As you may already know, I was accepted into the Pennsylvania State University to begin the long journey towards a PhD in geography. Pretty cool, eh? Well, the last push to get everything ready to move is on. Right now, its 9pm on Monday, and at this time on Friday we’ll be in Butte, Montana at the Motel 6 hopefully getting ready to sleep. We’ll see.

So, the trip itself is starting on Friday as soon as we get the truck loaded and carpet washed. Hopefully, pretty early. Here’s the rest of the trip itinerary (minus a lot of detail).

Friday 7-30-2010: We pack a 16′ truck, and say good bye to our friends here in Moscow. Our first destination is Butte, Montana. It should take us about 5.5 hrs and 370 miles, so if we get out of Moscow by 4pm we’ll be doing good.

Saturday 7-31-2010: We move across the beautiful state of Montana through Wyoming to South Dakota. Along the way we have a planned stop at Little Bighorn (we stopped on the way out, but I don’t think grandpa has been there yet). We’re spending the night in Rapid City. This longest jaunt of the entire trip is about 8.5 hrs and 600 miles. It’s going to be a long ass day.

Sunday 8-1-2010: Fun day! So, today is our sightseeing day. As we slowly move across South Dakota we are going to go see Mt. Rushmore, The Badlands, and Wall Drug. Our final destination of the day is Sioux Falls, SD. Where we’ll be taking a 2 day breather. The estimated time for this portion of the trip is 350 miles, and 4.5 hrs, but with the sightseening we shouldn’t be arriving in Sioux Falls until late.

Monday and Tuesday: Staying Sioux Falls to spend time with Gary’s family.

Wednesday 8-4-2010: Moving on from Sioux Falls, our next destination is Davenport, Iowa. You say “why the hell Davenport?”, well, 2 reasons. The first is its dirt cheap to stay in Davenport, afterall who vacations in Davenport?? Second, its not a far jaunt to the next location where we’ll be spending ample time, Valporaiso and Middleburry, Indiana. The estimated time to arrival from Sioux Dakota to Davenport is 7 hrs, and about 450 miles from Sioux Falls.

Thursday 8-5-2010: The last couple of stops on the trip are my favorite. The first is Valporaiso, Indiana. This is the area I spent my young childhood, and most of my family still lives in Northern Indiana. We’re planning on spending a good part of this day in Valpo visiting my grandpa and the rest of my family. After visiting there we’ll finish the 1-2 hour drive to Middlebury to my other grandparents house where my parents and grandparents will be waiting:) This leads us to a nice three day break from the road which I’m sure the boy will love. The estimated travel time for this portion of the trip is 5 hrs and 280 miles.

Friday-Sunday: Resting at grammys!!:)

Monday 8-9-2010: The last portion of this trip will be from Middlebury, IN to Boalsburg, Pennsylvania. Awaiting us is a 2 BR townhouse, and I can’t wait. It’s going to be a grueling day, 7.5 hours (450 mi) of travel, and then unloading the truck so it can be returned the next day.

I’m completely and utterly behind in updating this stuff. Life’s gotten in the way. Last weekend we took a trip to CDA to go to Target, I had a couple of things I wanted to get before we moved (including a dvd player for in the car). So, of course we also hit the beach for a couple of hours. These are the pictures from that.

Yay, I have cute friends!!!:) And sometimes, they let me take their pictures! This is Miss H!

So, this is a photography blog, but I have to leave a little bit of me out there, since I’m paying an ungodly amount of money to have this thing… (okay ungodly is a lie… It’s about $100 for the space, the domain name, and the tofurious template). Still, it’s my site so get over it.

I turned in my first draft of my thesis a couple of weeks ago, and then I editted, and wrote, and editted, and wrote, and submitted a couple of more copies, and finally this weekend, I wrote, I editted, and I wrote some more. Finally, my entire committee has a copy. It’s awful, and I’m embarassed to call the work my own, but it’s out there. I did end up with some promising results, but it’s not the breakthrough that I was hoping for, not even close. So, that’s where I stand on that front.

We also settled on a townhouse, and will be moving on July 30 to Boalsburg, PA. That scares the sh!t out of me. I contemplated why that would make me worry since this isn’t my first big move (Munising, MI to Enschede, The Netherlands and back, and then Munising, MI to Moscow, ID), and then it hit me. Both of the moves away from home were something that I had my heart set on for awhile, and it didn’t matter if it didn’t work out. This time, we’re leaving a decent life, a good job, and throwing our lives up in the air for something that I had maybe dreamed about (well, substitute Purdue for Penn State) as a kid. I didn’t worry about it because I just accepted going to a Big 10 school wasn’t in my cards. Now, the stress is building.

I’m definetly not a confident person about my intellectual capabilities, and anyone who has talked to me knows I’m just a Yooper from the backwoods, I can come off as a dumb blonde just as easily as I can semi-coherent. I have a tendency towards research projects that are just dead ends (no really I do…). I’ve also got social akwardness issues, which wouldn’t be a problem if I weren’t aware of them. But, I look away when talking to people, not because I lie, but because if I see someone looking at me I can’t think. My mind goes blank, my skin breaks out in hives, I start to loose a train of thought, and I just feel like crying (which has happened several times during horrible times… like American Studies 300 class, I broke down and had to leave). Another socially akward thing about me, I love rap and I have a bad habit of “getting down with my bad self” while I work, and sometimes singing outloud. It does help the work get done and the rhythm is amazing to type to. Right now I really like Daddy Yankee, Snoop (of course!), and Ludacris…

But this site is mostly about photography, because more than anything, I love photography. Not only shooting and editting, and the such, but the history of it. I could sit and look at slide shows of Henri Cartier-Bresson , Annie Leibovitz, Man Ray, or Ansel Adams all day long.

If there’s anything I love as much as landscape photos its playing dress up and being silly with BD. I just got a new dress for work and a new pair of black shoes and wanted a shot of them, but didn’t get any full body shots. Here’s what I did get:)

If he liked to get dressed we could have some real fun… oh well:))

I’m behind with photos, but I’ll just leave the past where it lays. Instead, here are the latest set from our trip to Couer D’Alene over the weekend. It was meant to be a swimming trip, but town was beyond packed for the car show. So we did both (afterall we paid $5 event parking… and we were hungry haha).

BD thought all the cars were “broken” because the hoods were up, but he really liked looking at them all. It was his first of many car shows:)

Isn’t ironic that my last title was “It’s tough…” (I think that’s right…). Things got a whole lot tougher. My grandma passed away on Friday. She has been in poor health for several months now, but it seemed like she was doing better so it was still a shock. It came a little less than a week after I took family photos for a friend (Miss N), and seeing all the close family and stuff made me even more anxious for the planned visit in August. Friday Morning my aunt had emailed to get info on the visit as well. Needless to say, I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to be able to fulfill one request grandma had made to me, to meet BD.

It breaks my heart that she will never meet him. I had two whole years to get there to say my good byes and to let her meet him and I regret not trying harder.

I also regret not calling her back when she called me for my anniversary. She was the only one that remembered, but I didn’t answer the phone. It wasn’t long after that that she went into the nursing home and I never heard from her again.

Finally, I regret one of the last times I did see her (at our wedding party), that when she said “I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see you again” I said “Of course you’ll see me again” and kind of just blew it off. It WAS the last time I got to see her just about 5 years to the day.

I know I can’t change anything, and I’ll never be able to make it right. I know that regret won’t make me feel better, and guilt won’t do me any good. But I hope grandma knows just how much she’s always meant to me.

I love you grandma, and I miss you so much.

Love Raechel.

To say the past year or so has been rough is an understatement. I’m beyond exhausted physically, and mentally I don’t think I could handle much more emotional/life turmoil. Between trying to do a master’s degree (complete with thesis) in under a year, some family stuff, a terrible two tantruming toddler, and a constant “need” if you will to work, I’m about at my limit. We’re still in limbo as far as an apartment goes in PA and that really worries me.

I hate being a grownup, a workaholic, a woman, and most of all feeling responsible. For a week I would like to be one of those people who throws responsibilty out the window, doesn’t feel the need to work to make thier kids’ lives better, that thinks just getting by is good enough, and doesn’t mind asking for help or handouts from others. Of course, then there’d have to be some type of memory erase or time erase thing so I could pretend it didn’t happen, because the guilt I’d end up living with would no doubt give me an ulcer or ten.

But all in all, the hard work does pay off (just look at what I’ve accomplished some people say), but there’s always more to be learned, more work to be done, more to achieve, and I’m kinda happy about that… because when you boil all the crud out of the mud, I’m left with a deep love for what I do. And to prove I do, and that I love my son too, here’s today’s pic.

This is BD and I at one of my two offices today… I had to work and he had to come with me since he didn’t have daycare. He watched Wubzy, ate crackers, and napped on my lap while I worked on some maps (aren’t I special I have TWO offices… lol! Probably what makes me more special is that I have three screens in those two offices… but for now I leave you with this:)

And yes, I look like a derranged kidnapper with thier latest victim. I assure you, he’s just sleeping:)

Some random shots of the Boy that I found and haven’t been posted (that I know of). We still haven’t heard back on the apartment… so it’s stressing me out a lot, but otherwise everyone’s doing well. 52 days until we leave for Pennsylvania.