The Myth & The Majesty

In Wausau, I could never see a storm coming, nor was it very impressive when it reached me. Plenty of rain, little flash and bang. In the Hills, you can hear a storm coming from miles away but you can rarely see it until it's right overhead. On the ranch, storms are the opposite of those in Wausau -- too much flash, not enough rain. Storms are something to be watched carefully in the event that they get too close to dry fields. Aside from the propensity for high winds, I love a storm from here. From the front porch, you can see one coming for miles. Sometimes a storm will divide and go around Sioux Falls (which is pretty dang cool). Once, I stood in the driveway and watched funnel clouds go by both north and south of us with blue sky visible right overhead. And the lightning never disappoints.

I'm ready for a weekend. A long weekend. A long weekend with questionable weather but chances to kayak anyway. As luck would have it, such a weekend is only hours away. And at the end of said weekend, Mia Sorella will be landing at the local airport for three weeks of random fun stuff. So that should be awesome. Now, to survive the afternoon...

Amanda over at Life In Lajes  was minding her own business, trying to get to the UK when she was unexpectedly memed. Not being a naysayer herself, she decided to continue the madness. Strictly speaking, I'm not a meme-er. (Tee hee.) But when I found her comment waiting for me, I couldn't say no. And not just because I've known Amanda for longer than most of my non-family readers and she knows where I live. First, here are THE RULES as shared with me: You MUST post the rules.  Answer the questions the tagger sent for you in the post, and then create 11 new questions to ask the people you've tagged. Tag 11 bloggers; however, you can break the rules and tag fewer people if you want. Make sure you hyperlink their names/blogs. Let them know you've tagged them! Have fun! (Ashley's note: I would add "6. Don't ask a question you're not willing to answer.")   Now, these are the questions posed by Amanda: 1 . Where d

Things I've Been Wrong About This Week 1. A stranger's just a friend you haven't met. 2. Squirrels have innate survival instincts when faced with objects 2000 times their size. 3. People can function as intelligent beings on the internet. 4. I don't watch much television. 5. Men don't watch "The Bachelorette." 6. Tea parties are for small children. 7. Soy milk keeps forever. 8. You can't have too much of a good thing.

Some Mondays make it especially hard to go to work. Take today, for instance, coming off a fantastic weekend. 1. Awesome new shoes. 2. Some rugby-watching. 3. The first kayak outing since I got my boat back last weekend. It was nearly perfect. Then just to make it harder, I woke up this morning (late) to 65 degrees and very little wind. I didn't want to go to work. I wanted to go for a hike. Anywhere. So right now, it's hard to convince myself that "at a desk" is a good place to be. I'll compromise with lunch on a deck...

...You Don't Necessarily Need To Know About Me. (But I'll tell you anyway.) 1. I talk to my car. A lot. 2. I spent as much money on my Keens as I did on my kayak. (I got a really good deal on my kayak, though.) 3. I don't entirely understand rugby, but I'm trying. 4. I really, really hate wind. 5. I'm a little afraid Christopher Nolan is going to kill a man dressed like a bat . 6. I really, really enjoy making layer cakes. I can't explain it. 7. Although I usually have a head for birthdays and other milestones, and although I'll occasionally pull out a really random one ("Hey, that's the first day I worked in Wisconsin," or "Hey, that was the day of my first college class," or "Hey, that's the day I took the ACT"), I managed to overlook that yesterday was officially my ten-year high school graduation anniversary. 8. I love a good ol' eastern SoDak thunderstorm.

I'm a collector of hobbies. It's true. Some of that is because I don't sit still well. Some of it stems from the first few months I was in Wausau, back when I didn't really know people and abruptly had to find ways to entertain myself. In any case, I've retained a lot of those hobbies and rather excited about getting to tackle them this summer. So ... First of all, there's this friend of mine sharing her photography skills with the world. If you're like me and just don't get enough out of your camera, I recommend checking out her posts . Secondly, I discovered something fantastic earlier this week ... This blog chronicles the available lake kayaking in the Sioux Falls area and I suspect it could be helpful for other folks around here. Since this is the first summer I've spent here in a decade, I'm looking for all the help I can get. Third ... To area folks, hey, there's a rugby game tomorrow (12:30) at Marion Park. Weather permittin

After a westward sprint for the weekend (and retrieval of a certain boat), it's been ... quiet. Too quiet. The boss is gone; I have plenty to keep me busy but none of it is exciting. They finished resurfacing our street; there are no more work crews right outside the window. The weather's fabulous but I'm stuck inside. It's a little unsettling when I can say that the most exciting thing about this week so far is that my least favorite pair got eliminated on "Dancing With The Stars " Yep. That's it.

You know you're jealous. My tiramisu needs whipped cream.

As you may have gathered from recent posts, I find huge enjoyment in visiting restaurants on a fairly regular basis. Actually, there's a little more to it than that. I genuinely enjoy being a regular. It's not just because I'm a creature of habit (although that certainly helps) -- it's also because there's a fantastic level of comfort when you walk into a place and people recognize you. Thanks to this discovery (which I made at a fairly young age), I've been a regular somewhere in every place I've lived for any length of time -- coffee shops in Rapid City, restaurants in Sioux Falls, breweries in Wausau, bookstores in all of these places. Normally, I'd be giving hints on how to be a good regular (for instance, "Tip well, but not like you're trying to single-handedly put the server's kids through college"), but there are far more authoritative sources on that subject. This time, I'd like to address a different crowd. To The

1. Soy milk, when frozen, comes out of solution. When it thaws, it does not go fully back into solution. 2. Product placement dates back to at least 1971's "Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory." 3. I share a birthday with a Glee castmember. Note: he's actually two years older than me. Which means he's turning 30. And playing a high schooler on TV. Awkward. 4. Since "Umwelt," there's been an upswing in xkcd awesomeness. Truly, the last month has been ... fantastic. Today's? Also great. 5. I still despise Sioux Falls drivers. Not exactly a revelation, but sometimes I'm surprised by how much it continues to bother me. 6. My numbers-first approach to life may not be entirely healthy. Or normal. 7. A person can buy Twilight Zone bobbleheads (recommended to me by Amazon based on my shopping history) ... and they're in black-and-white.

Last August, I told you a little about ... you . Since then, my total number of visits have doubled. Yeah! Doubled! I was pretty excited to see that. I seem to have picked up a few new readers, lost a few regulars, re-gained a past regular or two, and generally gotten more ... I hate to use the word diverse, but at the very least it's gotten more interesting to watch. As it's been awhile since I graphed something, I decided to sit down with these new numbers and see what had changed. So ... here we go. This is you. General Statistics For some reason, October 2009 was a pretty big month for hits. While most months are fairly consistent, that month was a clear outlier. (If I can manage a few more quality posts, this month may be similar.) Roughly 2% of all views lead to comments. I'm afraid that reflects badly on me. However, there's been a drastic increase in the number of Facebook comments I get. Hopefully that trend continues. I'm not inclined to g

As a single woman with mostly-married friends of all ages, I get bombarded on a regular basis with offers. “I think you’d be perfect for my husband’s friend/my brother/my nephew/my grandson/this guy I met at this place this one time.” Generally speaking, I have a “No!” rule, although there have been a few occasions where a good story comes out of it. (I actually met one of my closest college friends on a blind date that involved the movie “Death to Smoochy.” Terrible date movie.) [Always, always an xkcd .] In more recent years, though, my well-meaning friends (and my email spam folder) trying to solve this Single-Ashley-Problem have changed their approaches. The most common question I get now is, “Why don’t you join a dating site?” As the Internet grew, online dating sites were to be expected – after all, matchmakers have been a part of the human experience since basically the dawn of time, from astrologers in ancient communities and meddling aunts in Victorian England

Let's just pick up where we left off yesterday, shall we? 9. The forgotten plus to a birthday month? The number of places that will give you special discounts when you buy something. I think I've been offered close to $100 in free stuff already. 10. Something kind of funny happened to me on Friday. I went out to dinner with D&J (...oh, you know who you are) and ordered ribs. A couple minutes after we dug into our food, a manager appeared with a whole new plate of ribs. Why? Because they'd put the wrong sauce on mine. Which meant that I got an entire meal out of the deal. A mistake that I don't notice, doesn't mean I have food that sucks, and that the manager promptly fixes? Best restaurant error ever. 11. During a recent Woot-off, I bought a super-nerdy T-shirt . (I couldn't help myself. Really, I couldn't.) There's something odd going on here: even if I leave out the weekend, it takes only two days for it to get from Texas to Sioux Falls and