Author: Jessica Dickerson

I’ve been sick all week, so I’ve been playing video games and not much else. I even had to ditch church last Sunday. I’m doing better now, though, which meant that I was able to go on our photography class field trip. At 7 am this morning. I was very disappointed to not have a valid excuse to miss it. Especially since I’ve had several nights of poor sleep this week. Let’s just say that 5:30 was very early this morning.

Really, though, the field trip was good. We drove out to Veterans Park, which is only about 15 minutes away, and there was a bunch of stuff to take pictures of. Which, I guess, is an advantage to living in California. Not everywhere can you walk around and take pictures of vegetation in mid-February. Of course, I’d love to take pictures of the snow my family has in Dallas. Holy cow. I’m so jealous! (Interruption: Kyle just broke the handle on the patio door blinds. He’s such a drag.) I’m still going through pictures and cleaning up the ones I like, but I hope some are good. Right now, I’m still pretty tired.

Oh, also, I’ve managed to injure my ankle. Running. Inside. Wii Fitting, actually. Done laughing yet? One of the exercises is running (in place, obviously), and you unlock different length courses. I actually don’t run, as a general rule, on account of all my lower joints being ruined in my teen years as a dancer. But the short courses only hurt my ankle a little bit while I was actually running, so I figured I wasn’t really doing any damage if the pain stopped when I stopped running. But then I ran the super long course (it took me about 20 minutes), and that apparently did me in. My ankle has hurt ever since, and it’s been well over a week. The last few days, it seems to be getting worse, which can’t be good. Mostly, it’s like it gets worn out by evening time, but the pain’s really pretty bad and I hobble around like a cripple and I don’t wanna go to the doctor so why can’t it just get better? I wore a brace today at the park, but it’s still really bad (getting the mail this afternoon proved that I couldn’t, in fact, accompany Kyle to the grocery store). So there’s that, too.

I think that’s pretty much my current status.

I had a migraine all yesterday, so I considered not going to photography class last night. I started feeling a bit better after dinner, though, so I decided to try and tough it out. I’m glad I did, too, because it was a great class. It was on composition, which was one I’d really been looking forward to. I lucked out, too, in that the guest speaker left some of the lights on during his PowerPoint presentation, which helped a lot. I think I’m starting to see how some of these rules actually make your pictures more pleasing and aren’t just arbitrary things that somebody made up once upon a time. Maybe. Anyway, here are the pics I took for critiquing last night. They’re both of a tree outside our apartment.

Last night was our ward temple night, but Kyle and I decided to do sealings instead of a session. That was a nice change, plus we didn’t actually remember much from our own sealing, so it was good to kind of get a refresher on what all happened. 🙂 Anyway, the fountain is normally turned off by the time we get out of our session, but since we were done earlier, it was still on, which led to us wandering around the grounds a bit.

You can actually walk up some stairs and get up on a level next to that relief of Jesus and the apostles, where you can walk clear around the temple. There are flowers and some trees and such up there, and I bet it’s really pretty when they’re in bloom.

So we’re walking along and we come around the side and there’s this gorgeous view out over the lights of the city and you can see the bay and some bridges and it’s really pretty. I kept walking along, and I heard this really drawn-out crrrrrunch. I had gone another couple of steps before I realized it wasn’t just a leaf or something. Looking back, I saw this huge…something…that I had now tracked along with me, and it was wet. I made Kyle go back and assess the situation (I really didn’t want a close-up view), and he confirmed that I’d just murdered a ginormous snail. Like, massive. It must’ve been a great-great-grandaddy, and I’d just done my impression of the Witch from Into the Woods on it. Cruuuuuuush. At least I didn’t eat it?

I apologized profusely, explaining that I’d just done a lot of good work, but I don’t think it helped. 🙁 I felt so bad. Poor thing was probably told that if it went to the temple, it’d live forever, and along comes me. Jess the Snail-Smasher. I’m such a jerk.

Yeah, I’m gonna gripe for a bit here. I just got a letter from the State of Utah. And yeah, I’m in trouble. The legalese is all a bit muddy, but the best I can figure out, their third party (Insure-Rite, if you can believe it (the most ridiculous name they could probably have dreamt up)) can’t find any proof that my car is insured. Which makes perfect sense, since my insurance policy in UT was canceled. What doesn’t make sense is why they’re paying any attention to my car at all—it’s not registered in Utah anymore! I went to a great deal of ridiculous effort to make that happen, and California didn’t even TELL Utah? What the heck!

So I’ve now received a “1st Notice” and am required to contact them about all this. I so love this sort of Super Fun Phone Call. I’m so irritated about this…

Oh, and apparently I was supposed to notify the Utah DMV of my change of address. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that! Wait…it makes NO SENSE! Maybe that’s why it never occurred to me. I mean, if I’d stayed in the state, sure. It’s not like I didn’t address the issue of my car’s registration. I just thought this was all taken care of months ago. The government is so interested in so many things about my car, but the states don’t communicate when it moves its registration? This is bizarre.

The wizard I finished cross stitching so long ago is finally hanging up! Instead of framing it, I decided to stretch it over a canvas, which I think turned out pretty well. It involved a lot of time and several techniques I’d never used before, so it’s nice to have it actually done and on the wall. Yippee!