Northern Michigan.

After the reception downstate, the family returned home and I had a day to recover before I had a friend come into town. This is a rare event for me as people don't often care to visit my hometown -- maybe because it's in the middle of nowhere, or because they know that Lake Superior is really too cold to ski on, or maybe it's because they hate having fun in beautiful places. I really don't know...it is possible that I never really invite anyone...keeping it quaint, you know. Regardless of what category you fit in, you should read Smithsonian Magazine's article on the area. Maybe you'll be surprised. As we were when we figured out that the main picture is of my little brother.

So, sidetrack over, my friend arrived and we enjoyed ourselves by hiking small mountains, taking ridiculous pictures, cliff jumping, hanging out at the beach, biking along the lake shore, watching the sun set (twice), walking along the breakwall to the lighthouse, picking strawberries, going to Harry Potter at midnight, playing games with my family, eating local fare, and just plain having a better time than anyone who's never been.

A little thing Midwesterners call "the woods."

This is my friend. She's having fun. Her feet are not freezing.

Unfortunately, I left the fruits of our labors (get it...get it?!? :wink: :wink: :nudge: :nudge:) at home.

Who wants to come here now?

July.

Whew! This month has been full, full, full! I will start at the beginning. Well, I'll start with week one.

July 2 my friend got married and I bought a really tight dress to wear for the wedding. Unfortunately, she's from central Utah so my only options were her 3rd cousins and they all came to the reception in Wranglers. Not that there's a problem with that, just that...there's a problem with that.

Nevertheless, it was a good time. Mostly I was glad her photographer captured the important people at the wedding. Me.

Then I went to our cabin in southern Wisconsin for some reading and respite. We played pool, we sailed, we swam, we watched fireworks, we caught fireflies -- :sigh: there were so many fireflies.

We looooove us some fireworks.

It turns out if you try to sail in the middle of a storm you end up soaking wet and muddy, having lost your flip flops and dropping your phone in the water. Good thing none of those happened to me. Next time, guys, next time.

Oh yeah, we also played Try-to-drop-popcorn-in-Laura's-mouth-and-if-you-miss-repeatedly-well-it's-no-big-deal. A real good time...

By July 7th we were off to Chicago where my mom and I were sealed for time and all...

Wait...nope...nevermind, hehe...that's right, my sister got married.

Relaxation over. Time to take a million jillion pictures in the sweltering hot and humid midwest sun.

Pictures pictures pictures picturespicturespicturespictures.

NOT such a good time.

After Chicago, we drove to the home of Michigan State where Kathryn had her first reception. Yes, yes, I said first. The second one (at home) was actually fun. This one was, ahem, well :cough-lame:. So my siblings and I played card games at our table. I ate 'til I looked pregnant then tried to dance it off. We last-minute decorated my sister's car...with empty water bottles and toilet paper...and...that was that.

And this is it for now. Just letting you know Bloggerismifica is stiiiiiiill kickin'. I'll fill you in on the rest when I'm not tired and hungry and you're not tired of looking at pictures of me.

Pagan Sun Festival.

Apparently in some Northern European and Baltic countries people celebrate the summer solstice in a big big way. And why not? It's the longest day of the year! Might as well have one last hoopla before everything heads back to being dark and wintery again. Besides, they don't have Independence Day. Go America, right?!

Well this year, I celebrated both. My friends and I did the best we could with what we had. We ate traditional food (gourmet hot dogs and smores), wore head wreaths (leafy camouflage?), and jumped over a bonfire (or rather, a small fire in a fire pit...).

That concrete wall added a level of difficulty I was not anticipating. It was quite scary...also, exhilarating.

See how much fun we're having?

Unhistoric acts.

I recently finished a book by George Eliot called Middlemarch. George Eliot had been recommended to me by a friend who loved Daniel Deronda. So when I found myself perusing my German friend's bookshelf in search for something to read while traveling the European countryside (:sigh:), I picked out the book described by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Yes, I just finished. Yes, it's been 9 months.

It took me awhile to get through because I didn't think the story was very captivating -- grown-up people books rarely are -- I kept reading, though, because I liked the author. I thought she had such interesting insight into human nature and the character of life. Take this, for example:

"Many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to 'find their feet' among them, while their elders go about their business. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."

Mmm, delicious...but why am I dedicating a post to this book about which I feel so seemingly tepid? Because the last 60 pages of Middlemarch launched it into my top 5. Shocking, no? I thought so too.

I will try to explain.

This book is mostly about two characters, full of ardent potential, who strive to achieve greatness...and fail...sort of. The main character, Dorothea Brooke, is a wonderfully ideal and noble creature. "She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will. 'What should I do -- how should I act now, this very day if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence!'" she asks.

The climax of the book for me occurred as Dorothea committed a sublime, "self-subduing act of fellowship." She acted out of compassion and a sense of right, laying aside her wounded heart in order to spare others pain. She did not live an epic life. Her name was not heralded among martyrs and heroines. She was a failed Antigone, "foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness trembled off and were dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognizable deed."

"Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth."

Every once in awhile I want my life to be heroic. Historic. I want to change the world. But for me, like Dorothea, there will be no "constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes." I do not expect my name to be trumpeted from rooftops or my life to be ideal or admirable. But I do hope that somewhere along the chalky white outline of my bumbling life I will have made a measurable difference to someone around me. That my memory will be held dear by those who really knew me.

There were some who considered Dorothea's life a tragedy, a waste of divine efficaciousness, and it would have been if it wasn't so nobly human. I wrote a post a couple years ago about a song someone performed in church. I want my life to be that song and this book and her character -- imperfect, but moving. The wonderful thing about Dorothea was that, "The effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts."

And that's what I'm depending on, too.

I (build) robots.

For NerdFest 2011, also known as the university's Design Day, I was required to build a robot for my Mechatronics class. The basic requirements were that it had to be controlled remotely and that it must be able to grab a ball and put it in a basket. The designs were really quite varied. Some opted to shoot the ball, some used a vacuum to pick the ball up, one team made a small elevator lift, and another team hooked up two measuring tapes to the basket so that wherever the ball was picked up it could be immediately sent along this track to the basket. Pretty ingenious...when it worked.

I have a 70-something-year old teacher who is known for asking, "What's the best kind of engineer?" The answer -- a lazy one. So in the spirit of the legendary Larry DeVries, my team opted for something simple.

We attached a tupperware container, split down the middle, to the end of a rotatable arm. The tupperware could open and close and the arm would rotate back to dump the ball in the basket. Simple, right?

It was also BEDAZZLED -- not my idea, though I fully supported it.

It turns out this design ended up being the most successful. Our robot was among the top 4 scoring robots out of 36 teams. The top two robots were based on the same idea as ours...they were just better. We made it to the 3rd round where we lost because our driver choked. Choked! When pseudo-victory was within our grasp!

Unfortunately, the 1st place robot outscored everyone by about 10 baskets so there wasn't actually much of a chance to come out on top. Overachievers. For building a robot with tupperware as one of its major components, I'd say we did pretty well.

And now? Back to doing problems like this: