I took her to the hospital and the doctors tried to save her life. They did the best that they could - and she is going to be ok.

Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote about falling. Actual literal falling, and how scary it was to fall while I was running.

I don't think I've ever fully articulated this, but I really had a list of the top 3 scary moments.

Moment #1: The dog in Boone.
It was summertime in Boone, and I was outside running. Boone is the little hippy mountain town that I lived in for grad school. There were two highways that intersected in the middle of town, so I would run down (the sidewalk) of one, to the intersection, then turn left up the other, then run back to my apartment on a side street.

I was maybe half a mile down the first highway, and a dog started barking at me, from the other side of the highway. I looked up, and it charged me. From the other side of a 5 lane road! Fortunately for me, I was saved by the cars. It got out in the middle of the street, and cars just laid on their horns. So it turned and went back to it's side. Still going crazy barking at me the whole time. Yeah, that's right, not bothered by the cars, just bothered by me.

And of course we all know, "I don't do dogs. I had a bad experience!"
Go to minute 6 on this video.


Moment #2: Falling down on Truman Road
Shortly after my move to the great Midwest, I was running and was almost back to my apartment when the sidewalk grabbed me, and pulled me down.

This ranks as 2nd most scary because I fell face forward.

Moment #3: Falling down at Lake Jiacomo
I fell backwards, but it was a little scary because there was nobody immediately around me that I could have appealed to if I had truly hurt myself.

All these moments were totally obliterated by what happened yesterday.

I was hit by a car.



I was running down the main street in my super safe, super pedestrian friendly neighborhood, when I approached a side street. I saw the car pulling toward the stop sign on said side street, so I stopped. The car stopped, so I proceeded to cross the intersection.

When I was directly in front of the car, she pulled forward and bumped my leg, but I turned and slammed my hands on the hood of her car. She stopped, and I yelled at her, and moved to the driver's side, so I could yell at her some more, and she sped off.

How do these things happen to me?

Oh, just to clarify, I'm totally fine. I hit the hood of her car before she could really plow into me, so I don't even have a bruise. I did call the police. He told me to be more careful. And... I adjusted my car insurance. But now I am thinking I need to rig up a "safety pouch" to carry while I am running with... I don't know... but phone numbers of people who could actually come pick me up.

Or, I'm just going to quit running outside entirely. These kinds of things don't happen at the gym.

I've decided to make you my new project.

More projects to show off. Tell me what you think.

Project #1. I decided to hang the Italy pictures at the bottom of the stairs.



Project #2: The chair. I spray painted it dark brown. "Espresso" is the official title, I think. And for whatever reason, the camera can't do any justice to the actual prettiness of the fabric that I chose. So just trust me on that.



Project 3. These are the shelves I have been thinking about getting for several months, and they went on sale at target this week.



The funny part of this is that I moved the books from my current bookshelves over, and thought, "Perfect, I have a lot of space left." And then I started filling in the books that I had hidden around the house... Not so much space left.

No, I prefer to be unsociable and taciturn.

Best moment of the first day of class:

I always make them play a name game, to start to get to know one another. So the game is to have an adjective that begins with the first letter of the first name.

We got halfway around the circle, and one student said, "I'm taciturn Tim."

I busted up laughing, and thought of this: Pride and Prejudice
(Embedding was disabled. Sorry.)

None of the other students knew what that meant, so we also got a vocab moment today.

Me? You're the one spending all your extra time at your little side project.

Since my parents and little sister left, I've been keeping busy with a bunch of projects. I just thought I'd share.

Project #1: Sewing ribbons on my curtains, and I decided to hem them at the same time.



Project #2: Jewelry making.




Project #3: Spray painting picture frames. And, on this one I can actually brag about the total cost of these pretty pictures. $8 for the frames, $2 for spray paint, $0.41 for cardstock = $10.41. The pictures are all of Italy, and I pulled them out of a daily calendar that my sister gave me a few years ago.







And you can weigh in. Where should I hang these? Choice #1 - under the stairs. Choice #2 - in the entryway. Choice #3 - at the bottom of the stairs. Choice #4 - in the office. Choice #5 - in my bedroom.

Project #4: Reupholstering this chair. You can weigh in on this too, this way I'll get my faithful blog reader's opinions, and not just facebook people. Should I paint the chair, and what color? Staining is too much work, so don't suggest that, it's paint or nothing.





Oh, and I can price this out too. Fun. $22.50 for the chair, $14 for new foam padding, $13 for new fabric = $49.50. Really not bad, since all the chairs I've seen in other stores cost well over $100.

Now for a name. I've got one! Octavius. But for short, we'll call you Gus.

Church got a whole lot more interesting yesterday.





I'm almost excited for next week.

That was a great game.

Last week I started my little summer break. I finished the high school program (and threw myself a party) and I get two weeks off before the fall semester starts.

I was so excited because my family came to visit me, and we had a great time. It was so good to see them and hang out. The first excitement was seeing my house and neighborhood, which they all really liked. My dad helped me with some things around the house, he installed a towel rack, and taught me how to install toilet flappers. So now I am a master toilet flapper changer. Yay.

I also took them sightseeing all over. I didn't think I had planned too much, but I sure kept us all really busy.

My mom said that when we were little my older sister called sightseeing "saucying." So we kept joking about saucying all over town.

On the first day, we went to all the church history sites. But I am lame, and even though I tried hard, and even managed to bring my camera, I forgot batteries...

On the second day, I did better. We went to the Steamboat Arabia.


On the third day, we went to Union Station and saw the Narnia exhibit.


And then we went to a Royals baseball game.


The funniest part of the game was when a cat ran out onto the field. No one knows where it came from, but it came and just ran around the field for a while, bringing the game to a total standstill. Finally they were able to corral the cat into the bull pen.

Great vacation.