What a week. School just started back up and it caught me a little off guard. With all of the things going on here, shoveling snow, looking for a real job, school and babysitting my 18 month old niece. I haven’t had enough time to do much anything else.
We finally got some snow (whoever heard of it not snowing until January in Wisconsin). Somewhere between 4 and 6 inches, did that for 14hrs straight. Gotta love it.
Yesterday I received a letter from the college I am attending. I thought that it would be my report card, but it wasn’t.
It was a letter informing me that I have been added to the college’s Deans List for last semester.
I wasn’t that happy with my GPA of 3.8 for the semester, but I guess it all works out in the end.
Not bad for a guy who never graduated high school.
The Knowledge of Bonsai Forums are now accepting donations to help us recover some of the costs associated with running this site.
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As some know, I am a landscaper and have been one since I was 13.
Here is the part that many don’t know. In the year 2004 I started working on the tree crew, trimming and felling large trees. I loved the work, it allowed me to know the species names for trees much faster than if I wasn’t on the crew.
At the end of June 2004, a tornado ripped through Madison. As a result there was much work to be done, cleaning up all of the debris left behind.
July 01, 2004 was just like any other day, little did I know that it would change my life forever. We were sent out to clean up some storm damage, this was a normal thing to do after a tornado. I was assigned the job of “ground man”, meaning that I was the one that collected all of the cut branches and logs and drug them to the chipper.
At about 10am I bent over to pick up some branches and the next thing I know I am in the hospital. Apparently what happened was at the same time I bent over the tree trimmer cut a log from the tree. And this log (about 12 pounds) fell from about 40 feet up and landed on my head.
As it turned out the log mostly landed on my should which was uninjured, the doctors said that if the log hadn’t released most of the power on my shoulder that I would be dead. I received 6 skull fractures, damaged my cavernous sinus bruising my internal carotid artery and this caused sixth nerve palsy, this is a paralysis of the eye muscles.
As a result of my injury I saw double, two of everything everywhere. To me it looked as if the double images were 5 feet apart. And now my head sports a nasty 12-16 inch scar, from my front hairline to my back hairline right behind the ear.
From July to January I was not working and I had to wear a patch over my left eye. This relieved me from the double vision so that I could function and drive.
Now I have to wear special glasses that have a prism on one lens. I still hate the things but at least I can see straight.
This whole experience changed my outlook on life, made me stop doing all of the “bad” things I was doing. I decided to go back to school at the area’s Tech College. Originally I was going for a degree in horticulture, and changing to Internet Programming and Web Design after 2 years.
I am working again for the same company that I worked for, but not on the tree crew (they couldn’t pay me enough to do this again).
This whole experience has taught me how precious life in this world is and how quickly it can be taken away. Now I try to live life to its fullest. My focus now is bonsai and bonsai on the Internet.
Thank you for reading this and becoming part of my life.
Last night I completed a sever change for this domain, this happened in the early morning hours (to me), and hopefully did not disrupt anyone.
You will now notice that we are lightning fast.
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On a side note I got to spend the entire day with my 18 month old niece. I will add a picture when I have more time to scan it and such.
Today, it rained almost all day. Now that wouldn’t so weird if it wasn’t the beginning of January.
I sure do hope everything stays dormant.
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Yesterday in the mail I received a surprise package from Indonesia.
Budi Sulistyo sent me a signed “Limited Collectors Item”
A 2007 calendar featuring one of his magnificent tree for every month.
Thanks Budi!
It has been a long night setting up the new feature here on the KoB.
Allowing bonsai artists to have their own bonsai blog on the KoB.
I will try to post here as often as I can.