It’s Raining Cat and Dog

This weekend was very busy. I cleaned cat boxes (a weekly event-there are 3 of them), cleaned bird cages (an every other week all out scrubbing event), balanced my checkbook (a whenever I get around to it event), put the boarders on some quilt blocks (a should be more often event), played with the cat and cut the dog’s hair.

Good Kitten (really, that is her name) is here with Blane. When he gets bored he decides to make her a home made cat nip toy.

Here she is all hyped up on nip-

                    

 

Then she got tired and had a little rest.

Still a bit cranked up though.

After that she took a little snooze and then decided to go outside. Here is my wildflower garden and bird feeders.

Wait, I think there is something unusual going on in there…can you see it?

Yep, it’s Kitten. Being bad. In the garden.

Not that she realizes, but the birds know she is there.

She decided it wasn’t her but me that blew her cover and decided to come out and pose for a minute. The dogs would have chased her but they live in deathly fear of her. Actually, we do too. We always make sure she is in a good mood before approaching, or she will chase us out of the room. Seriously.

Beta has a new haircut and is posing here in his manly one-eyed dog pose.

He thinks he is pretty smart. Actually, he is probably thinking I wonder if it is time to eat again? or Should I pee over here or over there? or I wonder why I’m sitting here?

A couple of weeks ago I went here to bridge #85542 to take some pictures of the creek-or it might be part of the Whitewater, but I don’t know which part. Technically that is a river, but would not qualify as a full fledged river in any parts of the world I’ve ever lived.

This is what it was looking like that evening

                          

If I had come a bit earlier you could have seen that the left bank is full of flowers.

This is the other side of the bridge.

I checked out the other bridge around the bend. There is an old bridge back there but I don’t think you can see it too well.

I checked out the pasture at the third bridge on rd 115-I think that is the number-past the turn off to Hershey Acres. Yeah, where ever.

Dave thought it was so much fun-can you tell?

For revenge he took my picture

Got the bad hair, baggy shorts and 20 year old sweater on. Lookin’ good.

So, sometimes you see pretty rivers and pasture, and sometimes all you see is a straight road and corn.

           

Not much of it out there yet….There is much more now.

And somewhere down the straight road and the corn is our house!

BK5K

Last weekend was Father’s Day and our 6th Anniversary. It was also the summer solstice. That was Sunday.

Here we are 6 years and 20 pounds lighter between us. See how happy I am that is it over? Seriously. Dave was asking me yesterday morning-what do you think we were doing now 6 years ago?  By yesterday afternoon he was saying-Do you think we were drinking yet? Hmmmm.

Here’s a father for father’s day. And a mother too!

We tried to do a 3 way video conference with my sister but kept losing the video part. It is no fun without video.

So that was Sunday. On Saturday was the BK5K. I just like saying it because running it was not all that much fun. I met up with Mary before the race-

It was already a bit warm. We started at 9 AM. Sharp. Dave had the camera and I see he took pictures of this-

Not too sure why. I think it is the Cotter band. Girls from the Cotter flag part of the band. I am not even going to speculate.

Anyway, he is easily distracted but did manage to get me close to the finish line-

I did pass those two women in the last 100 yards. The one gal right behind the guy wouldn’t let me pass her back at the turns so I had to do it at the finish. Sorry. Ok, not really. Next time let me pass. That little kid had already finished and was waiting for the rest of us. No, just kidding. Although I have had little kids beat me, but not that little…..

Mary came in after me looking strong

There she is, in the middle there. By the time we got around to the finish it was kind of like running on the sun. Really hot. I kept thinking of the running class I took. Wally Arnold, Running Room, told us that if it is hot not to run for a personal best,  you’ll end up losing time because of how much the heat takes out of you. So I slowed my pace a little and finished in 25:47, although the official time is 26:40 which is odd because I was watching the clock when I came in. Either way, pretty slow. My last 5 K was just under 25. I did pick up on the last two miles. It didn’t help that I had to stop and tie my shoe about 3/4 of a mile in. I blame Mary for screwing up my pre-race rituals of double knotting.

That was ok though. At the finish was Kathy, who is the best strength and toning teacher ever. She is also a great fan and encourager.

Do I always look so stupid or was it the lack of oxygen?

But after all that I was second in my age group. (out of 4, what can I say? I finished 124 out of 337, I think. At least that is what Dave said when he read the results) Right after Nina Bren, whom I know from other races.

Here we are on the podium. Ha! I look baggy, she looks like a runner. But I was cooler and dryer so I felt pretty good.

All and all, not a bad weekend.

Cora Comes to Visit

Cora came to visit on Friday.

Angie is so cute I can’t even describe it. You know how some new mothers just drive you insane with their worrying and constant baby this and baby that crap?

Well, Angie brought in Cora because she was worried about Cora not gaining enough weight-Ok, look at this kid

Seriously, I think she is getting enough food. But Angie was so cute about being worried about her we could not even start to be annoyed.

So we rushed her off to the scale after a scary brush with this-

Here is Patrick, who is never allowed to ride in my car again after an unfortunate incident involving backseat driving and horn honking. Doesn’t he look cute with the baby.

She weighs just enough-phew! That was close.

Here is that cute Angie, relieved mother and just so sweet-I can’t say it enough.

 

Not so good of Cora, I can either get a good shot of Angie or of Cora but not both together it seems.

Cora is getting to be a regular little kid now, and what is with that hair? It is about 3 shades lighter. She is quite the baby around our office.

And, of course, what the heck. Would it really be a visit without this-

I know-don’t even say it. Laura is back again. You might get the idea that all she does is wait around for a baby to nab, but really, Laura does actually work in between grabbing babies.

And that’s what happened Friday.

Wanda Retires

It has come to my attention I am a bit behind on the blog. It has also come to my attention that the last blog post had HUGE font. Is it my eyesight or what? OK, I am on the font size now.

Wanda, our supervisor, retired June 4th. This is how it went down.

We decorated the room in a quilting picnic theme and brought in the food-including 3 cakes. My kind of party

           

See Laura waving Hi? She is at loose ends because, as you can see, no babies.

 

Here are the interpreters. Well, Hannah and Yasmine. Part of the interpreter crew. Aren’t they cute? I take pictures of them at every party. Yasmine is having a baby in September. Laura is eagerly awaiting. And so am I.

Dan, the head of our dept, Wanda, and Nancy Hicks. Nancy wrote a hilarious poem for the show. Very impressive.

Wanda is going on an Alaskan cruise so they had a PowerPoint show taken from Ali’s pictures with Wanda’s head stuck in each picture. That also was very good.

 

Corrine, Charity, and Jennifer from SS put on a little skit.

All in all, a pretty good party. If you need a party, please call Preventative Health, as we are getting pretty darn good at it.

The race is on

I raced a few weeks ago. Well, I raced before that but I refuse to blog a bad race. Since it is my blog I feel I am entitled to edit out my poor performances.

Well, OK. Since I just found the pictures I guess I will blog the Spring Classic, which was not so classic. This was a 9 mile race in which I got tired, had to walk, and generally felt crappy. I finished with a poor time which would put me well over 2 hours in a half marathon.

Bad hair, but otherwise not feeling too bad at the start.

Here we are, all lined up. I am right in the middle looking pretty stupid. Please tell me my posture is not always that bad.

Crossing the finish line in 1:27 or some such awful time. I run the TC10 faster than this 9 miler. And that is about enough of that.

This is the good one. I ran the Med City Marathon in 2 hours and 9 seconds. If I hadn’t stopped to adjust my music I would have broken 2 hours. (Like I used to…back in the day)

See our shadows? Feeling good at the start

Nice crowd and we can wear our music-big plus. Weather perfect, cool, sunny, low wind.

Here is the starting lane in Byron. Run down, circle around, run back and start towards Rochester.

Finish up by the YMCA-

Kenny was directing traffic. Unbeknownst to him he is our hero.

He really can be hilarious at times.

 

                        

Very happy at the finish. I didn’t have a watch so I really didn’t know the outcome. Just feeling good and having fun. The 600 mg of ibuprofen before the race didn’t hurt either.

And the finish

Official time was 2:00:09. WooHoo. Shook off the spring classic blues.

Next up is today in Winona-BK5K. 5K. Ouch. That means running fast for 25 minutes. Ugly. But a yearly tradition. The race is on.