Corn Country

As most of you know, I fondly refer to my current residence as Corn Country. In the winter, it's Cold Corn Country. Yes, I live in a state where one of the biggest income producers is corn. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Anyway, I've been working in my yard a lot lately (instead of running) trying to finish this raised bed I'm building and planting a bunch of stuff - today while I was planting some bulbs, banana trees and elephant ears I was frustrated by the utter hardness and dryness of the ground. It was like rock -the ground was impossibly hard to dig in. Now, you figure a state that bases so much of its income on crops would have good ground. Nope. I don't know how anything can grow here. So that means a lot of mulch and purchased top soil.
On another, much sadder (I know, it's hard to imagine anything sadder then my crappy dirt) note, Andrew Thompson died this weekend in Tally Town. He is my neice's dad and a family friend. He was only a few weeks away from turning 26, so that just adds even more tragedy to the pain. I can't even imagine what his family is going through and can only wish them my deepest condolences. I am so thankful that I have happy and healthy family and friends.
To end on a happier note, Cody and I made some more awesome salsa tonight and I bought a new hose. :) I wish everyone the safest and happiest of days. Take care of yourself!

Crazy Weekend

I didn't even realize this picture was on my camera until I downloaded the pictures tonight, but I realized it tells the story of the entire weekend.

As most know, we went to Tally this weekend to take the cats to my moms so she can watch them while we're in Germany (we decided that 18 days was just too long to leave them by themselves) and to finalize some wedding details. Needless to say, it was quick and busy. We intended to leave as early as possible on Friday, but of course we ended up heading out much later then anticipated. After arriving in Florida Saturday morning we did some sleeping, checked out our wedding reception site, the wedding ceremony site, did dinner with my mom's family on Saturday, Cody's family on Sunday, and then drove back today. This picture was taken Sunday night at Cody's sister's house. She gave me a bunch of bachelorette stuff for my birthday so I was wearing the veil and just crashed (I was beat - after the 13 hour drive and then not getting enough sleep). The cutest part of the picutre is that Baylee (our ADORABLE three year old niece) brought her blanket over and covered me up. How cute. Lots of news from the weekend - will write more on it tomorrow.

Accomplishment!

Here's a picture of my newest project - a raised bed in the backyard! I've been bummed about not running this week so I've sunk myself into finishing this project. And it's almost done - at least the frame for the bed is built - now I just have to dig up some more dirt in the high part of the yard to transfer to the bed and then buy some good dirt from the store for the top. Yipee! See, the yard is a crazy slope so I flatted out the top of the yard for the veggie garden and took the dirt and moved it to the bottom of the yard to fill in the deep part of the raised bed. Then I took a ton of landscaping ties and built them level so the bed is level and stacked them to compensate for the slopped yard - that's why one side is crazy high and the other is level with the ground. Anyway, now I just have to get the dirt set up and I can plant it all up. My goal is to get it done before we go to Germany so when we get back I'll have all sorts of pretty plants instead of a dirt pile. :)

FYI

Lots of new pictures on the website. There's (1) International Gator Day where our UF Alumni Club volunteered at the St. Louis Area Food Bank, (2) Maifest in Herman - a whole blog in itself - tons of random pictures because I got bored and just took random pictures of everything, and (3) The Many Faces of Dude - a collection of pictures of Dude (pretty self-explanatory).
Enjoy. I'll have to tell the whole Maifest story later - including the part where I got pulled over as the designated driver without a Missouri license (I refuse to give up my FL one) and had to convince the cops I wasn't drunk -I guess I just give off the vibe of being intoxicated.

New Shoes

I finally got new running shoes (actually this weekend)! I've been wanting new shoes for quite some time but nice running shoes aren't cheap. I justify the expense by not spending hardly anything on shoes otherwise. Plus I think it's important to have good running shoes when you run a lot to prevent injuries and such (I swear my shoes are the reason my knees got better last year). Anyway, when we travel for work we're reimbursed for mileage and in the beginning of May I went to Columbia, Jefferson City and Rolla which gave me a huge mileage check. Cody and I have worked out a deal with my mileage checks that I get to keep half of it to "blow" on whatever I want (not that I ever really blow money - Cody and I are both rather frugal most of the time) and the other half goes to savings. So this check I got my new shoes. Sweet! They're Saucony's - which before I started running I had never heard of but now I'm in love with - they're light and quite cushy. I'm excited about the shoes - too bad I can't run right now (I can barely walk without crazy shin pain - I see another orthopedist tomorrow morning 8 a.m.). But I was missing running so I thought I would write about my new shoes . . . in case anyone cared. :) Hopefully I'll have happier news after my appointment tomorrow.

She hits. . . . she scores!

Well, not really. . . . again. I guess I'm in the new sports mood lately because tonight I played my first game of softball. Let me preface this with some understanding of St. Louis and softball. This town loves softball. Not really sure why. My guess is it's a rather unathletic game and you drink a lot of beer. Nonetheless, for whatever reason, this town loves the game. I've never played because it just wasn't a big thing in Florida (I've never really known anyone who's ever played, much less for a "league") and I'm not really a team sport person. So I decided to give it a try at the insistent pressuring of our GM. Let's just say softball didn't go as well as soccer and soccer didn't go very well. Sorry to say this for anyone with a love for the game, but softball is not my thing. I'd come right out and say it just sucks but I might get my car bashed in tomorrow, so I'll leave it with it's just not my thing. Another girl didn't want to play either (we both got roped in by the persistent and guilt-tripping GM) so we alternated positions and she batted and I played on the field (right field - which Cody informs me is where they put people who suck - like me). For one my shins hurt like hell so it was crazy painful to even walk out on the outfield and two, there just isn't much to the game. To win you need to pitch, hit and catch. I'll end my tirade now by just saying this is not my game. I will come watch to drink beer though. :)

More Pictures

Here's a picture of some roses I picked from our rose bush in the back yard. I thought I killed the bush in the winter when I cut it all the way to the ground, but I guess it lived since it's now full of red roses!







Here's a picture of an iris in our front yard. Since I don't know too terribly much about flowers, I looked it up online and it's actually named a "Mother Earth Iris." Kinda cool.

A hard pill to swallow

I like to run. I really like to run. I listen to music and clear my head. I get to spend some time chatting and bouncing stuff off Marissa - kinda like my own little therapy. Problem with running is that is sometimes hurts to run.

Last year it was my knees - some kind of patellafemoral syndrome crap. Basically my knees don't come forward right over my toes like their supposed too, but instead come inward. I got some great physical therapy and some new shoes to fix the problem (overpronation it's called) and now my knees are great.

Now it's my shins. But it's not as easy as some new shoes and some physical therapy. I actually have stress fractures (tiny fractures of the bone) in my shins. Quite painful and not an easy thing to fix. Basically the fix is to ice them and STAY OFF THEM. Anyone who knows me knows how damn hard it is for me to sit for any extended period of time. So basically I've been running on them for a few months now thinking they might go away - until last week I ran and they hurt so bad I thought I was going to cry (just ask Marissa). So today I talked to my doctor and the general consensus is - STOP RUNNING! Not forever - but he recommends 6-8 weeks. Well that's just not going to happen (since I really want to run the marathon in October), but I have decided that I'm going to stop running and start back up when we get back from Germany. So I agreed to give it basically five weeks. So now I'm faced with five weeks of no running. While this may sound strange, it's actually quite a depressing thought. I really like my running. Now I'm stuck with becoming totally deconditioned and only able to bike, swim and possibly the elliptical machine (which I like but am only allowed to do if pain free). It's a hard pill to swallow, but hopefully it will be worthwhile and I'll be all better soon.

Kitties on the Pickle Post

Kitties just love it when the window is open and they can perch on the oversized window sill (otherwise known as the "Pickle Post"). They all cram on the sill and watch the world go by outside. How cute.

Random Object Seen in the Alley

You might be asking yourself what in the world is this thing? Good question. We have no clue. Cody passed it every day in the alley after exiting the garage (I don't drive in the alley since I park on the street) and this weekend I was with him when we passed it so I just had to take a picture. Turns out it was gone this morning. One mans trash must be another man's treasure. Too bad we have no clue what that treasure actually is.

A New Look . . .

(1) The Blog. Yeah, there's a new look. Not really on purpose, but sort of stumbled upon it. I was trying to mess around with the Java script on my template (with my basic (read: non-existent) knowledge of computer programming) for the old one and somehow messed up the side bar thing so it didn't line up right. Well, since I had no idea how to fix it I just kept changing the template until one finally worked the way it should. I'll give it a while, see if it grows on me and if not, change back to the old dark one.

(2) The Cardinal's Stadium. A new look here as well. The new stadium actually opened with all its newness back in April but all games are sold out so I hadn't gotten to go to a game yet (Cody actually went to his first game at the stadium last night) - until today. My boss has season tickets and wasn't able to go to the game so he gave us four tickets to the Cardinals v. Mets tonight. It was pretty cool - and pretty good seats (behind home plate on the third level). The stadium is really nifty - very new. I wanted to take pictures of all its newness but left my camera at home. :( I still felt hesitant walking around the place after watching the crews build it so quickly (I can see the stadium from my office) - I didn't quite trust anything that can be built that quickly - I just know they had to have cut corners here and there and since the city wanted that stadium so bad (and for it to open on time) I'm sure any "inspector" would pass just about anything.

That's it for new looks. As for other news, Cody and I talked to his sister tonight and got some information on an officiant to marry us. Larry was great enough to call the guy who married the two of them and he said he would be available to marry us as well. First, it would be cool to be married by the same guy as his sister and Larry (sort of a good luck thing since they're such a good couple). Second, that takes any pressure off us to find someone, because yet again, we just don't care that much about who it is as long as it's legal and they're not a total moron. :) Third, we would have no clue how to even go about finding an officiant, much less one in Tallahassee. And finally, the guy is nondenominational so he will let us keep as much religion in or out of the ceremony as we want and let us pretty much make our own ceremony - definitely good for us.

That's all the news for today. Thanks Sara and Larry - you guys ROCK!

She shoots . . . . she scores!

Well, not really. But I did shoot. Well, almost at least. To get to the point - I played both my first and second games of soccer this weekend!
Cody has been playing soccer since he was a little kid. He was on the State Championship team in highschool. Since moving to St. Louis he has played both indoor and outdoor. Cody knows soccer and he's good at it. I don't even know the rules of soccer (though I do plan to learn them before going to Germany to watch The World Cup - I thought it would be useful)! Well this winter/spring he was in charge of setting up the indoor team in Brentwood. Part of this includes having enough people at each game and since they play co-ed, he needs at least three guys and three girls at each game (more is ideal so they at least have a few subs). Well, this past Sunday was their play-off game and they were a girl short, so rather then either forfeit or play with only 5 players the entire game, I filled in. It was awesome fun and I certainly have a newfound respect for soccer (even if I did totally suck at it). I always figured it wasn't that hard because when I run, I run for about an hour or hour and a half and when Cody plays soccer usually they have subs so he hardly ever runs for over 10 minutes at a time. Boy was I wrong! Soccer is hard! And that doesn't even count the kicking the ball part!! The running is so much! You sprint up the field to be an extra man on offense (not that I was any use on offense since I seriously have no idea how to kick the ball) and then the ball gets turned over to the other team and all of a sudden you sprint down to the other goal to block your man and then all over again - up and down the field, back and forth. And since it's indoor and there are walls, no one can kick the ball off the field to give you even a 5 second break - just run back and forth and back and forth. Anyway, it was crazy fun but I am just too bad to possibly plan seriously. I'm going to try to get Cody and Marissa to teach me how to play and then maybe take a baby soccer for adults class and then maybe I can play on a baby team next year. But we'll have to see. In an event, I had a great time in my first two soccer games!
p.s. The reason there were two games was that we played our game and then the team that played after us didn't have enough players so we played for them. One game of soccer is hard, two in a row makes your legs hurt like hell the next day. :) Good fun though.

Weekend Update

Can't really claim much productive, unless you call drinking a productive activity. Friday I had a work happy hour for one of our associates who is moving to Virginia, so that began the consumption. While I was there, Cody was playing golf with the boys so you can only imagine the drinking that occurred there. Then we met up, ostensibly to figure out details for the Germany trip (which has now become a Eastern and Eastern-Western Europe trip) with Dude - such as getting some train tickets (at least between World Cup games) and figuring out cities to visit (my list is: Paris [where we fly in], Gelsenkirchen [first game city and where Cody's folks live], Berlin [game 2], Munich [game 3], Hamburg [game 4], Krakow, Auschwitz, Prague, possibly Austria, castle city in Germany, possible wine country in Germany, and Brussels [where we fly out]). Anyway, we met up at The Drinking Horn, the most dive bar around. Needless to say we didn't get a darn thing done for the trip, Dude managed to spill half a pitcher of beer on the floor and we had to leave Cody's car in West County.
Saturday my goal was to start painting the dining room - I really want to get this room done so Cody's parents can see it when they come up (I have to prove I've done something since they were up here in July of last year). :) Well, I caulked around the ceiling where it's "shifted" but then got tired of looking up so I gave up that quest for the time being. Then Cody had soccer practice out in Creve Couer, so he did that while I ran with Marissa. Then we ate dinner with Marissa and Cassidy at a cool Chinese place - Jade Garden. I was quite excited that they had steamed dishes instead of just the typical fried fare - quite impressive. That night we celebrated Kyle's girlfriend, Cashelle's, arrival in STL at Kilkenny's (she moved here about a week ago). As odd coincidences go, she went to FSU (in Tally where Cody and I are from) for her Master's before moving here. Small world sometimes. Anyway, a good time and great amount of drinking was had by all. :)
Sunday actually deserves it's own post, so I'll do that one later. :) Happy Monday everyone!

Rare Occasion

It's 8 o'clock and we're "done" for the day. On a typical day, this either never happens or happens around 1 a.m. As you can see from the previous post, the weather probably had a lot to do with us already being "done." We thought today was going to be one of our typical busy days, where we try to fit 30 hours worth of life into a meager 24, but thanks to the weather man, it wasn't. On our perverbial plate for the day was: I needed to run, Cody had soccer practice out at Creve Coeur, and there was Parties in the Park in Clayton. Our plan, as usual, was to try to fit everything in. Since soccer practice was near Cody's work, I was going to ride with Marissa (who is on the soccer team) out to Creve Coeur, run while they practiced soccer, then ride back into town with Cody, come home and change clothes, hopefully all in time to run out to Clayton to meet up with everyone for Parties in the Park. But, alas, our day was lessened by the rain. All three of the above were cancelled. So Cody worked late, I worked out at the gym (Cardio Kickboxing kicked my butt), we made dinner (salsa and chips for Cody, left-over salad from lunch for me) and now it's only 8 o'clock and we're "done" for the day. Mind you, I still have the dishwasher going and some laundry to sort, wash and fold but that can be done after being "done." So now we're going to relax.

STL Weather

I guess this means soccer practice, running and Parties in the Park are cancelled?

The Countdown Begins

30 days until we leave for Germany! We got our World Cup tickets in the mail - very cool - and very expensive. Oh well, gotta love eating tuna fish until the wedding. :)

More last week/weekend update

Two very important updates since the post before the last post. So important they deserve their own post, not just a lump into the "week update" post. . . .
First, last Monday my friend, Kari, from law school just happened to be in St. Louis! It was the weirdest of coincidences since no one I have ever known has even known where St. Louis was on a map, much less had any connection to my new city (though on a side note, I guess I can't call it my "new city" anymore since as of last Wednesday I've lived here 2 years). Anyway, Kari's husband, John, has a sister who lives in St. Louis and just had a baby boy (on another side note, they named him Noah, which after I told Cody he is obsessed with naming our future, not-yet-conceived kid Noah - not after the arc guy, but after the Florida basketball player) so they were up here visiting the new nephew. Even though they were only up here for a short weekend, they were kind enough to take time to have breakfast with me Monday morning (worked great for me since it was only a block from my office). Kari, might I add, is one of the greatest people I've ever come across in my entire life - she's incredibly intelligent, one of the nicest people around, is strong in her convictions, fun, yet pragmatic, and now pregnant! Yup - she and John are having a baby girl! I am so excited for the two of them. They really are going to be wonderful parents! She even looks great pregnant! Anyway, we had a great visit, albeit too short. :( Hopefully we'll be able to keep in better touch (I've been lacking in this category) and be able to hang out again. I can't wait to see pictures of the baby when she finally arrives (August) -hopefully they'll be able to make it up for the wedding with her next year so we can ohh and ahh over her!
On another, totally different, note - we saw They Might be Giants on Saturday. Another weird coincidence, Kari and John had a TMBG song on their wedding CD (Birdhouse in Your Soul - one of my favorite songs of all time). Anyway, they played at The Pageant and were great! They played a lot of the new stuff that I must admit, I was not too familiar with, but they were great nonetheless. I was somewhat disappointed in the crowd, as every other time I've seen them in concert (more then a few times) the crowd has been very excited and energetic and this crowd was more mellow. Maybe it was St. Louis. Maybe it was the fact the band has been around for over 20 years and most of their huge fans are now in their late 20s early 30s now and not teenagers anymore. Maybe every other time I saw them it was a younger town (Tally, G'ville, Tampa, etc.). Who knows, but it was still a great show - I even got John Linnell's set list at the end of the show!!! For those of you who may be interested, they started with the Malcom in the Middle song, played the Sun song, Birdhouse in your Soul, James K. Polk, New York City, Istanbul, Song #3 on the first album, and some other stuff I can't remember because the set list is in Cody's car (also the songs were not in that order). All in all a great concert!

Week Update

Wow - it's been a while since I last blogged, but I have a good excuse - my mommy has been in town visiting!! We had a great time hanging around St. Louis and working in the yard. The last time she visited she helped me landscape our front yard and this time our goal was the back yard. Well, we didn't get it finished, but at least we got a plan as to how to lay everything out. Here's a quick run-down of our adventures.
Saturday - we picked Mommy up from the airport and headed to Bandana's for lunch. We planned to do a bunch of stuff in the afternoon, but we all ended up falling asleep as soon as we got home. :)
Sunday - We started at a huge book fair in the Famous Barr garage. It was awesome - all the soft cover books were a $1 or less and the hardback books were all under $5. We found at least 20 books, though couldn't find the one I was looking for - Of Mice and Men. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find it used somewhere. Then we headed out to Augusta to the wineries. It stormed on the way there but by the time we got there it had cleared up - it was still a cloudy day so the wineries were pretty empty. We went to Montelle, Mount Pleasant, and Augusta wineries and got to taste all the wine. We had a great time! Sunday night Cody had an indoor soccer game, so we went to watch that and then I made homemade spaghetti and meatballs.
Monday - I went to work but got off early so we could go shopping for Mommy some new clothes for her new job. We found her tons of great skirts and tops at Kohl's and then headed to Target. We had yummy Crazy Bowls and Wraps for dinner.
Tuesday - We played in the yard and made my specialty, enchilladas, for dinner. Cody hates them so we made them while he was at German class. :)
Wednesday - We went back to Kohl's to try to find some matching tops for some of the skirts we got for Mommy's work. Afterwards we went to my friends, Meghan and Danny's house for dinner. I've known Meghan since I was a small kid so she's known my mom the same length of time. I missed her birthday dinner last week so we did a delayed birthday celebration. It was great to see Elizabeth again -she's growing up so fast. She's getting great at sitting up!
Thursday - We worked out in the yard some more and then went to The Loop. We walked the Walk of Fame, ate at Blueberry Hill and then had root beer floats at the Fitz's bottling plant.
Friday - I took off work so Mommy and I could play in the yard all day. :) We dug and planted and dug some more!
Saturday - Not much to report here. We got ready and went to the Airport - of course, even with the utmost planning we still manged to leave half of her new clothes here. :)
All in all, it was a great visit and we can't wait to have her up here again! Now we just have to talk the rest of our family into visiting!!!!