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!

A few hours in the life of Sharon-about-to-go-on-a-trip

It is not even funny how much you can get done the night before you have to fly out for a week, even if you hate procrastination! I don't think it was procrastination... I think it was timely pleasant stress.

I was so mindblown by how much got done that I just had to share :)  even if this is super boring. And all on 4.5 hours of sleep!

7:30am to 5pm: put in a full day of reasonably stressful work

5pm to 7:30pm:
-stopped by the orthodontist to pick up more rubber bands
-went to TJ Maxx to get a bigger piece of luggage to check (on sale for about half price. All I had before was my faithful R2-D2 baggage that was just a bit too big to carry on but not nearly full size. So a while back I bought my first piece of carry-on-able luggage... and now the real deal!)
-went to the shoe store and bought a pair of sneakers (my first pair I'd had for probably 9 years, went with me through college, to France and Argentina, etc. etc., and was bought at Goodwill to begin with...).  And a pair of sandals (my 2nd real lasting pair in my life and a bit snazzier)
-went to a SECOND shoe store and bought a pair of silver heels! just little ones.
-went to JC Penney and picked up my bridesmaid dress that I'd had to order because no store closer than 2 hours away had it, and whew! it turned out to be just the right size! :)
-on the way home suddenly remembered I needed pills and stopped by WalGreen's
-on the way out of WalGreen's suddenly remembered I needed real and decent food to eat even just for 2 more meals, and ran to the grocery store
-on the way out of the grocery store realized I might possibly need gas before driving to AND back from the airport on a late Sunday night to come... but my errand productivity had hit its limit and I refused to stop and fill up the half tank even though it was right there. I mean seriously. Who gets gas at half a tank??

7:30pm to 10:00pm:
-began packing, basically now done with it all
-managed to eat some decent food for supper (sliced carrots, cooked an egg)
-washed the dishes
-took out the trash
-called one of my hotels next week to re-arrange the schedule
-washed out a new blouse

And that may be it. It felt like a lot more. I really hope that list impresses everyone!

And maybe I will get to bed before midnight tonight.

Hope you have had all had a Thrilling Thursday and will have a Fabulous Friday tomorrow!!

~credits and thanks to Ray Sloss my colleague who likes to call the days of the week like that~

A day with my family

Hi readers! I know you have missed me, heaps. I was making my family a priority while hanging out with them over the holiday weekend. Now at 12:30am on a Wednesday morning (eeks! SO early!) I am making you a priority over sleep. Or is it because I just watched the movie The Next 3 Days and am too wound up to properly konk out?

Anyway, for kicks, I thought I would share some of the activities of a holiday Monday at home.

Since the Big Kids watched a movie on Sunday night and we finally had no place to go in the morning (after school/work and then graduation and then church) we got to sleep in. Sleeping till after 9 is such a happy healing much-needed restoration of all those little tired-out cells in your body! Breakfast after 10... an extra cup of coffee that my thoughtful mother left for me! Then it was time to go play another round of our Age of Empires multi-player game with my three youngest brothers up in the computer lab. We had started the game the day before, and now that I was slightly more familiar with it, we got into attack mode... it was rather stressful for everyone, judging by my  brothers' reactions. This is why I don't like to play computer games generally speaking, they are too stressful. Why I usually stick with Capture the Flag. 

After that I thought I would get a little bit of work done. But that was useless because my laptop browser refused to pull anything up for several hours. Seeing that it was bent on still sleeping in, I went on to the next thing. What was the next thing? This was two days ago and my memory is already failing me. I think we goofed off until just before lunch when I ran downstairs and went on the treadmill for a bit because I was going nuts not moving enough.  It was rainy you see, and we were cooped indoors instead of being outside playing racketball or Capture the Flag or other things that could properly exhaust our lungs.

After lunch it was back to the computers for more game time! This time my youngest brother Trevor and I had a "race" in Commander Keen. I was internally giggling over this the whole time because I remember Trevor exceeding my Keen skills back when he was about 4, which was already 7 years ago. But I wanted to try my hand again at C Keen for old times' sake. I think I made it to the 4th level in the 45 minutes we had... Trevor was probably already at least on level 10. It's hard not to jump at the stomping cactus enemies! Stunning the big one with 2 back-to-back shots was extremely stressful but I somehow made it. Trevor showed me the secret of saving your game just before you get to a tough spot so you can save your lives and retry as often as you need.... Genius!!

I had posted on Facebook that I was having this race with Trevor when we started. At the end of our time I saw that my sister Kendra who was (as far as I knew) still in Des Moines, commented on my wall to see how the race was going. I found that odd. Then found my mom had announced on Facebook that Kendra was here. Yikes!! Time to run downstairs and yell at her for sneaking in without us noticing!

After that we hung out with her in the living room for a while, and she regaled us with her Wicked soundtrack, which the kids all clamored for as soon as they heard the name (go figure).  They did have to put up with about 5 minutes of my Disney station on Pandora while they tried to decide what to listen to. Heh heh! 

At some point we regaled Kendra with the barbershop arrangement of "Hey Mary Lou" that we had whipped together...

Later after various other activities including listening to a lot of Wicked songs, Mommy had us gather in the kitchen to assemble our Tinfoil Dinner suppers. Originally she had planned to cook them out in our burnpile I mean bonfire pit. Since it was way too wet and rainy, we were just going to cook them in the oven instead. I had just finished a nice suite of push-ups and other strength training, so I could  barely safely slice the potatoes, or at least so I felt. Mommy had raw burger for us to each mush into our own hamburgers and layer into our dinners. When I realized Kendra was starting to giggle as I absentmindedly watched her collecting her hamburger, I spotted her blue surgical gloves and my eyes popped. "Kendra?? Seriously?!"  She adamantly held that human guts were ok but raw animal meet creeped her out. Unfortunately I didn't quite get a good picture, I had to run upstairs for my phone and by then she was peeling them off in the trash... 

While waiting for dinner to cook, some of us played the card game Scum. I was Scum most of the time, maybe Vice-Scum once. The story of my life.

And so we happily sat around the huge family table later, diving into our tinfoil dinners, discussing everything from bone tones (ask Kendra about that) to Colorado to how car transmissions work. 

Then there was cake and ice cream and further evening stuff which I can't recall.... Till the little boys went to bed and we watched the next Harry Potter movie, #6. Kendra was quite determined to have a movie night with us even though she was getting up before 5am the next morning to get to her next class in Des Moines. This HP movie is not one of my favorites and I conveniently had to leave the room to attend to something at the worst scene, I think the one with the Inferi.

And I think that's all... A typical day, nothing super amazing but just good to be home in the lovely normalcy of family. Oops, I had better stop thinking about it because now I want to go back and hug my siblings again.  Want to have my 5th brother want to play more computer games with me and my 4th brother want to play chess with me, want to sing with my 3rd brother and read the stories my 4th sister writes, and actually I want to just sit on the couch between Kendra and Carolyn again, surrounded by sisters and goofing off.

I am not proofreading any of this, that is my new rule of thumb! at least for tonight.

a milestone!

We saw my sister Kendra graduate from her Physician's Assistant program this morning. Kendra, the first Hoyt child to receive a graduate degree. The first to get earrings! Jason suggested that perhaps he could be next. We recommended a nose ring for greater uniqueness.

Extremely proud of her!! and  all the adventures braved, all the tough times fought through, yes even all the hours of sleep lost and meals skipped or replaced with junk food to reach this goal!

return to Iowa

Sorry guys, I think I forgot to post yesterday. Not that anyone cares, right? Nobody can read a blog post every day!

It was quite a day yesterday, finished by packing for TODAY - the wonderful drive home to Iowa! The first time since Christmas! Today was a 6-hour road trip to my brother's house. I thought I would share a few special moments:

-First of all, the whole trip seemed to whiz by in my shiny new red car. Even the gas tank thought it whizzed by, it just kept sitting there at 200 miles left, then about 400 miles once I decided to stop and fill it since I needed to stop for a break and water anyway.

-At some point in Illinois I swear I saw a helicopter divebomb toward the ground ahead. I was horrified and kept looking around for it as I got closer. Suddenly it zoomed up out of the trees and over the nextdoor field and I saw it was a cropduster. I was not happy with it for freaking me out. Seriously those crop dusters are insane, they swoop and zoom right over the fields and the highway. Somebody is going to die, if only from a heart attack from seeing it.

-There was one narrow escape in Iowa where a red-winged blackbird (I think?) was swooping around over the highway, it was close but it got out of the way in time.

-I managed to not stop once in Illinois and this was super funny at the time. I guess because both Indiana and Iowa are my homes, I have to be just a little biased against Illinois.

-I did have to turn around twice once getting to Cedar Rapids because I got so excited about cruising in my car... and/or so glad that those slow people were finally turning left that I didn't realize i was supposed to turn left too...

There was probably something else to share but I forget what it was. Getting sleepy and tomorrow is the big day when my sister graduates from her physician's assistant program!

oh to be a barber

---by the way: I apologize for the outdated pictures and links and stuff on this blog, I will fix that as soon as I have the time and energy---

Today I am not sure if I have any adventures to relate,  but I did want to say, isn't it so wonderful to have a hair stylist or barber who knows you well and is your good friend? So much better than going into one of these salons or cheapo quicko places. I have a friend who cuts hair in a little shop off her house, I met her when we both went on a missions trip to Guatemala, and now she is definitely my hair cutter (is that a term? well who cares!). Such a cozy little place and I can talk to her about anything, she is my adopted mom (well one of several!), and she probably knows more about my family and I about hers than you would ever expect from people who haven't actually met each other's families... What a total stress relief to go after a long interesting day at work, and unwind, and get prettier in the process, hee hee!

Anyway, (1) I wish you could all have that fabulous relaxing experience, (2) wouldn't it be fun to be a barber or hair stylist and have decent-length conversations and friendships with that many people,what fun! But actually cutting people's hair without ruining it for them would probably stress me out.

peril on a hot spring evening

I decided to start posting again so I could keep my younger siblings who are not on Facebook updated on my life. If they are amused and informed, that is plenty enough for me!

Well, people who know me know that I love weather and temperatures- all types, all extremes and everything in between. I love winter and snow and cold, I love summer and heat, love rain, rainstorms, gray skies, and blue skies too, etc. etc. For me the temperature range is as follows:  Below 20 is cold... 20-30 is chilly... 30-40 is cool.... warm is 40-90, and then above 90 it starts getting hot. I used to say, "I'm not cold, I'm Scandinavian!"  Until it struck me that I was (unintentionally) lying over and over, whereupon I considered my German and English heritage and switched the saying to, "I'm not cold, I'm AngloSaxon!"  (this reverberated into many other areas such that, "I'm not hurt, I'm AngloSaxon!"  "That doesn't bother me, I'm AngloSaxon!" .... but I digress, I guess)

My bedroom is the room I can totally control in this house, I mean in this chicken coop, and so I like to keep my windows open as long throughout the year as I can, and enjoy as much of the natural outdoor seasonal temperature and fresh air as possible. They might  be closed November through February. This year, as has become the latest fashion, spring has been basically non-existent, so we suddenly had a week of 90-degree weather in May and even though I was ecstatic, I realized I would have to do something because it is always a bit harder to sleep in hot weather. 

And we don't have the air conditioner installed yet because we don't have a drill.... We found this out after opening the new window air conditioner and figuring out how to install it while I was busy and Stacey was tired, and after I had got a huge splinter in my toe running out barefoot to hold the air conditioner in place from the outside while we attempted to maneuver it into the correct position only to find that- the screw holes were missing! After that I sat on my floor trying to pry out the splinter with a needle while Stacey chatted with the neighbors to find out when someone could come drill. It has been a long time since splinter digging started drawing blood and wreaking throbabble pain and so I was quite relieved to get it out.

After the failed installation, I remembered the brilliant idea of last summer where I propped up my box fan on my window ledge and on the ironing board so it could suck all the cool air of the night into the room and blow it all over. Aaaaahh! I was very happy. I can't take total credit for this though, it was inspired by the basic science behind my dad's construction which involved a huge fan on the attic stairs doing the same thing. Ahh fans, so much nostalgia around them, don't you find? Anyway, I was very proud of my homemade air-cooler and took a picture. With my snazzy phone of course. Telling myself, "I wasn't born yesterday!" and giggling proudly. See below for the picture.

5 seconds later I took a step backward and happened to glance down and see a grass stem on the floor, which I poked, only to find it was my needle which I had almost stepped on.

Sharon returns

So if I start this blog up again... will anybody read? or are blogs a thing of the past?

S&S's Great New England Adventure - Day 5

Well, after that exciting 4^th of July night, after which we tumbled out of the subway and into bed well after midnight, we slept in. Until 9am, at which time Housekeeping knocked on our door. What?! We were too shocked to respond… I mean what hotel would send Housekeeping around at 9 in the morning ever, let alone the morning after a holiday?! Well, it was pretty much time to get up anyway. We had a full day of Freedom Trail ahead of us.

So the Freedom Trail in Boston is: Follow the Red Brick Road along the Boston streets to visit historic landmarks! I’m serious, it is a two-brick wide red line, if it’s not in bricks then it’s in red paint on the concrete. It is a very handy way to find your way around central Boston. We visited the Park Street Church and the graveyard and the King’s Chapel graveyard (oh I was so excited about 2 graveyards in a row, especially with their beautiful headstones which tended to be a skull-shaped face between wings) and King’s Chapel and the Old State House, where we got to have a nifty little tour that explains exactly what probably happened during the Boston Massacre. We did get a little distracted on the way… once we stopped at a used bookstore where I bought 3 or 4 books for under $10, and then by the time we got to Faneuil Hall, it was closed for the day and Quincy Market was just across, and in the paved courtyard between, there was a street show going on – basically a guy who could climb a ladder without propping it against anything. Pretty neat! Then I really wanted to see Quincy Market so we walked through the ground-level floor. It’s really neat. You have to go to one such to understand, but it’s a lot of little shops selling everything from seafood to chocolate to candles under a roof, but it feels kind of like an open-air market, with a roof. So when we saw the ice cream and frozen yogurt, we decided we should get some, since we didn’t feel like taking time out for supper yet. Oh my goodness, I could get bogged down in all these boring details, let me move on… So since the rest of the sites along the Freedom Trail were closed for the day, we walked back and walked around the parks and saw the Ducks and fed the ducks in the pond – I did that is, peanut butter crackers, I had 7 little ducklings trading water right next to the edge of the pond to get the crumbs. Such fun! :)

And then let’s see… we walked around for a while looking for supper, then we finally, at the end of our footlife, stumbled into Uburger and got ourselves burgers, and went home and plopped into bed- I mean went back to the hotel and plopped.

S&S's Great New England Adventure - Day 4

And it was MONDAY! A big day! Time to leave Connecticut, and visit Rhode Island, and arrive in Boston and see the fireworks!

We drove to Newport and only turned around once on the way... I think just once. Newport was of course quite busy as it was a beautiful sunny day, much like it was when I was there one year ago. We drove to Bellevue Avenue to visit one of the mansions - the Breakers. Oh my goodness. It's so magnificent in there. It's kind of hard to imagine living there (well for simple little me anyway) but especially hard to think of the difference in standard of living between the rich and the poor, which I realize still exists, I guess it just doesn't permeate society as visibly. Oh but excuse me, all those huge mansions weren't mansions really, they were just summer cottages for the folks who owned them. Anyway, the tour was very nifty because they gave us a little ipod-thingy and earphones, which we carried around with us and pressed Play every room or so to keep following the tour and hear the descriptions. Keeps down the ruckus of a building being toured, that is for sure. I think the most amazing thing to me was that the Vanderbilts built their tubs out of 1 piece of solid marble, which made the tubs so cold that they had to be filled and emptied with hot water several times before they were actually warm enough to get in. Excuse me but I think that's kind of a dumb luxury, but anyway.

We walked along part of the Cliff Walk which runs along the coastline right behind the mansions. Beautiful of course! The best part is where the sidewalk turns into a Rock Walk, huge rocks that are flat on top that you can step or hop along as you wish. There was a horrid smell in the air that we think was the stinky seaweed washed up on the beach. I mean that it wasn't stinky to begin with but it probably got left way up on the beach and started to get over-sunned or something... We did however brave the stench (ok, it was a stench to us but probably not that bad) to walk right down to the water and stand on rocks where the waves splashed over our feet - oh! such fun! :)

And then we were very hungry so we drove off to find Panera Bread, which was easy, and then we drove around for 30 minutes looking for free parking then for cheap parking then just for how to get into the public parking period... ! Revived with food, we set off in the car to drive around the southern bay coastline on the Ocean Drive. It's beautiful, you must do it if you go to Newport. We would've gone out on the rocks again except for the smell and also our allotted time was almost up, it was time to head out to Boston.

So a couple hours later we arrived in Boston and found our hotel and found that the door closest to our hotel room can only be gone out, not back in, which was slightly inconvenient but we survived. After getting unpacked and resting up just enough for my pain pill to start killing the headache, we took the hotel shuttle bus to the subway station--

--here let me just pause and say that Stacey was the brains behind our trip and planned everything from the hotels to how we would get around each city and what we'd see, we would have been sitting in our hotel room trying to figure things out on Monday night if it weren't for her, three cheers for Stacey!--

--and hopped on the subway to downtown Boston, then we just followed the crowds to find the Esplanade where the Boston Pops was playing and the fireworks would be shot off! We couldn't see the Pops playing but we could hear them, the sound was broadcast all over the Esplanade area (which is basically the area all along the riverbanks, I believe...), it was incredible music, and then we had to figure out where to stand so we could see the fireworks. THAT was a job! Like before, we played Sheep and just followed the crowds to where they were clustered, it was a spot where we could see pretty well between the leaves of the trees along the riverbank. We had to stand waiting a while and I was about ready to give up and die and sit down, when suddenly, ka-BOOM, there they were! They were fantastic fireworks! There was music playing at the same time and most of the fireworks matched well with the music, quite mesmerizing... and then the finale was all the fireworks you can imagine in the sky at one time, ka-POP, ka-POP, KA-BOOM! all over the place!

Afterward we followed the crowd to the subway and Stacey and I just managed to squish onto the first (I think) train back... one more person got on after us and oh my goodness, that was a little closer quarters than I've ever stood to anyone and I won't go into more detail but it was definitely some kind of experience!

And we got home, I mean back to the hotel, after riding in the back of the hotel shuttle on the floor (!) and tumbled into bed and slept so hard, it was just wonderful... and that's what I'm going to do now, good-night.