My Current (Non)-Existence

My life since the end of May has been pretty much the bare bones existence. Yes, it is of my own choosing, and Miriam is quick to remind me that I'm the one that thinks that college classes will enrich my life. And I still think they enrich my life. But, it probably was not advisable to take four upper level, under-graduate/graduate classes all at the same time this summer. (No, I'm not getting my masters degree - it's just that three of my classes were cross-listed as both under-grad and grad courses.) And it's probably not advisable to take four more classes this fall, but I am hoping it will be a better experience since the courses are not condensed into six weeks, but instead cover sixteen weeks.
The four classes that I took this summer I thoroughly enjoyed, except for one. That one was not my first choice for a required "filler" class, but it was the only option. (As it turned out, it shouldn't have been an option; the registration for that class should have had strict parameters around it as it was a capstone course which required 3-4 prior classes.) That class was WAY harder than I was prepared for or expecting. Since the course was only six weeks, and we had completed two weeks before the teacher realized that the majority of her students were not supposed to be in the class, and there is no refunding for summer classes, we just had to pull up
our boot straps and wade on. The teacher did make some course changes and lessened the work load by about 10%, but it was still intense.
The other three classes, one of which is still on-going - I have two weeks left, were really interesting, even if they were hard. I don't think I've ever had another summer, six-week class require four 300 page books read front to back. And they weren't easy, fast reading, even though they were interesting. I also don't think I've ever had a class require your papers to be written without any direct quotations. That was weird, but do-able. The classes that I really enjoyed were Intergovernmental Relations - ask Katie about that one, she read some of my papers for me; The History of Women in America from the 1600's -1980's; and The History of America from the 1960's forward. The capstone class I didn't really enjoy was Marketing Management. All of these classes required an insane amount of reading, discussions, and papers each week. There were many late nights, usually up to 1:00am, and occasionally 3:00am, as well as early mornings at 5:00am until I left for work at 7:30am. I did invest in coffee several days to stay mentally alert at work, but the rest of life went to shambles.
There were only two social events that I participated in and that was Brittany's mom's retirement party and the 4th of July. (Which two of my classes were over before the 4th of July.) The house did not get cleaned except when company was coming - so basically it got cleaned for the 4th of July. Home-made food was extremely rare and a fair amount of pizza was bought and eaten. Laundry happened about every 2 weeks and got folded and put away about every 4 weeks. Dishes got done about once a week. And Gunther and I became soft, plump, couch potatoes as that's all we did outside of work: sit on the couch and do homework.
Now that I only have one class, I feel like a free bird. I vacuumed the house for the first (maybe second) time since the 4th of July, I cleaned the kitchen the other evening, and I've made food almost every night this week. Jason and I went camping for one night and did a 7 mile hike a couple weeks ago, and we went rock climbing one morning last weekend. And Gunther and I have taken two bike rides this week. That has pretty much been my entire existence this summer.
For our camping trip, I completely forgot to take along the camera and wish I had. We went up to Medicine Bow on a Friday afternoon after I got off work and completed my necessary homework for the day and camped at a nice campground area. The next day, we planned to hike what we thought was a fairly reasonable hike up along the ridge of the mountain overlooking Mirror Lakes. There were no trail signs or any way to know for sure what we were doing, but there was a visible and marked trail. As it turned out, the hike kept going, and going, and going, and going, and kept getting higher, and higher, and higher, until we got to the very tippy top of the highest peak on that ridge, which was a few peaks further then we intended. We had accidentally summitted Medicine Bow Peak at 12,000+ feet. There was snow along the way which made some parts of the trail a little dicey, and the round loop ended up being about 7 miles and around 4 hours, to the best of our knowledge. The scenery was beautiful, but sadly we have no pictorial proof that we accomplished this feat. Gunther was his little mountain goat self and enjoyed every minute of it, especially the snow, and slept most of the next day. We came back on Saturday afternoon in order for me to continue with homework.

 This photo from 2013 in front of Mirror Lakes shows a portion of the mountain we were hiking. We were on the backside of the majority of this mountain, not along the ridge like we thought we were going to be.

 This is another picture, but still doesn't encompass the whole range. We started way to the left of the range and ended up way to the right of the range, both of which aren't shown in this photo, either. I think that the highest part that is in the clouds is Medicine Bow Peak, the summit.

Our 4th of July party was a blast, but again, I didn't take any pictures. We have been asked to host it again next year, as the fireworks in the neighborhood are pretty spectacular and last for 5+ hours.

The rest of the pictures are just of what my life looks like currently.

The swingset right before we took it down, with the help of Chris and Juli.

You can see our pile of branches from trying to trim our trees earlier this summer.

Our office...which is a complete disaster. We did get another desk given to us in July, so now I don't have to sit on the couch to write papers.

The guest room. It is also a disaster. That pile of papers on the floor? That's my filing cabinet right now. Hopefully I won't need anything out of there for taxes next year...

Our basement. 

When Jason was gone in June, I traded our yellow hide-a-bed couch and two chairs for these basket chairs. Jason had said that he really liked them and had mentioned several times how much he did not like the yellow couch, so I thought he'd like the trade. I wasn't 100% correct in that thought...a new couch is on our list someday.

My currently clean kitchen.

I'm pretty sure I'm killing our houseplants.

I believe this is an African Snake Plant which isn't supposed to need much water. I think I water it too much, because I forget when I watered it last.

These guys are looking really sad, too. Do house plants need sunshine? Or am I doing them a disfavor to sit them outside on hot, sunny days?

Our now giant firepit and dead tree that I want to cut down really badly. I think it's about 30ish feet tall, so it will need to be cut down in 2-3 sections. Just need to borrow a chainsaw and ladder someday.

We have two trees like this - out of control and in need of extreme trimming. I don't know what they are, but they start out green and just started turning dark purple (no blooms, just the leaves) in the last couple weeks. There are lots of them around, I just haven't asked what they are.

We have two Linden trees in the backyard. We found out what these were on the 4th of July. Jason kind of trimmed them this spring, but we didn't know they leafed out so much.

These are the blooms that just came out on the Linden trees. They are really tiny and the leaves get pretty big - bigger than my hand.

Another pretty much dead tree that I want to chop down this summer or fall. Notice our patio table and chairs? Jason thought it was important to have a table and chairs for our 4th of July party.

And this tree - another one I despise. I already sawed out the main chunk of deadness, but I want the rest of it to go, too. 

I forgot to take a picture of our bedroom. You would see three wash baskets full of clean clothes, and two piles of dirty laundry on the floor. Also, the top of the dresser has become storage for clothes on their way in or out of circulation.

There you have it. Both the verbal and pictorial story of my summer. I plan to resume more active living in August before the fall semester starts. Then I will probably go dormant again until January. Just an advance notice.