Hitting the Trail

Yesterday was the St. Mary’s Trail Scamper, 4 miles. Because of the small field and relatively few old women (all two of us)  I was first in my age division at 39:32 or something like that.

Conditions were pretty good, somewhat cool (70’s) but a little humid. I ran the whole way, only walked for about 50 feet up the last steep hill (why do they put a hill so close to the finish). Dave talked to Kathy H who volunteered to cheer us on.

This is what it looked like.

We lined up to start-

And they’re off! That’s me towards the back because I am not getting in the way of those whippersnappers who have times like 25 minutes (overachievers).

Here’s my first pass-look at Kathy cheering me on like the good volunteer that she is.

I really need to  upgrade my running clothes. Stuffed sausage comes to mind every time I see myself in pictures……

This is the second time around. Little sweatier, not quite so lively, but still smiling.

Here I come, on the last pass coming the other way. WooHoo.

 

Still Running.

Ahh, the finish. Yippee. Actually, it was a good race. The trails were beautiful and in good condition and well marked (Year 2 people got lost and ran for miles before finishing-I mean more miles than the race was supposed to be!)

I should have gotten a picture of Kathy and me. She is such a positive force out there. I’ll put in a repeat picture of her and Mary B and me at the BK5K.

There she is, in the middle, another happy volunteering-at-a-race venue. (I really should edit myself out of this picture)

Hey, last night I watched A Night at the Opera.

Here’s a line-when Groucho and Chico are going over a contract-

Driftwood: (Groucho) All right, I'll read it to ya. Can ya hear?
Fiorello:(Chico) I haven't heard anything yet. You said anything?
Driftwood: Well, I haven't said anything worth hearing...
Fiorello: Well, that's why I didn't hear anything.
Driftwood: Well, that's why I didn't say anything

I’m sorry, but it is highlarious. So if you haven’t seen it lately, I’d recommend sitting down, getting out your knitting, and having a good laugh.

 

Here’s a question….

Remember these two back in the day?

Well, how’s about this one?

Lyndsay is ready to go. Seriously, she wore this dress last week and she has expanded by leaps and bounds this week. I think she’s due the very end of the month. At least I hope so.

Isn’t she cute though? Yes she is.

Do you wonder about my place of work?

 

Meldefest 09

After all the cooking and cleaning, Meldefest took place last Sunday. Really not sure why on a Sunday ‘cause I was pretty darn tired on Monday (it didn’t help that Dave made decaf on Monday AM but that is another blog entirely)

Anyway, here’s what went down.

Ed, 4th in line (Dave is 5th), arrived promptly with his son Adam. They came all the way from Decorah.

The rest of the gang trickled in pretty quickly after that. Clockwise is Joe, the oldest, then Mike, you’ve already seen Adam, then Dave’s uncle Steve (his mom’s brother) and Carol, who is married to Joe. They are noshing on chips and dips. Delicious.

Here is (from left) Carol, Mike, Barb (3rd in line) and Joe. They are looking at old picture albums which were somewhat amusing.

From left, Joe, Steve, Tom (belongs to Barb) me and Adam. Dave took because I look stupid. Dave is the king of taking pictures where I look stupid.

Steve and Tom.

And here is the whole gang. From L seated:

Barb, Mike, Me, Adam, Steve

Standing:  Joe, Carol, Ed, Dave (with cake) and Tom

Barb and Tom arrived on their Harley and were all decked out in leathers for the ride home. Wow.

Pretty wild, eh?

And that was Meldefest 09.

Wall Color

Dave painted. I tried to take pictures of it. Not so successful. You can’t really see the true color of the brownish tinted walls. Especially after I was trying to edit the color. Oops.

This is for my sister Debbie who wanted me to try to carry my laptop upstairs and show her whilst we were chatting on Skype. Much too much work. So I took some bad pictures instead

This is the red wall in the living room.

The dining room is also this color but we are waiting for a picture frame to come so we can hang this picture by Fairfield Porter (brother to Eliot my fave photographer).

Cute but blurry. But you get the idea. Our frame is maple with a blue mat.

Anyway, then I tried to get the other walls, they are brownish tan.

Although they look a little green, they are not. I realized that I could not get a good reproduction of the color so I tried again in the kitchen'.

That is a little better but not quite it.

Nope, I give up. I decided it would not work so I lost interest and decided to immortalize Trixie instead

She wasn’t satisfied with her picture either-she thinks she photographs better from the other side and this picture makes her look fat.

Oh well.

Pimpin’ your Porta Pottie

People, really.

If they expect us to be professional and upstanding employees at all times, then things like this should not appear at our back door.

Because once I drove up and spotted these babies, ideas immediately popped (I almost wrote pooped-how Freudian…) into my head.

But, being the dedicated employee that I am, I quickly entered the building to continue doing the important work that I do, and found Laura, whom I personally know as one of the hardest working employees at the firm, and someone quite probably as demented as I.  In a good way, of course.

Well you should have seen her eyes light up when I told her what had appeared at our back door. And, as you can see, the wheels started turning.

Friends, the possibilities are endless

I sent Laura in on a recon mission-truthfully I sent her in there because I wanted a good picture for the blog and to document the exact moment when two great minds were thinking alike.

Did I mention this might be a hard hat area so already we have committed about 18 safety violations?

We’ll worry about that later (if we get caught)

In the meantime,  let the pimpin’ begin.

I googled the topic-decorating porta potties.(what did we do before google? Did we, like, have to think things up all by ourselves? Crikey.) And I am happy to report that Laura and I are really quite normal in the grand scheme of things because I came up with 91,700 hits. Now these are not all decorating porta pottie topics per se, but there are enough to get some ideas.

Here is the firehouse porta pottie. Seems like a lot of work. Plus we are going for a classier look.

Here we have the castle theme-sort of goes with the throne concept of bathrooms. Still, I am not sure we are looking for this type of motif. However, we must consider our target audience (thanks MPH program) which are construction workers, so maybe……

You can’t see this too well but it is sort of a flowery, garland type of deal. Too feminine? Perhaps.

 

This is a Christmas themed project, but what I like about it is this little detail

             

A porta pottie gnome. How can you go wrong with that? I am thinking a gnome with a hard hat. Tasteful, safety conscious, and relevant to the setting.

Then I ran across this headline-Naked Man Rescued From Porta-Potty. I hope this doesn’t happen to us because Laura and I cannot be responsible. Plus, there wouldn’t be a completely naked man in our potties because he would be wearing a hard hat.

Now this one I thought was clever, but rather frightening and we certainly don’t want to have the bejeezus frightened out of the workers BEFORE they get into the pottie. That defeats the purpose of having a pottie, don’t you agree?

     

The following were decorated by women engineers of Alaska (Interestingly many of these photos are from the Pacific NW. I wonder if there is something to that as I am from the Pacific NW AND lived in Alaska? I don’t have an excuse for Laura-yet)

 

I do like the calculator door idea and really like the things to do and read on the walls. The downside to this is we are on a timeline and we do want to get the upstairs of the building finished before the snow flies so maybe we don’t want to encourage spending a lot of time actually being entertained in the pottie. Just a thought.

So I guess for more ideas we can go here. I especially like this idea

“Place a Tiki-Torch in front of each toilet. If there are 2 or more, use a torch for each one. At night this will definitely help guests see their way.”

I don’t think we need to borrow trouble with open flame though. So maybe the Tiki Torches?-not so much.

Any other bright ideas?

Addendum-I just spent 45 minutes looking at porta potties. I’d like to say holy crap but, well, you know.

However (and I don’t seem to be able to stop) if you want to see a porta pottie that is the mother of all porta potties-go here. Even the employees would be using these babies.

The Fourth of July

The fourth of July happened this weekend. It was a pretty good one. I spent most of Friday cleaning up for the family gathering next weekend. Like the house will stay clean that long, but I am giving it a good try. I don’t think we will accumulate 3 months worth of dust by then, like we had before I started cleaning.

By the evening we were ready for a little R&R. We decided to relax on the deck. With the zoo. Which seems to follow us where ever we go.

Here’s what we were looking at. Much greener than the last picture I posted on the blog, which was a brown spring picture.

My view, however, was soon obscured.

Hard to enjoy the scenery with this staring at you. I went out and got some catnip from the garden for a little cat fun.

                          

I thought maybe it would clear my view but, no, still blocked.

Only now she’s ignoring me.

I actually picked up Kitten and brought her out. Very scary.  She is trying to be hidden behind plastic see-through chairs. She has an issue about thinking no one can see here when she is out in plain sight. I suppose a cat brain is only about as big as a large grape…

 

Beta posed again. He’s so good at it. Again, he thinks he’s pretty smart but he’s really wondering if he will be able to lick the grease off the barbeque later.

          

Dave was enjoying himself.  I think. Either that or was having some sort of reaction to the beers he was drinking.

             

He was master of his domain.

          

On Saturday Dave painted all day (boring). I did nothing. It was a holiday after all.

We have the perfect fireworks view. Let me tell you, taking pictures of fireworks is very tricky. Especially with a little one shot camera.

I got quite a few like this

Timing is everything and could the neighbors please turn off their lights?

OK, after some practice I got these

             

 

Timing is everything.

I also took some of the full moon

Which also took some doing since the moon is behind clouds.

There-you can barely see it but it’s there.

And that was the Fourth of July.