Happy Haunting

I love Halloween! When I was teaching at Hillcrest and Bonneville High Schools, I required my students to write journal entries at the end of every week. They were supposed to write about sports medicine related things that had happened that week. They did this every week, except the week of Halloween. Because I'm such a ghost freak I would make them write me ghost stories. The requirements were that the stories had to be true (they had to experience it themselves, or they had to have heard it from someone they knew who experienced it), and it had to have happened near Idaho Falls. Then I would turn out the lights in the classroom and read everyone's stories with a flashlight. It was so much fun! I have a TON of really good ghost stories about places in and around the Idaho Falls area. I was thinking the other day that I should do whole blog page dedicated to those stories because there are a freaking lot of them! I loved it when different students would write about their experiences at the same place. I had about three students who wrote about Wolfman's Cabin in Ririe, and about 20 students wrote about the Ammon Cemetery (still places I have to check out for myself). At the very end of class I would tell them a ghost story about their school. So today I would like to relate to you the ghost story I told one of my classes about the spooky happenings in the halls of Hillcrest High.

As an athletic trainer I am at the school late many nights out of the week. My first year at Hillcrest, one of the boys basketball games had finished very late. It was deathly quiet as I cleaned the training room that night, getting ready to leave. Everyone had left the school and I was almost done. I closed the door in my office and started to walk to the training room door when I heard a tapping sound coming from one of the cabinets against the wall. I thought something might have fallen, so I opened the cabinet door, but everything was in place. I shut the door and started to leave again when I heard it again, this time a little louder. (The kids sitting near the cabinets get up and move to another place in the training room). Now I was a little scared so I made a beeline for the door. As the training room door closed behind me I heard someone begin to knock on the door I had just come out of. I freaked out and ran out of the school. A whole year went by without anything happening, and then again, one night after a long basketball game I was once again alone in the school. I was just leaving and turned out the lights in the training room before I left. In the darkness I glanced over my shoulder, and I saw something move. It was pitch black in the room, yet I swore I saw something white, over by the cabinets. It seemed to melt into the wall. (At this point the ice machine in the training room kicked on and all my students started to scream...haha!) Needless to say I got the heck out of there. After the strange things that I had witnessed I decided to ask our head janitor if he ever had any scary things happen to him. He told me that the night janitors were scared to come down the weight room hall (the same hall the athletic training room is in) because they could hear people talking and moving things around in the the rooms there. Then he told me that he had heard that there used to be an old homestead on the land where Hillcrest now sits, and that he had heard that the farmer and his family had died in a fire on the very spot the weight room and athletic training room now were. So if you ever happen to be in the school at night, I would suggest to stay away from the training room...

Over My head

Considering that my life is extremely boring right now, and since it's still too early for a Halloween blog I decided to post a blog from last semesters English class. We had to write a paper on a person who inspired us so I wrote one on my Grampa Jensen. I had to interview him and then write a memoir. This is just a tiny bit of my paper, a section close to the end, but I wanted to post it. Grampa's birthday is at the end of the month so I thought this would be a fitting tribute! Happy Birthday Grampa!!

I looked over the towering wall of bookcases. The old books, at first glance, all seemed to be the same. They had thick dark blue or black covers with gold lettering, but on further inspection they were different. "I kept all of my old school books. I have read them thousands of times." I picked one of the books up, "Fundamentals of Chemistry" and thumbed through the yellowing pages. The equations and reactions in the book were too advanced for my understanding, much like the past hour of conversing with my grandfather had been.
He reached out to pull another book from the shelf. "I loved my science classes in high school. Our teacher, Mr. Sherman, told us we would go through stage one throughout the school year, but I took the book and read all three stages in about a week. I couldn't get enough." He put the book back on the shelf, "It got to the point that if he was busy and the other kids needed help he would say, 'Go see Lowell, he'll sort it out for you.'"
He laughed a little as we slowly made our way back to the couch. I held onto his arm to keep him from tripping over any unseen obstacles. His slight frame was not hard to keep upright. It was strange to see him like this, frail and thin. I still thought of him as the strong unbreakable man from my childhood. Once seated he began again. "Mr. Sherman gave me a key to the laboratory so I could go in on weekends and experiment. I had found a diagram of an x-ray machine in the back of the science book and I decided I was going to make one. After it was finished I showed it to the teacher and he couldn't believe it. It wasn't until I showed him the film I had exposed with the machine that he actually believed I had done it. I liked doing things like that though. When I was growing up during the depression my mother had a book, 'How to Make Things Out of Old Things.'"
He chuckled as he remembered, "But that is what we had to do. No one could afford to buy new things, so we made things out of old things." I laughed with him as I thought of all the "things" he had made from other things. The tractor sitting outside in the driveway made from an old car and left over scrap metal from World War II, the bicycle sitting on the patio rigged up to a small lightweight motor from who knows what. The gyro-copter in the workshop made with an old lawn chair and extra bits of aluminum pipes.
I marveled at what this man had done with his high school education. Even after six years of college I was no where close to understanding the world like he did. "When I was growing up in Payette, Idaho there was an old brickyard down the street, where they had once made bricks by hand. One day as I was exploring I found a little tunnel half buried under the big mixing pit. I shoveled out the dirt and found a huge room underneath. In the corner was a stove and a lot of metal tubing. It was a whiskey still. So I went to the library and I read about whiskey stills. I found out that the tubes used in whiskey stills are made of pure tin. Pure tin is hard to come by, even now it's pretty valuable, about half the price of silver. There was a man that owned the junkyard in Payette who also dealt with metal. His name was Seegal, but everyone in town called him Pop-Seegal." He started to laugh and then looked at me to make sure I understood, "You know like Popsicle?"
I laughed as I rolled my eyes and he continued. "So I melted the tin down into six bars and took one to Pop-Seegal. His eyes got real big when he saw what I had. He handed me a box and said, 'Go ahead and fill that up with stuff out of the junkyard and I'll let you know when you've gotten enough for a fair trade.' Well I filled up the box and he never did tell me to stop so that tin bar must have been pretty valuable. As I left he said, 'Hey Lowell if you have anymore of these, go ahead and come by next time you need something out of the junkyard.' I went to that junkyard a lot that summer!"
He was laughing again. Only my grandpa would think that hanging out at a junkyard for most of the summer would be a worth while past time. "I had enough projects to last me a lifetime after that. On one of my trips to the junkyard I found an old welder that had been burnt in a fire. I took it home, but it wouldn't work. That was the year I learned about transformers. I went to the library again and researched transformers. I took the transformer on the welder apart and laid the wire out all over our barn. Then I cleaned it and wrapped it in tiny pieces of sheets I had gotten from mother." He held up his hand to indicate the sheets had been torn into pieces about an inch wide. Then I found some linseed oil in my mothers art supplies and went to the library to learn how to make paint (I'm relatively positive I drove the gal at the library nuts when I was a kid). I made the paint and thinned it with gasoline, but you shouldn't do that Jenni because it's dangerous." He winked at me and I laughed with him again. "Then I put the whole thing back together and taught myself to weld with it."
He talked as if it was something that anyone could do, but I was totally lost. I didn't even know what a transformer was. I mean I was pretty sure he wasn't talking about the Transformers from the robots in disguise fame. I didn't have much time to contemplate as he started another story, "I built a little shack out by our house out of wood pallets. I would build little rockets there and I joined the U.S. Rocket Society of America. I still have the card! It's still running today, but it has a different name." He looked at me questioningly and I asked him what it was called. He leaned back with a satisfied smile, "They call it NASA now."

Unpredictable

Wow I can't believe that summer vacation is almost over! I haven't done much of anything productive this summer, and I've loved every moment of it. I did just get back from a trip across Wyoming into South Dakota with my brother Curt. We decided to try and save a little money so we camped out at every KOA between here and Rapid City and all I can say is; boy I'm tired of sleeping in tents! I remember camping being a lot more fun when I was a little kid. It was really a great trip though! We were able to see Sacajawea's grave in Fort Washakie WY which was actually one of my favorite parts of the trip. We also went to Devil's Tower, Thermopolis, and Mount Rushmore. AWESOME! Then about two days after we got home I went to La Grande, OR with the family for my cousin Tennille's wedding and a family reunion. It was great to see and catch up with family, but I am so happy to be home again, sleeping in my own bed!
Besides that I've done a lot of thinking this summer and I've decided that I am destined to wander aimlessly throughout my life, not knowing exactly what I want to do. In other words I'm not going back to school this semester, part of the reason being that I have no money left for school, but also because I don't know if I want to go back into the health care field. At any rate I'm taking this semester off to make a little money and try to figure out exactly what I should focus my efforts on. I'm trying to finish up my book before the end of the summer, and then I will try to get it published. I've got some ideas for some new books but I want to finish this first one before I get to work on the others. I love writing, but unfortunately I have no experience and don't know if I have the talent to make it more than a hobby. Too bad other people besides me have to like what I write :) So that's the scoop for any of you that were wondering. Maybe someday I'll figure things out!
Anyways now that I'm not heading back to school I am soooo looking forward to Autumn which is my favorite time of the year!! Bring on the fall colors baby!

Summertime

I am loving this summer so far, probably because I have done absolutely nothing for the majority of it, yet I have been so busy doing nothing! It's crazy how time flies when you're not doing anything. I know I need to get a job and earn a little money, but I honestly have no motivation! School is supposed to be starting in another month or so and I find myself wishing I didn't have to go back. I keep hoping that I will run into a billion dollars somewhere so I can just have fun all the time. I suppose the only thing to do is find a job that I love that also makes me some money....but the finding is the hard part! If only I could get paid to travel around and stay in nice hotels, play with my nieces and nephews, camp in Yellowstone and go to Disneyland! That would be the perfect job for me!

Goodbye Oregon....for now

Here I am, the last couple of weeks as an Oregonian. I've decided to head back home and finish my chemistry classes at Idaho State University, mainly because I'm totally out of MONEY! It's always sad to leave family and friends behind no matter where it is you're going, and I cried...a lot when I left home to come to Forest Grove. I've missed my family everyday that I've been gone (especially my sweet little nieces and nephews!!) I'm so excited to be with everyone again! The sad thing is that I still LOVE Oregon! I think that I was born to live in Oregon. Not that I've met anyone really, I'm still as friendless as the day I moved here, but it is gorgeous here! It's exactly the type of place I always imagined myself living.
As I've been packing up this past week I have this bittersweet feeling. I'm so excited to get back home, but I feel like I haven't gotten my fill of Oregon yet. Every minute that I can get away from school work is spent exploring the forests and attractions of the northwestern US. This last weekend I had a ton of homework to get done, but I didn't do any of it. The weather was so nice I decided to go for a hike. I drove west on highway six headed toward the coast and just stopped at random spots along the way. I eventually ended up at the Tillamook Forest Center. I had never even noticed it before as I went to the coast so I thought I would give it a try. It was awesome! I can't believe there are places like this just thirty minutes down the road from where I'm living!
So if you get a chance to check out this side of the country I say do it! I love it here!!!!!!!!!!!

The Twilight of Spring Break

An entire week off of school deserves a little celebration. I can't tell you how long I had been looking forward to this Spring Break! Don't get me wrong, I really have been enjoying school, but I needed this break. I had been contemplating going home for the break, but in the end my yearning for adventure won out. I really have wanted to take in the sights around the Northwestern US while I'm still here, sooo....I set my destination for Forks, WA. Haha! I know what you're thinking, "Wow she must be a total Twilight freak!" Well I cannot lie, I think Stephanie Meyer can write a pretty good story, but her books are not my favorites (I'm still a good person I swear!) Still, why not Forks?
If you know me at all, you know I'm a creature of the woodlands. When I read those Twilight books I really wanted to see what the rainiest spot in the US looked like, especially because, at the moment, I'm living so close. So it seemed like a great time to go out and do it. I decided to explore a little so instead of taking the fast route up I-5, I decided to take the scenic route up the Washington coast. First off, I have to say the Olympic Peninsula has got to be the most beautiful place in the entire world!!!! And that is saying something because I've been to a lot of beautiful places! Even crazier, I was there in the cold off season, I can't imagine what it would be like in the summertime!
Forks itself is a very small town, in every sense of the word. There really is not much to see or do there unless, of course, you're a Twilight super fan. The town has really embraced anything and everything Twilight. A lady at the Forks Chamber of Commerce told me that the town had been struggling to keep afloat, and then Twilight hit and now business is booming. She told me that almost every single shop in Forks sales some sort of Twilight product, because they know that the majority of their customers are Twilight fans. Crazy to think that a book can change the fate of an entire town! So I learned some pretty awesome things, but Forks is still just a relatively normal small town. The big difference is that it's a small town in the middle of some pretty amazing places! You have national parks within walking distance, beaches about 20 minutes down the road, and rain forests 30 minutes away. I loved it!
And just so you know, the first few days of spring break, Mark came to visit me here in Portland (I don't want to leave him out because we had a fabulous time!) I woke up early on Monday to pick him up at the airport and we pretty much partied from that point on. He had just come off working the entire night, but I didn't even let him rest. We went straight to the Oregon Zoo, which was amazing, then we went to the movies. The next day I took him to the Cape Meares lighthouse where we saw some whales (I think). Then we went to Oceanside so we could check out the tide pools and play on the beach. After that we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and tried out some different cheeses and ice cream :) The next day we went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum and then to the Portland Temple. And then I dropped him off at the airport early Thursday morning, from which I left for Forks. WHEW! Yep it was pretty much the most awesome spring break ever!

Far and Away

So I've been back in Forest Grove for about a month now. The weather has been gorgeous! Everyday that I wake up and see that it's sunny and warm out, it makes me want to be outside doing something. So needless to say I've been exploring around Portland a little bit.
Last Monday, President's Day, I decided to go to the coast, but I forgot to take money for parking. I parked anyway and walked down to the beach, then I started feeling bad so I only stayed for about twenty minutes. I know, sad, but it was high tide and no one was at the beach anyways. So then I made a spur of the moment decision to go to McMinnville, mainly because there is a Wal-Mart there :)
I plugged Wal-Mart into the GPS and took off. About an hour later I realized something was terribly wrong when I saw a sign, "PAVEMENT ENDS AHEAD." I thought to myself, "Oh geez I better turn around!" Then I decided, "What the heck, it's not like I have anything else to do today." So, I put all my faith in my GPS to get me to Wal-Mart and started down the long dirt road ahead. Turns out, I saw a part of Oregon I have a feeling not a lot of Oregonians have seen! I did not see another car for over an hour as I slowly made my way down the muddy, winding back road. I had no idea where I was, only that I was headed up the side of a mountain and hopefully making my way to McMinnville.
As I drove up the mountain I came to a wall of evergreens. The trees were so thick that my headlights automatically clicked on in the darkness. It started to rain, and fog began to filter down through the trees. I could understand why Stephanie Meyers might imagine vampires living in a place like this. I finally reached the top of the mountain and the fog lifted a little. I was at the edge of a lake, right on the top of the mountain. I stopped in the middle of the road and turned off the car. I got out of the car to snap a picture. It was eerily quiet, and suddenly I felt very alone. I took a couple of pictures got back in the car and then sighed as I began to drive. That's when I realized how much I missed my family, my students, my friends...all the people who love and care for me, people who wouldn't let me go to the coast by myself. The rest of the drive was lost on me as I contemplated my life. I eventually ended up at Wal-Mart, but by the time I got there I didn't feel much like shopping. Instead I drove back to my roommates house.
I have decided that I love Oregon. It is probably the most beautiful place I have ever been, and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to live here, but now I know for myself what people mean when they say, "it just doesn't mean as much when you don't have someone you care about to share it with."