Wednesday night is theater night, duh

Dear friends,

Because Wednesday night is a great night to go to the theater, right?!

Stacey and I went to see a show called the 4 Plaids. I mean Forever Plaid. Wow I really wish I knew what was wrong with my brain, I feel it blipping every once in a while. Despite being about 4 dead guys it was a pretty good show. Lots of great music! It was like a musical on steroids. Mostly 4-part harmony barbershop, so Ethan, I wish you could have been here!

These guys were pretty good, they made me almost die laughing a couple of times.

There was even a police car to let the traffic out after the show.

And now, I have no motivation to do anything. Absolutely anything. I don't even want to go to bed. Although I know it will be good for me. But I feel like it would be better for my sanity to stay up and do something fun for a while. Isn't that childish?

Well anyway, 8 more days of being a child and then the braces come off. :)  AND it is the same day as Stacey's birthday!! So that night we are going to PAR-TAY!!! :)

love,
Sharon

happy Monday

Dear all,

It feels like a normal summer weekday. For a few more days, until the NEXT TRIP hits!! Philly in 3 more days.

In the meantime though, there is not much to report. The latest adventures have been pretty normal... Staying up late on weekend nights... hanging out with friends... backing into a trailer hitch... pretty much the usual. I should probably share some pictures of that last event. It was a nice clean punch at least, right into my brand-new race-red bumper. Poor Cherry! She is a trooper though. She continues to happily zip around, enjoying the road, as I do. We are extra cautious about zipping backward though.

In other more momentous news, I believe my family is about to hit a milestone... in another day or two there will be ONLY boys at home. Plus Mommy of course. The last girl is going to college... Carolyn, the one like me. :)  In fact there are going to be 3 Iowa Hoyts at LeTourneau this year, yikes. They may form a club, a conspiracy, or just end up finding the whole campus plastered with posters about how cool they are as I believed happened a while ago. In any case, I am expecting to hear about some major momentous moments from down there and I am planning to go down and visit them sometime to help out! Hee hee.

Today was the first day I can remember talking to someone on the phone who was practically yelling at me. It was quite an experience. I managed to mentally distance myself from it, for about 20 seconds. 

Oh yes, I should add that I do have a new phone, it is a gorgeous Samsung Galaxy III that makes the coolest sounds. I could sit there and listen to the sounds all day. The water sounds when it goes to sleep and wakes up, the swishy sounds when you unlock it, best of all the bird chirp sound when I get texts or emails... I mean how much better does life get??  Sometimes though I have to admit I am slightly confused about whether that was nature or my phone.

Wishing you all a happy Monday evening,

love,

Sharon

the latest news in this neck of the woods

Hi all,

There has been a lot happening, it is time for an update!

First of all, yesterday when I got home from work I glanced in my driver's side mirror and what do you think I saw?? A spider had spun a little web right in the mirror! Of all the NERVE!! I can't imagine how it survived my efficient driving and turns... It is a pretty little guy and I have not bothered to remove him yet. Her I mean. All spiders that spin webs are girls right?

Kendra is here and we are watching a lot of movies in the evening. Well, sometimes. It is a great way to bond, by reacting to the movie and to the other's reactions to the movie.

I had a party with my Sunday School class last Saturday. They are 1st and 2nd graders. There were 5 kids who came and it was so much fun, as it always is, also quite wild. Even though I had them sit on the floor there was still a considerable amount of food and drink spilled. We had lunch and went on a trek through the nearby wilderness (the tree farm etc.) and blew up balloons and played balloon tag and then the boys carried on a good violent balloon fight which I extricated myself from in order to make the puppy chow with the girls. And then they made animals and eyeglasses and things out of pipe cleaners while I finished up the puppy chow. Then we sat around and ate as much as we had time for, before going out for a water gun fight. Which quickly became a water fight that included cups of water being thrown at people, mostly of course Miss Teacher. It was a blast! And then I sent baggies of puppy chow home with them. 4 hours goes very very fast on an action-packed Saturday afternoon. It probably took me longer to clean up than it took me to clean in preparation, but it was very much worth it. I kind of love the barely controlled chaos of kids running around. Of course I am used to having the ages a little more spread out, if they are all the same age that makes it a bit more wild.

And now I am getting ready for my 4th smart phone in 1 year, have to go with a new carrier since U.S. Cellular is getting bought out by Sprint in this region. So there you go, time for AT&T and a new phone (can't transfer phones though you can phone numbers, how dumb) as soon as I can get all the pictures uploaded off my camera, which is currently blazing along at the blinding speed of about 40 pictures uploaded a day, out of 889 total.... Maybe I will just go into the store and see if they can help me quickly get that done. I cannot sit around letting slow stuff hold me back from the future!

And besides that, tonight I have to make cookie bars for my colleague who is moving to another area of the building. And have to go shopping for the chocolate chips for those. And I wanted to watch my first episodes ever of E.R., with Kendra. And also wanted to go to bed early and get some work done. It's 6pm and I still have to take my run before getting to that. How likely do you think that is? Well I'll just have to jump in and see how far I get.

what happened a week ago today

Dear readers,

I have been home from California for a few days, part of me wants to go back and part of me is glad to be here. A few weeks of Indiana summer life before the next trip, and it is going to be a crazy couple months of travel.

Last time I think I left off after recounting the Saturday in San Francisco adventures? I know I did a very quick job of that, but hopefully it gave you a picture of the full and fun day.

On Sunday we slept in, we had yummy grilled hot dogs and buns and grilled corn and little tabouleh and couscous salads for lunch, then Natalie and I finished our movie (Little Miss Sunshine) while Jon took the dogs to the park for some exercise,which they needed after being shut up all day. Oh yes, Jon and Natalie have 2 dogs and 2 cats. I am amazed at all the animals in their apartment but it is pretty fun.

When Jon got back, he informed us that we could take the next train which by the way was in 10 minutes! That is, if we were ready. Oh my goodness! So we scrambled around, grabbed our stuff including sunscreen, and for the 2nd day in a row took off for the train station.

We took the train into town and then took a cab down the bayside (hmm the driver did not know where the Ferry building was... insane). We walked along the bay for a while, in a mall, (one of the cool urban malls with nifty stores), around town a bit, then I decided I needed to head back and head out to San Jose for work that week.

Somehow I drove to San Jose without having to turn around... more than once, initially I got on the highway headed north instead of south. Figures!! But with a GPS it is easy, and actually I kind of like the freeway ramps in California, it is easy to turn around on them. huge improvement on the East Coast and even the Midwest.

I got to my hotel and was IN AWE at the beauty of it... amazing, when I have a few minutes to collect my pictures I will show you. Got my computer online which is of course the most important part. Took a picture from my balcony. I wish I'd had more time that week to simply hang out in all the different parts of my suite and enjoy it... That is one of the things you have to keep in mind, those of you who have the working world ahead, when you have a job that sends you on cool trips, you are often busy enough that you don't often take the time to properly appreciate it even if you do initially appreciate it very much with your eyes and your gasps of delight. In fact that applies to all of life. Enjoy what you are doing right now and live it to the full. That is a paraphrase of a great quote by Jim Elliott, a missionary who died for Christ in South America.

Then I finally realized my text messaging was failing and I called the person I was meeting for dinner to find that he was already there... so I took off! I had dinner with a new friend I made over the weekend, my cousin's friend who was also there for work. We went to an outdoor mall and I picked out a French restaurant, mmmm yummy. What a fun evening and delicious food. And then it was plenty late and time for both of us to go to our hotels and get some sleep before the work week ahead.

Well I will tell you about the rest of the week in another post because this one got a bit long and I don't want people complaining that they have to read through a book every time.

bopping around San Francisco

So on my first full day on the West Coast, we got up and ate breakfast my cousin cooked, we dashed out the door with a friend to catch the train to the bike shop, where we rented 2 bikes for those of us who are just temporarily in town, met up with another friend who biked there to meet us, and set off on a bike ride across San Francisco and to the Golden Gate Bridge! which we crossed. Then we biked doooooooown the hill and found a place to park and lock our bikes, with some difficulty, and sat down to a delicious lunch which was more or less seafood for all of us. Then we went back to take the ferry back across the ferry... I mean across the bay, guess I am a little sleepy. But apparently we needed tokens and tickets to get on the ferry and there was not time to get that hour's ferry. So we got ourselves tokens and tickets for the next one and then went and sat in a little restaurant place and got something to drink and sat and chatted and bonded for a while. Oh yes, after locking up our bikes before that. so then we went and picked up our bikes again and waited in line for the ferry! And we got on it and enjoyed a nice chilly super windy ride. When we got back we rode our bikes through downtown traffic to my cousin's office because we had to wait for the next train. Oh yikes, that ride was a little interesting. Then we hung out in the office and warmed up for a while. that office is AMAZING! nothing like the cubeville I am used to. when we left, we said goodbye to one of our friends and then it was the four of us walking back to the train station. Well I said something, joking, about racing. Two of us had bikes, two of us didn't - me and the friend. The friend seemed to think I was mostly serious and that started me running and then we both started running breakneck down the sidewalk, then we were just about ready to slow down when my cousin and his wife on bikes started passing us! So we ran again really hard and just managed to run into the train station ahead. We were very excited about that. Hahaha!! These little impromptu adventures... Then we took the train, then we got home, the friend left to go to another even he needed to attend, and I and my cousins went out to a VERY cool Mongolian restaurant (are you reading this Derek??)  where you have a hot plate in the middle of the table and a pan of broth there, kept at a rolling boil, and you order different kinds of meat and vegetables and other things that you want, and you take pieces of them and dip or leave them in the hot broth to cook for a minute or two, then eat them... totally new incredible experience! I have to learn how to do that. Probably not hard, just takes some prep. If you ever get the chance to have Shabu Shabu (i think that's what it's called), please do.

And now we're back home chilling, Natalie and I are watching the first part of a movie (Little Miss Sunshine),, and I should really go to bed. It is 12:40 here and 3:40 Indiana time. Yikes! But a very fun day. Tomorrow should be more relaxing, although, I would totally take another day like this.

jumping back in history for a moment

Dear all,

When I went to the airport to leave Philly back in June I had some fun getting to my gate, so thought I would share... I typed this out back on the day it happened and never remembered to post it.

This afternoon my flight was at 6pm so I left my cousin’s house around 3:15. They only live 20 minutes from the airport. But here’s the story. First I set off toward what I thought was the nearest gas station, I just missed it apparently, after a couple minutes I put it in my GPS and circled back around to it. Then I pulled up on the wrong wide, the gas tank was on the other side. Then I could not figure out how to open the gas tank!! There was no fingerhole on the tank lid and no lever anywhere in the car…. So I had to Google that on my phone and it said to push the gas tank lid. I was so mad, I did it and it opened. But it was funny. Then I drove off to the airport. I missed one of the turns on that really big ridiculous traffic circle so I had to take a back way to the right road (my GPS rerouted of course), then I found myself at a 4-way stop on this new route between 2 Drexel police cars. I was slightly freaked out but laughed about it right away. Fortunately they weren’t with me long. Then there were cars stopped on the road I needed, got around them. Then there was one-lane construction ramp, finally got past it and to the airport. Then the lady took a while to figure out how to split my charge for the Avis rental. Then I had to wait for the bus. Then when I got to the airport they did very quickly check my 1 bag for me but security was a long line. Then I got almost all the way to my gate printed on my ticket and looked on a flight info board and it said it was a different gate on the other side of the airport! Before I went all the way down there I asked someone and they confirmed my 1st gate was right. I had to ask the lady at the gate too because the sign said it was going to San Juan Puerto Rico. That would have been a fun place to end up but I guess it’s just as well I went home. On the plane I sat next to a married couple so there wasn’t a lot of point in trying to talk although I did have to ask them about my seat belt which had a weird detachable part… hahhaha! They said I won the prize for having that. On the flight first I dozed for a while and then I read a book. Hmmm I had better stop talking, this is getting pointless to go through all the details. But it will make my blog post about these adventures much faster! Haha, sorry, that will be a repeat for you then. So anyway, I am in the right gate for my flight to South Bend and I shouldn’t miss it.

heaps of stuff!

Well, I think this year I am going to beat last year's record. Last year I recall that I did not even leave the state of Indiana in the month of July... though I did every other month. This year I am going to California. Yikes!

Yes, a new work trip, I can't say I balked at all when the San Jose site asked me to come out for a few days. Have never been to California and am extremely curious and a little nervous about it. Will the air feel different? Will California smell weird? Will I fall over and pass out? Will the people speak the same language as me? Ok, I better stop. :)  haha!  Regardless I am looking forward to it, and I really hope this time I can avoid missing my connecting flight and showing up late at my hosts' home. How handy to have second cousins basically right in San Jose a few minutes from the airport!

the other grand bit of news is that I had an orthodontist checkup today and my orthodontist gave the go-ahead to schedule the last 4 appointments, which involves everything necessary to take the braces off. I have been saying for quite a while that I will actually be a little sad to lose the braces and lose my teenager identity, and yes I will be a wee bit sad about that, but now that they have said it is almost time, I am truly excited to have them off. Funny how that works. I guess you start looking forward to whatever you know is coming!

Right now it is 10:37 and we are sitting around waiting to see if the bible study group who basically all couldn't come at the regular time was serious about coming around 10:30 or if it was just a joke. It is so hard to tell with these people. I need faces to look at. And people to make the sarcasm sign if they are actually joking. But it's cool, a little time to hang out with Kendra and update the long neglected blog. But nobody has been complaining very vocally... That is, at all... So I must assume no one cares too much. Nevertheless I will try to do better!

Well, I better go brush my toophers and floss and all that good stuff, especially to impress my dentist tomorrow morning. He is going to be super excited to hear about my braces! Come to think of it, I will miss my orthodontist and all the techs there. My orthodontist has a standing joke about "this appointment is going to hurt" or "pull a little to make it hurt and she might bring it treats" because once it did hurt so bad I cried, and then I felt bad, and brought in brownies as an apology. Hahaha! Some great laughs over the last 2.5 years.

Happy Friday!!!

time wants to run when you're having fun

How did a whole week run away and I did not notice?! 

Last weekend when I left you, we were jumping full swing into wedding preparations... I spent all afternoon helping with that (including cleaning a bathroom at our friend's house... which is really ironic since I almost never clean the bathroom here, dishes are my assigned chore), then we had the wedding rehearsal and dinner afterward at Hacienda, then we ran home to find KENDRA was here!! That was exciting. Then we ran out again for fireworks. Winona Lake fireworks were a slight disappointment in the length, I think they only lasted about 20 minutes, and we missed the first couple minutes. However they were very beautifully staged and delightful to watch. But the length was more than made up for the following night when we spent at least 30 minutes watching fireworks exploding right over our heads at the wedding reception. That was a great day and probably deserves its own post. I really hope someday I have the time to sit down and write all the things I should. Till then I will try to keep my readers updated while occasionally picking some adventures to describe in more detail.

The last week with Kendra here has been fun! I think we have done something fun every day. Basically. Fun on purpose I mean. Just hanging out with siblings is fun, you know. So many inside jokes and shared memories and total license to pick on each other... !

She did totally blow me away on Thursday with the news that she had passed her board exam which oh, by the way, she had taken on her way out here but had not told us!

Today the plan is to go shopping, because we need clothes. And we have tried the shops in Warsaw and they have not measured up to our needs, so we are going to go hit The Mall in Fort Wayne!

And then we have to come back and go to the last Masterworks concert of the season and.... etc.

Have a great Saturday!

4th of July weekend...

Hi guys! Sorry. The slacker blogger finally updates. I am not doing very well at keeping this up! Not from lack of desire, just from the busy-ness of life. Even now as I sit here my fingers are still damp from washing dishes, after a morning of booking a flight to California (next work trip) and running errands and cleaning the house in preparation for Kendra coming! and even I am trying to stuff down some healthy food before going next door to help with wedding prep. 'Cause our super good friend Elisabeth is getting married tomorrow! And I am a bridesmaid so I should help. Plus a good friend and next-door neighbor so I want to. :)

Yesterday was July 4th as I'm sure you know. I confess I didn't spend the WHOLE day in patriotic celebration, I spent some time in the morning practicing hairstyles and sandal tying with another bridesmaid. You may ask yourself "sandal tying?!?"  Well for the wedding we got these sandals that have the foot part and then several loops for a long ribbon, which you can tie through the loops different ways for different styles. The ribbons are pretty long and there are a LOT of different styles so we had to find one that we liked, that looked good with the dress, that felt good on our feet and wouldn't let the sandals fall off. We were successful after just 3 tries. Then I can't remember what I did all afternoon... Oh, I took a walk, and researched lots of different flight options so I could get the best one today. Different airports to fly in and out of, different times, different prices... complicated! Then I made some brownies and drove up to Goshen (stopping to pick up potato salad on the way) to hang out with Uncle Doug and Aunt Cindy and a couple of the cousins and a couple of the first-cousins-once-removed (otherwise known as FCORs). I did my best to explain this term to them (the once-removed ones, who incidentally are all 12 or under) and they mostly had it by the end of the evening. Had grilled corn on the cob for the first time ever! Cut mine off of course. After dinner and a game of Apples to Apples, in which my 12-year-old FCOR won, we went out to the driveway to set off some fireworks! Josh said that some of them were illegal but some of us were slightly doubtful he could have just walked into WalMart and bought illegal fireworks. They were all very fun... I set off a couple too. Some of the neighbors stopped over to help us.

And then I drove back to Warsaw and decided that 60 miles left on my tank of gas was plenty to leave that chore over until today. There were a lot of fireworks to see on the way home.

And then I watched part of a movie at 11:30 before going to bed because you know on these holiday times you can't just go to bed right away!

Well I hope you all had a good 4th of July, thanking God for the country we have to live in, and I hope you keep enjoying the weekend! Stay tuned for more wedding weekend updates. :)

just another Friday night

I realize I am supposed to finish the Dunes story, but that is a bit long to tackle tonight, and you surely don't want to wait a couple more days for any blog post at all, right?

Today when I walked out of work on Friday I felt a great sense of accomplishment. I had met my deadline, cleaned up some of my email, and the week before I had been notified that I was getting another raise. So, I decided to go shopping!

Often I dread clothes shopping because it takes so much time, with not a lot of return. But this time I was blessed to pick up several useful items, including...  .... MY FIRST PAIR OF NEW BLUE JEANS EVER BOUGHT WITH MY OWN MONEY. I know that is just ridiculous. But I have never found new jeans I liked even though I have tried tons of kinds. Most of the ones I have found up until now have been from Goodwill, because that at least has a wider range of styles and sizes which might actually fit. And one pair of "black" jeans from JCPenny's. And I did have one brand-new pair of jeans a long time ago but that was a gift to me after the WalMart bleach spilled down the jeans I had. That was probably when I was 13 or so... can't remember. Anyway, this is a pair of Levi's! I didn't even realize it when I bought them. They weren't even where they were supposed to be I don't think, but I noticed they were my size and also Short, and I thought, "ooo, I was about to walk out of the store but let's try these."

Then when I was in the checkout line, a nice man behind me gave me his 30% off coupon which he said he wasn't using (? go figure) and even got them to give me credit towards my next purchase... Basically he was very nice. So it was a rather pleasant trip to the store. I did leave my necklace in the dressing room by accident, but when I got home and realized, I called them and they found it for me. Don't let me forget to go pick that up tomorrow.

Have a happy weekend!!

dunes day - part 1

Friday morning when I woke up, I had no plans for the weekend, other than maybe shopping and the usual housework, and it sounded lovely.

Friday afternoon one of my friends sent a message round to the girls asking if anyone was up for one of several different activities, one of them being a day at the the beach about 2 hours away. At first I thought, wow, there goes my whole Saturday and I will not accomplish anything if we do that. But the more I thought about escaping to the beach... It ended up that all 5 of us wanted to go to the beach, even last-minute.

So Saturday morning we got up not too early and somehow got ourselves together and packed up all our supplies (including lots of snacks) and went to buy water and still more snacks ('cause you don't want to starve at the beach... what a dreadful way to go!)  Finally around noon we left Warsaw. Of course, I offered to drive us in Cherry. So there we all were cozy in a zippy little red car, deeply anticipating the beach joys ahead.

It took us a little bit to get there because, for some reason, Highway 31 turned into Business 31 and 933 and was no longer itself. So at the last minute we swerved left onto the 80/90 toll road (Ok... so we didn't quite swerve) and had not even gone all the way up the ramp onto that highway before we discovered that staying on 933 would have intersected us with 12 after all. Oh well. So we stayed on 80/90, we got tired of the radio and started messing around with one of my CDs to put in, the girls decided to listen to the "handsome guys" (Il Divo) which I was pretty happy about because (A) I thought I had lost that CD months ago, (B) I love their music. Well by the time we had got it safely in I saw a sign passing and gasped, "Oh - did we want 12??"  Thankfully my extensive experience of turning around enabled us to get quickly back on track. Then we didn't see the name of the next road so...passed that one too. Then we were finally on Broken Arrow highway... Oh wait. They kept telling me it was Red Arrow or something. I don't know why I had Broken Arrow stuck in my head.

By this time Sharon is feeling quite short on protein and I confess if there's one thing that makes me irritable... So I insisted that we stick to the original plan and stop to get some lunch. The first place we stopped did not allow take-out. So we went across the road to a Mexican grill and we all ended up getting 1 taco apiece. And took them with us to the beach which we FINALLY reached!!

~~ by now you are probably about ready to quit reading for the day... I wouldn't blame you ~~

When we first got out of the car we were kind of surprised to find that it did not feel so deliciously hot as it had back in Warsaw, and even rather cloudy up here. I began to think it wasn't very smart to not have brought sleeves. But the AngloSaxon spirit in me rose to the occasion, as it usually does, and we all got ourselves down to the beach and settled on our towels with our tacos.

I can't even convey the sweet peace and happiness of finally having a full tummy. And my less-than-8-hours of sleep and the increasing warmth of the day came to bear on me until I clunked out on my towel... Well not until I had lathered sun screen all over. I even had Stacey help me with the back. Unfortunately while I was proactively thinking about that, I totally forgot about my chest and so... But that will come up later in the story. And finally, after this exhausting effort of putting on sunscreen, I collapsed on my towel and began the afternoon with almost falling asleep on the beach.

Well, I am not sure this story really merits 2 parts but I guess that is what will happen!

adventures with Sharon on a Friday evening

Hi kids!

Sorry, it's Friday night you know... and even if some of you are not kids, I can't help it, it's the big sister coming out in me.

So I am sitting here at my lovely Lenovo with my SUPER COOL Logitech wireless mouse! It has only taken me about 3 years to get a wireless mouse... Not too bad. It feels very nice to not be using that little red dot or the not-quite-specific-enough touchpad.

This evening after I got home from work and errands (errands such as picking up my super cool new mouse!), I went out for a quick run. Well while I was running out through the tree farm on my way to run, I ran right through a little patch of insects! And they started swarming all around my head and flying above me as I ran on! At first I thought they were just a pack of annoying gnats or flies. Then I looked up and they were bigger! but not big enough to be real bees or wasps! And they would not leave when I swatted at them, and I started sprinting to try to outrun them, but I couldn't! And then terrified I thought that they must be some kind of mini killer-bee that would start stinging welts all over my face and I would suddenly find I was allergic as my body violently reacted and my throat closed up and I fell to the ground... Somehow I kept running even though they stayed with me. My last desperate thought was that I could run back to the house and grab some bug spray and spray them till they fell out of the air dead. And then, I realized they were no longer with me. Maybe they read my mind? At any rate it was quite a horrific experience and I made sure to avoid that whole area when returning. I do not usually get to start my runs out with sprints, guess it was a nice change of pace. No that was not a pun! Come on, you know I do not say this stuff intentionally.

Well, this has been another episode of Adventures with Sharon. Tomorrow we are planning a beach day, so I should have plenty to tell you about that afterward, like how it was to hang out in the sun for the first 30 minutes, then the next 30 minutes, then the next 30 minutes... And also hopefully swimming (trying to keep learning anyway) and running up and down the dunes till we fall over gasping in the sand. :)

everyday pain and other everyday stuff

Well as usual I forgot to remember to update my blog until bedtime!  But I will write a few lines anyway.

10:30 is the new bedtime. I made an effort to get some sleep once I got sick, and I got so high on the euphoric morning rested feeling that now I have to keep it up... :)

It has been a normal week I guess. Work all day, errands and housekeeping and stuff in the evening. Today I cooked for the first time in probably weeks. What was on the menu, you ask?? Well, it was quite gourmet! Bacon and asparagus! which I made enough of to share with Stacey. And tomato and corn tortilla. And I had found this little 2-pack of chocolate pie at the grocery store on Sunday so we had that for dessert.

There is nothing like cooking food and doing dishes and having a piano in the house to make you feel like you have a home!

I burned my pinky finger while cooking the bacon. Did you know that hot water is not really soothing to a burn? As I found out while I was doing the dishes. But I toughed it out and eventually my finger got used to it and the pain became less searing and less long-lasting. These small actions of bravely surmounting difficulties, of whatever size, are the stuff that truly tough people are made of. Don't you think?

Hope everyone has a Thrilling Thursday tomorrow!! (and I know you think that sounds like a name I made up, but that is not my name for it, I got it from a colleague!)

oh no! quick quick!

Oh my goodness I haven't updated the blog in a while! But I just have 2 hours until bedtime!! What can I say?

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

How many words can you make up with that? If you need something to do. Hee hee

ah-choo

I don't know about you guys but I HATE colds. Forgive me for using the h- word. I have said in the past that I would rather break my leg than get a cold, I suppose that is extreme but whenever I have a cold I still feel that way.

This cold hit me like a wagon of bricks that stopped and catapulted all the bricks over at me, the first few fell like random allergy-induced sneezes and the rest came down late last night, as we were finishing up Bible study and hanging out with friends... Actually the real WHOMP was around 3am when I found myself lying in bed struggling to swallow without extreme trauma. I immediately self-diagnosed strep throat although  I have to admit the pain wore off partway through the next morning, so there was probably no way it was strep... Anyway without sickening you with all the dirty details of a cold, this one is progressing so fast that I do have some slight hopes maybe it will already be wearing off by Saturday, which would be nice, since I had plans.

The crazy thing about a cold though is that sensation that ripples all through your body, the sensation that every single one of your kazillions of cells is only functioning at 20% capacity or less and it is just not quite enough for you to move without fatigue.

But can we all agree that pain pills are a lifesaver? Pain pills have seriously decreased my misery level more than that DayQuill stuff did. I love pain pills, don't you??! Don't worry... I did not even come close to taking the amount they say you can.

Well I hope you are all staying healthy and far away from illnesses of every type, and enjoy breathing in the beautiful air!

approaching the end of an era! ....

Guess what!!

I went to the orthodontist today,

and he said,

"Looking good! Almost done!"

In fact it will probably be 3 months max until they are off.  Somehow this is way sooner than I expected, I guess I figured that 2.5 years was an estimate and it would go a little past.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry! How about both.

At least I have a little time to prepare myself for my identity without braces. :)

worth several thousand words

Hi my readers,

I thought that today, instead of throwing a bunch of words at you, I would just share some pictures from the last week or so. But then I found I actually have to upload all those pictures to Dropbox and then load them off onto my computer. So, how about some older pictures?

of us holding a baby :)

A couple weeks ago we got to meet Alexa, who is my housemate Stacey's first and new little niece.

Here she is with Grandma Bollman...

And here is Stacey with her niece!

And I got to hold her too :)

Awwww!

Babies are such a miracle! Can you believe it?! That God creates a totally new life from two people who love each other! I could cry from sheer overwhelming happiness just thinking about it.

MLB!!!

Well, when we found out I would be in the Philly area for work, my good friend Shawn (from Philly) suggested that we could go to a baseball game while I was there... Hmm... How about YES!! My first major league baseball game, I was SO excited and spent weeks and weeks looking forward to it!

The big day finally arrived and we drove to the sports complex! and slowed down quite a bit trying to get into the parking, but finally succeeded.  As we walked toward the stadium we could hear the last bit of the national anthem ('cause we were a teency bit late) and I could feel the excitement swelling up inside me even as the crowds swelled up around me as we all crowded through the security area... I had to say goodbye to my carefully brought water bottle and had my bag searched but it was worth it to have the bag so I could put the bobble-head in it! Yes, everybody who went to the game that night was handled a packaged bobble-head of Carlos Ruiz, one of the Philly catchers.  But he was pictured as being at bat... that is the part I did not quite get. 

We got to our seats which were in quite a nice place, down relatively close to the field where we could see all the action. Oh so exciting! Phillies vs. Marlins.

The game went along pretty quietly for a while... Somewhere in the first few innings the Marlins scored a couple of runs. The Phillies had not gotten any yet. After a bit we went to hunt down some food to sustain us through the rest of the game. Hot dogs!! The line took a bit but we finally emerged with our awesome hot dogs... And there was of course ketchup and mustard and pickle relish to put on them, AND sauerkraut! I have to admit I would not have thought of sauerkraut as a traditional hot dog condiment, despite growing up near Ackley of the renowned Sauerkraut Days, but hey... I will try almost anything and it was super good. Well when we had our arms full of food, we had to wait to descend to our seats again because the Phillies were at bat and you know what havoc might ensue if some dumb people got in the way of Phillies fans watching their team batting.

The game kept proceeding rather frighteningly smoothly and quickly and we kept waiting for the Phillies to get their act together and score something... Finally they did! It had to be at least the 7th or 8th inning when they finally tied with the Marlins. I can't remember the exact inning numbers after this, it all gets kind of hazy....  Well we were getting down to the very end stretch, I can't remember if it was the 8th or 9th. The Marlins were at bat and one of their batters somehow GOT TO SECOND. When the umpire called him safe, it started, it was a low rolling rumble at first and then it just surged up mightily and moodily into a wide wide  I had never heard anything so loud, it was louder than any of the preceding cheering. It finally stopped, but then as soon as the next batter stepped up, there it was again... Boooo, boooo, boooo, boooo, boooo. I seriously did not know whether to be tremendously ticked off or giggle uncontrollably. Mostly I defaulted to the latter. It was such a childish sulky rebellious thing. Some people were joining in just for fun too, because they thought it was funny, they could not keep from smiling even as they were still booing Shawn may have been one of them. 

Oh I'm sorry, I got so run away by looking at the booing that I forgot to finish telling the game story. Well! ... Let's see. The Marlins did get at least 1 guy home that inning. BUT then Phillies tied them at the bottom of the 9th. Oh my goodness!! Extra innings!! In the next set, the Marlins scored some more! Oh my goodness. Because the Phillies had just recently gotten their first 2 hits of the game, I guess a whole bunch of fans went extremely negative and flooded out of the stands because they didn't expect the Phillies to get any more in time. I mean seriously, it took them practically the whole game to score anything at all, it did not look extremely hopeful. But who would walk out on a game... that's ridiculous. Well after they were all out of our way,

the Phillies were up to bat again, and this time, what do you know... they tied with the Marlins again, this time with a home run!!  Whoop-dee-doo the "Liberty bell" went off! (there is a huge "bell" on the edge of the stadium that rings whenever there was a home run).  It was extremely satisfying to finally see a home run, there were probably at least 2 or 3 balls earlier in the game that were seriously within 1 foot of being a home run but didn't quite make it. Well. There we were again, tied at the bottom of the 10th. 11th inning!

I can't remember if the Marlins scored... I do remember the booing kept coming back. And there was some Marlin dude that made it to 2nd base and the ump called him safe... You can just imagine the crowd's reaction. They would never stop booing now.

Then the Phillies were up to bat and they got a guy on base, and another (I think?), and then...

HOME RUN!!!!!

The stands went nuts. As that ball went sailing up we leapt to our feet and screamed and cheered. It was amazing!

Well, I think that was the end, hopefully I didn't leave out anything too significant, it was certainly a tremendously exciting game. All the action was basically in the last 3 innings. Such a great way to break into major league baseball!

And you should look up the Phillies Mascot, the Phanatic - he is crazy and so funny!

Well I will leave you with picture proof!

a very short history of the week

My dear darling beloved readers,

Well that was just about too sappy for you to want me to actually write you an update on my adventures, right?? hee hee!  I do apologize for the extreme lag between last post and this one.

Since it's almost midnight and we will of course get up for church in the morning, I thought I would just send you a brief overview of the week's activities for now (so you can be really impressed with how much I have done this week) and then next time I would like to send you the story of the Tuesday baseball game!

Saturday morning - Landed in Philly... drove to Jeremy & Lillian's house, in bed before 3am.
Saturday - A bit later in the morning, got up, enjoyed a nice leisurely late breakfast of eggs, toast, and BACON with J&L before driving off to Uncle Sherwood and Aunt Sharon's house, where I spent the rest of the day, including a yummy cookout and the movie Midnight in Paris.
Sunday - Got up and went to church; came home and chatted and relaxed and napped, then went to the house of my colleague/friend and had dinner and playtime with his family. Then drove to hotel in downtown Philly.
Monday - Got up and drove to Princeton NJ for 2 days of meeting. In meeting till 6:30. Went to dinner with colleagues. Then stayed up late!
Tuesday - Got up for Day 2 of meeting. Miraculously able to leave by 5. Drove back to Philly for the Big Major League Baseball Game!!! Very exciting. Story to come. Then back to aforementioned downtown Philly hotel.
Wednesday - Finally got a bit of sleep. Worked! Went to lunch. Went to afternoon meeting. Worked some more. Walked down the street to dinner on a boat. Hung out with colleagues there for dinner and dessert and THEN went up a few streets to have some really truly Philly cheesesteaks. And then back to the hotel and bed.
Thursday - Worked. Had lunch. Worked more. (I was supposed to be attending a conference but work was more critical).  Went to a specially arranged dinner at a museum with all the conference people. Got back to hotel, finally had a chance to move a little bit, by taking a nice walk with a friend and chatting. Went to bed.
Friday - Worked! Checked out of hotel room. Attended very last session of conference (!). Worked a bit more. Went and got lunch. Drove to Jeremy & Lillian's house for some more cousin visiting time! Worked a bit, went out for dinner in rain (but the restaurant we went to was indoors, don't worry, oh and we did drive too), the rain from the remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea. Learned to play Dominion, I beat Jeremy but was beaten by Lillian.
Saturday - Got a decent bit of sleep again. Saw J&L off to their day's activities. Read, worked a bit. Drove to NJ to hang out with a friend for the evening, ate some extremely spicy curry. Drove back and got home before midnight.

And now it is time to go to bed again and get up for my last day in Philly. I can't believe it, it will be so weird to go home!

what happened at midnight that should have been history

So I know people think that I am a travelbug and probably totally on top of it... Well, forget that, nobody would jump up and shout "On top of it!" if they were asked to spit out 4 words describing me. However I have never had any self-caused travel mishaps until yesterday. Well, except getting the Ovaltine through London customs, which was ultimately a success story... that's another story for another time though.

Yesterday I was flying to Philly to spend the weekend with cousins before a week of work in the Philly/NJ area. Of course I had made arrangements for a Friday evening flight to max out my time with people! Now because there is almost never a direct flight from Warsaw to anywhere (except Dallas), my connecting flight was through Chicago. So I left South Bend at 3:45pm on Friday and got to Chicago at 3:30pm, time travel backward! When I got there I had a 3-ish-hour wait, so I did some work, went on a treasure hunt, got some dinner (my first Johnny Rockets burger, woohoo!). I got back to the gate in plenty of time prior to boarding. I waited and waited... watching the tornado news that was playing non-stop on the TV... Nothing. Finally, 15 minutes after my flight was supposed to leave, I started to get panic-stricken and look around for someone to ask. The tricky thing was that my flight was a US Airways flight, but it was in a United terminal that was basically all United gates except 3 for US Airways. And all the US Airways people had disappeared a little prior to my supposed boarding time, and of course no United people knew anything. Well, after seeing nothing about my flight number on any of the screens and seeing online that this flight had supposedly been switched to a gate at the opposite end of the airport (!!!), getting quick panic-stricken, I finally stumbled across a chance US Airways person and asked her about it. She said I had missed the flight, it had switched gates - to the one right next door! - and they had announced it a ton of times, and that if I didn't see people aroud my gate 15 minutes prior to boarding I should go asking people about it. Imagine my distress, even if you have no sympathy for my being out of it -- I had heard NOTHING and seen nothing this whole time. I was horrified. She said she was not really supposed to set up flights for people on another airline but she did find me one 2 hours later with United. Maybe the fact that I was on the verge of tears with braces eked out just the sympathy needed to get me that flight. I don't know. anyway there was no extra charge, I went and checked in for that flight, and waited. For a while tears streaming down my face because my dear cousins in Philly would have to wait up at least 2 extra hours for me just to get in. And also because my phone battery was getting close to the end of its life and I could not find an outlet to charge it, and how was I even going to keep my cousins in the loop and use my phone as a GPS when I got there?! Finally I got up to look around for an outlet with more determination and I found one that I could sit down next to and plug into. I had just started doing this when a young man in a seat nearby said, "Hey ma'am, if you want to plug in, there's an empty chair right here," and they had outlets right next to each chair. "It's nicer than sitting on the floor, just saying," he grinned. So I sat down there to charge it for a bit. I worked up the courage to ask him where he was headed and we chatted for a bit. He was a very pleasant free-spirit type, in the military, on his way to a new post but missing flights and getting delayed not by his own fault. Anyway it cheered me up quite a bit to talk to someone, and we both agreed that talking to people in airports and on planes was considered weird by other people but that we both enjoyed it a lot and had great conversations. After this, it was time for me to go make sure I was truly properly checked in and almost time to board... Well, boarding was delayed a bit till the gate was free and our plane was de-planed from its previous load of people. So by the time we finally left Philly it was already at least 15 minutes late. We seemed to be taxiing on the runway forever prior to takeoff. Maybe just because I was dozing in and out. Shortly into the flight, I was quite freaked out by the fact that the cabin lights came on, there came a distinct slight smell of something burning, and the pilot asked everyone to unplug everything they had plugged in "for just a moment"... but never said when people could plug things back in. Well, I guess the cabin lights  must have actually been for the sake of the beverage service, but I never found out about the other two bits. Also there was a considerable amount of turbulence much of the way even though we were heading a bit north to avoid weather... Ahh yes, that made our flight time a bit longer too. I should have asked about those mystery items but I was just kind of out of it due to tiredness and desperation now.

---Keep in mind that this is after a week of less-than-ideal sleep, particularly a night of 4.5 hours due to staying out late with friends, and then a short night that was interrupted by violent wind which woke me up---

Well, I must have dozed off for part of the flight because it did seem awfully short for over 2 hours, minus those pockets of excitement, at which time I did again mentally prepare to die. But thank the Lord we landed safely around 12:30. After we got off the plane, I went down to baggage claim, went to the office to ask about my bag which should have been on the earlier flight (how was the bag to know I was going to miss the flight, after all). I was behind a man who had also had bags on the earlier flight and the lady looking them up said the last track they had was such-and-such time and they would have to file a claim. I was slightly terrified to hear this, especially when the lady helping me began to say they would have to file a claim for mine.... I knew I would be hopping around to different locations practically each night and gone from Philly for a couple nights, and basically ALL my stuff was in that bag. Just as she was finishing saying this and I was prepared to try asking some last questions without crying, she said, "Oh wait, it's over at US Airways." Relief!!! Then I just had to find the US Airways baggage claim... had to ask several people, including the flight attendants from my flight who were rather confused about what direction C would be even though we were standing right in front of D... Well, I made it over there and claimed my bag in great happiness. Took the shuttle to the rental center. There were 3 of us who got off at Avis and there was just one Avis person working there. The first guy in line was Avis Preferred and because the car was not right there waiting for him, he had to go bring it up, because that was protocol. He apologized and the Avis Preferred guy apologized and those of us waiting just said, "no problem!"  next it was my turn and the arrangements were made in short order. I went out to my car with some great anticipation, what model and color would it be.... Wow! It was a Chevy Cruze, a beautiful rose-pink-maroon color! I really liked the color the minute I saw it. And it was a Cruze which was the rental car in Dallas I had previously returned for being "too new", but now I knew how they worked, and fortunately the key was normal, not one of those "push-and-start" types. So I arranged my mirrors and everything and headed to the exit. Only to find there was a car ahead of my that was having issues. Fortunately that was only a couple-minute wait and then they had to pull aside and I got to go through. My little phone GPS got my safely to my cousins' area, though as usual it rather threw me off with some of the one-way roads and names right around their area... I found a place to park that was not much of a walk. Called to let them know I was headed over, as they had instructed, just for my safety. Got to their street and then I was not sure which way they lived on it, right or left, but I quickly ascertained that by going right and discovering the numbers were descending away from theirs. Went left and there was Jeremy waiting for me on their porch! Ahh what relief!

And so around 2:30 or 2:45 I tumbled into bed and must have drifted off...

Oh, I forgot to explain the title of this. At midnight I should have already been in their house, but what actually happened was I was in a plane approaching Philly. Oh well. By the way, I love flying in over Philly at night, it looks like TwinkleTown to me. There are all these little lights that twinkle. Probably because of all the trees that wave in front of lights. At least that's my intelligent guess.

Well I hope this story has somehow entertained you or at least encouraged you that you have not missed a flight by your own subconscious deafness like me!