More Family Activities

It's been awhile...so goes my exciting life! My foot is still sore and fat, although it has improved. We took our annual trek to Adventureland and we did have fun in the humidity. I'm still liking the roller coasters best. My grandson Nathan (in orange) is fearless. He rode the Inverter which has prolonged periods of upside down, which I don't enjoy.

I read a really good book by James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow, his best in awhile. I saw Inception which is good, but not sure I totally understood it..is there a book?

My house continues to be a quiet and lonely places, memories everywhere and although they are good memories, they make me sad because there won't be anymore like them. I'm trying to focus on the future, but it's hard.

Family Photos

Here's our 4th of July family photo. And here are two future cowboys, my grandsons Grady and Maizen riding Wilson.
In other news, my big foot is better, meaning it hurts much less but it's still big. Sigh.

Baseball!!

Our family went on our annual major league baseball trip to St. Louis (Cardinals) this weekend. Richard organized our first trip 12 years ago. We have gone west as far as Colorado (Rockies) and east as far as New York (Yankees). Pictured is our traditional family tee shirt, designed by one of my daughter's friends. Click to enlarge the picture.

We had a good time as usual. And it was HOT which is typical for St. Louis. There are pictures on my Facebook page if you are interested.

In other news, see my big foot! In a brief moment of uncoordination, I managed to fall off the curb as we were walking back to our hotel after the game. So today I've been limping around, no permanent damage but so embarrasing and annoying...plus no one is here for me to whine to, sucks to be ALONE!

Des Moines Skyline

Hello from downtown Des Moines where I am attending a three day HIV counseling training. One day down, two to go. Actually it's not too bad and I get CEUs (continuing ed)

Early this AM I locked the keys in my county car and had to call my boss at 5:30 AM to find out if there were spare keys (there were). I may have to bring her cheesecake.

The All Star Game is tonight...that makes me sad.

On the 4th

I just put out my garbage and then took it back in because today was garbage day, not tomorrow.

I got my Scrabble tile on Saturday. Isn't it cute? The vendor gave it to me for half price because of the "rude woman" incident. (See previous post)

We had our usual family picnic on the Fourth. It didn't rain but was really windy, still, we had a good time. In the morning Emily, Erin, and I walked in a 5K. I guess Emily ran, they were both way ahead of me. I did it in less than an hour which was better than last year for me. My sore legs on Sunday reminded me that I should probably do a little training before the event.

Getting Smarter

I went to the AANP conference in Phoenix AZ last week. It was a good conference, beautiful facility, good food, learned a lot.

My hotel was very nice but they only had wired internet and unfortunately I didn't bring my trusty laptop. Instead I brought my cool new ipad which has only wireless. So I was dependent on my trusty iPhone for internet. Too tedious to blog on the small screen with my old eyes

My return flight was cancelled which I didn't find out until I got to the airport on Sunday morning. I spent Sunday in the scenic Airport Best Western. They had a restaurant but it was closed. I had a tasty supper of chips and diet Pepsi from the vending machines. They did, however, have wireless internet.

When I got home I found a message on the answering machine from the airline letting me know that my flight had been cancelled. Would it have been too much trouble for them to email? I would have seen that before I left my Phoenix hotel. The joys of air travel.

Busy Weekend

I missed blogging yesterday. I've come to the conclusion that I just don't have enough to say to blog every day, so I won't!

I had a busy weekend, the weather was cooperative. I have a large pool of standing water at the bottom of the hill in my backyard. There were a couple of ducks as well. Can hardly wait for the mosquitoes.

Saturday, Erin and I went to the Farmer's Market. I was going to buy a cute charm made from a Scrabble tile. I had set it down to get money out of my purse when a women reached around me and grabbed it. Really rude!!

Saturday went to a Kernels game with Emily and family. It was a nice night with fireworks after the game.

Sunday Emily, Grady, Sarah, and Nathan and I went to Toy Story. It was just as good as the others. Very cute! We saw the 3D verson, but I don't think the 3D added that much to it.

As usual, I didn't do any house cleaning. So sad!

Gotta Love It

The weather has been the big story here today. Two storms with very impressive clouds and lots of rain and some damage to roofs and trees but no tornadoes or injuries to people. Here's some representative video of the clouds.



You gotta love the Midwest!

Another New Job

I have another new job. I worked at one place for 26 years and now I'm on my fourth job since 2000.

I'm again a working as a nurse practitioner at county public health agency. It's nice to get away from hospital nursing's irregular hours, weekends and holidays and the endless micro management by email.

Right now I'm working mostly in the STD and immunization clinics. People are helpful and friendly, the pay and benefits are very good. Maybe this will be my last job.

Grady's Birthday

A Nintendo DS!! Just like Grama's!

My New Toy

I got my iPad today. It's so cool, just like a giant iPhone without the phone. Having fun figuring it all out.

Sent from my iPad

Today's prompt: What are the five best bands

Today's prompt:

What are the five best bands you've seen play live?

The Lettermen
at UNI 1970, before Richard

Peter, Paul, and Mary (twice)
in the 80's, once with kids, once without

Simon and Garfunkel (twice)
1967 Coe College in Cedar Rapids after their first hit Sound of Silence
in St. Paul, MN, reunion tour 2005

I'm so BORING!

Wet Sunday

OK, enough rain already! Still hot and humid. My yard looks like a jungle, it never gets dry enough to mow. My hibiscus loves it, thinks it is living in a tropical climate. Guess that's life in Iowa.

Spent my day thinking about cleaning house and finding reasons not to, watched a movie, A Serious Man, ho hum.

But the highlight of the day was the return of True Blood, just love that show, so much better than the Twilight series.

Running the Flood

Today I walked in a fundraiser to raise money for flood recovery. If you're not an Iowa person, you may not recall that in 2008 the Cedar River flooded the city and surrounding areas with record setting water levels. So much damage is still apparent even after two years. It as dark and cloudy but the rain stayed away until the walk was over. The air was very warm and humid. But any pounds I sweated off were replaced by the big breakfast we had after.

I'm very fortunate that my neighborhood is on a hill safe from the flooding.

I spent the day at a meeting about strategies

I spent the day at a meeting about strategies to combat resistant gonorrhea. Aren't you glad I decided to blog every day this month!

Thursday's bog prompt-

If you could go back in time and meet your 16-year-old self, what three things would you tell yourself?

1. You will marry the love of your life and your life together will be good

2. You will find a job/profession that you love.

3. You are not fat and don't smoke so you won't have to go through hell when you're trying to quit at age 37.

Good News: I won this jade plant today at work

Good News:
I won this jade plant today at work. It was part of a raffle for Relay for Life. I never win stuff.

Bad News
I burned the back of my throat eating a beet that was hotter than I thought. It really hurts! Ibuprofen!

Today's blog prompt: Japanese lore

Today's blog prompt:

Japanese lore suggests that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, your wish will come true. What would your wish be, and what would you be willing to do 1,000 times to get it?

My wish would be to have Richard back and I'd do just about anything to make that happen. I guess that's more a fantasy or a dream than a real wish.

It's really depressing to read all the stuff

It's really depressing to read all the stuff on the oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf. The pictures of the oil coated birds just break your heart.

Poor President Obama. First he inherits a tanking economy and now this. I really don't know what people expect him to do to fix this, I'm not sure that it's fixable.

Interesting...

I Want One

Have you seen the new iPhone? So extremely cool!

Check out the FaceTime app.

Exercise

Walked a 5K today. It was a promotion by Weight Watchers. No fee, no timing, and no tee shirt.

It was a beautiful day and a lot of people turned out. Oddly it was held in a cemetary which really was a beautiful setting with all the Memorial Day flowers and very little traffic.