Sunday, April 20, 2008

Stormy Weather

Posted 5:12 PM by Dezi Rollins, LSSP | 0 Thoughts

A not so fun part of this time of the year is the unpredictability of the weather. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving to the grocery store and heard about a tornado spotted in Ft. Worth, but everything in our area was okay. Just about the minute I got out of my car, it started raining, and it was pouring by the time I got to the door.

As I was doing my shopping, my cell phone rang, it was Mom. Apparently there was a tornado in the Frisco area, and she was telling me about it. Right about the time we were hanging up, an employee started telling people to go towards the dairy case. After a few minutes, they announced that everything was okay. It was sunny by the time I left!

A few days later, they were predicting more storms coming, and talking about a tornado that was spotted in west Texas. As I was driving home from class, it started pouring rain, but it got lighter and lighter as I drove towards home. We heard that storms were coming during the night, so I set the alarm on my cell phone to go off in case we lost power. In the early morning hours, I was awakened by the sound of the tornado siren.

I woke up David, grabbed my phone and Roxie, and we all headed into our safe hallway. We'd been sitting there less than a minute, when I got a text message from Mom. I called back, they had lost power, but we never did. We wound up not having any damage to our house, although there was one house in our neighborhood that had some roof damage. And it gave everyone something to talk about the next day.

Then on Thursday night this past week, the ominous clouds ahead indicated that we were in for more storms. The weather channel was predicting severe storms, and there was a tornado spotted around the Ft. Worth area. The footage from Ft. Worth was scary. Luckily, we only got a bunch of rain. Downtown Dallas got a lot of the storm, but we didn't.

I will be so glad when this severe storm season is over!

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Weekend of Culture

Posted 8:29 PM by Dezi Rollins, LSSP | 0 Thoughts

This has definitely been a weekend of cultural experiences! Yesterday, Mom, my aunt, cousin and I went to the Metropolitan Opera! Well, actually we went to the Tinseltown Plano theatre, where the Met's production of La Boheme was shown.

We had gone to some of the Met performances before, it's a really neat program, you can sit there in your jeans and eat popcorn while enjoying a spectacular view of the opera! Even if we were in the actual theatre in New York, we would not have as good a view as we do at these shows!

Between acts, we get to see the stage being taken apart and put together for the next part. We get to hear interviews with the principals and the conductor. Yesterday's host was Renee Fleming. She also talked about some of her experiences in the roles that we were watching, which was also neat.

The actual opera was amazing. Having seen Rent, which is based off of La Boheme, I knew the main gist of the story. There were a lot of differences, but the overall plot was recognizable. The music and the singing were also superb! I'm so glad we went to that!

Today's cultural experience was very special. Mom and I went to hear the Dallas Symphony Orchestra play The Wizard of Oz. They had the movie playing on a big screen, and the orchestra played the music along with the movie. It was really neat! They also had a couple of the original Munchkins there, and they were brought out on stage and we got to hear from them.

It was a very cultural weekend! Now onto the rest of the week!

Sunday, March 30, 2008

In Conclusion.....

Posted 8:44 PM by Dezi Rollins, LSSP | 0 Thoughts

This month has definitely been action packed! First, we had the crazy days of snow during the first week! Then the next weekend, some of my female family members and I piled in two cars to drive out to Jackson, Mississippi, home of the Mal's St. Paddy's Day parade. We attended in honor of the Sweet Potato Queens, and had some great costumes that Mom put together!

Mom had the idea for all of us to give a gift to all the other queens, which was definitely a hit! Some of the gifts include: lip gloss, bubbles, necklaces, as well as other girly things! We enjoyed playing games, and watching everyone try out Aunt Carol's Wii. The parade was a lot of fun, we all got lotsa beads as well as various other trinkets. Pictures of the festivities can be viewed here.

The day after we returned back home, I got to experience my first mammogram. I won't go into details about that, but it was not nearly as bad as I imagined in my head. I'm all clear until next year! The best part is that afterwards, Mom and I went to eat cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory!

On Good Friday, David and I went to Lovers Lane UMC to attend their service. Their choir was performing the same music as Grace Avenue, however Becky was one of the soloists at Lovers Lane, (and I hadn't been to choir rehearsals this sememster due to my Wednesday night class), so that's where we went. After the service, Becky, her fiance Eric, her parents, along with David & I went to dinner at Macaroni Grille. Since we were a little late for the dinner crowd, we were seated fairly quickly. The food was great and the company was superb! We had a fabulous time!

Saturday was spent getting stuff ready for Easter. I got creative this year and had some fun with Easter eggs. I dyed some, then tried different decorating styles for each one: painting flowers with a q-tip, making dots with an eraser, painting with a toothbrush, gluing rick rack to an egg, decoupage with tissue paper (wound up looking like duct tape since I used silver paper), as well as attempting to paint stripes. They came out looking pretty cute, although there's no way I'm putting Martha Stewart out of a job!

After Easter service, we decided to go have brunch. The entire city of Frisco decided to go to the same restaurant as us. Once we were seated, our breakfast was wonderful. After finishing, we headed back to the house for a bit before heading out to DeSoto. It was good to see the family and watch the kids in the egg hunt.

This past week was spent getting things ready for my class presentation on Wednesday. I was rather stressed about it, but it went really well. Friday night, I went for my weekly torture session of yoga, having missed a couple weeks due to travel/Good Friday. It was definitely tough, but I left with a big grin on my face!

Yesterday was the first annual Rover Rally, put on by the Frisco Dog Park, Inc. I showed up early to help with set-up, although there wasn't a whole lot to set up at my booth. I had been assigned to work the Bobbing for Weenies booth, which was an absolute hoot to watch! The dogs were to try to get a vienna sausage from a bucket, it was so funny to watch! Most of the dogs weren't quite sure what to do, several of them (Roxie included), we had to hand them a weenie instead of them bobbing for it. Oh well.

I had entered Roxie into the dog contest, in the best tail wagging category. At home, her tail is almost constantly going, but when it came time to go before the judges, she got performance anxiety! She wagged a little bit when I talked to her on stage, but not enough to win. Oh well, maybe I'll teach her a trick for next year's contest. Here are the pics.

All in all, March was an eventful month, and April is looking to be packed as well!

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Sunday School Outing!

Posted 8:10 PM by Dezi Rollins, LSSP | 0 Thoughts

Last night, David and I attended the Texas Tornado hockey game. The team is a Junior A hockey league, in which the players are too young to play for the NHL. We'd wanted to go to a game, but never really got the chance to go until last night!

One of the other members of our Sunday school class bought a group of tickets for our class. The ticket (which was a great price, I might add!) included a seat, program, hot dog, drink and chips. Since I don't eat meat, David enjoyed my hot dog, while I bought a pretzel.

The game was a lot of fun. We were playing the Topeka Road Runners. We didn't win, but oh well! I love watching hockey, especially live hockey! Our group (two dozen of us), was sitting in the end zone, we had a great view of the net. We even got to be on the jumbo tron at one point! The camera guy came over and one of the other class members said to wave, so we did!

It turns out the row in front of where David & I were sitting (which had half of our group) was the row of the game, and everyone in that row got a card for a free ice cream. We still got to be on the jumbo tron, so that was cool! We were all joking about offering autographs to everyone.

Since the team was losing, most of the group left early. David and I stayed until the bitter end. After the game, we decided to get something more substantial to eat, so we went to Steak & Shake! We enjoyed some great food, then went home and set our clocks forward.

This morning, due to the aforementioned time change, I had a difficult time getting up. I was supposed to sing "Joy in the Morning" with the choir, and I was definitely not feeling joyous. After a trip to Starbucks for some caffeinated goodness, it was off to Sunday school. And you know what? By the time I took my place on the stage with the other choir members, I was definitely feeling joy!

On a completely unrelated note: Here are my pictures from the snow day last week! Some are on Thursday, and a couple are from Friday morning.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

It's Snowing!

Posted 2:57 PM by Dezi Rollins, LSSP | 0 Thoughts


Monday, March 03, 2008

Fun With Yoga!

Posted 8:19 PM by Dezi Rollins, LSSP | 0 Thoughts

I've been going to yoga for about a month. Each class, it gets a bit easier to do some of the poses. Others, I am still a long ways from doing them successfully. I've also noticed that I'm not nearly as sore the day after class, which is always good!

Friday afternoon, as I was stretching and warming up class, the instructor was introducing herself to the new people, and saying that the class that night was going to be rigorous. Since her class is so challenging anyway, (I affectionally refer to it as my Friday night torture) I was a bit nervous about her definition of rigorous.

I was right to be nervous. By the end of the class, my arms were wobbly from all the work we had done on our upper body, and my legs weren't too far behind. I seriously felt as if I had been hit by a truck! I just knew I was going to be sore the next day, surprisingly enough, I wasn't. Although that class seriously challenges me every week, I am still enjoying it!

Tonight's class was definitely more low-key. It moves at a slower pace and there are more beginners in the class. I saw a couple of women in there from Friday night's class and they were asking me if it was like the Friday class. Definitely not! I told her that I always felt rejuvenated and relaxed after this class, which is true!

There was a newbie next to me tonight, she told me after class that she watched me most of the class, as I seemed to know what I was doing. I commented to David that it made me feel good, but slightly scared. Kind of like the blind leading the blind, but I'm glad she found it helpful to see how I was doing the poses.

All in all, I'm glad that we joined the athletic center and I am really glad that I am taking these yoga classes!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Yay, Biscuits!

Posted 5:58 PM by Dezi Rollins, LSSP | 0 Thoughts

Today was our day to bring refreshments to Sunday school class. We had discussed what to bring, and David suggested cinnamon biscuits. My dad and I used to make these together when I was little, and I always loved them! I braved the store yesterday to pick up what ingredients we didn't already have.

I got up early this morning to make them. They didn't take long, and David set to work putting them in the Corningware as I got ready. I headed to church a bit early to set out everything before people arrived.

Class this morning was great, as it always is. We are discussing the book Making Love Last a Lifetime, and it is definitely an enjoyable study! Today we started out by discussing where we went on our honeymoon. Someone else had done a cruise to the same places we went, we had fun discussing the Dunn's River Falls excursion!

We went on to discuss the chapter entitled "When the Honeymoon is Over". That was also very interesting. I really enjoy our Sunday school class, and the discussions that we have. While we do have facilitators, we don't have one or two people who do all the talking. Everyone participates in the conversations, which is neat because that it how we learn about each other!

Everyone enjoyed the biscuits and someone said they were impressed that I got up early enough to cook something! It really only takes about thirty minutes, including prep time and bake time, so it didn't take long. One person raved about how great they were and wanted the recipe, which I gave! That made me feel really good! Yay for cinnamon biscuits!