was attacked by a multitude of flies!  Ick!  I sought refuge in the pickup, but I had to write my notes down and it was sweltering, so I chanced opening the windows.  Huge mistake!  When I left, my pickup was covered in flies!  Everywhere I looked was black with them!  I have NEVER seen so many flies in one place at one time before!  I hoped to get them out by speeding down the HWY with windows all the way down, but they persisted and were still everywhere when I stopped at my next field.  They were biting me incessantly, so I frantically sprayed "Off" all over me and the pickup, hoping to offend some.  It worked, slightly, but the whole rest of the day I was plagued by the nasty things.  Boy am I glad to be home!  That disaster was not averted, sadly.
          Then on my last field, I stopped to dig for milo seed and noticed the WD-40 can and holder laying behind me on the seat.  I guess it decided it had been bumped around too much.  That disaster was averted though because I noticed it before it got lost.  I made up a theory when I was going through some wheat stubble that the field was so bumpy not even weeds could grow in it!  (I hadn't seen any weeds up to that point)  I do NOT like bumpy fields!  Ick!  Somebody (namely, D's) needs to learn not to go through their fields with big equipment when it's muddy.  You make HUGE tracks doing that and your agronomist (intern) does NOT come out a happy camper!"

Well, there you have it.  Coming up next:  Something that entertains me highly but you will find abhorrently boring!  Hahaha!
-JJJJ

Cattle, Sheep and Auctioneers

So... you start to wonder if you're going crazy when you're walking back to the dorm and hear sheep baaing and cattle mooing but there isn't a single animal in sight...  Weeeiiiiirrrrddd...  I looked all over, but couldn't find hide or hair (yes, according to correct grammar, it should be 'or', not 'nor', even though 'nor' sounds so much better.  But if you use 'nor' you're using a double negative, because you already have 'not' in the 'couldn't'.  Just a random side note I thought of after reading that phrase in a book and stopping short in shock at the awkwardness of it) of a single thing that could be making such noises!  Odd, odd, odd. 

I was skimming through my journal again and came across a few interesting tidbits.
Quoting directly from journal, "Oh, something funny I heard on the radio the other day!  They were talking about tombstones, and on an auctioneer's tombstone was written, "Going, going, gone".  I couldn't help laughing.  I know, morbid, but still, you've gotta admit it's funny."

Here's a quote our newspaper editors must have read and taken seriously, "Don't be afraid to make a mistake; your readers might like it." - William Randolph Hearst.  Ha, yeah, "they might laugh at it!" - Pa 
Yep, our newspaper consistently has dozens of errors in it every single week!

Well, I'm trying to decide whether or not I should post my "averted disasters" entry.  Maybe another day sometime soon.  I'm going to do something else sometime, too, that I think will be hilarious.  HAHAHA!  Be warned!

Well, off to supper here soon, as soon as Patty gets back from work!

Ta-ta!
-Josie

The Month of May!!

Yay, it's finally the month of May!  =D

There's a healthy dose of spring for ya!  =P
And now some interesting "gobbledygook" from my American Government book a year ago...
1. Negative patient-care outcome (death in a hospital)
2. A very large, potentially disruptive re-entry system (Titan missile)
3. Television with non-multicolor capability (black and white television)
4. Uncontrolled flight into terrain (airplane crash)
5. That portion of a means of egress between the termination of an exit and a public way (a door). 
Haha.  Well, there you have it!  Now you can go be a smart aleck and talk like that!  Ha, just kidding! =P
Happy May!  (Try to survive the snow)

Tractors, spring and exploring!

Well, I have a bunch of pictures to post today!  =D
It all started when I was walking to class and saw two lovely BLUE and RED tractors sitting on the lawn on the south side of the building I was going in to!  Hoorah!  Case IH and New Holland; the best kind of tractors! 

 And then I took some random pictures of flowers...

 And then went exploring!  =D  I went in pretty much every building on the south side of campus, and took pictures of cool stuff. First, a stairway.  I just like the wood on this one, but wait until later; there's a really cool one comin'! =D

 Another picture of the tractors.

 A view of a building from the top floor of another across the street.

 Above: Some kind of flowering bush  Below: A cool view from the walkway outside the library

 This is evidently where the professors used to stand and watch when students were taking tests!

 Farther away view.  This is in the Great Room in what is now the library.

 An iris getting ready to bloom.  I'll have to go back and catch 'em when they're actually in bloom!

 I like the sunshine in this picture.

 A neat little circular window.

 The really cool staircase!!!  It was really cool in real life, and it is so old that it squeaks and the boards sink in when you walk on it!  Nifty, eh? =P

 Above: A white flowering tree.   Below: Nichols Hall.  I thought it looked like a castle.  =P

 See, doesn't it look like a castle?

A picture of what looks like Texas bluebonnets...

 Above: A painting of a cellist!  It was amongst a big mural of athletics, art, music, etc.  And the music one was a a cello!  Yay!   Below:  I REALLY wanted to go in here, but the door was locked.  =(

A pinkish/white flowering tree.

And lastly, some videos of going down the creaky old stairs!  I don't know if you can hear the creaks or not, but they were really neat.  =P

And I believe that's all I have for ya for now!  =)
Have a lovely spring!  =D