This week would be classified by my grandfather as mundane, but sometimes those are the best:
Eating a good tuna salad sandwich Rain that makes the earth smell good Planting herbs and hoping my brown thumb doesn't kill them Good pasta Watching So you think you can dance with my sister Helping load photos onto facebook Having friends over to watch a chick flick (Lake House, so good) Leaving work at 5:30 even if things aren't completely done Daisies Brand new conversations
And mostly, it is the anticipation of good things to come.... the rainbow after the rainstorm. I have always felt when school started, a new year started, and even though I am not in school anymore, I still feel a bit of anticipation when the summer begins to wind down in August. August is full of last minute summer plans, doing all the things you meant to do all summer. August is also when you get ready for the year ahead, go clothes shopping for crisp new jeans and empty notebooks. August will be completely starting the new job, and leaving the old one behind. With tax free shopping day, I will probably try to find a pair of jeans for old times sake. And who knows, maybe all the last minute summer fun will be just that...... fun.
So I like to think that a majority of the time I am a realist. But my family has told me some of the time I am bitter, but this post is for the hopeless romantic in me. You are warned, so you can skip it.
This weekend I went to a Young Single Adult conference with some friends. It was in Wilmington, so our backup plan was to hit the beach if it wasn't fun. So the conference was only for Saturday, but we decided to make a weekend out of it. So we drove down Friday night. Roadtrips are awesome. So the point of going to a singles conference is to meet people, but as I have mentioned, often my job makes guys heads explode. So we decided I would be a kindergarten teacher for the weekend.... a 25 year old kindergarten teacher. So we got up saturday to go to the conference. Turns out it was a lot of fun. We did a service project in the morning, and I met a bunch of people from my sister's ward. This made it impossible to say I was a 25 year old kindergarten teacher, because then if they told my sister they saw me, it would be awkward when she said, what? I don't have a sister who teaches kindergarten. Apparently I have an honesty streak in me. It was so funny because they were like, Oh we love your sister, she is so great, can you tell us embarrassing stories about her? And I said, no, there aren't any, and they were like, oh that figures. But one of my friends went to school with one of the Chapel Hill people, so I got introduced, and we chatted. Apparently the whole IBM thing is not intimidating to someone who works at Duke. Nice. Then we had lunch, and the workshops. Then we got to go to the beach. It was such a gorgeous day, and the water was perfect!
The best part of the conference was the dinner cruise. If you are a fan of the office, then imagine Michael Scott's Booze Cruise, but without the drinking.
So during the dinner cruise they were playing music and had a dance floor. At first, not many people were dancing, but then it got a bit more crowded. So I was sitting at one table eating dinner, and I decided to get up and throw my food away and try to move to where the guy I had been talking to earlier was. So as I was getting up and moving, he was moving to where I had been. Then my friend was like, uh... he's over there..... So I walked back over to that table, and was kind of wondering if I should ask him to dance, when he asked me.
I also tried to find the video for Anastasia dancing, and Ariel dancing, and basically, every great dance scene from the movies. Ok, so it probably wasn't like that in reality, but it was fun. Then the boat cruise ended. My friends and I went back to the beach to swim in the water. We stayed for church, and then went out to the beach for a couple of hours before heading home. So I had a great time, and would totally recommend YSA conferences, especially ones at the beach.
Triathlon training is going a lot slower than I thought it would. I don't know why I thought I would be Lightning McQueen, but I am not. So while I don't like to embarrass myself on my blog, I thought I would share so that hopefully when I finish the triathlon I can look back and see how far I have come.
Swimming
I couldn't remember how to breath doing freestyle. Thankfully, I have very talented sisters who swim like fish. So I got a tutorial. It did help, but I am not immediately a great swimmer. My current time is 15 minutes for 10 laps, only 2 laps in freestyle, the rest in breast stroke because I can't do more freestyle.
Running Thanks to a friend, I now can calculate my route and distance (google pedometer). So I can run/walk 2 miles in about 35 minutes. Yeah, ok, it is mostly walking. I run for a block, and then I walk for 2 blocks for the first mile, and the second mile is mostly just walking.
Biking
My bike sits inside on a trainer, so I had forgotten how amazing it is to ride outside with the wind in my face. It was awesome! But once again, I realized how slow I am. My sister says she can ride the bike at the gym and go 15 miles in half an hour or something like that, and I rode 6 miles in 40 minutes. So I am way way slow, and I need to add another mile to the bike.
This means my total current triathlon time is an hour and a half. I think you have two hours to finish it, so at least I think I can finish time-wise..... now the real question is, can I do all three activities in sequence? This week to the training routine I add Bricks, a day where I bike and then run in order. Whew! I am tired thinking about it. But my mom keeps reporting how great she is doing in her training, so I gotta keep up.
We were sitting around the table talking about summer time, and orange push pops were mentioned. You may remember them... the Schwann man would deliver them, they were wrapped in a cardboard tube, and had a little stick that you would push the orange popsicle up with. Yummy. My youngest sister has not had the benefit of growing up with a Schwann man, so she has missed out on this delicious piece of summer time. So I have been looking for them in the store. No luck yet, but if anyone has seen them, let me know.
Another key part of summer was the slip n slide in the front yard. A sheet of yellow plastic that you ran the hose over, and then you would run and do a belly-flop and slide down it, and end up in the puddle of grass at the end. This was much fancier than just running through a sprinkler.
Summer demands some creativity in the FHE activities, but I couldn't find a slip n slide. So we decided to water balloon volley ball. It ended up being more like water balloon tag, which was also fun, but I think everyone got more wet trying to fill up the water balloons. And this just reminded me of the Red Balloon movie....
So I was waiting until I got my pictures off my camera.... then I realized they weren't good blog pictures. I need to get better at photography.
I went to visit my sister for the fourth of July. She lives in Independence, which is just funny. Ok, technically she just moved to a new town. But it is near Independence, and we watched the Independence fireworks. Ha!
I arrived on Wednesday, and we headed out to the huge furniture store to shop. We sat on every couch they had, but had more luck finding comfortable chairs. We are short people, so huge couches are not very comfortable because our feet don't hit the floor. In this store I think people work on commission, because one sales guy was stalking us. So we kept dodging into other furniture aisles to avoid him. We did look at dining tables, but they were all too big. The first couch we sat on was actually the one we ended up getting, and then we matched it to some chairs with custom fabric. It was a very successful shopping trip. Then we ate steak to celebrate. Then because it was a gorgeous day, and my sister had planned the weather perfectly, we went to see Legally Blonde at an outdoor theater (Starlight Theater). It had great music and was fun to watch. Whew! I am tired. Thursday we got up and hit the gym. Yea, I can't keep up with my sister. But that is ok, it was good triathlon training. The perk of a gym is the machine tells you how far you have run, instead of just guessing how far in the neighborhood. Then we went to work... well, she went to work, I sat in her office and read. Nice. Then we got Thai food for lunch, our favorite. Then we went to Union Station. Back in the day, all the railroads decided to cross the Missouri at Kansas City. If they hadn't, it would probably just be a corn field today. The floor of the station is wavy where people shuffled their feet for 50 years. They also had a special exhibit on the Chronicles of Narnia, complete with snow. Then we walked to another building in downtown KC and saw a lego exhibit. An artist had done sculptures in legos, which were cool. Then my sister had to go back to work, so I watched Bones and took apart a nightstand with hideous molding. Demo! Friday was rainy, so instead of going to the garden, we went shopping at the outlets. I love outlets, and I got an extra 20% off! We also got a dining room table. Then we went and saw XMen Origins. Saturday, we went to Powell Gardens. It is a botanical garden and a food garden out in the middle of nowhere. They had a quilt garden, where all the plants were planted to look like a quilt. We walked around and saw the fountains and lillies and other pretty things. Then we headed to the boss' bbq, where kids set off tank fireworks. This cracked me up, especially the fireworks that were parachuters! We had brought some hotdogs, and I had insisted we get real beef ones, and my sister said, wow, these taste really good! Then we went and saw the Independence fireworks. They had some really spectacular ones. We also put together the dining table, which was pretty hysterical. It has a leaf built in, so the top is really heavy, so we were having a tough time flipping it over. Then Sunday we got to eat pancakes on the new table, and we went to church, and brought breakfast enchiladas to break the fast, and then we saw a jazz concert. It was once again gorgeous weather, so the outdoor concert was fabulous. It was also in a pretty ritzy part of town. Monday was again a work day, but I stayed home this time to do laundry and pack. Then we went to an old house and toured the inside. They spent a ton of time restoring it! It looked pretty amazing, except where the dogs had peed all over the floor.... then it was time to fly home. Sad. And my planes were all delayed.
A super wal-mart and sam's club just opened 5 minutes from my house in Morrisville. I have got to say, Morrisville is now the most awesome place to live. I know wal-mart has a reputation for serving the unwashed masses but these stores are clean, sparkling, new and cheap! I got Breyers vanilla ice cream for $2. Gas is $1.47. Good-bye to Harris Teeter, hello to "save money, live better".
