Rain Rain, Come and Stay

Rain, Rain come and stay,
Please don't ever go away,
Amanda likes a shady day,
rain rain, come and stay

The weather has been listening to my desires and it is a rainy day again. We have had a lot of rainy days lately and I had heard we were in for heat and sun coming up, but apparently thats not today and I couldn't be happier.

Five simple reasons I love rain:
(1) it usually means its not intolerably hot
(2) water is always refreshing
(3) i don't have to water the garden
(4) the sun doesn't hurt my eyes and head when its raining
(5) it reminds you you are alive

In other news, my social interaction at work has increased sharply with the third girl from our unit leaving. Apparently when there are only three of you in a unit, everyone counts. All of the sudden I am being included in gossip and called over to look at funny cases. While I did not really miss/desire it before it started, I kind of like it now.

Already? Thursday?

I have been working on this post all week and now its almost the next weekend before I post about the last! What a rat race. LOL.

This past weekend consisted of two distinct periods - one of absolute craziness, and one of absolute exhaustion.

Friday night, as planned, I headed out with a couple of friends to attend my first CAPA Classic Movie. We were going to see Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock) at the Ohio Theater in downtown Columbus. DH was supposed to go as well, but he had all sorts of work issues and had to stay home by the computer. Anyways, I headed off, picked up J and D, and then headed to T's house, who promptly announced his plans had changed as well, and while he could do the movie still, dinner was out. We headed downtown and parked near the theater. Ohio Theater is absolutely gorgeous for those of you who have not had the chance to see it. The movie was interesting, not nearly as dark as I had imaged it would be, and very theatrical. After the movie it took us almost 20 minutes just to get out of the parking garage. We headed back to T's house and switched back to my car, and then debated the options for dinner. By this time it was past 10:30pm and we did not know where kitchen's would be opened. We started talking about what resteraunts we used to go to late night in high school and college, and before you know it we were headed for Perkins, my late night highschool stand by. Ah, the memories. Now, the thing is, J, D, and I hanging out together without others is sort of unprecedented and I was not sure what to expect. Ultimately there were some awkward moments, but we had some good conversations as the evening went on and I would not be afraid to do it again. I dropped them both off and arrived home around 12:30pm.



Saturday morning I was supposed to go to the farmer's market with M. At 7:20am a thunder storm right overhead with torrential down pour woke me up. At 7:40am I got up and called M, cancelling the trip due to weather. The storm went on for another half hour, it was quite impressive. I love big thunder storms!! It was good we cancelled for another reason - I had a horrible headache, so I took drugs and went back to bed. I was woken up at 10:30am by DH telling me M and T were trying to reach me. I called T back first and found out that we had forgotten that it was the day of the Victorian Village Garage sale. He invited me to come down and join him. I sprinted out of bed, headache gone, and threw on some clothes while calling M back, who apparently had decided at like 8:30am that maybe we should try the farmers market after all, of course by 10:30 it was pretty much too late. Anyways, I drove down and met T on Neal Avenue and we spent 2 hrs wandering the area and finding some select treasures. It was so nice just hanging out with him and chatting. T is one of my favorite people I met in my program, since the first weekend I visited Columbus. He is just so easy to talk to and I very much enjoy his company. After were were tired of walking and had covered most the area we grabbed lunch, then I headed home.


Saturday evening we had a birthday gathering to go to. We met at M's house, where they all surprised me embarrisingly with a large cutout of Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). They could have at least got my Jacob! The funniest part though is that I had been plotting to do the same thing to J, another Twiligh fan. They beat me to it. After a photo op that turned out shockingly realistic we headed for gallery hop, where we browsed the galleries then settled in at MoJoe's for drinks. It was a nice evening, and again a late one, made even later by the fact that when we got home the puppy was wound up, despite having been only crated for 4-5 hrs all day (normally she is crated 10 hrs!). She kept me up all night pretty much, I got probably 4 hrs of interrupted and very spotty sleep. In the morning I felt like jello, but I couldn't really sleep either. I spent the day alternating between reading and sleeping until dinner time, at which time I finally bucked up, cleaned up, and took the dogs for a hour walk out by Westerville Community Center, hoping it would help River reset her clock and sleep through the night. It worked. Sunday night was relatively peaceful.

And that was the weekend. Other random things I feel the need to post about, now that its Thursday -

-- Another person from my unit at work left. That puts us from 6 newbies to begin with down to 3, with three months until probation. Apparently my class of 52 has lost 17 members already. We may have 50% attrition before the probation is up.

-- Since June 1st we are watching our budget, and I am watching my waistline - counting dollars and calories. It is going relatively smoothly. I actually am surprised how easy it has been to eat an appropriate ammount of calories, I hardly have felt deprived at all. Now its just persistance. I am using http://www.livestrong.com to track calories, fitness, and weight.

-- Earlier this week I reached the half way point of my reading goal for the year, slightly before the year is half up. In other words, I have read over 20,000 pages so far this year.

-- I am trying to figure out what I want this summer, you know, what I want to get out of summer. I am not getting very far and summer is already racing by. It does not help that so much of summer is already planned for me!! This weekend we have Friday night and Saturday night plans. Next weekend I hope to visit my sister. The weekend after that we have a wedding and my sister might visit us. The weekend after that is the fourth of July - we are headed to Illinois to celebrate with a friend from college. Then weekend of July 17th we head to New Jersey to see friends. August brings my little sister for a visit, and before I know it, the summer will be over. Now, all of these things are fun! for sure. But they don't leave much time for any other goals or smaller activities - like getting Grim trained up to go to the farmer's market, or finding a good pool to visit around Columbus, host BBQs with friends, try new summer recipes based on local harvest finds, or anything like that. The only thing I have come up with that would be really nice to do this summer that is not already planned is go to Cedar Point. We went two years ago and it was SO much fun, I would love to go again.

At least if summer rushes by, I won't notice the heat too much. I have loved the recent rain, and am said that we are not supposed to have a hot streak rising to 90+. Boo.
We will see what happens.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

It is really hard to believe it is June already. Five months of the year gone. I am starting to think organization is impossible. For my birthday cake I had another three-trip to the store mess to get it done. So, the bad part about it being June is that there are some things I wanted to do this year which I have hardly started, so its bad to approaching the midpoint. The good thing about it already being June is that we are that much closer to football season. But we are not quite there yet, so I will have to settle for baseball.

Last night DH and I went to the Clippers. It is the first time I have been to their new stadium in downtown Columbus and have to say I think its genius. It is so open and casual, with so many options about where to sit and how to experience the game. I love it. And the vending selections are great to so that eating out at the game seems like a treat rather than a chore, even with the slightly elevated prices you would expect. We were there with DH's coworkers and it was a lot of fun. We only stayed for seven innings, but I look forward to going again. Now if we could just manage to make it to a Crew game, summer would really be in full swing.

Happy Birthday to Me!!

Yesterday was my Birthday. I turned ancient. Of course, I turn ancient every year, because every year I become as old as DH, and then when his Birthday comes in August I stop being ancient again.

I baked my own birthday cake, it was pretty sweet. I made minor accidental alterations, but it was pretty much this Chocolate-Orange Cream Cake. We went up to my Grandma's house and celebrated with my Grandma, Uncle, and Dad, it was great.

If I could describe my long weekend in one word it would be contentment. It was a very relaxing and very contented weekend. Relaxed, wonderful.

Back to work tomorrow. Hopefully being ancient won't slow me down.

The start of a LONG weekend...!!

Its funny that the phrase "its the start of a long week" has such negative connotations. This week I had a nice, short week, and now I get to start my very positively connotated long weekend. Four days off to be exact. We have memorial day off on Monday and I flexed to take Friday off as well. (When we rearrange our schedules at work we call it flexing).

The main reason I decided to take the whole day off was that my Dad came into town Thursday night. It is funny because this is my Birthday weekend, my birthday is always right alongside memorial day. My dad ALWAYS has a profession conference memorial day weekend, so there were many many years where he was gone for my Birthday (not that we did not celebrate, it just came earlier or later). This is the first time the conference has brought him to me for my birthday!! It is in Baltimore and he decided to stop on the way to see everyone here in Ohio.

I got off work at 5:15pm and he was already parked outside my house waiting on us. It was really great seeing him. Thursday night we walked the dogs and then drove into downtown Columbus and went to my favorite Irish resteraunt in town - O'Shaunneseys. It was delicious! Yesterday it was quite nice to not have to go to work! In the morning we walked the dogs, had breakfast, watched some ESPN and played the requisite Rock Band. I decided that its pretty much required that if you come into my house for more than a couple of hours that you need to be introduced to Rock Band, especially if you read my blog and see me posting about it all the time! He sang Pinball Wizard and then another one I did not know very well while I played guitar, it was a lot of fun.

After that we headed off to Campus where I showed him around - this is the first time since I moved here that he has visited me with any time to spare to look around Columbus! So, I took him to my "old life" as well as my current life- ie we went to the Political Science dept at OSU, met up with some of my friends and went out to lunch, I took him to Raising Canes, DH met us and took the afternoon off.

We picked up the Dogs and headed to Alum Creek to walk on the dam. After we were done walking we took the dogs down by some water to get a drink and they almost pulled Aaron into the water. Grim clearly thought she should be allowed to swim around at will. He eventually got her out with only minimal wetness to his pants and shoes. We sat in the shade, with then nice breeze blowing on us and the dogs laying in the grass and just relaxed for a while to give the dogs a chance to dry off a bit - it was rough. LOL.

We came home with the intentions of heading back out to the baseball game, but after all three of us pretty much fell asleep on the couch we decided we did not need to spend the night out and instead just went out to dinner at the Pig Iron (delicious!!) and then came home and watched the NBA playoff game (Magic/Celtics). My dad got his wish and the Celtics won.

All of last night I could not believe it was Friday night, felt so much like Saturday! This morning I am headed to the farmer's market. Dad left at 7am this morning to drive up to Burton and spend the day following my vet sister around as she is on call. Tomorrow we will meet back up with him at my Grandma's for dinner and Birthay cake , and then head our seperate ways. I am pretty sure by Sunday night it will blow my mind that I have another day off on Monday. LOL.

Green Thumb?

So, picking a new car is not all I did over the weekend, its just all I had time to mention yesterday. The other big thing I did was get my garden in the ground!! This required a trip to home depot, and then 2 hrs of hard work. I also cleaned out the smaller flower bed in front and planted seeds. In the vegatable patch I ended up with way many pepper plants. Here is what is growing their now (or hopefully growing soon): three heirloom tomato plants (each a different kind), 1 banana pepper plant, 1 red pepper plant, three basil plants, countless cilantro seeds, countless dill seeds, leeks (these are actually ready to eat, they came up from the seeds I planted last year), 4 unknown plants - I think they are all green pepper, but I don't remember what I bought, two jalepeno plants, 1 sereno chile plant, one rhubarb bush (this is a perennial, I finally planted it!! Can't wait for next year when I get harvest off of it), and one giant weed of unknown variety. For some reason I decided not to pull it back when I was cleaning out the bed a month ago, and I see no reason to pull it now. I want to know what it does. I know, I am weird.

Anyways, this is the fullest my garden has ever been, I actually used the whole thing for the first time. I hope everything does well!!

Vroom Vroom

I would say it was a productive weekend, I feel like I actually accomplished some things, which is always nice, and uncommon for me.

Saturday I got my driver's license renewed, then we drove to Dayton to look at a 300C. We thought both the car and the dealer were sketchy. We grabbed lunch in downtown Dayton, and then headed home. Two notes of interest about this experience:

(1) DH finally understands how questionable my current car has become. As he had not ridden in it for weeks/months, he apparently did not take me fully seriously when I described the various noises it makes or said it was literally falling apart. We were almost to Dayton (DH slept most of the way), when all of the sudden he sort of snaps to attention and realizes there are all sorts of weird noises. I told him they have become normal to me (though there is a new sputtering related to the air conditioner fan I believe). We NEED to get this car replaced ASAP.

(2) Dayton does not feel very big, at all. I just looked at Wikipedia and its population is 166K in Dayton proper with a metro area of over 800K. When we were downtown, it felt no bigger than Duluth MN (my hometown), which has 84K in Duluth proper and 275K in the metro area. It had a couple more tall buildings (not taller than those in Duluth though), but it had a lot less medium height buildings. It seemed very compact for such a large area. We came up for two possible explanations for it feeling so small - either the population has decreased dramatically since the 2000 census (which really would have nothing to do w/the buildings), or it is just more spread out, since it is not up against a lake and hill.

Anyways, we made it back to Columbus and headed for the Mercedes Benz dealer at Easton where we had test-driven the first 300C. They had been steadily dropping its price since we looked at it. I am sure they just wanted it off their lot since most the cars they sell are worth so much more. We had them assess my car and then we decided we are going for it, put a down payment on the car and will go back Tuesday to finalize everything. Hope my car lasts until tomorrow evening!! We think it may be about the worst trade in that place has ever seen, seeing as it specializes in the luxury brands. So, hopefully tomorrow night our car concerns will be resolved. In the words of DH (this is actually sung as a little song) "we're getting a chryyysler were, were getting a chryysler". LOL.