Those Things That Aren’t That Fun but Are Made Fun by Friends.

Have you ever done something that isn’t really that fun but was super fun cause you did it with one of your besties? Yeah. I did that about a month ago.

On Father’s Day weekend Laura, my travel partner and blog muse, and I had a garage sale. Now, Laura is an expert in the field of garage sales but sadly, I am not. So she gave me all sorts of tip—like you gotta have stuff outside cause that draws people in. Good to know. She also had some free stuff available and I advertised fabric. Oh, and the other thing is it’s good to have pictures of your stuff. I took some sort of bad pictures of fabric since that’s really what I wanted to get rid of. I put an ad in the paper and Laura hit the social media sites.  She also did signage.

She’s Hired.

We had a beautiful day as you can see. I had fabric and books and assorted stuff like these sinks--

    They didn’t sell, btw.

But someone said they’d make great planters which I considered but came to my senses about later.

Laura sold a ton of paint brushes and other supplies. I sold quite a bit of fabric and books and we were surprisingly busy and steady for most of the time we were open—which was 8-1.

A slow moment.

In the minutes that we were alone we looked at our Ireland books and made profound and witty comments which amused us to no end.

We took a selfie with my camera--

There’s our calculator, some dental floss to have during our garage sale for dental emergencies (as one does), our Ireland books, my phone so I could Google what we needed to know, and our money—which together we made over 200 dollars. Not bad for a morning. But NOW that I know (I know, I know, NOW I know) how to throw a garage sale. I do. AND both of us are already planning our 2nd annual garage sale next June. I’ll have a little more fabric, but way more household goods and clothes and books and kitchen stuff. I’m already storing it up. Oh yes I am.

But the thing is I’m not sure I would have had the fun I had without Laura helping me and then sitting with me and being loud with me and everything else. It’s true.

Oh, and we paid the balance on our Ireland trip so after we spend our Saturday morning together we again apologize in advance to our fellow travellers for having to travel with us. Because surprisingly enough, some people don’t think we are funny. I KNOW—I don’t get it either.

It’s been mostly quiet after that. I am doing my last class at Walden. Yay for me. I have all the applications in for the practicum which starts in November. By Stitches 2018 I’ll be done, done, done. Am I ever glad about that. I’m still recovering over the two classes I took in the spring. I still don’t know how I did that.

Between then and now Ilan and Pam had their baby, Nova, and she’s extremely adorable.

Until she wasn’t

But even when she wasn’t she was still pretty cute. And little. Newborns tend to be that way.

Tiffini showed up for a visit for a couple of weeks and what better way to say hello than to run a relay on the 4th of July! Red White and Boom was completed by 8:30ish in the AM. It was hotter than I expected but I made it and so did Tiff--

Before-

After

Less happy and more sweaty!

I put on a sweatshirt cause I was sweaty and cold but by the time this pic was taken I was getting a bit warm.

The next day the ladies got together and we had a little 40th birthday celebration in Tiff’s honor—She was an hour or so late….

I hadn’t seen some of these folks for quite some time so I really enjoyed the reunion. I also hogged the shade but that’s another story. Next up for me and Tiff?? Ragnar Michigan. Look.Out.

Cody is in the middle of driving to Norfolk with Maral. He’s going back to residency and Maral has a job, I think as a hospital list. Either way, before he left he got a commendation from the Marines and the Navy.

We are so proud!

I only wish he had more hair. Jeepers. That’ll look impressive on his dress uniform.

And that’s what’s new. I have to get to the store to buy appetizers for work tomorrow which is making me incredibly salty AND cutting into my blog time.

There WILL be more later--

Happy says—What? This is my excited/hungry/mad/relaxed face. Guess which one it is now?

Don’t make me bite you.

June Fun in the Sun

Well, I have to say I did yet another Med City 1/2 Marathon over Memorial Day weekend. Sadly, didn’t do all that great but Cathy did superly well. I blame it on getting about 3 hours of sleep the night before. I just didn’t sleep well at all. So about mile 10 I was done. I hate that. But races are like that. Especially Med City. It’s either a great race or a crappy race. This one was in between. I felt tired and that’s what stopped me. Oh well. It wasn’t as terrible as in past races so I guess that’s something

Got some good pics though—oh, and did I mention the massive amounts of free beer whilst listening to the band in the sunshine? Yeppers.

Before……

 

After

We met up with Superman too

Right? That happened……

I do have some racing fun with Cathy. Next up is Scheels relay in August. Key word—Relay. 1/2 of a 1/2. That I can do.

We have accumulated dogs in the past couple of months.

First came Manny

Then, cause I thought he needed a friend, next came Lacey

Both are 10 years old and very different folks.

Every AM we go for a walk

And then a rest

And although these are famously birdy dogs Manny was a little confused by this atypical bird behavior-

The hell????

We had an over night visitor a couple of weeks ago too

This is Brandy and she’s a young Springer which make us appreciate why we have old Springers. Hahaha. At least she will chase a ball, unlike my two. So, we were the house of all things Springer.

We really enjoyed having Brandy—who belongs to my coworker Mollie who has the cutest baby every born--

Seriously—hello.

However, Nina’s nephew had a baby and I have to say—he’s kind of the new standard for cute baby boys--

Lea and said baby Jack.

Ok? I want these two to get married and create super babies

But I digress. Because I do digress quite frequently. Digression is the only way that Laura and I communicate.

OK—anyway, back to dogs. We have two old dogs. Manny and Lacey. Manny has Lyme disease and maybe Cushings. Lacey is on Prozac. There we go. Life is always fun here.

Our Jack, not baby Jack, is unimpressed and stuffed himself into a too small space to show his disdain

I finished my pink dress and quilt for Ilan’s baby. I am hoping that we get it there before the baby comes. But if not it will be close-

That is one pink dress…..

I honor of the impending baby we show our support by filling our new beer fridge with assorted growlers, including my personal favorite Crazy Aunt-

No, I don’t have a problem.

Laura and I are having a garage sale this week. It features my fabric stash busting, Cozy mysteries I’ve read (Thank you Martha) and other assorted goods. If I make 20 dollars and get rid of some fabric I’ll be happy.

It’s gotta go.

Upcoming events? Hmmmmm. Not sure. I’m in my last class at school. I am so done with this. Working on getting my practicum in order. Who knows what that will look like. Walden is really good at non instruction. If I had to do it over I would have done this at Winona State. But after getting half way through it was too late. But by Feb of next year I should be an MSN. Which will get me approximately nothing. But at least it’s letters behind my name right?

The biggest event is in September when Laura and I go to Ireland and change history there forever. They really don’t know what they are in for. We are practicing being shusshed by our co travelers and strangers alike. We are immune to the shhuuush, by the way. Well, I mean we may shuuush momentarily but seriously, we only have one volume, which is fairly robust.

After that is Michigan Ragnar which I am running with Tiffini. So, basically, I’m taking September off.

Oh—Blane and Melanie closed on the house they bought in a place called Grafton, which is north of Grand Forks but not quite Canada.

I wish I had more pictures. Maybe I can link…..Here’s a link but not sure how long it will be active….I suppose you can google 6283 County Road 8, Grafton ND. It’s a huge lot—here’s Blane by the garden.

We will be going up in August for a few days. And I hope to do Thanksgiving up there with Cody.

Blane also did an 80’s themed gig for charity at his work.

Nailed it.

I guess that’s all for now. It’s stopped raining for a minute so time to walk some dogulars before nap time….

Finally, Happy does not care what happens, as long as those dogs just leave him alone.

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.