Done and Done

Over a Month??? My pet peeve is bloggers who don’t keep their blogs current and look at me. Well, here I am an I hope to do better now that I am almost done with classes. I just finished the quarter in which I took two classes (10 credit hours). They were the busiest busy work classes I could have picked to take together. Especially coming off of finance which was like a vacation class it was soooo easy. This quarter I wrote 11 papers and did 23 discussion posts, each with two required cited and referenced replies, and those replies generating at least two additional replies. See what I mean? Every weekend and every day off I sat at this stupid computer for at least 5-7 hours, in addition to coming home from work and spending an hour or two replying to replies. I can not tell you happy I am that this is done. I can’t even say how I got through it. Oh yeah, in addition to the classes I went to Cali twice, my sister came, and I went up to Grand Forks for a long weekend. So—one more class then practicum then done. I got a scholarship through Mayo and with my tuition reimbursement the second half of my schooling is paid for. Yipppeee skip.

So—I’ve already mentioned my last Cali trip. But then in April we had Pam and Ilan’s baby shower. Aren’t they cute?

I’m almost done with the pink dress and the quilt top is done too. Finishing touches and hopefully will be ready for the baby in June

Pink dress with wine……

After the shower we stopped to refill our growlers and got sucked in by some delicious beers--

A week later we had Yarnover. Which never disappoints. This year we didn’t go to the dinner the night before. Martha came over Thursday night, and Friday we yarn crawled to Northfield. We first stopped at the quilt store in Zumbrota, All in Stitches. Jeepers. They had the quilt panel I wanted (they were out of it at PNQS, my go to for all things fabric). It was a great store but the clothing and shoe stores there were amazing. We wondered who shops here cause it was sort of high end and, well, Zumbrota just isn’t all that big.

We ended up at Northfield Yarns, one of my all time favorite stores. Martha got some yarn to make new clogs. I refrained—saving up for Yarnover.

Saturday we went WAY up north and we shopped till we dropped at Yarnover. I wasn’t going to buy anything until the Wollmeise tempted me and I saw some University of Wisconsin Bucky yarn I had to get for Dave. Dang it. We ended up at the brewery for a light lunch but the food truck wasn’t at Insight so we went to Surly. I’d heard lots about it. The food was good and the beer tasty, but I still love my Insight best!

I have to say the weather was super nice for the day.

We made it home and on Sunday, before Martha left, we took a beautiful walk on the Dodge Trail

It’s so much greener now—3 1/2 weeks later.

Martha brought Laura and I some travel goodies for our trip to Ireland in the fall-

This is the stuff they get when they go to Taiwan.

this is a Bloody Cocktail mix—just add vodka!! She thought of EVERYTHING!

I love the little spoon.

Cinco de Mayo found me down town relaxing with my BFF Cathy people watching at the Half Barrel-

Why do I have Man Hands?

It was just a warm up for the very next day was the Craft Beer Expo-

O.M.G. It was so much fun. Note to self, next year pretzel necklaces will be worn.

We went with a group of friends and I haven’t had this much fun in ages. Well, at least since the night before with Cathy!!

We took our picture with the local celebrities—the KTTC weathermen!

Gawd.

And had a great dinner at the Tap House

Really—such a great group of people. Kate, in the front on the right, will be my practicum preceptor, poor girl.

I’ve been sort of lonely for a dog so I got an old dog this time, a rescue Springer named Manny. He’s deaf and sort of blind so he fits right in.

He needs a good haircut I think. He’s still a little shy and nervous so we’ll see how it goes. He’s a funny old dog but I love him already.

And that’s what’s been happening here!

The weather is getting nice so I’m hoping to get some gardening in soon. Otherwise—it’s all the same old, same old, with a little new thrown in.

Two really is a crowd.

Running and Racing

Hello! I have returned home again. And that means hours and hours of homework. I am now just over half way in the quarter. I have written 5 papers and am finishing up three more. Then I only have three more to go. Can you say busy work? Have I complained about school enough? I suppose that whatever happens I’ll be able to cite APA cause that’s what you do at Walden. They give you a crap ton of reading that you couldn’t get through even if you didn’t work a .8, and then you write about it. But mainly you just try to get something down that makes sense so you can cite it. Does anyone get the idea I am super burnt out on this. Ugh. This is what I get for taking two of the busiest busy work classes offered at Walden. And why the projects in week 4, 8, and 10 have to be two separate papers is beyond me. It makes no sense.

In addition to work being as busy as it could be with our current staffing. I never rest. And that’s about it for the whining portion of this blog.

Last I checked in I was at Stitches and then up at Blane’s.

This month I went out to Cali to see Cody and have a bit of a run.

So, here’s the story in pictures.

We got to the airport in MSP early. You know I travel during spring break every year and every year I say—WTH. But this year is no exception. The other thing that happened is I went through TSA precheck and my boots set off the alarm. What??? I wore them from MSP to San Jose and back with no problem. It was obviously a rookie mistake, and one I was getting on everyone else about. I guess I should have guessed since most of the people in front of me set off the metal detector.

Anyway, we arrived early and decided to eat and I was next to my favorite brewery growler--

It was only about 8ish or so which negated my ordering a tall cold one.

We took off and of course, the whole way there I did homework…ugh. And we arrived in one piece, grabbed Ilan, and headed out to lunch.

We went over and got our packets which necessitated a selfie--

and a beautiful view from Encinitas--

Cody got us a place by the beach, right on the base. It was a beautiful sunny day and pretty warm, but not that warm. And that’s where we stayed for a couple of days.

Our little house—we are the two doors on the right.

Our afternoon and evening…..

The next day, after some carbo loading, we were up early to the race-The Encinitas Half Marathon

Before---

After--

They finished quite a bit before me—I’m sort of holding on cause this is right after my finish.

Those guys rocked it. I did only ok. In my defense, I started at the very back cause I was supposed to run with Dave and he didn’t run. I spent a lot of time catching up and passing people and getting blocked in. So I was a 2:07 which is a bit slow.

ANYWAY--

You know what it was time for after the race??? The obligatory Bloody Mary!!

And it was all uphill from there.

Ilan had brought a suitcase full of delicious beer, some of which hasn’t been released yet. O.M.G. It was just too good.

Beer and Homework

Beer and Cody

Beer and Sun

Beer and us.

That was a hard selfie….

Somehow I didn’t take a picture of the wine we had for dinner. Oh well.

And of course, our evening fire.

What a great day.

The next day was a surfin’ safari--

That happened.

Dave and I kept it simple by walking on the beach.

Bad selfie. Although Dave’s squinty eye still cracks me up. I don’t know why I embarrass myself with these terrible pictures.

Once the surfers got done….

We moved inland to Temecula--

The view from our room. Nice eh?

However our room was totally handicapped accessible, including a coffeemaker in the bathroom which was sufficient to gross us out. We did move it….

We had a wonderful dinner and the next day Ilan left but Dave and I took a walk around the land.

It has been very wet in SoCal and very unusual to walk around in lush greenery in a desert like area. But we did.

 

And flowing water….

I found a big chair in the trees--

We went out with Cody and had some wine tasting….

We saw this guy too-

Had some sushi, and headed back to the hotel.

We decided to enjoy the rest of our vacation  with a bit of beer overlooking the course.

And early early early the next day we flew back home.

See ya sometime SanD.

Sigh. We did have a good time though.

Next up--

Till then—here’s lookin’ at you