Cy's

We'd been hearing about it for probably over a year, and last night we finally went to Cy's Hoof N Horn in Sedgwick for steak night. It was actually classier than I was expecting, and the food was really good. Now to make it back sometime for $0.50 taco night on Mondays. If I do get back there, I'll have to remember my camera – there's a very sexual deer mount on the wall...

Ooo, look, it's me again

And here I am, once again. If it feels like I just posted, I did.

I had a most enjoyable week off from work. Yay! Although I was very productive, my mornings often reminded me of what summer used to be to me: wake up late and watch The Price is Right. It was beautiful. Two highlights from TPR: One day a Corvette was part of the Showcase Showdown, and a different day, a dude Jose bid $250,000 on his Showcase. Um, hello? Easy win for the other contestant with a bid of $1! Bob did talk him down from his initial bid to $60,000, but the other contestant still won with the good old $1 trick.

We're sitting at less than T-4 weeks to the most blessed event of the year. A few weeks ago I told one of my friends, "We've got a location, a pastor, a photographer, and the beer – what else do we need?" Well, we now have quite a bit more, including one important aspect (i.e., marriage license) and also rings, shirts & ties for male attendants, a suit, a dress that isn't screwed up, female attendant found her dress, musicians, rehearsal dinner location and menu, shoes for both of us, etc., etc. One day there will finally be no more on our To Do list. That day will be sometime on the wedding day, but you know. At least it's not too far away!

Yesterday we got a chance to help with one of the less glamorous parts of the planning. This is not a complaint (in fact, it was proved to be quite enjoyable working together with B), and I want to let it be known that B's parents have spent hours and hours working on these less glamorous parts. We got to help work on getting the algae out of the pond. This means getting into the pond with pitchforks, gathering it together, and hoisting it out onto a trailer on the shore. I'm sure I was a sight. I just wish we had some pictures!

. . . the good life: beatrice installment

I've been blessed to live the good life two weekends in a row now! Don't tell me you don't know what it means to live the good life! If you don't, please refer to Illustration #1.

This time, the good life was partaken of in Beatrice. It had been, I think, two years since the last time I visited the Thimm homestead. I had a great time catching up with Tine, watching entertaining movies, and eating oh-so-well (should I even admit that one breakfast I ate consisted of four pieces of french toast and 3.5 zweiback? um, probably not, but there you have it). We also visited the recently redone Homestead National Monument OF AMERICA!! In case Kathy ever wanders over here, I took a special picture just for her so she can see I immediately placed my HNMOA magnet in its proper place on my refrigerator (Illustration #4). I look smashing in this picture.

Time for some good ol' pre-dated entries

Well, I've been away for a while, so even though I'm posting several on one day, I'm gonna be tricky and mix it up with a little change-o-date-o. A common and sophisticated term for what I'm doing.

On Sunday, B's extended family had a lovely shower for me and were all way too generous with their gifting. It was a lot of fun, and his family is just so nice. Check out that beautiful spread of eats!

It is so. True.

Words of wisdom from a sheet about fitting/wearing men's suits:

Maintaining proper shirt sleeve length [out of the cuff of the suit jacket] is one of life's greatest challenges.

In somewhat reverse order

Last night was supposedly the peak of an awesome meteor shower, so we went out to watch. We saw some, but this "meteor" "shower" was not as spectacular as others I've seen. Still a lot of fun though.

I was in Omaha over the weekend for my cousin's wedding. Good times. Except when I started feeling sick at the reception.

And I finished the last Harry Potter this weekend! My review is that it was very good. My favorite line: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" It sort of gave me goosebumps.

And in unrelated news:

Here's what I have for you

Today was a great day for this reason: I saw three modmates!! What fun! Not enough time with any of them, of course, but still, how wonderful.

Frustration: Who would have guessed that an envelope fitting a half sheet of 8.5" x 11" is not a standard size?! We have spent over an hour (B more than I) separately trying to get at least one of two different printers to print on our envelopes. WTF? Neither Word nor printers are my friends. Put them together...what a nightmare.

[EDIT: I now officially hate the printers I have dealt with tonight. Especially for trashing more envelopes than printing on them.]

I wish I had time to even think about blogging

Did one of my neighbors mow my lawn?

I think, maybe, yes. Odd. But awesome too.

...

I feel like I need a new entry, but I'm not sure about what. I am so busy I can't even think of anything of interest. Perhaps this: My cat is going to be boarded at the vet while we're on vacation. I'm a little worried for her and feel sorry that she has to spend so much time in a cage. Of interest? That we'll be spending slightly more on our cats' lodging during this time than we will on ourselves most nights.

I went to California. Here are some pictures.

I was sent to a conference in San Jose last week, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. [All pictures can be enlarged by clicking or opening in a new tab.]

This is the pool at our hotel, which was the probably the nicest hotel I'll ever stay at in my life. The pool was saltwater and on the roof.




Here's my delegate table, which was great. We had a lot of Table 20 Spirit! And I really loved being a delegate.



Here's a group of [mostly] Bethel folk deep in a discussion about mythology and the Bible. I had so much fun with the other young alums.


At the end of the week, we all traveled to San Francisco for some touristy things. One of those was Alcatraz, which is inhabited by many seagulls. This mama seagull was feeding its babies. Feeding them another bird. Our youth pastor said, "That was their brother."


This gelato place in Chinatown had the most interesting flavors I'd ever encountered, including ginger root, toro (the meat the comes from the belly area of a tuna), avocado (pictured here), and Budweiser beer (sign pictured here). I really wanted to sample the Budweiser, but my "tact over truth" personality took over and I decided I didn't want to get any disapproving looks from the person right behind me.


A street in Chinatown, including a branch of my bank, Bank of the West. Too bad I didn't get the whole Chinese name in the photo. Now I won't be able to find my bank when I go to China.











Picked these dudes up in Chinatown.



















Good job, TSA. This is a display at the SF airport, most likely about items prohibited on airplanes. Not that I would know for sure because the display wasn't at all labeled. Items were just haphazardly thrown in as far as I can tell. Notice the dust marks indicating more items used to be in here. Upside down brochures. And if I were going to take poison on an airplane, that's exactly the kind of container I'd put it in. One that's clearly labeled "poison."








The thing I most wish I had a picture of and would have taken a picture of had we not been en route to a public transportation connection and had I not been pushing a stroller was a sign in front of a restaurant in Chinatown that read, "Special Shat in Chicken!"

Planning guide

A couple weeks ago when I was looking through the Yellow Pages for bridal shops, I came across this guide for planning a wedding. I thought, "Hey, this might come in handy." And then I saw the guide started at twelve months before the wedding. I only ever had about 3.5 months. So I thought I'd chart our progress. Of course, some of the unchecked items are unnecessary, so it's like they're checked. [click on the picture for a larger view]

Kristine...

This is just for you! Sorry it's not much, though.

Sunny California is indeed sunny AND California. Who wudda thought. I can't believe I just typed "wudda."

Well, I didn't find internet access intending to post to my blog, so I really have nothing prepared to say, and judging by what I've written so far, I should have stopped a long time ago.

In need of some marketing help?

At Wal-Mart I walked past a rack (haha – you'll see later...) of training bras. One of the available brands was "Sweet Nothings." Seriously? As if girls who wear training bras aren't already self-conscious enough about their cup size?

62626

Sorry, just had to commemorate the turning of 26 on 626. Someone told me today that this is considered a Golden Birthday. I always thought that referred to turning 50. Which I did not. Well, Wikipedia supports this Golden Birthday idea – when your age corresponds with the day of the month – and says an alternate name is Champagne Birthday. I like that better. Too bad I didn't know that and drink some champagne. I did have boxed wine that had a little fizz to it, so maybe that's like poor man's champagne. Maybe people wanted to associate that with this phenomenon but Boxed Wine Birthday just didn't have the same ring.

Hmph.

Currently, the other Mennonite colleges do not have me as their biggest fan. (Not that they ever do, but even less so now.)

Throw another...pancake on the Barbie?

I use an online service to keep track of foods/calories eaten and activity/calories burned. It has a database of foods, so even if I don't know nutritional information for everything, I can get a pretty good estimate. I enter search terms and it finds any foods that include those terms. This morning I searched for "Breakfast Bar." The most surprising result was "Breakfast with Barbie." Now, what the heck is that? I googled it and didn't come up with much except for a toy that was a joint venture between a milk processor board and Mattel that features Barbie at a kitchen table with milk, Honey Nut Cheerios, and a newspaper. Back to the online service I use, I clicked on this food known as Breakfast with Barbie to see what the ingredients are. None were listed. But one serving of Breakfast with Barbie is worth 124 calories. Which just serves to further the argument that Barbie is damaging to people's self images. I mean, heck, apparently just being in the presence of Barbie causes you to get fatter! :)

It's true

The Salt-N-Pepa station on Pandora plays the best selection of songs.

WOOF!! WOOF!! WOOF!! WOOF!!

I just spent my afternoon listening to a motivational speaker. WOW.

Know what's gross?

Gross was the other day when I was working out and got to the ab curl station. I used the machine right after a guy I was already annoyed with – annoyed because he kept jumping around from station to station not following a pattern, which more than once caused me to have to not follow a pattern. And I like following patterns. So anyway, I get to the ab curl machine. The guy before me did the regular front curl and then also curls turned 90 degrees in either direction (so his armpit was right on the curl bar thing...I know lots about the actual names of the things I'm trying to talk about here). That in itself didn't annoy me; I do the same thing. But this guy had some super bad B.O.! I got to the ab curl and got the bar adjusted to the height I wanted it to. Being a female, I find it more comfortable to have the bar a bit higher than others might, so the bar was very close to my nose, and all I could smell for the duration of my curls was nasty, nasty B.O. Sickenating! [photo illustration below; too bad you can't really see the expression on my "expertly" inserted face]