Re-Start!

It's a new life.... it's a new day.... I could go on and on.. but here's the short version.

2009 dated Todd and got engaged in November

2010 bought a house, sold a house, rented a house, helped folks recover from flooded houses,

started renovating new old house, planned a wedding, had a wedding, demo'd a kitchen,

re-built a kitchen

2011 more renovating, more renovating, more renovating, planned 2 more weddings (not mine)

spent 6 months out of the first year of marriage apart with Todd on the road on the Britney

Spears - Femme Fatale tour. Uber stressful and so grateful when it was over.

2012 still renovating in year 2 but still loving every minute and coming up with more and more

great ideas to keep building The ultimate Greenhouse. and now.....for the rest of

the story...

tune in tomorrow!

Dogtober

Last weekend was the 2nd Annual Dogtober event for East C.A.N.
once again we had the use of ArtHouse Gardens (thanks Alan) and Elizabeth and Shelley basically did all of the organizing. I have been a little swamped at work and didn't really get involved at all as they pulled everything together.

8 am - 4 pm was my gig. I brought Beda since he's officially looking for a new home. He is still a foster dog even though we've had him for ages.

well, he's not officially looking, but i am.
Although things have been going well at the house (ie: Abner hasn't been a total butthead lately and attacked him) and since folks aren't lined up for him due to him being a... um... senior dog - we certainly haven't been pushing things.


until now. :)



he was so darn cute. who wouldn't want to take him home?
i thought he'd made a love connection at one point, but i was mistaken. bummer!


Anyway... the day was all about music, pumpkins, dogs to pet, a 3K run/walk, raising money and awareness, and of course..... the infamous Listserve Pie Toss!

We asked the top listserve posters to participate and quite a few of them agreed to take a pie in the face in the name of a cause.
those brave enough to show up were:
Rembrandt (father of 22 - who lined up to toss a pie!)
Mitch Palmer (hammer extraordinnaire - you need shakes? he's got em!)
Grizzly Reeves (who drove about 45 minutes in for this since he's moved out of East Nasty)
Elizabeth Chauncey (she was kind of trapped since she's our fearless leader!)
Wryker (manager of his own fan club)

E Burt was next door hawking her wares at Meg's for the day's yard sale so she deferred.
Pam was too chicken to show up as was Bill Bernstein. that's ok. we'll get em next time.
oh, and Alan .... he "had to work in another location" yeah right... whatever.


Here are some pics!

oh, and i got in on the action too!

i'm pretty sure this is what caused my back to go out on me for the next 5 days!

:)

Weekend Update

not really the SNL kind. the eastsidekind

got up early saturday morning thinking i was going to go to Oktoberfest/Germantown Street Festival to hold a puppy and try to make people think they want to take it home.

too many volunteers and not enough pups - go figure! One was adopted the night before and I generally don't take Beda out to things like this although it would be really great if i did.

this is Beda.

So, Alison (my sister) and i headed out still pretty early to go try to regain some German nostalgia.
yeah right. after perusing the booths and Alison making a few purchases (for those of you with no money - it's a really great way to satisfy the urge to spend - more later.) we decided to eat lunch

Alison is a pescaterian (she eats fish but no other meat) so she ate the veggie beer cheese soup from Mad Platter. I found one of many vendors advertising bratwurst and had that.
bratwurst? whatever. more like a polska kielbasa in a hot dog bun with american mustard on top.
um... hellooooooooo bratwurst is not italian sausage, hot dog, polska k, turkey sausage, smoked sausage. it's bratwurst. and i know it by the flavor. this wasn't it.
and who ever ate it from a hot dog bun? it's supposed to come in a crusty roll "brochen".
and bright yellow mustard is a travesty.

and truthfully, i could have lived with the hot dog bun and the yellow mustard IF i had been eating a brat.
i spose if i had waited to eat until after consuming 1 or 2 of the enormous beers being sold for god knows how much i may not have noticed.
i didn't drink any beer. so i guess you can say i didn't hold up my end of the whole Oktoberfest deal either.
but the German Chocolate Cake from Mad Platter that Alison and i shared on our way back to the car was divine. the icing was homemade and you could tell. we both loved it.

back to the spending money thing. Alison and i have similar things we are drawn to so we tend to visit the same types of booths at these events. we both naturally steered right into a sweet little booth with pillows and sleep masks and fabric journal covers. i eventually realized i had seen her things before at the Tomato Arts Fest earlier this summer. the cutest stuff! White Cottage Design
and they live in East Nash too! while having a conversation she mentioned her 150 pound american bulldog Boris. i said... wait a minute... you live on Douglas! yup! i run past her house with the dogs and have met them on the street with their big hoss of a dog!
love it.
Alison bought a holiday gift and two things for herself and i like to think it was because i was spending through her. i'm pretty good at convincing someone they need to "go ahead and get it" it's so cute "why not?" just think... "you'll have one gift down and only a few more to worry about"
it's really my way of being able to spend money without having any.

I love to go shopping with people who have money. When Todd wanders into a men's shop at the mall i love it when he says "i think i need a new shirt" or a new pair of shoes or whatever.
ooooh goody! i immediately go to work looking for the perfect shoe or shirt. or if it's a gift for someone .... yay! two of my favorites! i get to pick it out and maybe get to be there when someone opens it! (more later on that one!)

So, Alison ended up calling me a bad influence and i got excited knowing she had two new items for herself that i happen to think are just perfect! AND one for someone else.

mission accomplished! ha!

Countdown

I'm not the only person who has a significant other that spends most of their days away so I'm not looking for sympathy.

I always say things could be much worse and i'm a lucky girl.


Today I took Todd to the airport for another long and hopefully final leg of what we like to call "the neverending tour"
He'll be in Japan, China, Korea, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, UK, and Ireland with a few possible additions and maybe a subtraction or two.

I get to meet him in London on November 13th and hang until they move long to Newcastle from Manchester. Get to visit with family and hopefully take awesome pictures.

The title is countdown because I'm pretty excited about going to England again. It has been way too long and the first time back without my grandparents living. I'm glad I won't go to their house actually. I want to see it again but not on this trip. too upsetting.

35 days til i leave for London.
yay!
Here is my To Do list...

1. follow a meal plan for the next 35 days
2. try to peel a few more pounds by following above mentioned meal plan
3. consistently run with dogs for the next 35 days. good for them good for me.
4. get the darn grass to grow in the backyard before i leave! It's grass growin time um.. did you hear that Abner? NO DIGGING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is Abner. he's a digger.
that's as far as i'm going with the to do list.
It's already daunting.

ok..... GO!

Been a while...

For months and months i sat back thinking... i want a blog... i want a blog...
i was inspired by my friend Courtney. www.onemoderngirl.blogspot.com.
she's funny. and if you don't think so when you read her latest one about Southern Bred..(yes, an awesome meat and 3 in our hood) then you must go back to her May 5th post titled Foot in Mouth.
shes funny. like i said before.

so anyway. i was inspired. i started a blog.
i wrote one thing.
i'm lazy.

i've decided to make a new commitment!
how bout a few times a week? let's stop there. i don't want to get crazy and make you think i'm an open book and you're going to know everything about me and my life. whoa! nuh - uh.
yeah, i'm lying. it's not about that. it's about this.
i'm lazy.

have a great labor day weekend!
i'm gonna!

Whattaweek

I certainly didn't expect the week to turn out the way it has.
Turmoil is the best way to describe it I suppose.
Here's the long short version.

Monday - kickoff day for Young Scholars Medical Program (YSMP).
This is the part where Anne the student leader who has done phenomenal work this summer on the program gets to actually lead! (i'm pretty sure she's enjoying it)
We had a luncheon at the University Club for the students that I and the Dean of the program attended. Joel, the reason behind the program and the guy who keeps it financed and my big boss for the last 5 years stopped in to give the students a welcome.

Tuesday - Did the intro for the LifeFlight portion of the YSMP day since I work with LF. Then had time to kill on campus and went to visit my old boss. That's when the bombshell came. Joel told us he's leaving at the end of the month. Tears were shed. Professional? No, but I don't care. I was very very grateful to have a private 20 minutes to talk with him about the impact he's had on me and my time here. Sadness descended.

Wednesday. - Rumor and gossip abound...total disarray and uncertainty!

Thursday - More rumor and gossip. eek! Why does nobody have a crystal ball?
Then my wonderful friend JJ suggested a yoga class at a studio (instead of a living room- ha!) after work and what a gift that turned out to be. I had forgotten what it's like to sit in silence and focus on the inside of your body. R E C E N T E R E D

Friday - what a better day this will be. I watered my plants in the backyard and am so grateful for the mild summer we've had! My hostas are healthy and my impatiens are overflowing from their planter. Even my hydrangea (another gift from Todd) is healthy. Turned on the sprinkler to start the grass seed growing and went inside to get ready for work. You can tell i have an old house...the sprinkler being on prevented the toilet from flushing. Yay for water pressure. ha!
Off to the office to face the day with a new mantra! "everything's gonna be alright now... everything's gonna be alright."

Weekend

Didn't feel physically great this weekend and was missing someone so I kind of "hunkered down" as my mom would say!
I watched movies!
I never do this. I'm notorious for going to Blockbuster or Red box and renting a video and then not watching it.
Anyway... it started with
I Heart Huckabees - hated it. i'm sorry if i'm not that deep. i hated it. and the word existential just confuses me.
then
Juno - seen it before (actually was my Earth Day gift last year from my sweet boyfriend- yes he gets me Earth day gifts!) still love that movie.
Rachel Getting Married - loved it. raw is a good word for this one - in more ways than one.
Doubt - it was hard to watch. great movie - Philip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic and of course Meryl Streep. But I probably should have saved it for when i wasn't as emotional. There are some scenes that are just so heartwrenching - it's one of those where no matter how many times you say to yourself "it's just a movie" it doesn't matter at all because you know that the subject matter here is something that people deal with every single day so it isn't just a movie at all. terrible.

then of course you have to add in the insane number of "16 and pregnant" episodes that were on MTV. really. even though i think MTV should have MUSIC on there... i'm wondering if these actually work as a deterrent for teen pregnancy.

oh, and i ended with an episode of Throwback with Bobby Flay last night.
next time i'm in New York i'm eating blueberry pancakes at Clinton Street Bakery...

www.clintonstreetbaking.com

definitely!

now when is my next trip to NYC?