Good Day

Poor Shawn was at work all day today, working really hard. He didn't even take the time to come home for lunch. (He only works a block from home, so he usually comes home on his lunch break.)

I, on the other hand, had a nice, social day! In the young adults group we've gotten involved with at church, the other women and I have realized that none of us are working right now. There are six girls who either are currently unemployed, are teachers (or are currently unemployed teachers), or have recently had a baby. So we've decided that we should start doing things together during the day while our husbands are all at work.

Today, four of us started off by meeting in Ballard for cupcakes at Cupcake Royale! I love this place. Today, I had the carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, and I also had a "babycake" (a mini cupcake) that was vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream frosting. The frosting actually was made with locally grown strawberries...yum! The other three girls had never been to the bakery, so I was glad they all enjoyed it.

Then we headed over to Green Lake, where two more girls met us. It was beautiful and sunny today, and warmer than it's been in at least a week. The six of us walked around the lake, which is about 3 miles. It took longer than I expected since the various moms had to stop on occasion for feedings, diaper changes, putting babies into strollers, taking babies out of strollers...you get the idea. :)

By the time I headed home, my legs were a little tired and my shoulders were sunburned...but I had good conversations with some good, new friends. It was a good day!

Dragonfly in Amber

Dragonfly in Amber, by Diana Gabaldon, 1994. (947 pages)

Dragonfly in Amber is the second book in the Outlander series. I first heard about the series last fall, when I was chatting with girls on the Book Club board of TheNest.com. I read Outlander in February, and I absolutely loved it. Here's the post I wrote about the book then.

A large portion of Dragonfly in Amber actually takes place in France, which, for some reason, I wasn't expecting. It was still a well-written story, and this part of the plot was intriguing. However, I missed the "magic" of Scotland that was present in the first book. So I'll admit...I was thrilled when they eventually went back, even though I knew it was dangerous for them.

For much of the first book, Jamie didn't know that Claire was actually from the future (1945). However, in this book, he knows. So it's interesting to see what they choose to do (or not do) with the information that she knows from her history books.

If you haven't read the Outlander series, I highly recommend it. Just be prepared, though, for the occasional gruesome details of 18th century battle, death, and destruction. :) I'm very excited to read book #3 (Voyager). I just requested it from the library...and even though it was published in 1994, I'm number 20 on the holds list (and the library owns 7 copies of it).

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Total number of books read in 2009: 28

Total number of pages read in 2009: 10825

2nd Wedding Weekend, Part One

I really need to blog about our trip before we get too far away from it and then I don't remember details! So...after my brother's wedding in North Carolina, and after spending a few days with my parents in Ohio, I flew (with my friend Katie) to St. Louis. There were two major events going on in St. Louis that weekend. The main event, really, was the wedding of my friend Shannon. The other event was a reunion of the Hydra! For a full explanation of the Hydra, read this post from last summer. Basically, there are five of us girls (me, Katie, Rachel, Jane, and Shannon) who were best friends in college and are now spread out all over the country.

Anyways...Katie and I flew in to St. Louis on Thursday. While checking in to my hotel room, I learned that Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson had both died. Rest assured that MJ "tributes" and references abounded all weekend long. Then Katie and I headed over to Shannon's parents' house for a HUGE family/out-of-town-friends barbeque. Jane and Shannon were both there, so the Hydra was almost complete! I had planned to leave at some point to pick up Rachel and her husband from the airport...but the poor things missed their connecting flight and had to spend the night in Memphis. Regardless, Thursday night was a great time to start catching up with my friends (and their family members) that I hadn't seen in awhile.

On Friday morning, I eventually was able to pick up Shawn from the airport. He was kind enough to take another overnight flight so that he'd be able to spend time with my friends and me on Friday. Unfortunately, he was without a cell phone (long story), so I spent 45 minutes circling the St. Louis airport waiting for him to come out, while he spent 45 minutes sitting at baggage claim waiting for me to come in! Turns out, I took him over to Jane's house (where all the girls and assorted children were going to have brunch) and only had about 4o minutes until I needed to go back to the airport to pick up Rachel and Phil.

So two weeks ago today, the Hydra was together* for the first time since we graduated from college 9 years ago!! It was so nice to be able to spend time with all of the girls. I think Shawn was a little overwhelmed at first (my friends can be LOUD), but he settled in pretty quickly and held his own. :) We spent the rest of the day at Jane's house, just chatting and eating. When everyone needed to head off to the wedding rehearsal and dinner, Shawn and I relaxed at the hotel until it was time to find dinner (I introduced him to Bob Evans restaurant). Then we saw Transformers 2 (on opening weekend).

This picture was actually taken at the wedding on Saturday (obviously), but I think it's the only one we got of all the girls. I'll make another post about the actual wedding day. Left to right, this is Katie, Jane (8 months pregnant with Lucy...and her son Joey hugging her), me, Shannon, and Rachel.

*If you didn't read the original Hydra post, I feel obligated to mention that there was originally a 6th member of the Hydra. However, none of us has seen her or heard from her in over 3 years...so we consider this get-together to be a complete reunion. No offense to her, should she happen to stumble across this blog. :)

Peas!

While we were gone on our trip(s), we were bad gardeners. We weren't too worried about the first weekend we were gone, since Shawn was back home after only 4 days. We figured the plants would survive (especially since we have the extra reservoirs at the bottom of our planters). However, for the longer time away, we kind of forgot to arrange for someone to come over regularly. Shawn was able to contact one of his co-workers, and he came over to feed the fish and water the plants after we'd already been gone about a week. When we came home, I thought we'd probably killed all our plants. But there have been new blooms on the columbines, there are little itty bitty tomatoes, and suddenly there are lots of pea pods! I was most certain that we'd killed the peas, so I'm very excited to see them growing (especially since I love eating peas right off the vine).

Shawn and I picked one pod yesterday, just to see if we were correct in thinking it was ready...and it was yummy! Here are pod #2 and #3 that I just picked this morning!

It's official...we have peas from our "garden"! :-)

Modoc: The True Story.....

Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived, by Ralph Helfer, 1997 (325 pages)

I read this book while I was on vacation, and it actually took me the entire two and a half weeks to get through it. I don't think that had anything to do with the book...I just tend not to read much while I'm traveling. That being said, I read it for a new book club I'm hoping to start attending. The meeting about this book actually met last night, and I ended up not going. The friend who invited me wasn't going to be able to go, and honestly, a night just sitting at home sounded really good yesterday.

As you can see by the title, this book claims to be a true story. I'm not 100% convinced that it's entirely true, but it's definitely an amazing story if it is. (Anyone know if it's honestly a true story?) It is written by Ralph Helfer, who is an exotic animal trainer, and this is supposed to be the back story of an elephant he eventually acquired.

The book tells the story of Modoc, the elephant, and Bram Gunterstein. Bram's father was the elephant trainer for a circus in Germany, and Modoc and Bram were born on the same day. Because of this, Bram was literally raised around Modoc. When Bram was a teenager, the circus was sold to an American, and Bram stowed away on the ship that was taking the animals to the U.S. so that he could stay with Modoc. As the book progresses, the journey of Bram and Modoc is an amazing one. Together, they manage to survive shipwreck, thieves, murders, and civil war.

I did like this book, but it wasn't my favorite. I think I would've liked it better if I'd read it faster, instead of breaking it up into small sections like I did (and spread out over more than two weeks). I felt that the author didn't do a very good job of allowing the reader to get a sense of the time that was passing. For example, in one part of the book, Bram and Modoc are living in a village in India. It feels like they're only there a few weeks, but the author casually mentions at one point that they'd been there for over five years. The author has the same problem with Bram aging. For most of the book, Bram seemed to be portrayed as a teenager. Then there seems to be an abrupt shift in his personality, and it was then that I realized that he was probably decades older than I was picturing.

This would have been an interesting book to discuss with a book club, as I would be interested to hear what others thought of it. I'd also like to know if others had the same issues with the author's style that I did.

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Number of books read in 2009: 27

Number of pages read in 2009: 9878

We're Home!

It was a long and fun trip, but it's good to be home! We flew back to Seattle late on Sunday night. Parking anywhere near the Seattle airport is really expensive, so our new friends in the area have been great about giving us rides. When Shawn flew out to St. Louis, he left our car at the house of our friends. That's fine...except that these same friends had to come get us at 12:30 Monday morning! By the time we went to their house, picked up our car, and drove home (stopping by the drive-thru of Jack in the Box since we were both hungry), it was about 2:00am before we made it home. Poor Shawn had to go to work on Monday morning...but I slept in until 10:00. :)

Over the next week or two, I'll work on some posts that will show pictures of some of the things we did while on vacation. But just to recap...Shawn and I left on Wednesday, June 17th. We flew overnight, arriving in Raleigh, North Carolina, around 9:30am on Thursday, June 18th. After celebrating my brother's wedding that weekend, Shawn flew back to Seattle that Sunday. I, however, drove with my parents and my 3-year old niece to NE Ohio. Shawn spent most of that week at home, working, while I hung out with my family and saw some friends in Ohio. On Thursday, June 25th, I flew (with my friend Katie) to St. Louis. Shawn met me there early Friday morning (after taking yet another overnight flight). We spent the weekend there, hanging out with my college friends and attending a fun wedding. Early that Sunday morning (after 3 hours of sleep), Shawn and I flew from St. Louis to Denver, where we spent the next week enjoying the mountains and spending time with lots of friends and family.

And now we're home. :) The whole trip was definitely tiring at times, but overall, I'm glad we did it this way. It was actually cheaper for us, since we only needed to buy one-way tickets for me instead of round-trip tickets. We got to see LOTS of people in one big trip instead of trying to remember who we did or did not see in lots of little trips. While we were gone, we think that most of the fish survived (although I still can't find the ghost catfish...); however, we're not sure that our garden will survive. We kind of forgot to have someone come over to water everything, so things are looking a bit crispy. I have high hopes for the tomato plant (there is actually a small tomato currently growing), and I'm crossing my fingers for the peas (since we already have a dozen or so pods growing), but I'm not going to hold my breath for the carrots. I'll let you know what happens. :)

Still Alive!

So...I got a little busy over the last week or so. Since I last posted, I flew to St. Louis, hung out with my college girlfriends, attended the wedding of one of said girlfriends, flew to Denver, and have been doing lots of fun stuff with friends and family. I'll try to explain more details in posts over the next few days, when I have a chance to add some pictures.

Today, Shawn and I went out to lunch with our friends Mat and Abby. Mat was one of the groomsmen in our wedding, and he and Shawn have played rugby together for years. Mat and Abby are the same couple that I did the Stomp to Romp Out Breast Cancer with back in March.

They suggested a restaurant that's relatively new to Denver, called D Bar Desserts. Here's the link to the restaurant's website. You should definitely take the time to look around the website, looking at all the yummy food! It's actually primarily a dessert and wine bar, but obviously, they do also serve lunch and dinner. For my lunch today, I had baked mac n cheese. I normally don't like homemade macaroni and cheese, but this was wonderful!! I didn't take this picture (I found it at milehigheater.com), but this is what I had:

For dessert, Shawn and I split the "Cake and Shake." It's a big piece of triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and a mini milkshake (we chose chocolate...should've gone with vanilla). It was awesome! Again, we didn't take this picture...I found it on flickr.

Everything that we had today was so good! And it should be, considering that the restaurant is owned by none other than Keegan Gerhard, of the Food Network! He was actually there today, baking and running the restaurant. He actually brought out Mat and Abby's food for them. It was a little surreal seeing a chef from TV working in the restaurant where we were eating. If you're not familiar with him, you can find his bio on the restaurant's website. And this is what he looks like. :)