Last post

Hello blog world.  As I haven't posted so long, if you haven't been keeping up with my life (which I'm sure most of you have...) this post will be a dramatic one.  Since my last post, I have met and married my husband, Darren Campbell! Yippee! So, we decided to start a new blog together. As we are both poor bloggers, with our powers combined we shall see how that one is kept up :)  Our new blog will be by invite only, so leave a post here if you'd like an invite and where I should send it. Au revoir!

I'm Back!!

So...My guess is that no one reads this anymore because I have been so bad about blogging. However, I have been inspired by my new favorite website ever, itjustgetsstranger.blogspot.com (please do yourself a favor and read this blog.  It can't not cheer you and will make you laugh so hard that milk will come out of your nose) Moral of the story, I'm going to make a valient blogging effort!  I shall start with this silly little story immortalizing a life changing event in my history.

THE ELECTRONIC MOUSETRAP

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Laura Hess. Laura had beautiful golden locks that were envied by all. What the populace didn't realize was that Laura's hair was nothing without her blowdryer, a principle that was not unique to Laura and has been tried and tested true by women throughout the ages.

On a beautiful spring day before work Laura was blowdrying her hair, a common routine. She was fortunate enough to live in a house that she overall adored, however Laura's bathroom had one fatal flaw; there were no plugs. It was clearly designed by a man. So Laura rigged up a brilliant system! If she plugged her blowdryer into an extention cord that was plugged into a power strip that was plugged into an adapter that was plugged into the wall, she could still perform her daily ritual in her bathroom! Thus she proceeded.

Towards the end of her hair frying routine, the lights flickered a few times, not an uncommon occurance. You can imagine Laura's shock and horror when she turned off her blowdryer, and in fierce protest of her electrical mousetrap, the extension cord burst into flames! Laura shrieked, dropped the blowdryer and stood back. The flaming contraption landed on her bathroom rug quickly spreading the flames with its new fuel, her beautiful rug that her mother had made for her.

Laura suddenly could not remember a single useful fire fighting tip that she had learned in her many years of OSHA torture. She knew this was an electrical fire which meant something different, she just couldn't think what! "Stop drop and roll"? She thought, "no, that doesn't seem right. Pull, aim, squeeze and sweep? But with what shall I PASS? Rescue, alarm, contain, extinguish?". Somehow, none of the acronyms that OSHA holds so dear seemed applicable in a real life situation.  Turns out Laura had never learned any practical skills. After about a minute, she had a moment of inspiration and simply stamped out the fire with the other half of the rug. In a paranoid fit before work, Laura went around the house unplugging all applicances in sight.
 
As Laura was a jumpy wreck that week envisioning everything around her catching flames, she wondered how to put her fears to ease. Late one, she awoke in the middle of a dream shouting "baking soda!! Of course!" Laura now sleeps easy and keeps baking soda in her bathroom. Oh, and also, she hasn't worked up the nerve to buy a new blowdryer. Baby steps! 
 

Yes, all of these things used to be attached.

I have now seen, and I believe

Over labor day, my friend Ashley Allan and I set off on a marvelous adventure. We headed north to the magical kingdom of Cape Cod. This is a land fraught with mystery and majesty, secrets and surprises, fantasy and fiction. You never know what you might meet round the next bend. Nothing is impossible in Cape Cod. You might even see the allusive and mystical humpback whale. I have long maintained that whales do not exist, for how could such a fantastic creature possibly be real. I mean look at this thing.



Cape Cod is truly a land where dreams come true, where miracles happen. For I, Laura Hess, now add my witness that the humpback whale is a true and living creature. For I have seen it with my own eyes. In fact, I saw nine of them.









I am so thrilled to be among the believers. So thrilled in fact, that I have honored the whales by naming my new beloved after them. I love fish, and I frequently own fish. When my last fish, Apollo, died I thought that I could never love another fish. However, with the change in scenery (aka, the move to Virginia, more on that later!) I decided to purchase a new fish! I named him Entropy, which was the name of the one of the whales that we saw. He is absolutely beautiful!



He looks very similar to Apollo after Apollo changed colors, except Entropy is more turquoise purpley.





I love him, and I'm so happy to have a fake boyfriend again**!



**If this doesn't make sense to you, see post from November 2008.

A visual accounting

Here is a brief spattering of pictures from a few random things. I'll try to post more later!!

At Easter time, we found ourselves wanting to paint eggs. Turns out when you go to buy Easter egg dye the day before Easter, the stores are sold out. So we used nail polish!



Still a little confused about how on earth I got a degree from Yale.



The graduation party



This may surprise you, but it rained.



My church had a mustache party. It was silliness to perfection!



Terrence and I inside the ancient Colosseum!



Ancient Rome. Words cannot describe how awesome this place was. Rome on the whole was not my favorite part of the trip, but these ancient ancient ruins where real life really happened was amazing!!



St. Peter's Basilica was really awesome. While Peter never wanted this kind of church, the dedication and effort it must have taken to build it really touched me. It was the most elaborate building I have ever seen.



The amazing country cottage that we stayed out in Lucca, just outside of Florence. It was an incredible place, and is where I shall honeymoon...



Cinque Terre, breathtaking!!!



Terrence and I on a gondola in Venice. Touristy? Perhaps, but I had a much higher opinion of the city after taking the water tour!! Before it just smelled bad, after it smelled like ancient sewage problems.



Lauterbrunnen Switzerland. Holy cow was it pretty here! The biggest collection of waterfalls in one glacier valley is here!



Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found thee!!



All roads lead to Interlaken. No really, they do!



I knew I would find true love in Salzburg!!



The classic Salzburg picture, taken from the Mirabel gardens! Several famous movie scenes have been filmed here, including my fav from the Sound the Music!



Russia!!! St. Petersburg!!! Yes, I loved it as much as I always thought I would.



Peterhof, where Peter the Great, found of St. Petersburg in 1702, built this elaborate gold plated fountain system!



The Kremlin. I had no idea that the Kremlin had so much history. We saw the burial grounds of all the ancient tsars, as well as this particular church, where the tsars were inaugurated!



St. Basil's cathedral was maybe one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. Each little spire is its own individual chapel, which means that the inside is this awesome ancient little maze. With awesome acoustics as a beautiful singing group proved!!

Adventures of late

When I say adventures of late, I am referring to adventures as of the last 7 months since that is the last time I updated my blog. I would say that the last 7 months have been extremely action packed, which means that I will not have much detail, which is a shame for my posterity. I have lost the blogging game but will attempt to catch up!! I will first post descriptions, then do an intense picture post.

Professional life front:

I graduated!! Wow, it is very very hard to believe that my education at Yale University has come and gone!! I am officially a certified family nurse practitioner and have accepted a job in a pediatric primary care office!! Yippee!!! I have a real life again!

Personal life front:

Did I mention that the job is in northern Virginia just south of Washington DC?! I will be moving down at the end of September! Very excited and a little nervous for this new adventure. I will be living with my good friend Nicki Schoonmaker. You may ask me why I choose DC, and I will tell you: it seems like a good idea.

Fun life front:

I went to Europe!!!!!! Holy cow, I cannot have enough exclamation points behind this!! I loved it! I went with Terrence, and my friends Ben, Matt and Charles. I went to several cities in Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. I love Salzburg!! And Lauterbrunnen! And Cinque Terre! I just love it. I left the boys and joined my friend Anna in (drumroll please) Russia!! I have been wanting to visit Russia for as long as I can remember, and now I have!!! Yes, it was everything I dreamed of. I was on vacation for 3 weeks in June, and could have happily stayed for the rest of the summer at least!

I have seen many Broadway shows in my time here in Connecticut. Here is a complete list

In the Heights x2
Shrek
Memphis x5 (I know I know, but I really liked it, you can live stream on Netflix and learn for yourself)
Finian's Rainbow
Addams Family
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (almost x2, I'm going again next week!)
West Side Story
Billy Elliot
Lend Me a Tenor
Catch me if you Can

I sure love Broadway and will miss it immensely!

Crazy weather life front:

um, we had a earthquake. yes, yes we did. Most unfortunately I was driving at the time so didn't even feel it.

and, uh, in the same week, we had a hurricane. Wowzer. Last days or what! It was somewhere between a tropical storm and a category 1 hurricane, but it sure did its share of damage! Trees down everywhere, and many people still don't have power!! I decided to play it safe and leave my fabulous beach house so can't report on how awesome the ocean must have looked at the time. Definitely the most wind I have every encountered! My house had a touch of damage, but overall I came out of it very well.

Ok, I think that's all of the really big stuff, I will be back later in the week with lots of pictures of all of these occasions!

And God said, let there be snow.

Snow snow and more snow! Last winter, the Connecticut weather was fairly mild. Cold of course, some snow storms, but not too much accumulation. This winter I prayed for snow because I love it (please see previous post) and boy oh boy did God deliver!

There is this special type of storm over here called a Nor'easter. Now, I haven't figured out exactly what makes this different from a good old fashioned Colorado blizzard, but here is what Wikipedia says it is:

"A nor'easter (also northeaster; see below) is a type of macro-scale storm along the East Coast of the United States and Atlantic Canada, so named because the storm travels to the northeast from the south and the winds come from the northeast, especially in the coastal areas of the Northeastern United States and Atlantic Canada. More specifically, it describes a low pressure area whose center of rotation is just off the East Coast and whose leading winds in the left forward quadrant rotate onto land from the northeast. The precipitation pattern is similar to other extratropical storms. Nor'easters also can cause coastal flooding, coastal erosion, hurricane force winds, and heavy snow. Nor'easters can occur at any time of the year but are mostly known for their presence in the winter season.[1] Nor'easters can be devastating and damaging, especially in the winter months, when most damage and deaths are cold related, as nor'easters are known for bringing extremely cold air down from the Arctic air mass. Nor'easters thrive on the converging air masses; that is, the polar cold air mass and the warmer ocean water of the Gulf Stream.[2]
However, in common parlance, "nor'easter" is often used to refer to any strong rain or snow storm that occurs in the northeast part of the United States, regardless of season, prevailing wind direction, direction of storm travel, or the geographic origin of the storm. This "bad storm" usage has even spread to local TV channel newscasts, at least in the greater New York City area, which makes the common use of the term "noreaster" all the more confusing. Within common parlance, even if a particular storm has a generally rotating formation and a portion of it presents northeasterly winds over some part of the northeast, other sections of the same storm may be presenting prevailing winds from other directions over other parts of the northeast but the storm will still be called a nor'easter."

Mostly what I get from this is that nor'easter means bad weather. Here are some pictures from our latest storms.

Last week, I woke up to this:





It was wonderful! About a foot and a halfish. I was so sore from shoveling, had some great fun sledding, I felt more at home then I have in a long time. Then something really strange happened about a week later. It had been really cold, so not too much of the snow had melted. It snowed a little more, and then started to rain!! Ew ew ew. Freezing rain. This was the result



That's no decorative pattern on my window, that is ice!! Somewhere around an inch of ice!



This much ice was everywhere! On all my windows, covering my car, and it was coating the snow! It is not too clear in this next picture, but my backyard was a bonifide skating rink!



You can sort of tell that the "snow" has a glazed, smooth look. Definitely the strangest weather I have ever seen. We got another 5 inches or so a couple days later, not too bad. Then this morning, woke up to another 18 inches! Now mind you we still had a lot of snow on the ground because it hasn't really gotten out of the 20's. Wow!









I figure that there is a total of 3 feet on the ground right now! Boy oh boy I love the snow!!

Snow, snow, snow!!!

I love the snow!!! I just do! If it has to be cold and dreary, it might as well snow! I love to sled, to throw snowballs, to make snow angels, snow cones, snow forts! And it is so beautiful while falling and even more beautiful when it is fresh and untouched, and the sun can just make snow sing! And who doesn't love a good snow day!

Take for example the March storm of 2003 where we got about 3 feet of snow, and school was canceled for a week! It made the world wonderful. Doesn't this just look fun? (just to give you a frame of reference, there is a car in this picture...you can see the rearview mirror barely sticking out!)



Need further proof that snow is incredible?

Here is snow's contribution to Alaska's scenery:



And what about this random picture I found on the internet? Gorgeous!



Snow has also been an essential part in creating some wonderful creatures, snowpeople! Who doesn't love this guy?



Who would put the star on the tree without him? And what about this wonderful lady (Stella I think was her name...my sibs and I made her)



Or this snowbaby, Felix, that Sara and I recently made



Don't we just look so happy together?







This is only a small sampling of the snowpeople have touched my life.

Plus hot chocolate tastes so much better after you have been playing in the snow. Trust me, snow is God's gift to the world!