Merry Christmas

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. I got to spend it with a lot of my family. Still not ready to write much. Some of you may be relieved to know that you are seeing the last Santa's Marching Band video of the season. Soon we will have to burn the tree, take down the decorations, and enter the bleak month of January. It's also the month of my birth so I'm at least a little excited about that, I'm still young enough that I don't mind another birthday.

Christmas Eve

too tired

almost Christmas

Customers were crabby at work today. Some were very nice and a couple even brought us treats, but overall it was incredibly hectic and stressful today. Tomorrow I am in pharmacy, not sure how it will go but we close at 2pm so as long as I can survive five hours things should be okay. If it's nice out I might try to ice skate again. Tonight Dave and I have been picking out Rock Band songs to buy with our Christmas gift from M, my brother-in-law. I'm nervous about the big snowstorm that's supposed to happen, I'm hoping that family can still make it up here.

tired and boring

more chores make me a dull girl. I just spent 1/2 an hour making a grocery list and writing out where to find each item (aisle number, etc) since I'm sending Dave out on his own. I am excited for Thursday, just hoping that it waits to snow until late evening.

sleepy

Ugh, I was so sleepy and unmotivated when I came home from work. I laid down on the couch and tried to de-stress. I then went on to watch a National Geographic episode about stress: portrait of a killer. Finally I got around to the cleaning I've been meaning to do. Currently the oven is cleaning itself and stinking up the house. I swept and mopped the linoleum and cleaned the ferret's cage. I made a schedule and list of things to get done so I feel better about that at least.
Tomorrow I need to give Dave a lesson on getting ready for and going to the dump. It will be an exciting little adventure for him to go all by himself.
Since once again I am an hour later than I had hoped to get to bed, I will finish up with more marching band.

Little Drummer Boy

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

family weekend

I meant to put another music video up on Friday morning but got to busy packing and trying to make it to work on time.
We left for the cities Friday evening and went out to Saint Paul late to watch our friends band perform. We got back to (my) in-laws house pretty late (2 am) and proceeded to marvel at M's brand new 46 inch flat screen television. After about half an hour of the new Star Trek movie I had to get to bed and Dave eventually followed.
The next morning (at 7:30) I received a couple calls in a row from my grandma saying NOT to come visit because the flu was going around her living place. That wasn't really a concern since we weren't in town but I advised her to drink lots of water since she was recovering from the flu.
I wasn't feeling too sleepy after that so I tried to study my pharmacy tech book. I am becoming a little more intimidated by it, there may be more to memorize than I had initially assumed. Dave's parents cooked us breakfast and we enjoyed visiting with them and his grandma who is in town from California. Next it was on to errands. I mostly just followed around and ate samples as Dave's mom and grandma picked out the great dinner. I recommend Target's cinnamon sugar covered almonds, semi-healthy candy. The whole family got to eat together at Champ's for lunch and soon after the women left for our tour of the James J. Hill house. There were actors that kept us engaged in the day to day life of a servant in the house and often belittled us for our poor skills at housekeeping and cooking, since we were all applying for a waitress position at the house in 1901. We returned home and enjoyed a great meal with everyone before talking and joking, and finally just relaxing in front of the television.
Today I visited a good friend who's studying in Norway. Her mom still lives two houses away from my parents. We tried out a breakfast place in the area and were very pleased with the place, we finally left because it was pretty busy. I stopped at my parent's house to pick up some gifts. My dad (G) offered me food and advice before hugging me and sending me on my way again.
Dave and I packed up the car before meeting up with my dad (O) (there are two dads) and his girlfriend. We had a nice time visiting and opening presents.
My mom offered a suggestion for a new way to get home and it worked out pretty well, we may try it again in the future. Sometimes I forget how wide the twin cities area is, if we leave from one house we take a completely different route to get home than if we leave from another house 20 miles west.
Enough rambling about the weekend, I'm going to get to posting the videos so I can go to bed.

give the Neil Diamond cd a rest

big sigh, I finished wrapping presents. I'm still enjoying Christmas music although I'm hoping that our pharmacist somehow forgets his Neil Diamond Christmas cd because I've heard that on repeat for a few days now. I don't have a whole lot to say so I'll just get to today's "marching" installment.

notes on the day

I think that I finished my Christmas shopping so I'm pretty happy about that. Now I just need to get ready for the weekend (we're driving down to the cities) and make a plan for next week.

I watched Kiki and Lydia play today, mostly because I threw Lydia on top of Kiki. I've started to realize that Lydia now knows that she can't be the Alpha when it comes to Kiki so she's begun to sort of ignore Kiki's presence. I think that she's decided she's not willing to surrender her dominance in the household, thus she pretends Kiki isn't there.

I made myself go outside and skate tonight and I'm glad I did. It was a new moon so it took a while to adjust to the darkness, but it was fun. I'm not any good at it, but the limited gliding I did felt nice.

I wish there was more time in the evenings, I will have to get the gift wrapping done tomorrow. and now for your enjoyment, or displeasure...

Grandma got run over by a reindeer (but not really)

No cooking today, Dave and I went to my grandma's after work for her home's holiday party. The food was pretty great, and best of all I didn't have to cook or do dishes. My grandma took a surprising amount of food, surprising until she started to give it to Dave and me. Sometimes I think this is part of the Great Depression mentality - she better take what she can get and make sure we have enough, she was born in 1916 after all. Once dinner was over it was easy to see where I got my sweet tooth from, Grandma had no trouble putting away the ice cream and tiny cake squares, we even snuck some back to her room. Dave was quite the gentleman helping out some octogenarians with seating and drinks. I have to admit that spending time there makes the distant future seem a little scary, but also helps me to appreciate my youth and health.
Another confession... I am mostly writing every day lately so that I can post a new Santa's Marching Band song on here :)

more cooking mishaps

Staying motivated when it's cold and dark is difficult. I've been using cooking as therapy for the sluggishness. Cooking desserts is motivating to me because I have an enormous sweet tooth - I'm still not super motivated about cooking dinner. Tonight I decided to start some creme brulee. I have to let it cool for 3 to 4 hours so we probably won't enjoy it until tomorrow.
I found that I have a bad habit of looking right into the oven upon opening the door (we don't have a window on our oven). Usually I am just greeted by a blast of warm air, but since the creme brulee has to sit in a warm bath (pans half full of water with the ramekins inside) there was a lot of steam this time. As I stuck my face close to take a look I experienced two thing immediately: burning pain on my lips, and my eyelashes curling back. I quickly stepped back recalling overhearing a conversation about steam burns being worse than other burns and also realizing that I wasn't really hurt. I'm not sure if my actual eyelashes were reacting to the steam and heat or if it was the mascara melting and reforming, but all is well and from now on I will try to remember to step back when I open the oven door.
Now that my it's starting to wear off I better get to dishes before my motivation is completely gone.

C is for Cookie, (that's good enough for me)

This weekend was spent making cookies and doing small errands. My phone died early Saturday morning but luckily I woke up around 8:15am and made it to my grandma's house. She had me re-wrap a gift and send it back to the giver (shoes didn't fit comfortably). After stopping off at the post office I went to Target to return some lights we bought (it turned out that there were 3 strings of lights in the crawl space). While in Target my brain turned off and I wandered the aisles aimlessly wishing that I was more tuned in to what people want (for Christmas). Eventually I forced myself to the check-out line and made my way to the grocery store. Other than trouble finding molasses (syrup area, not baking), that went smoother than the Target trip.

Back at home I started the cookie process. In all I made 4 types of cookies... sugar, gingerbread men, candy cane, and corn flake wreaths. Since our porch is a "one-season," I just kept the dough out there to chill. Not long after we moved in to this house I reorganized the spices and put some of them into old baby food containers. When I tried to get the container with ginger in it open I had trouble. I used grandma's special "atlas grip" gloves, had Dave try, and finally came up with this solution -


(solution being to jab madly at the lid with a corkscrew until I had a suitable opening).

Other cooking mishaps include overly sticky goo for the corn flake wreaths, they are made very similarly to rice krispie bars... melt butter and marshmallows together and then stir in the cereal. I think the problem was that I had made one batch without incident and instead of cleaning out the green sludge (you add food coloring and vanilla to the wreath recipe), I just added new butter and marshmallows. The thing turned against me and was almost impossible to scoop out of the pot. I think the green food coloring may have done something bad, or the marshmallows were too sticky, or maybe I didn't add enough butter the second time. Here are some Pioneer Woman inspired cooking pics of the crushed candy canes, the before and after. Lastly, in the cooking department, since I didn't have raisins I used frosting and red hots for decoration on the gingerbread men. Sometimes the red hots melted a little and looked demonic, which resulted in some interesting decoration...At last cookies were finished so I decided to venture out on the frozen lake.
I started timidly along the shore and stomped around quite a bit. It's been pretty cold up here (between 0F and 25F) so I wasn't too worried. After a while I got comfortable and started twirling around. I was too lazy to go back and grab my skates but there's a pretty good patch for skating in the "bay."to end the post, my favorite Christmas song, performed by Santa's Marching Band.

O Christmas Tree

Here it is, the Christmas tree. I haven't managed to get a very picturesque photo of it but it's getting late and I wanted to be done writing this entry by now.

It was mostly a good day for me. A sick co-worker was feeling a little better and back at work, I got to "play" in pharmacy. I am slowly getting better, I know where to find a lot more drugs now and I can generally move the drugs on without many questions. I used to really like stickers but working with the sticky labels has almost changed my mind, some people will be getting some slanted labels and/or labels with wrinkles. I still like counting pills, it just gets a little nerve-wracking when a lot of people are waiting. Oh, and the big news (for me) is that another co-worker (a pharm tech) is leaving to work somewhere closer to her home (over 30 miles away from our store) so I will now be working in the pharmacy 3 days a week, almost guaranteed (versus the possible 1 1/2 days I had recently). I feel a little bad for my co-workers on the sales floor since I was getting to be a decent help there, but I have to admit that I'm pretty excited. It sounds like a newer employee will be getting more hours so she can help on the sales floor. Now I just need to start learning all of the drug names and their generics.

When I got home from work I found an awful surprise. Vomit. Vomit on the dining room table. Kiki had managed to get sick on two separate place mats, the tablecloth, and over the edge to the carpet. I checked the poinsettia first (they are poisonous to animals) but there weren't any signs of chewing. Eventually I realized that a gross leftover of mine is what caused the problem. Yesterday I had a small amount of leftover steel cut oats that froze in the car. When I got home I brought it in and set it on the table before going to Dave's band concert. When we got home I was too tired to clean up so today Kiki must have tried it out for herself. The milk I used was a little questionable yesterday morning, so after freezing and then thawing out all day it was probably nice and rancid. I considered adding pictures of the mess but decided they would be too explicit for the blog. Explicitly disgusting.

Dave's band concert was good. There were a few really great moments, one in particular where the brass were really in tune and blending beautifully, another when the junior and senior high students came marching in to pounding bass and quad drums. The parents and faculty seem to really appreciate Dave which was nice to see and hear. I just hope they feel that way come spring, and are possibly ready to show/fight for it if his job is on the cutting block.

I need to help my grandma out with some packing at 9am tomorrow morning so I need to get to bed.

Santa's Marching Band

Do you have anything that you absolutely love even though you know it may be awful to others? This is my seasonal love...


This is Santa's Marching Band, something I inherited by marrying Dave. His grandma passed it on to him and I love, love, love it. Dave isn't huge on Christmas music, and especially not noisy, slightly out of tune, bell Christmas music. The "band" plays something like 50 different Christmas songs in a row before finally starting over. Even my favorite "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." When we lived in the apartment it sat in the moldy basement until I discovered it the second year. Dave is ready to take a hammer to it so I can only play it for so long while he is home. I didn't think about the fact that "filming" on the camera's side would produce a sideways video. Maybe I will fix this later on, but for now just tilt your heads.

It's starting to feel more like the Christmas season now. Yesterday Dave and I cut down our first Christmas tree. We tried a tree farm nearby but they were closed due to sickness. We ended up taking my brother's (uninsured, yeah that might have been a bad idea) noisy truck to the next town to a tree farm. The whole way I kept telling Dave not to hit anyone, not that he would do that in any vehicle but I was nervous. We got to the place with saw in hand and found a nice fat balsam. I lay down on the ground and writhed around like a worm as I maneuvered the saw back and forth, after my arm began to burn Dave took over and we had our tree. The tree was a little pricier than I anticipated ($37), but it sounds like they were similarly priced elsewhere and we got the fun of the experience. I'm undecided about what we will do next year (real tree or fake) but we can decide when we get to it. I will have to take a picture of the tree later. After the whole tree experience and some relaxation at home we went to my work party. It was fun seeing everyone's spouse/partner. It was also nice seeing the pharmacists' (both of them - married to each other) house. It was very nice and spacious. Lots of antler decor, but tastefully done. I want their kitchen. No pictures, sorry. We had yummy food, both prepared and catered. Before leaving we had a White Elephant gift opening. There were about 30 people there total. I had a lot of fun watching people open the gifts we brought. A wine bottle holder (for just one bottle), some decorative fruit, pewter mugs, and a big stuffed frog with tag still on. Dave and I did pretty well, someone stole his scented oil heater (which he was very pleased about) so he stole a small drum to use at his school. I opened a drummer boy tree ornament that no one stole from me and is now hanging on our tree.

In other news the lake finally froze this week, not to the point that you could safely walk on it. In my grandmother's words, "___ Lake is treacherous!" I like that comment, I told Dave that she reads a lot of romance novels. It really can be dangerous though because a river goes through it so the ice in the middle isn't safe until it's been really cold for a while. Here are some pictures of the newly frozen lake.
I took the pictures at dusk. The close up is of some animal tracks, possibly a dog, not sure because I wasn't willing to go close enough to look.

Me trying out the ice, seemed solid in one spot, but I broke through in another. I wasn't planning on walking out anyway but as long as it was shallow enough to keep my feet dry I figured I'd see how thick it was.

Lastly, since I was going to introduce foxkitty, here is pic of him. He's a trouble-maker. Really he's a finger puppet, but he has stories.

post feast

I am happy to have the day off today, it's off because I have to work tomorrow (I also got Thursday off because it was a holiday). I plan to relax, do laundry, and possibly go out for a friend/coworker's birthday.

Here is how Thanksgiving happened at our house...
On Wednesday I had to work, but before work I wrote a list of chores to get done in the hour between when I got home and when my sister arrived from Duluth. I got home, started in on the chores, found out I had a little more time to finish them because Alex was coming later than expected, Dave came home and asked me about the mess on the kitchen counter - explosion from me about expectations and a crappy workday (I had many nice people come in, but also a few impatient people who thought I wasn't doing much to help them, more on this later), finally with Dave's help I calmed down and finished up the list of chores. Alex showed up ready to party so she and Dave hung out while I worked on cooking Thanksgiving dessert (pumpkin cake/bars), making a bread mix, and baking bacon. Dave made us some delicious burgers for dinner. When I was finished with stage one of the baking extravaganza I joined Dave and Alex playing Rock Band and later another game called "Little Big Planet."
The next morning I got up and worked on the stuffing, cutting up bread, measuring out dried fruit, chopping celery and onion (had to switch to contacts at this point because the burn was too much from the onions and the contacts filter out the fumes). I finally got around to a slow shower before going to pick up my grandma. Alex and Dave said hi to grandma when I got her home and Alex continued to talk to grandma for a while. I had thrown the turkey in just before the shower and was now working on the sweet potatoes and green beans. Once Alex went back to her laptop grandma started helping with the sweet potatoes. At first this was nice, but soon she was trying to take over on the potatoes. I love my grandma to death, but she is 93 years old and isn't as spry as she used to be - let's just say that a potato got dropped, fingers almost got burned, and she may or may not have been close to starting a small fire. She won't relax, I'm sure I'll be the same way if I still have the energy that she does. I tried enlisting the help of Dave who had retreated to his computer. Apparently no one can hold grandma's interest if there is cooking happening. In the end everything turned out, I was just over-stressed because I was worried about grandma, over-controlling about "my" Thanksgiving dinner, and pissed that the other two weren't being sociable. At dinner everyone was happy and enjoyed the food. Sadly grandma was already tired out (4 hours later) and Alex brought her home. I then felt really bad about being crabby with her trying to help. I'm hoping that it wasn't very obvious to her that I was crabby. I sent dessert home with her and some salad since she never gets any at the assisted living place.
That evening was pretty low key, watched some hulu/tv and went to bed. Alex left this morning around 8:30 to start a crazy day of work at the mall.

As for the work comment (people not thinking I'm doing my best to help them, etc), I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Dave thinks that I'm pessimistic. I prefer to think I'm more of a realist in that regard. Related to work I realized that I am optimistic about people, I think that people are essentially good. When their actions don't match up with my idea that they are good it is extremely disappointing to me. I take it way too personally when people get mad at me at work, I really am trying to efficiently get them what they want, but sometimes it's not ready, or sometimes insurance won't cover it. Many times these circumstances put the customers in a bad mood. Since I don't have control of the problem it makes me feel helpless and inadequate. The example that stands out from Wednesday has to do with a person that came in for a rare item. The item was ordered because it's not something we carry in the store. The item was expensive (almost $200) and the person wanted to try to bill it to insurance. I went to our billing person to ask if the item would be covered and to find out if I needed to retrieve any extra paperwork (basically paperwork that would ensure the customer's responsibility to pay for what insurance would not). She told me that she was 90% sure that it was not covered and let me know which paperwork I needed to go over with the customer. When I came back and let the customer know everything I had found out he wanted to know if it was our policy to either have customers pay upfront OR be unwilling to fill out a bunch of paperwork. I know that didn't make a lot of sense the way I wrote it, but he made it sound like he only had two options, pay up front, or not do paperwork because salesperson is being a jerk and still have to pay up front. He basically stormed out after paying. I repeatedly explained that I was plenty willing to go through the paperwork (there were about 14 pages of it), but he acted really disgusted about it. I just wish that people knew that I want them to leave happy and satisfied, but I can only do so much. I'm not going to risk my job so that they can get free medical equipment. sigh. People may be good, but the world isn't always fair or gentle.

coming soon... introduction to foxkitty

all by myself...

I am feeling so lazy and unmotivated. I was surprised that Dave wasn't home when I got home from work, so I looked for my phone to see if he left a message (I forgot it at home again today). Sure enough, there was a message explaining that he had parent teacher conferences tonight and tomorrow night. Although Dave being home doesn't help my motivation, the mood is at least a little happier and lighter. It was very quiet and even with music things didn't seem the same.

I made a Reuben casserole for dinner. I am starting to go through our canned goods (some of them are left over from my grandma) and trying to use them up. The canned good in focus tonight was sauerkraut. It ended up being pretty good. I was supposed to use mayonnaise and Thousand Island dressing but I didn' t have the right dressing so I just used blue cheese dressing. It was a little strong and not as sweet as the real recipe, but still decent.

On Saturday Dave and I went on a walk searching for a Christmas tree. We found a couple of candidates but I was surprised at how sad many of the trees looked. Apparently there must be a lot of work pruning at a tree farm to keep the trees looking pretty.

Yesterday I cleaned up my computer and moved the important stuff on to an external drive before Dave wiped my computer. I wanted it running better and I have plans to put my favorite music off of all of my cds onto the computer. That might end up taking up a good amount of space so I figured I'd better make some room. I also played with Gimp, an open source program similar to Photoshop. Since I'm no fun tonight I will post the results of yesterday's play...








This is double Lydia (the ferret) and Kiki rocking out on our PS3 toys, with and without makeup and wardrobe.


Below is a summer pic of me softened and with a flare. If you look into the sunglasses you can see Dave taking the photo.

Duck pee

Today was a salesfloor and pharmacy day for me. Both were mildly enjoyable. Dave had a not so enjoyable day and since I was lazy it meant eating out.

Dave has/had an elementary holiday concert coming up in December. He was informed last week by the athletic director that the concert needed to be moved to a different date, and also gave him the date that would work... that date being 10 days sooner than the original. Dave was a little stressed about this news, but overall it didn't affect him much. Today Dave found out that none of the elementary teachers were made aware of the change. They charged into his office with pitchforks and torches demanding justice, luckily he was able to plead innocence in the change and the mob quickly turned to seek the blood of the athletic director. For now it seems that the concert is on hold until further notice.

He also had a fun little experience with his 4th grade class today. He sent a kid to the principal (first time this year) for banging on the bass drum (something the kid had already been warned not to do), only to have the kid returned since the principal was busy. Later on in the class Dave noticed a 4th grader not singing. He told everyone to sing but one kid was holding out. Dave continued to play guitar and initiated a showdown with this kid by staring at the kid continually. The kid began a pattern of looking at Dave and then looking away. Even the girl next to the kid noticed and started looking from the kid back to Dave and so forth. Eventually Dave was able to wink at the girl when the kid was looking away, breaking some of the tension. From what I hear, Dave won, finally staring the kid into submission, which happened to be singing in this case.

Kiki update: she is not excited about the new food. Still no vomit, but we're not sure if that's because she's not really eating much or what. If we add food to what she has she gets a little excited and starts to chow for a while before thinking, "oh *$#%, this is still that crappy duck and pea food." I like to call the food duck pee, probably adding to Kiki's distaste.

colder weather, nice weekend, kiki fix

Now that it's sufficiently cold enough that I don't go outside to sit and relax, I'm excited for the lake to freeze over. There have been a few mornings of thin sheets of ice on the shady parts of the lake, but it always melts once the sun rises above the trees. There are cross country skis in the garage, but I don't think Dave or I have any boots that fit into the bindings. If it stays really calm and there isn't snow the lake would freeze nicely for ice skating. I should look into getting boots for the skis, I'm not sure if I would just bring the skis in, or if there is a binding sizing somewhere on the skis.

In Kiki news, Dave took her into the vet last Friday since she continued her bulimia. The vet said that she seemed very healthy other than some arthritis. After some blood tests the vet told Dave that the problem was most likely a food allergy and that we would have to switch her cat food. We had the option of an 8lb sack at the vet's for $40, or going to Petco and getting a 10lb bag for $21. We went with the cheaper option, since we were going to the twin cities that weekend anyway. So far Kiki has not vomited once since being on the new diet, if this keeps up we will stock up next time we go down, although 10lbs should last her at least a month or two.

The weekend was nice, we got to see all parents (both of his and all 3 of mine) and still got a couple errands done. We ate at McDonald's for the first time in a long time when we were on our way down. I used the unhealthy oportunity to it's maximum by ordering an apple pie, ice cream cone, and burger. Dave and I had a mini-discussion about whether or not he ordered me a burger, or a plain burger since there was absolutely nothing on it, not even ketchup. I ate at "It's Greek to me" with my dad on Saturday. We were duds on Saturday night and went to bed before 10pm (similar to most nights). On Sunday we took a trip to Costco with my parents and sampled from the variety of freebies.

I'm trying to decide if I want to go ahead and start with the Christmas presents even though this is already an expensive month (with the loan and our 6 month pay on car insurance). I'm not going to want to do it later either so I guess I'll just have to decide by the weekend.

post reunion blues

My cousin and uncle left on Wednesday morning. It made me a lot sadder than I expected, I've been in mourning about the loss of the cousin I hardly had before the weekend. It's sort of silly, I don't know if it's just girly hormones or what, but I think it's because my cousin and I are alike and it was fun to find a "kindred spirit," or however that is phrased.

I got to play in the pharmacy again today. As much as I like my co-workers on the sales floor, it is exciting to learn something new, and as nerdy or weird as it may sound, I just like counting pills. Today I was at one of the stations checking out pills (I should know what the position is, but I don't) and learned the basics of the computer program. Unfortunately there is a chance that they will be going back to the old computer system that they used before I started there, which would mean learning the whole process over again.

Dave is starting a small rock group at his school and is also working on the elementary concert program. It's causing some stress, but I think he's excited about the rock part. When we both come home from work with stress it seems to cause rifts and today there was a small fight. The best part about fighting is the communication afterward. I feel a lot closer and loved after those talks, but I wish I could get better at staying calm during a disagreement rather than reacting and escalating.

I'm distracted because Dave is playing The Daily Show on Hulu and it's about bed time, so I'm signing off.

Bonding and falsetto

This weekend has been pretty nice and relaxing, but also satisfying because I got laundry done and my parents really helped out with the yard, groceries, and sewing. The yard is officially raked as well as it is ever going to be, I have an okay amount of food in the house, and my mom was able to hem Dave's pants with a cuff (something I had been putting off for two months).

Today my uncle and cousin arrived from Idaho and Montana respectively. I see my uncle once a year most years, but I have only seen my cousin once or twice ever and the last time was when I was in elementary school. We all had dinner together, then said goodbye to my parents, and finally got down to rocking with my (40ish??... haven't asked or figured it out yet) cousin. We played about 3 hours of rockband and each rotated positions until Mike was singing "Underneath it All" by No Doubt in awesome (and somewhat hilarious) falsetto.

A lot of times I like hiding out in the house and not being social, but the times I feel the most alive and connected are usually when I'm with other people. I still think that I re-energize when I'm alone, but I'm still working on getting over the idea that the best time is time alone.

In case I sounded a little haughty about the health stuff in the last blog (or two?), I will now tell on myself for my eating habits today. I started out the day with a large piece of banana bread (the loaf was made with two sticks of butter), moved on to a chocolate/cheesecake cupcake, and finished out the midday with some cheesy jalapeno chips. But hey, I still took my vitamins and had some V8, does that count for anything??

loan and trip

I love that it's Friday. This week was very busy at work and we did a decent amount of cleaning at home in preparation for my parents and my uncle and cousin coming up to visit. One of my co-workers, I will call her Mother D, and I have been meshing very well and got so much done this week. She's great because she's so vocal. At times that can be a tiny bit on the dramatic side, but overall it's really nice because she's so helpful and really lets me know how things should be, and when I'm doing a good job. Anyway, I need to make sure that she knows how much I appreciate her efforts.

I'm very excited because I am planning a trip to see a friend in Norway, and because Dave and I are going to pay off his student loans. The trip won't be for a few months but things are looking good as far as saving and getting to see friends and new places. Dave and I have been saving money and after talking for a while we decided that paying off the loan was a better money saver in the end. We will try to make up most of the money we are putting into the loan in 8 months. That might not work, but I think we could probably do it in less than a year, and for now that's good enough for me. We're also looking into moving our car loan to another company but I don't know much about that so I'll have to talk to the bank. I plan to call them on Monday (sorry, a lot of this is turning out to be a note to self).

I've been trying to be healthier lately with mixed results. Overall my diet is healthier, especially at breakfast (oatmeal and V8 juice), but I haven't done exercise besides doing a yoga dvd the other morning. Most of the dvd just had me getting into wussy poses. Sorry, I know that there are tons of benefits to yoga, but there didn't seem to be anything athletic about what I was doing. It seemed like a good thing to do after a strenuous workout. I'm not going to be jogging any time soon, a mixture of laziness, cold weather, and deer hunting danger, so maybe I'll try more exercise dvds. The best outcome of the healthy eating and getting enough rest is that I haven't really been sick (unless you count the weird flu shot incident in early October). I hope everyone else out there is staying fairly healthy, or that there is good health in the near future if not.

Kiki and the food trail

As I have mentioned previously, our cat, Kiki, has problems holding down her food. She vomits a lot. We were trying different ways to prevent the vomiting. I used to brush her every morning when her fur was still long (I may go back to doing that even with the short do), we tried the "Furminator" hair brush, but her type of fur doesn't seem to work well for that, and most recently we tried a treasure path of food. When it was time to feed Kiki I picked up a cup of her food and began to drop 2-3 pieces every few feet through out the house. Kiki anxiously followed me around and would stop at every 4th or 5th grouping to dine. After a while she gave up and just looked dejected. For the next 4 days there were just pieces of her food all over the carpet. She wouldn't find them and eat them, she just came to us and complained that there wasn't anything in the bowl. Lazy. I finally went around and placed the pieces back into her food dish but we are still finding the random piece when we walk around. We read that we should be giving her some wet food or raw meat. Apparently she doesn't like either. On days that I cook meat plain before adding spices, etc. I may break some off and try that but it hasn't happened yet (tonight we're having a pork loin recipe with rice and squash).

In work news things have been going mostly well. I stayed late today because someone came in just before my shift ended to get a commode and wheelchair. There is a LOT of paperwork, for a wheelchair especially. I noticed some things that bothered me, a co-worker going to the back to get a drink and not coming back for about 10 minutes, another co-worker talking with others while things started to get busy by the pharmacy... but I am realizing that neither of the incidents lasted very long and they are probably things I have done myself without realizing it. Especially if I run into someone who needs help with something while I am just running to get water.

It's about time to take dinner out. It wouldn't be quite so late if not for all of that paperwork, but there's always an excuse.

Halloween

This is the finished product of my Sally costume. I was pretty pleased with it. A few customers at the drugstore told me that they didn't think I was real when they first came in (I wasn't moving) so that was unexpected and fun. On Friday I wore half of the costume (dress, shoes, leggings) but went home and got the wig and tights for the arms since so many people at the drugstore dressed up. I wish I had gone all out on Friday since more people ended up dressing up that day than on Saturday. I'm already starting to get ideas for next Halloween so that is exciting. I don't plan on starting that until at least end of summer though.

I am so sick of the rainy weather. I'd rather have snow at this point, it would be prettier and brighter. I don't know if I will get to the leaves or not, I don't really want to deal with them in the spring but I don't want to rake in the rain either.

There were no winnings from Dave's poker game, but he had a lot of fun seeing his friends. I'm sort of boring and dumpy today, I blame the rain. Since I'm not being very productive on here I might as well start laundry. woo hoo.

Concert

We just got back home after the concert tonight. It was definitely an experience. Dave performed much better than I. He does well with the parents, band boosters, and students. His conducting was great too. My saxophone playing could have used a rehearsal (or two). Sadly, even though I'm a musician, I was thrown off by playing a counter-point to the main theme. I've also been practicing the songs much faster than the high schoolers were playing them. I finally eased into playing at the end and it was fun. A couple of squeaks and some out of tune notes, but I'm glad that I did it. It was nice to meet some of the families and students too.

Work was slightly stressful today, one of my coworkers is extremely frustrated with any additional tasks that are added on to our regular duties. She's also unhappy that they are soon pulling me two days a week to the pharmacy (rather than working the floor). Yesterday was my first real day in the pharmacy and I learned how to do blister packs... it's packing pills for each day of the week and also divided into different times of day (like those 7 day pill organizers, except it's for the entire month). I loved it, it was calm and relaxing. I like doing beadwork and sewing so it reminded me of that somehow. Enough brain usage to keep me from being bored, but it included just methodically placing pills into the right slots and melting the sheets together to seal.

Kiki and Lydia are playing so that's nice to see. I'm ready to go to bed so I guess that's it. I'll try to write and post pictures about Halloween. Dave might be deserting me to play poker. Also I'm excited for the end of my money seminar this week. I have Thursday off since I have to work on Saturday so I can be relaxed about getting to the cities and hopefully, maybe? get some raking done since there are a ton more leaves on the ground since we raked.

Sucks-a-maphone

Another thing happening in my life currently is practicing saxophone for Dave's high school band concert. No, I am not in high school, and no, I do NOT play the saxophone as I've discovered increasingly over the last few days.
There are not any saxophone players in the high school band that Dave teaches so he has enlisted the help of two 8th graders and me to help out on a couple songs. He told me about this two weeks ago. Originally he was going to have a flute player do the sax part but she decided not to two weeks ago which is why he asked me then. I play flute and the reason it shouldn't be a horrible transition is because the fingerings for the two instruments are very similar, the reason it is horrible is my tone is awful and I play with too much stress. We've been trying out different things to improve my "honky honky" alternating with squeaky tone. More mouthpiece in the mouth, less in the mouth, tilt the instrument this way, now that way, tuck lips in, tuck one in, don't tuck them in... I should know more about this but it seems like nothing is making it better. The main thing is that I need to relax. Those 8th graders are going to school me on sax.
I also need to forget about trying to play it like a flute. I know it's obvious, but my mouth just wants to pull back and the instrument feels sort of bulky. The last few times I've practiced have resulted in mini-tantrums (one ended with a combination of many notes being blasted out and raspberry sounds). The concert is this Tuesday. The plan is to play as much as sounds good, and let the 8th graders take over if I start getting too squeaky.

Today I am working on the yarn wig for my costume. It is more work than I thought, maybe because I originally skimped on the yarn (one skein rather than the two + it's going to take). I think it's almost there though so I'm hopeful, it's the last part of the costume.
I also got some pharmacy training done online so I feel good about that since I've been putting it off for some time now. Since Halloween planning is winding down I should have more time to do that training in the evenings. Now I just need to schedule keeping this place picked up, after the costume work the place looks like a tornado hit it.

Update

I've been slightly busy making real dinners (planned ones that involve the appropriate food groups), getting ready for Halloween, and watching movies (occasionally).

Work: Work has been getting a little stressful. I still love the job, but there have been some changes to the way things are done. My co-workers, some who have worked there for upwards of 10 years, are not pleased with the changes. We receive faxes from doctor's ordering wheelchairs, dressings, and braces. The old way of doing things was to put these doctor's orders into a folder until the patient came in and requested the item. The new way is to be proactive and call the patient to see if and when they want to come in for their item. The problem is that most times we have to search for the patient's phone number (takes time), we sometimes get many orders in a day, and we have people just coming in with a hard copy requesting the item right then. Some days we have the extra time to fill out the forms ahead and contact the patient. Other days we can barely help customers who are waiting in line because things are so hectic. I decided that I am okay with doing this new way because I believe that if it doesn't work, it will be obvious and we can switch back. My co-workers who have much more experience don't feel that we should have to upset the way things were because they worked well before, why mess around with that. I don't think I'm putting it very eloquently, but that's the gist of it.

Finances: I feel like I'm relaxing a little more about our financial situation (payments for the car, higher utility costs, etc). The test will be next Sunday (the first) when I balance the checkbooks and compare our expenses/incomes to the projected amounts (I already know that both will be a little over what they should be - I get three paychecks this month). Because we have increased the amounts that we are paying on loans we are actually spending more than we did when we were in Duluth, paying rent. I'm just so excited to get those loans taken care of.

Halloween: I don't plan to go out and party, but I work on Saturday so I will be in costume that day, and possibly the day before (we have a lot more employees working during the week than on Saturdays). I already talked about going as Sally from the "Nightmare Before Christmas," and I have finished the dress, stockings, received face paint (to try to match stocking color), and gotten the shoes (from mom). I started the wig but need to add more yarn to it. Here are photos of the front and back of the finished dress I made.

Autumn snow

Even though it wasn't a total surprise, it was forecasted, I was excited like a little kid to wake up to bright white outside. It's only enough to cover most of the grass and I haven't excited Dave enough to make a snowman, or snow-Kiki which is what he suggested, but still - it's snow and not even Halloween. I don't think this has happened in a while.

One of the things I have noticed since moving here is my not worrying about personal time so much. I used to try to hoard it up as a precious commodity. I thought the more time to myself I had, the happier I would be. I still get a lot of time to myself, but I don't think about it the same way. I've finally started to see chores as things that are part of life (sometimes enjoyable) and not so much as annoying obligations. I'm also able to just do things rather than over-think them. It's still a tendency of mine to over-think things, but that has more to do with emotions than actions. If it's been a while since I've seen my Grandma (a week, like today) I just go and see her, simple. And yet it wasn't always that way. I would weigh what I needed to get done, what I wanted to do more, how the choice would affect me in the future, blah, blah, blah. Maybe I'm starting to live my life more in the world and less in my head, but I know that these are still small steps that I'm taking (visiting Grandma, getting chores done now rather than later, going outside in the morning instead of waiting until the work day is over). (I guess) I'm committing myself to living in the world more and just doing things (like the Nike motto).

In other news, Kiki puked again today. When we first got her it happened a few times until I started brushing her daily (she is a long-hair calico). After the brushing it happened only twice, and now she has a "lion-cut" hairdo so I thought the fur wouldn't be a problem. I guess it's time to start brushing again, or being more careful about her food. She has a tendency to chow down when it's there so we try to give her small amounts multiple times a day. Here's a picture of the new bouffant.


Enough blog, time to start real life for the day.
Two more pics... one from Sept and one from today -


Sorry... two more things...
1. Do I now need to rake snow along with the leaves since they have recently begun to fall?
2. Dave just came in and told me this story... The other day he had one of his second graders ask him what death was, the reason? a story that was part of his curriculum. The story involves blue jays and a coyote. The coyote wants to fly so the blue jays give him feathers and teach him a song that he must sing in order to fly (I assume that this is the musical part of the lesson, it being music class and all). Now that the coyote can fly, the blue jays tell the coyote they want to play a game and start pulling out his feathers one by one - leading to his death. Is this really an appropriate story for second graders? That's fine that they learn the blue jay song, but did the coyote have to die? what was the point of that? Sadistic little blue jays. Apparently Dave told the poor kid that death was getting hurt (I'm hoping that there is some parental involvement and that someday the kid knows what really happens when people die).
3. (last thing I promise) Netflix will be delivering Spinal Tap to us today, for the second time. Dave must have forgotten that we already watched it (because he got bored and fell asleep at the end) and rented it because a friend thought it was hilarious and recommended it. I don't care that much, just find it amusing. "D minor, the saddest key of all."

The Gorge, and Halloween preview

First I will post a few photos that I meant to have on here a few weeks ago...

"Our" lake at sunrise.
Young adult loon.
Entrance to "the Gorge."














The photo on the right is also near the entrance of the gorge and if you look closely you can see the crane that I kept trying to get
shots of, just looks like a silhouette.

Here's one of the crane even further away, but more defined.

And lastly, a shot of the gorge (this is facing away from home).


It's past my bedtime but I will say that I am fully recovered from whatever was wrong yesterday. This leads me to think it may have been the flu shot, but I guess I'll never know for sure. Dave had pep band tonight so he's a little wiped out too. I'm excited about my Halloween costume. I'm going to be Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Maybe I'll take pictures of that progress. I don't seem to be able to complete sewing patterns so I usually just make something up myself. I've been making the dress out of this left over red material (from a Queen Amidala costume, but I am only making something to copy, since I don't have extra material for the Sally costume and I did have extra expendable red material. I did trace the lines for darts from a real pattern (that was meant for a shirt), but otherwise I just took my measurements and drew them onto the fabric (it made mathematical sense at least). Yay for Fridays... the end.

oh, P.S. the gorge is what my parents (and I) call this narrow strip of water that connects the lower lake to the upper lake. There's a current and the water is deep enough to dive into (in some places). It's also a fun place to go because it's not private property (or at least no one has a house on it), and has several good places to pull a canoe up and hang out or picnic.

flu or flu shot

My temperature is raised and I am achy all over, I'm hoping that this is just a result of my caving and getting the flu shot yesterday, and not that I'm actually getting the flu. I came home from work at noon and have napped since. I'm eating left over soup and hoping that I feel better tomorrow for work. I decided not to go down to the cities for the money seminar I'm in, I think the drive would be difficult and I need more sleep than I could get if I went (11pm to 5am sleep window).

There's also the possibility that Dave will be going to the "boys weekend" at the cabin, so now I get to see him before he leaves if he does decide to go.

I've heard of a few people getting these symptoms after a flu shot, I know it's better than the real flu but still... I'm kind of a small person, maybe they should give me less of the vaccine? Or maybe I just took too long to get the shot and I have the real flu (don't think so since I plan on being better tomorrow :) ). I'm a huge wimp about needles which is why previously I haven't received a flu shot. The last shot I had was in 1997, and that was for Hepatitis B (I'm behind on tetanus unfortunately). The shot itself turned out to be no big deal, a tiny prick on my arm and soreness at the site. Apparently I just built it up enormously in my head.

Church

Yesterday Dave and I decided to try the catholic church in town (we've also gone to a different catholic church east of here). While we were living in Duluth we attended services at the Coppertop (United Methodist) church where Dave most times played guitar in the contemporary music group (during the service). This may make my mom cringe a little, but I don't really care too much which christian faith we decide to go with. I have mixed feelings about organized religion, but I definitely see many of it's benefits so I'm not at all against it - I just think there's a lot of room for improvement and that people should be able to really look at what is working and what is not. It just seems like there can be a lot of mixed signals/hypocrisy involving inclusion and loving ALL of God's people. So I will get off the little podium (stepping stool more like) to describe in detail the Crucifix at this particular Catholic church.

Most people have seen likenesses of Jesus' crucifixion at some point or another. It's Jesus nailed to the cross. Different artists have rendered the icon in different ways, and the artist (not sure who) that made the crucifix at the Grand Rapids church makes quite an impression. The church is fairly large and open (at least for this part of the country). The ceiling reaches it's highest point above the altar and about halfway between the ceiling and altar is the crucifix. The cross in thick wooden beams, just an ordinary cross, maybe life-sized. Jesus is also close to life-size, and Jesus is in immense, terrible pain. That may not seem strange, especially given how painful it probably is to be nailed to a cross. The reason it seems so different is because most crucifixes seem to show exultant, peaceful, or maybe just a little grief-stricken Jesus'. This Jesus has his head thrown back in agony, (his face is almost out of view since it's looking at the ceiling), his fingers are splayed out, on the right hand they are turned upward almost asking why, on the left hand they just seem to be stretched as far as possible to suggest further pain. His back is arched as much to his right as his spine will allow, portraying writhing pain... noticing a theme? pain, pain, and more pain. On the one hand, the crucifix shows what a tremendous sacrifice and gift Jesus provided, on the other, is that what you think of when you look at the Son of God full of misery?

Dave and I did like the sermon. It was mainly about walking your talk (don't just talk the talk, walk the walk, or however that saying goes). If you think something is important, it should show through your time, actions, and dedication. Since it was church this was applied to our faith and going to church, doing good acts, and so on, but I thought it was a great message for anything in life. If something is important to you, do other people know it? How involved are you with it?

I guess it's been a slightly philosophical day. On a lighter note, the weather sure has turned toward fall :) Work was very busy today and I was mildly frustrated a few times, mostly with mistakes I made. I'm trying to learn how to breathe when it gets busy at the drug store. This weekend Dave and I went to Duluth to see his family (Grandparents from CA came to MN to visit), and I got to visit with my sister. She just got a mini-lop bunny. It's super cute and has attitude which is nice to see (I wasn't sure how smart rabbits were, so it was amusing to see Temperance/Keystone (it has dual names at this point) be a sneak and move a blanket to get to a forbidden tunnel). On Sunday a couple of our friends from Duluth stopped by on their way home from further up north (it's sort of hard to imagine, sometimes I feel like we're it for "up north" as far as the U.S. is concerned). We had a lot of fun playing guitar hero 5 (Dave's b-day present from me), and going out to eat. The weather has been rainy and cold but it had to happen at some point.

I intend to post more photos soon"ish" so I'll find a few to leave you with.


this is my bruise from the small trees I hit with the four-wheeler, and because I'm a huge dork, there's a penny so that you have a bit of a scale to show how large the bruise is. I think the picture was taken 4ish days after said incident.





Before our friends came over on Sunday, we decided to take the 4 wheelers out for a last spin before M took them back. We went back to the mine pit and these are more pictures of where I jumped into the water. After talking to my sister I feel a little less brave and brag-worthy because it sounds like she's been off some pretty scary stuff up the north-shore of Lake Superior. Maybe next summer she can show me some of the spots :) The first of these pics is looking down to the water, the second shows Dave standing just down from where I jumped, the next one is the rope you climb back up on, and the last is just another pic looking out from the jump site.

This is where we jumped off of the "cliff," I had been hoping that I would have a better pic of the drop, but you this one just has you looking out from where you jump.

view of mine pit





more mine pit.

I'm not in much of a mood to write, but I will say that I did not escape my little mishap unscathed... I have a pretty large bruise on my thigh (might take a picture if it gets colorful enough) and I bit my lip, so the inside is a little swollen. I will have to go back to try to capture how clear the water was, and maybe try to get a shot of the drop, although I bet it's more impressive from the bottom up and I'm not sure it will be warm enough for me to jump again.

fun weekend

Life got going again (my excuse for not writing), and there was a lot of it this weekend.

We had Dave's brother and sister-in-law as well as another couple come up to visit. His brother has two 4-wheelers that everyone got to try out and one of which I drove into a small group of trees. His brother (M) was a great teacher, going over the most important things to know and addressing issues as they came up. I just needed to practice driving on a slope without trees before going into slightly more difficult terrain. I tried to keep the steering straight, but it seems that you need to be turning up the hill in order to continue straight. When I started heading into the woods I panicked and actually gave it more gas until I was so close to the trees that death actually crossed my mind as a possible outcome (I may have been thinking over-dramatically, but it happened kind of fast and the only protective gear I had on was a helmet and goggles). At the last minute I let off the gas and squeezed the handle brakes. I still hit a group of very small trees but I didn't fly off the vehicle and seemed unhurt. M was good about looking back periodically and (to my dismay) realized pretty quickly that I had disappeared from view. He came back and pushed me out of the mess I had gotten into (I was now STUCK on the baby trees). Soon enough we were on our way out to the mine pit. The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful and I became more cautious and more experienced. There was a very frightening hill I went down, but no other mishaps on the 4-wheeler. There was a fantastic view of the mine pit (which has filled with crystal clear water) and even a 22 foot cliff to jump off... which I'm incredibly proud to say I did. I didn't plan on swimming but there were four people jumping off and I knew I'd regret it if I didn't give it a try. It was incredibly scary once I had decided and was standing at the top, but the scare made the water temperature nothing to deal with. It wasn't really cold in the first place, but I don't know that I would have noticed since I had the adrenaline going. M decided that he'd better try too, very exhilarating experience. We finally made our way back to the house where we bragged to the others of our amazing feat (yes, I'm still oozing pride, sorry).

This morning I took the canoe out on my own for a couple hours. It was very peaceful and I was able to take a few photos of a crane. Unfortunately it kept flying away so none are very detailed. I will add some photos later, I need to charge my camera.

I'm already sad that our guests are gone. There was lots of eating/snacking, and a fun game of Settlers (of Catan). Dave pointed out that I sure like to be around people for someone who's semi-anti-social. The truth is that I'm not so much anti-social as I am a homebody. I don't necessarily like to go into town unless I really need something.

Jobs... I've been putting this off for a long time so I want to at least give some details. Dave found out that rather than teaching 4th-12th graders, he will actually be teaching kindergarten through 12th grade. Everyone. He also found out that his high school band has less than 15 kids and there is a pep band performance/game every week. The good news is that he likes most of the kids, the school is pretty laid back and friendly, and it's more experience.

I am working at a pharmacy in town. Currently I work on the sales floor ringing people up, starting to fit them for braces/boots/slings, and doing paperwork. I really enjoy it because I am busy (no time to be thinking about other things I could be doing with my time) and I love the people I work with. They are good people and most have a great sense of humor which is always a good thing.

That's all I have for now, but I will hopefully add those pictures soon.

Dave's car

Another long pause in blogging. I'm going to set my goals low and just write about car stuff today.

Dave had (yes, had... I'll get to that later), a Hyundai Sonata 2002 that served him well for years. I wrote about some of the things that happened around the time we moved such as helping my mom with the garage sale in GR, cleaning the apartment, the trip to OK, and finally moving up here to live. Sometime in that time period something, or rather, multiple somethings, climbed into Dave's car. I started working at the Pharmacy before Dave had to go to school so he did things around the house like mow the lawn. The lawn mower ran out of gas one of those days so Dave got into his seldom-used Sonata to get to God's Country (our gas station name, no lie). As he got in he decided that the car smelled like dead fish (he doesn't like fish to begin with, so it was really bad). Despite that, he turns the car on and sees that the air coming out of the vents is providing tufts of fur, and now despite even that he travels to God's Country and gets the gas. When I get home he is telling me about this issue and we decide the next course of action is to get the car looked at. I go to work the next day and he takes the car in. Turns out there's a "rat's nest" in the air duct, full of dead animals. I put quotes around rat's nest because it could have been mice or other smallish animals, we will never really know. The smell was so atrocious that the first mechanic would not deal with the clean-up and found someone else (with a stronger gut) to do the job. Even after cleaning out the inside area of the car and Dave cleaning the interior, the car smelled a little rancid. Dave's solution... air freshener, but not just any air freshener, Peach. Since Dave had not begun the school year yet he decided not to be literate and chose the orange colored air freshener thinking that it had an orange smell. Not so, this air freshener was distinctly labeled "Peachy Peach." At this point the car started taking on an artificially sweet, fruity dead animal scent, so delicious.

The car also started making additional sounds coming up to stop signs. Dave's parents were concerned about his commute to work and suggested that he needed an all-wheel drive vehicle. We knew we couldn't afford one of those fancy hybrids (plus I'm not sure if they have AWD), so we started looking at Pontiac Vibes. Started looking at, and ended up buying over Labor Day. Honestly, I'm a little bummed about the money, loss of money I should say, but if it really helps Dave in the winter it will be worth it. Hoping to pay it off sooner than later. I just hope that he doesn't forget how to drive stick completely, being that it's our first automatic. I'm loving the automatic locks and spacious cargo room (when you fold down the seats, it's pretty regular size when they're up) of the hatchback.

Eventually I will get to talking about our jobs, at least I got the car news out of the way.

backlogged stuff

Some random notes to start... a few posts ago I referred to my grandmother's house as uninhibited, although it may be, I meant to say it had been uninhabited. My parents came up to stay a few times, but for the most part it would have been empty if Dave and I hadn't moved in.
I would also like to write a bit about leaving Duluth and our road trip. I had four days and three nights to clean the apartment and pack up the remaining items in our Duluth apartment. Calci started having problems walking on the 3rd night and we put her down the day we needed to leave. We still had cleaning to do after that and I had to be in the twin cities by 6pm. I remember realizing as I passed West Duluth that I was leaving this town for good (or at least for the foreseeable future). I said goodbye to Duluth and tried to mentally be aware of the changes taking place. So much seemed to happen in such a short time. I went to a seminar about money (not about making money) that evening and woke up at a decent time so that Dave and I could get ready to leave for Iowa. We did a few errands and then made our way to West Liberty, IA, which is close to Iowa City. I have a good friend that lives down there and that I don't get to see very often. We only stayed the weekend but were able to see "family life" since she is married with two children (they are the perfect little family of four, although I know my friend is super excited for her husband to finally be finishing his doctorate - he's on track, it's just a long process), we ate at the Hamburg, a delicious burger joint with pie shakes, watched Rambo (the last one), and visited around a fire(pit). Next we drove down to see Dave's friend and college roommate just outside of Tulsa, OK. It was very relaxing lying around and watching movies and South Park. I was happy to visit the Gilcrease Museum of art, and we had a lot of fun at Grand Lake (of the Cherokees) where we were able to take out wave runners on the huge lake. Unfortunately we were not able to get to the ice cream tour because they were booked, but we had fun visiting, seeing another friend who came up from Texas, and doing various impressions including the Kool-Aid man. After about a week we finally returned to Minnesota and began to actually live here in Grand Rapids.
Again, thought I would have more time, but I will try to write about the jobs tomorrow. As a final thought I will say that Kiki (the calico cat) and Lydia (the ferret) have made a little headway in their relationship. Lydia does continue to initiate play, however, Kiki declines with a double swat of her claw-less paw. Sometimes Lydia just checks in with Kiki, and Kiki seems fine with that, even shows some interest with a little amicable sniffing of her own. I will leave you with a photo of a staged cuddle between the two. If Kiki is repeatedly pet and Lydia is barely woken from a slumber, they can be placed next to each other.