Got an hour? Listen to this...

Fall was almost my favorite season in Sioux Center. The temperature is nearly perfect and all around the earth and the air are an explosion of color while the leaves change into yellows, oranges, and reds, first on their branches and then swirling through the air and then forming a blanket over the streets, sidewalks and lawns. Some jobs on the nursery allow me to enjoy this process, such as grading locusts or birch. However, overall I have not felt the fall here to be as enjoyable. It is wetter, more grey, and colder. Perhaps this is just a bad year. In any case, I am glad I was able to visit Sioux Center and catch a glimpse of this season there.

But mostly I am glad I was able to spend even a little time with a few of those who have remained there. I have missed you all greatly, actually, and wish I could have seen more of you yet!

Dee and I were fortunate enough to see Sufjan Stevens on this new tour of his. I very much like his new album, or at least what I've heard of it so far. The concert consisted almost entirely of new material, all of which (perhaps due in part to the experience of hearing it live) I found to be spectacular.

Yesterday I was fooling around on some crutches. While my hands were thus occupied, a friend decided to hurl a frisbee at me and afterwards draw my attention to it just in time for me to watch the frisbeen meet the bridge of my nose... Today I had a headache. I would have been okay with that, had I been also rewarded with a black eye. I feel like everyone should have at least one black eye in their lifetime, or at least I should... And this should have been my chance, or so I thought. But no. Not even a bruise on my nose. Just a red spot and a bump and a headache. Ah well. Nothing ibuprofen could not fix. :)

I've been in Canada four months now. Summer is mostly over and now the ladies crew consists of only four people, including myself and Dee. It is a lot quieter, a lot slower, and much more boring than I expected.

I have not done all of the activities I had hoped to have done by now, such as visit the safari, or go white water rafting, or even go biking on the bike path in Niagara. But I have found ways of staying busy such as attempting to buy 33 different beers at Bugsys so I can get a beer mug with my name on it, watching movies at home or the cinema or the drive-in, walking forbidden paths, going behind waterfalls, camping, swimming at the Bakker beach, walking down the pier at Port Delhousie, participating in a play by Beth and Paul T. and Justine M., and tomorrow Dee and I plan to go to the butterfly conservatory.

I have not read as much as I hoped, but lately at work I have been listening to books on audio. I know tis not the same thing at all as reading, but it helps pass the time at work and prevents my getting so bored with the music I currently have. I am intrigued by the ability of some people to read books in such a captivating manner and to create slightly different voices and manners of speech for all the different characters in one novel. I think reading for a recording would be a rather fun job. Perhaps I have found a new calling...

I have traveled a little from here since coming. I went to Alberta for a happy family reunion and shortly after to Grand Rapids for a very unhappy family reunion of sorts. I still plan to go to Montreal sometime to visit my cousin and to Toronto to visit a friend and to Newmarket again to visit my aunt and uncle. In October I will be returning to Iowa for a long weekend. Heads up!

I think that is about it for now.

happenings

I went fishing on Saturday with Dee's dad and youngest sister. I learned to bait my own hook with minnows and cast my own line. I caught a pickerel and two bass, of which we threw one back for being too small.

This week has been a bit long, having to work full days again after not working a single full day last week because of the heat and then rain. I had a nice welcome back yesterday though. I got locked in the porta john for the entirety of our first break. It was like a bad movie or nightmare or prank... I laughed for the first 15 minutes thinking how I could just sit there and not work the rest of the morning. Then I got hot and realized how much it would suck to get left in there any longer with no reading material, phone, or anything. Finally I saw (through the air vents I was peeking out of) the van doors close and the vehicle begin to move in my direction. It wasn't until I heard the girls' voices that I realized just how relieved I was to be rescued and I began to cry.

WORLD CUP FINAL: NETHERLANDS vs SPAIN.

Mexico is out of the World Cup, so my second choice team is the Netherlands, of course. :) Because of Canada Day I got Friday off so I was finally able to watch a World Cup game. And not just any game, but the Brazil vs. Netherlands game! It was one of the most exciting games I have ever seen and a good exciting one because all the suspense and mounting tension exploded into pure elation when the Netherlands beat the best ranked team of this cup!!! I watched it in Boston Pizza with a bunch of friends. Game on at 10am, along with the first beers of the day. When the game was over we all got in our vehicles and drove in a convey through several little towns waving Dutch flags and honking at every Dutch flag and every orange jersey we saw. It was great to see complete strangers unite to share a moment of celebration.

The next game is on Tuesday at 2.30pm. I thought about taking the afternoon off of work to catch it, though deep down I knew I would not do it. But to my utter joy and happiness we have a hotter than hot week here, which not only got us sent home early today, but also caused our bosses to declare the next two days six to noon workdays. WOOOT WOOOT!! KNOCK EM DEAD, NETHERLANDS!

I went camping last weekend at someone's lake side cottage. It was a rockin good time. Next weekend I'll be going to the Bakker cottage. They are already there, which leaves me the house AND loft to myself. Yikes. I have to remember to set the alarm every night and lock doors and shut off lights and care for Lima. So much responsibility. :D So first, to the grocery store. Second, to the liquor store... (kidding)

PS. I miss everyone. EVERYONE!

I've been doing a little church shopping in these parts and last Sunday I liked the church I went to so I decided to go there again today. What an adventure...

As per usual, I was running a little late. So I sped a little. On the highway there are usually three lanes, but sometimes it cuts down to two. But rather than telling one to merge, they just use the 3rd lane as an exit. I didn't remember that from last time and missed any signs indicating that would be the case, so I was in that third lane and suddenly I was about to head down an exit thinking "Oh shit!" I tried to quick move a lane over to stay on the highway, but couldn't because there were two cars who wouldn't let me on, so I figured I'd just take the exit, turn left at the street to go back to the highway and get back on, no biggie. But THEN it turns out the exit was not for a street but for another highway. "Oh shit" again. It seemed a good 5 km before the next exit on THAT highway where I finally got off, turned around and got back on the 2nd highway towards the 1st highway that I needed. THEN! when I got back to the 1st highway (the one I needed), the ramp for Niagara (which I needed) was closed! So I had to go the opposite direction and get off at the next exit to reenter the highway in the right direction. Well, the next exit was 7th street and that was where I got on that highway in the very beginning anyhow and by this time it was ten after ten and by the time I'd even make it to church I would have been about 20 minutes late... So I just went home.

How embarrassing.

Last week Dee and I went to a Caribou concert in Hamilton, which was pretty good. We saw lots of familiar faces. Joel Vander Leek, Adam D., Olive, Neal, Jason K., Paul's Christina, possibly Alan, and to top it all off, Josh Sandbulte was the lead singer! It was pretty fantastic. Great to see you again, friends. I wish you all could have been there.

The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.

My first two weeks here have involved heat rash, sun burn, blisters on all four fingers of my right hand and my left thumb, various scratches, cuts and bruises, and bending over so much my ass falls asleep and it hurts to stand up straight. However, with every passing week the bending becomes easier and also the plants get taller and hopefully eventually the bending will be less frequent as well... With every sun exposure, my skin becomes tid bits darker and my fear of burning up is slightly diminished. With every blister comes the making of a callous. And I have absolutely nothing positive to say about the heat rash, except that it is finally gone. :)

In one of the fields there is a mama killdeer bird who laid her eggs on the ground between two plants. Whenever we get close for a job, mama bird goes a couple rows down and starts making a shit load of noise while fanning out her feathers crookedly to appear injured. A fancy trick to appear an easy prey and thus distract the "hunter" from the nest. Dee and I saw about these birds on one of her Animal Planet movies. Then we witnessed the trick work for real when some of the girls were convinced this bird was hurt and should be helped. Smart bird.