hahhaha... of course i'm boggle!

You Are Boggle

You are an incredibly creative and resourceful person. You're able to dig deep and think outside the box to get things done. You are a non linear thinker. You don't like following directions You draw your inspiration from the strangest places sometimes. You're constantly inspired.

What Board Game Are You?

loquat, pineapple guava, & avocado

i've wanted a pineapple guava plant and a calamansi plant for years now! moving every year or so hasn't helped me "set down roots" literally speaking, and now that i'm in a house that i own, there isn't much of a yard in which to grow fruit trees, so i never felt like paying the $25-30 at the local tropical nursery for a mature tree that i didn't have any room for.

since i have this inner urge to grow my own fruit trees, i figured now would be a great time to sprout an avocado seed - i did this once when i was in 3rd grade, and i successfully planted it outside and it grew there nicely, and i waited patiently for the first 5 years as it didn't blossom nor produce fruit. i was disappointed to learn that avocados take 5 years to mature before they have any fruit, but i know that when the 5th summer was approaching i got really excited! and then!! then my parents sold the house and we moved away before i could try my avocado fruit! i guess all the fruit trees we had put in our patio-sized yard made our condo the most desireable one in the complex, as our sold for $110k while others sat on the market at $80-90k. so my avocado did serve a purpose, but i still never got to enjoy the fruit.

at any rate, i figured now was the time i should grow my new avocado tree, because i think i'd move from this place and into a house with a bigger yard before its 5 years of maturing are over, and then i wouldn't have to wait another 5 years... it took FOREVER to grow that first root, the seed had been sitting in water for almost a month before the root started growing! but the seed cracked open and i'm noticing the leaves growing inside! it's exciting to me =) i come home and check it every day to see if there are any new leaves (yes, right now there's a tiny red one curled up at the top of all the green ones) and to see the development of the root (now there's two!!!)
during that month of waiting for the seed to sprout, i continued to look for plants to grow, and i ended up looking online for those tropical plants i wanted, and while i was doing my holiday shopping i came across wellspring gardens on ebay, and they were selling starter plants for pineapple guava for $4.99! i bought 3 pineapple guava starter plants and also got 2 loquat starter plants, but i gave one of each away to his mom for her birthday. they came smaller than i thought they would - in 3inch pots, to be exact. but i transplanted them to these larger ones and i stuck them in the room where they'd get some sun every day and i'm hoping they grow and flourish! since they're so young, it'll be at least 1-2 years before they produce fruit, but i have to make sure they get to that stage!

here's what they look like right now - that's the loquat on the left and the 2 pineapple guava on the right:
and then here's a side view so i can monitor their height and growth:
so that means i have 4 plants to take care of... time to change my black thumb into a green thumb =)

we -tried- to go on a bike ride

so because of mlk, we (my educator friends and i) didn't have work on monday. so the 3 of us decided to go on a mtn bike ride, just around the hills of my house. to make it a little bit more exciting, we thought we'd bike up the road a little bit and go through the dirt paths behind all the houses where i normally bike.

on the way there, i thought it would be faster (and less close to the traffic) to cut through an empty grass yard, rather than stay on the sidewalk and go around it. as i was in the lead, i turned around and asked the girls if they thought i could do it - and all 3 of us agreed that a mountain bike should be able to handle it.

boy, were we wrong!

when we got out and onto the road again, i noticed while i was biking that there was a lot of stuff stuck on my tires. i waited till i got to the next turn and decided to stop there to wait for the girls to catch up. when i stopped and turned around, i noticed that they were far back and they were yelling at me, "shy's got 2 flat tires!!" at that point, i decided to knock out some of the thorns that covered both tires. OMG there were so many!! those goatheads got really stuck in there, too!

i finished clearing most of the front and thought i'd clean out the rear tire too, but when i picked out one thorn i heard the disheartening hiss of the tire... i had a flat too!!! then i checked the front too - and it was flat too!! i had 2 flats as well. gah!

so far, that was 4 flat tires we had on 2 bikes. but while we were walking our bikes back, we realized that the 3rd bike indeed was inflicted with 2 more flat tires. SIX FLAT TIRES!!! sheesh!

we took their bikes to the bike shop and got the tubes replaced - but i had the guy teach me how so that i could do my own at home. and then after he was all done repairing them, he wheeled the bikes out and gave them back to the girls, saying, "now ladies!" and we got the speech on how bikes should avoid the grassy areas that hide the thorns and that we need to stick to the trail in front of us and not try to forge our own.

i had no idea that a mountain bike that could handle rocky and hilly terrain was not built to go through grass! i guess that's something new i learned this week =)

oh, and i also learned to replace the inner tube on a bike's tires! i haven't had time to do it yet cuz i've been working my sink, but that's another project for another post.

anyways, i don't have a picture of the goatheads, but i found a pic online of what they look like embedded into a tire:

now imagine that many, but all the way around both tires of mine, and you'll get an idea of what my bike looked like on monday. crazy, huh?!

fishing at 4 in the morning

last week, on Sabbath, we ended up on 100 acres near yosemite practicing our aim shooting at apples flying through the air. my first shot knocked the apple propped up on the tree, and that was pretty cool to hit my very first target =)

when we came back and had dinner with our host's parents, i found out that we were going fishing at 4 on sunday morning! i had never gone fishing that early in the morning... actually, i don't think i've ever gone fishing besides that one time i went with m. for a 2-day trip into mexico. and that last time, we slept on the boat, so everyone could wake up to fish when they wanted to.

they laughed at me because i wanted to take a picture of the rising sun, but hey, i guess it's one of those things that i still find beautiful, probably because i never had to wake up to take care of the horses and cows before the sun rose, like my farmboy bf had to do while growing up. uncle was pretty funny to watch, because any time there were any ducks flying near us, he would hoist up a make-believe shotgun to his eye and pretend to shoot 3 or 4 ducks down. i woulda loved to get a photo of the multitude of ducks flying through the air but i was too busy being entertained by uncle so eager to hunt all living things near him!

on the drive home, i learned all about guns from my farmboy - he educated me on pistols, rifles, shotguns, where we get caliber (.22 is based on diameter, in inches; 12 gauge means that 12 lead spheres with the same diameter as the shell would weigh a pound), and i spent some time on the lake with a great family. i think it was a rather great weekend overall!

wow... this test was easy =)

hahhaha... i didn't think the test would get me as much, and i wasn't sure on whether or not to check off things (i'da preferred rating it on a scale so that stuff i've definitely done was a 5 and stuff that i try to do, or sometimes do, would get a 3), but i'd have to say that the title it gave me pretty much fits. i haven't read the in-depth description yet, but i laughed out loud and had to share the test here:

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a

Lifelong Learning Reinventing Money Manager

today was fix-it day!

so i brought my car to toyota today for a routine oil change, and then they of course tried to upsell me on the other stuff my car needed! they listed a buncha stuff, like my rear wiper, an engine air filter, an in-cabin air filter, rear brake cleaning and adjustment, and fuel system cleaning. they wanted me to pay $444. which, if i trusted them, i might have paid, but i wasn't too keen on paying that much money for something i wasn't sure about. i went ahead and let them change the rear wiper and the engine filter for $20 total, but deferred the rest to "when i had more money".

and then i texted my handy dandy car guy boyfriend and told him that i needed his expert advice on all the stuff they wanted me to do. he told me he could make me a new in-cabin air filter, and for much less than the $75 they were going to charge me! so we went to home depot and picked up some air filters (including some for my ac unit). and then he went into my car to figure out where the air filter was, and it was hidden behind my glove compartment. and when he pulled the filter tray out - would you believe there was no filter in there at all?!?!? those ppl at toyota tried to have me pay $75 to "replace" a filter that they had forgotten to put in!

i ended up putting in a new filter into my ac unit, and then i went under the sink and wanted to fix the drain for the ac unit - every time we used it there would be a pool of water under jill's sink. we pulled the hose off and found that it was clogged with sediment - no wonder the water would drip out - it was just sitting there with nowhere else to go! we cleaned it out and i reattached it.

i ended up vaccuuming and cleaning out the trash bin and taking out the trash and picking up the mail and all sortsa other stuff that needed doing too. once i get in the fix-it mood then i wanna keep on going till everything's taken care of!

but i was totally impressed with the "make my own air filter for the car" bit. he is too cool!

a push in the -right- direction

so while i've been wondering what to do about juggling teaching, coaching, and going back to school, i "knew" i needed to teach to bring in the money, i wanted to coach because i thought that was the best aspect of my teaching job, and i thought going back to school would open opportunities (even if it is just to teach college).

but i just found out that i don't have the option of coaching anymore. my principal decided that he wasn't going to let me coach again, due to the girls that are stirring up drama, bringing their list of grievances about me to him. they're trying to blame me for everything that went wrong this season, and i know that there are people behind this orchestrating this all so that they have the opportunity to step into my spot when i'm asked to leave. it's frustrating and hurtful and i didn't quite know how to handle it this afternoon. i sat in my classroom after school ended and had trouble feeling like doing anything else... it was a rather devastating blow.

but i've been trying to stay positive about it. i guess, if you want to look at the silver lining, it's that i'm glad that i don't have to worry about trying to juggle all 3 things - and coaching was the hardest thing to fit in anyways. that means that all i have to do is figure out how many classes i want to cut back to so that i can maximize my time as a student. should i teach full time and take 1-2 classes a quarter? should i teach part time and take 4 classes a quarter? either way, i know i'll be taking classes. it's like, the hard decision was made for me, and now i know i just have to start going to school.

i guess i just have to be thankful that now i know what to do. i remember agonizing over the decision when i was trying to decide whether or not to take the missionary job in japan, and not knowing how to make that decision. it was a long and hard summer trying to make that decision, fearing that no matter what i decided i'd be going the "wrong" way, thinking and overthinking each possibility, and not liking my options. it was really rough.

thank God for closing some doors and showing me the right path this time! i don't want to waste any more years figuring it out...

matthew 6:31-33

i've been reading the one-year Bible faithfully since Dec 1... i just bulled through the first 2 weeks telling myself that it will soon become habit, and i think i've gotten to that point.

one of today's verses really hit home, even though i'm familiar with it, because it addresses the thoughts i had yesterday (as i was thinking about a job change and how to support myself while pursuing it)

matthew 6:31-33
so don't worry about these things, saying, what will we eat? what will we drink? what will we wear?
thises things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your Heavenly Father already knows all your needs.
seek the Kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

what should i do?

so, sunday was interesting... after two weeks off from work, i didn't know why i was dreading going back. was it out of sheer laziness? or did i really not like my job -that- much? i didn't realize that was the case, or even if it is.

i do know that over the past few months i've been wondering about my job future. i was recently surprised to find out that i was tenured at the beginning of this school year, unbeknownst to me. but even before i found that out, i was itching to find something that fit me better. there are many aspects of teaching that i enjoy, but i also feel like the right job for me is just waiting for me to find it. i think i'm looking for a challenge - i want to discover my own theorum, or create a new invention, or make the latest breakthough discovery. hahahah... cliche, i know, but still, i want to be in a field where i'm growing and pushing myself to my full potential. as a teacher, i feel that i encounter daily challenges, but those are in the realm of education and psychology, where i'm looking to improve my classroom management, where i'm trying to bridge the gap between the students and their learning, and trying to make math interesting and attainable for them. but i want to be challenged technically, where i encounter math problems (or engineering? or physics? or something else?) that push my limits.

on the first day back, i knew i would have to review the students, and let me tell you, i was -bored- out of my mind!! period after period of graphing lines - and i have the same set of "guided practice" problems intended to help them remember all the key elements as the problems progressed. period after period it was the same. by period 5, i was tempted to keep some calculus problems next to the projector so my mind would have something to work on while i was presenting to my students. i didn't. but i wanted to.

i think it's the thought of doing this year after year after year that makes me feel like maybe i need to start exploring other options. i mean, i do like a lot of aspects of teaching (and all the side benefits like Christmas vacation or summer vacation, etc). i really enjoy being around the students most of the time as well, and i know i like it much better than a desk job.

but i'm still excited at the prospect of going back to school to get my masters in math! without a definite goal or plan, it's a little intimidating, but i know that no matter what, i still want to get this degree. even if i stayed a teacher, i'd want to pursue this degree. so i should pursue it now, and then see what possibilities open up!

it's exciting -- and a little scary too! -- but mostly exciting! i need to pray about all these decisions...