Random Doodlings

So today I was working on another project (which I will link to just as soon as there's something to be linked) and I got distracted because it was hard and I couldn't make it work the way I wanted to. So I scanned a bunch of my little drawings from my little green book. And I thought I would share them with you today.

 These are something I did to keep my hands busy while allowing my mind to wander. No, I have not done the other 21 letters yet.

 Well, you already know how I feel about monsters. The fat hairless one is probably my favorite.

I'm from Oregon, okay? I really freaking love trees.

The wolf you've seen before, but this pseudo-Hamlet is new. He's actually as new as last Sunday, as a matter of fact. I think he's adorable.

So these last two are actually drawings I did on the dry-erase board in my dad's office. He's an accountant, see. And a hero. Plus he's the one who taught me to understand positive and negative integers when I was a kid. Cheesy, yes. Still kind of sweet? Also yes. Or so I think, anyway.

When you are driving a truck

So at my place of work, there are lots of huge vehicles that are used to haul around large quantities of the green dirt that we happen to sell (in large quantities). Things are actually divided into two operations--the east plant, where the office and the smaller operation and littler piles of dirt live, and the west plant, where the old nickel mine used to be, and where the HUGE piles of dirt live. Like seriously huge. They have trees growing out of them.

I work at the east plant in the office because I'm too pretty to wear coveralls and drive a forklift. (False. I work at the east plant in the office because my dad works at the east plant in the office, and he is the one responsible for getting me this job. And also I am his number-crunching slave when his number-cruncher is sore.) I also have, on occasion, reasons to run up to the other plant, because we store musty old records in the old office building (which is haunted) and sometimes I have to pick up paperwork from the guys or reset security cameras. It's all great fun.

 And okay. This is just a crappy picture I took with my phone, but still! Haunted.

We have a guy who hauls rock back and forth between plants for us. I don't really know why he does this, to be honest, but it seems to have something to do with tests and weights and stuff. As it turns out, selling green dirt is actually very complicated and intense and you have to be pretty clever to do it. But for whatever reason, we have this nice guy whose family has been around town forever, who works with his dad hauling stuff for people.

His name is Willard. Someone in his family makes barbeque sauce and Willard gave us some for Christmas because that's how awesome he is.

When I'm cruising around in the company car, and his big yellow cab comes bearing down on me, I'll wave because it's polite and because we know each other.

Only recently, he's started doing this thing where he doesn't just wave. One time, at the west plant, he shook his fist at me like a punk (possibly because I was going ridiculously slow over the railroad tracks at the intersection and so his way out was blocked and he couldn't go anywhere until I moved). The other day, instead of waving, he took both hands off the wheel and gave me a nice interpretation of jazz hands.

He thought he was pretty funny. Except that he hauls rock--literally tons and tons of rock--in a dump truck sort of setup, with a big ol' trailer hitched along for the ride. This is not a small truck. I would actually die if he ran me over in it, even inside the relative safety of the company car.

So it was also terrifying. Punk driver.

Did I mention the front part has three sets of wheels, while the back trailer has four sets? One set right after the other like millipede legs.

Not cool, Willard. Not cool.

This is my gross approximation of Willard's truck.

Happy New Year!

Admittedly, this won't be very exciting because there aren't even any pictures. And I don't really have any good stories about the holidays, except for the part where my sister and I went sledding for the first time and I thought my life was going to end.

Wait, you want me to tell you about it? There isn't much to tell. Except that this nice lady was there with her grandchildren, and she told us how to go about it (I mean, we were such novices that we weren't even sure how to properly sit on the sled. It all seems like it will be very instinctive until you get up on top of the slope and you realize NOTHING about it comes naturally). Her grandchildren were also very helpful. And by helpful I mean "kept trying us to do crazy things that we were totally unprepared for".

"Hey go on that jump!"

Okay. No.

Also, do not take a running start. Thank goodness she stopped us in time, because my sister asked if that was necessary, and this nice grandma was VERY clear. We did not need, or want in any way, to get any more acceleration than we were already going to get speeding down the hill.

So we hopped on our little round sleds (cross-legged, naturally), and after some scooting closer to the very final edge, the last precipice before the top of the hill becomes the sudden drop, and when you're about to go skittering down the slope whether you want to or not--we let go.

And then it was over.

Only in the meantime, the wind rushes through your ears and your body hurtles through space at speeds never previously achieved by an unprotected human body. And there's no actual steering involved, so you might slide around so you're going down backwards, and then you break the sound barrier and your head explodes but somehow you arrive at the bottom mostly intact.

All this in a few seconds of pure bliss, of exhiliration untempered by say, a windshield. Or walls.

My sister crashed into a lamp post the first run. I didn't see it because I was too busy rocketing through space and time. But we took many spills that day. We were not pros. But we were most excellent.

So there was some bruising, and we had ice and snow in pretty much every crevice, and we were so tired that we fell asleep later in the day, but it was one hundred percent the most wonderful and terrifying experience I've ever had in my life.

Remember in Calvin and Hobbes, how the trips in the sled always ended in a spectacular crash? Well, now I understand that.