So for the last couple weeks I heard on the radio that Kellie Pickler was going to be in concert at Buffalo Run Casino. Now I really wasn’t much of a Kellie Pickler fan until I saw her on Dancing with the Stars last season and from what I can tell, she’s very down to earth and I just love her.
So I had hubby find out how much tickets were just because I was nosey and next thing I knew, we had tickets for Friday night.
I didn’t get a picture of her microphone but it was shiny and pretty!
The cool thing was it was standing room, so as you got there, you just chose where you stood. We got fairly close to the stage. The sad part was there were some drunk girls who jumped right in front of us/beside us and the gal was using me as a leaning post most of the night. Oy! Oh and I almost wore most of her drink. I’m fairly certain she was drunk before she ever got there.
But let’s not focus on those weirdo’s… let’s focus on Kelly!
She’s a little thing, holy cow! And look at those heels. They aren’t Red High Heels, but don’t worry, she sang the song!
Definitely worth going to her concert. It was a great way to end a strenuous week too!
And the sad thing is, she should have had that room packed and it wasn’t. This girl can sing!
Ok, so isn’t he cute? I’m so glad he took me there. Thank you baby!
So late last month before we headed to Mermet Springs to go diving, we signed up to get Wreck Diving Certified. What does that mean? Off coasts of many of the countries/continents in the world and even in other bodies of water (you know, not oceans) there are wrecked ships, vessels, heck they’ve even manually sunk airplanes, buses, etc and we are certified to actually go dive them. I know, I’m cool like that :). haha.
The night we had to do our classroom portion, I met hubby there after school/work. Now Mermet Springs is a spring fed body of water, therefore cold so we had to get dive hoods. Don’t I look cute?!?!
Sadly because of how my classes fall I generally don’t get to eat lunch so when I got to the Dive Shop I was hungry. Grady told us that the class would start at 6:30 and it would go until 9-9:30 so we decided to run out real quick and grab some dinner. I was really in the mood for Italian however we didn’t have time for a sit down meal, so I suggested Fazoli’s Italian just down the road from the Extreme Sports Scuba.
So when I was working on my Bachelor’s degree, I had a agriculture education degree going on. Now a lot of people look at me when I say that’s my bachelor’s like I have a horn growing out of my forehead, I promise people, I’m not a rhinoceros or a unicorn! You may or may not know, I am now working on my Master’s… but get this, it’s in English. Don’t read my writing here and feel sorry for me… this is my blog and I like (…..) and stuff like that, just saying.
Anyway we’re getting off topic. An English Master’s is totally different than an agriculture education degree for sure, but they still go hand in hand. Serious, you have to be well spoken and be able to read and write and grade and educate people on agriculture. See, it all ties together.
Now when I was working on my bachelor’s degree my dad shot me an email in my first few semesters of college talking about what teacher’s made. I loved it so much that I printed it out and pasted it right next to my desk where I studied as a great reminder as to why I was going through the difficultness I felt. Oh and blogger says difficultness isn’t a word, well I just made it one for this post.
So now, here I am going back to school after a short length off trying to remember how to write papers… I turn my first one in today, it’s a New Critical Analysis of the poem To his Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvel. I can share it with you if you’d like to see it :)… lol.
I’ve felt pretty stressed out these first few weeks of school and was wondering what the heck I was thinking, but slowly I feel like I’m getting my groove down… I hope! I took my first quiz on Beowulf and failed it miserably. But that was enough to kick my butt in gear and I passed the next ones with flying colors. Oh and reading Beowulf, have you ever tried? It’s written weird! But again, beside the point.
I guess this post is to say, I’m looking for that reminder, that thing to get me through the hard times to remind me that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. But for now I’ll leave you with Happy Friday and the poem of what teachers make.
WHAT TEACHERS MAKE A poem by: Taylor Mali The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education. He argued: “What’s a kid going to learn from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?” He reminded the other dinner guests that it’s true what they say about teachers: “Those who can…do. Those who can’t … teach.” To corroborate, he said to another guest: “You’re a teacher, Susan,” he said. “Be honest. What do you make?” Susan, who had a reputation of honesty and frankness, replied, “You want to know what I make?” I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor and an A- feel like a slap in the face if the student did not do his or her very best.” “I can make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute silence.” “I can make parents tremble in fear when I call home” “You want to know what I make?” “I make kids wonder.” “I make them question.” “I make them criticize.” “I make them apologize and mean it.” “I make them write.” “I make them read, read, read.” “I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, and definitely beautiful over and over and over again, until they will never misspell either one of those words again.” “I make them show all their work in math and hide it all on their final drafts in English.” “I make them understand that if you have the brains, then follow your heart…and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you make, you pay them no attention!” “You want to know what I make?” “I make a difference.” “And you? What do you make?”
The whole point of our trip was to head to Mermet Springs, IL, to go scuba diving. What’s so special about Mermet Springs you ask? Have you ever seen the movie U. S. Marshalls with Tommy Lee Jones? Well the 727 airplane that they are flying on in the first 15 minutes of the movie… has been purchased by Mermet Springs and now sits in the query. Oh… and you can dive it! Along with many other treasures.
As you first enter, you drive straight into the sight. You keep to the right which will bring you up the building.
You must check in the minute you get there. You give them your C-card and they’ll keep it the whole weekend (allotted time you plan on being around).
This is the office where you check in. This would also be where you can get stuff to save a dive, rent equipment, get shirts, etc. Oh and the AC was on which was nice 🙂
The cool thing is they have a great system set up for getting your tanks refilled with air, which was a good thing because my first 2 dives and pretty much all of hubby’s dives, we were air hogs. Woops. They say as you get better/more experienced at diving, you’ll use less air.
Bathrooms and showers on sight.
Are you hungry? No problemo! They’ve got you covered! Drinks. They have you covered there too! And trust me you need to drink water every time you come up out of the water due to the dehydration factor! It’s weird, I know but it’s still there.
On Sunday before we headed home, we got burgers. Let me tell you, these burgers were fabulous. We also had Gatorade.
They had tables set up under lean to’s so that you can get your equipment set up, but if it’s raining, you can set your gear up in the dry conditions. How cleaver.
Then it’s time to head to the water. Don’t worry, that weird red thing is the upper half of my wet suit. I also had a dive skin on… yes, it’s what you think it is… like having a second skin 🙂 The wet suits are warm, especially on warm days so we took them down but they are a PITA (pain in the @$$) to get back on once they’re wet so it’s just easier to cool off your upper half and walk around with them half on.
There are many treasures to be found at depths of 15 feet down to 115 feet. Definitely stay in your comfort zone though. Oh and the water at the 115 foot mark was around 39 degrees…. I didn’t venture that far, but a bunch of our group did. I’m not big on cold weather or being cold… so I stuck more to the warmer temperatures.
There was a map you could actually hook on your BC to take down with you, try to help keep yourself located under water. Hubby and I sooooo should have invested in one of these, especially since this was our first outing to Mermet Springs. I think one of our people told me they were $10, but don’t quote me on that….
Here is the fish feeding platform. Can you believe it is 15 feet down?
And that, ladies and gents is Mermet Springs. Y’all come back now, ya hear? Oh wait… that’s the Beverly Hillbillies, but I’ll bet the sentiment is the same here! 🙂
On our trip down, we really weren’t sure where to stop for dinner. We finally decided to grab a bite to eat at Dairy Queen in Poplar Bluff. Hubby used to make a trip very similar to this a few times a month and said we definitely wanted to eat before we got past Poplar Bluff because there wasn’t anywhere else past there.
Zebra Girl and I both went for the Bacon Cheeseburger. Sadly they got ours mixed up when they delivered the orders because she ordered hers without tomato, lettuce & onion and mine showed up that way. I wasn’t even aware that it was on there… otherwise the burger itself was yummy!
Friday afternoon, 2:50pm, class got over and I hit the door running. Usually I may linger, but not this particular day. I had places to go, people to see and more like it, people waiting on me. I took off to meet up with everyone so we could get on the road. Generally I don’t eat lunch and just eat dinner early, but hubby told me to grab a bite to eat on my way to JT & AL’s house. Things didn’t work out so well, so after I met up with them, we ran to Wendy’s and got Zebra Girl and myself a jr. bacon cheeseburger, then we were off to get Zebra Girl.
I was teasing AL that she had Van Coke. At first I was confused but she explained it was Vanilla Coke. Ok that makes sense 🙂 but the rest of the night we called it Van Coke.
We stopped at Poplar Bluff to grab a bite to eat and wound up eating at Dairy Queen then we hit the road again.
We stopped for gas at Sikeston and Zebra Girl started washing the windows since we had quite the bug collection going. Hubby and JT followed along behind her to make sure she got them off and the windshield was clean for AL to drive :).
Finally we pulled in to Metropolis around 11pm. AL dropped us off at the Super 8 and they went on to their hotel room at the Metropolis Inn. Originally our group stayed at the Super 8, but they changed for this trip. Sadly hubby and I booked through Hotels.com to work on a free nights stay and weren’t able to change hotels. No biggie, it was just down the road, probably less than a block apart.
Our home for the next 2 days.
When we walked in to the room, we were greeted with a nice little area. There was a table, microwave, refrigerator and the couch was a hide-a-bed.
The area between the “living” portion and the bedroom portion was the bathroom & Sink. There was also a hidden door that would close the bedroom off from the rest of the room.
We got a King size bed. I noticed that the tv in the bedroom portion was a flat screen and the tv in the living portion was an “old fashioned” box tv… lol.
We laid down and I’m pretty sure we were out the minute we hit the bed.
The next morning hubby got me up at who knows what hour and we got dressed and headed to the other hotel. Everyone ate breakfast at the hotel. There was Biscuits & Gravy, cereal and the white powdered donuts, coffee, juice and milk.
Then we were off. Metropolis is about 15 miles roughly from Mermet Springs.
Mermet Springs is an old query that has been turned into a diving attraction. That was our whole purpose for heading to Mermet Springs was an entire weekend of diving fun. Diving as in Scuba Diving. Oh and hubby and I were working on our first advanced diving certification of Wreck Diving.
We had a long day of diving. Around 5pm we all left and headed back to Metropolis. Zebra Girl fell asleep on the 15 minute car ride. Sadly hubby misplaced his shirt so he got to head back to the hotels shirtless. We later found it in his diving bag.
After we left the restaurant we headed downtown to get our picture taken with Superman.
I also noticed that there was a wall paying tribute to our military for our Freedom!
Then we headed to Dairy Queen there in Metropolis for dessert!! Yum!
Then we headed back to our hotels, hubby and JT pulled our Dive info off our computers and then we headed to bed. Sadly, someone thought it would be a good idea to be up and at their hotel at 7am the next morning. I’m sooo not a morning person so I think I might have been holding a grudge…. ya think? lol.
We all decided to head to Hardees for breakfast instead of the hotel breakfast on Sunday morning.
We found the size of tank hubby needs. They say as you become a more experienced diver you use less air for the same amount of time down, but for now, he could sooooo use a tank this size!
We grabbed a bite to eat there at Mermet and then hit the road around 1-2pm. I looked over and Zebra Girl was zonked out.
Once we crossed the Ohio River….
Hubby and I zonked out too.
Next thing I knew, I woke up to JT saying something and the Denali had died. Yup, we were 3 miles from the gas station outside of Dexter, MO and we ran out of gas. Yehaw. Luckily JT’s dad was in front of us so they ran to the gas station, got us a gallon of gas and brought it back to us. Not the best way to wake up :). Diver Girl had us taken care of!
Then we were closer Van Buren and we thought we might actually get rain. Turns out, it was just enough to spot up the windshield/car. Oh well.
At one of our stops along the way, we stopped at McDonald’s and Diver Girl thought it would be fun to put a straw on our antenna. That sucker road all the way to Springfield when we finally took it off.
We stopped in Springfield at Red Robin for dinner.
And finally got back to JT & AL’s around 9:30, helped unload the Denali and headed off for our house. It was such a fun weekend, but very short and very long at the same time… if you can make sense of that.
.jpg)
.jpg)
