Category: Journal

Kyle and I love to make fun of ourselves by quoting Will Ferrell in Old School, when he describes married life as being excited about a trip to Home Depot on Saturday. In typical fashion, today we had a totally mockable Saturday.

We hung a new ceiling fan which was kind of a disaster. The instructions that came with it were terrible. The fan could allegedly be mounted flush to the ceiling or with a dropbar, but the instructions for both ways were combined and there were about 9 steps that pertained to the dropbar installation and not the ceiling mount–including the instruction that described how to actually mount the thing. We tried to improvise without the instruction and either it’s incredibly complicated to do it or we had some part of it incredibly wrong. About an hour and a half and two bodies full of totally ruined muscles later, we gave up and installed it with the dropbar. That took about 20 or 30 minutes and then we finished a bunch of other day projects.

Plus, the Masters!

Now we’re relaxing and my upper thighs and left bicep are killing me. Even with Aleve. Maybe I should double the dose?

Work was super busy today. I’ve been out of the office March 23 for a workshop; March 24, 25 and 26 for a different workshop; March 31 and April 1 to make up for the first series of workshops; and April 4 and 5 for scavenger hunts with high school students — technically I was at work but completely out of my office. Needless to say, I have a significant amount of catch up work to do so of course I had no time to get anything done.

My schedule:
9 a.m. – arrive at work without tea because our office administrator is sick and i have to be exactly on time to let our front desk person in
9:15 a.m. – director arrives, chat
9:45 a.m. – out of the office in search of tea and the daily newspaper
10 a.m. – arrive at desk
10:10 a.m. – genealogy appointment (slightly unannounced)
noon – chamber of commerce meeting, didn’t serve me lunch
1 p.m. – let dog out, get lunch at subway
1:15 p.m. – reporter arrives for tv interview
1:18 p.m. – local guy shows up with awesome new story with some civil war history (unanounced)
1:20 p.m. – tv interview
1:25 p.m. – check on the scanning of the newspaper
1:30 p.m. – genealogy appointment returns from his lunch
3 p.m. – genealogy appoint leaves after awesome conversation
3:10 p.m. – guy arrives looking for cemetery plats (barely announced)
3:30 p.m. – finish responding to first email I opened today

Good thing I wore heels because I thought I’d only be standing during a tv interview and would spend the rest of the day comfortably behind my desk. I can’t really complain though because I really did have some fun and good conversations. It’s nice to feel busy even if it’s just on unexpected little projects.

The weather is finally acting more like spring and is supposed to continue this good behavior until it starts acting like summer. It’s raining and thundering right now and it will be raining some tomorrow apparently, too. I’m hoping for not too much rain because I want it to be nice enough that my tours at the museum don’t have to cancel (they’re high school classes so they just walk the 1/2 block from our building to theirs.).

I’ve been super busy. Kyle was at debate nationals mid-March so I made myself extra busy that week, going home for a weekend, and then spending a few nights with work plans. The week after I had three days of workshops, a Wednesday and then Friday-Saturday, and then last week I followed it all up with two days off for my 25th birthday. So there has been lots of being in the office busy trying to prepare for being out of the office and this week I have two days of tours and one day of workshop plus an evening event. Whew. I’m also doing two freelance sites and trying to get a new blog up… plus I’m itching to redo my own online portfolio/resume but want to do one I’ve been promising a friend for months before that.

Hopefully good weather means continuing to get out of the house. We spent this weekend in KC shopping, dining, live music. Awesome. I want to go back next weekend for Middle of the Mapfest. We’re slow at making plans though. I’d like to see Cowboy Indian Bear and Margot & the Nuclear So-and-Sos and maybe some Cursive.

We saw Bright Eyes last night for my birthday. That was awesome but strange in a self-reflective, this-is-growing-up kind of way. The music was great and great to hear live though so I guess growing up is a good thing.

Yesterday was the memorial service for our family friend who passed away at the beginning of February. It was a really beautiful service with lots of sharing of memories of Ben. I was going primarily to support Kyle who took Ben’s death pretty hard, and then secondarily for Gina, his wife, who I have known for years because of my involvement in debate and for whom Kyle now works. I really didn’t know Ben, having met him maybe once or twice in passing, and the memorial made me very sad as to this fact. It was a lovely time of remembrance that really celebrated his life. After dinner, we joined all of the guests who were there for debate at dinner in Liberty and had a very nice time. There is almost nothing I love more than being at a huge table full of close friends.

Today, Mom and Dad came up for so we could have dinner for Mom’s birthday. It was the first time they made it up to see the house since basically right after we moved in. They were both really impressed with our furniture and paint choices and our new flooring. It’s hard for me to really remember how much things have changed since they last came to visit, but I know that most of the furniture and accoutrement we have now we didn’t have then. I’m glad that they liked it! And they seemed to have a good eye for our style, now, too.

I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I really love designing the house. And tonight, I look forward to loving the pretty dresses at the Oscars. It makes me wish I had more fancy occasions to get really dressed up!

1. My (new) stylist (that I’m testing out) was 5 minutes late to my appointment.
2. She didn’t introduce herself.
3. She flat-ironed my hair before cutting it.
4. The flat-iron process pulled my hair a lot.
5. It proceeds from this that she cut it dry.
6. She spent most of my haircut talking to the other people in the salon as though I wasn’t really there.
7. I tipped 30% less than my usual tip on a haircut, and less than 20% which is basically unheard of for me in any tipping situation.

Needless to say, I am still on the hunt for a stylist. I weed out new stylists when they ask to cut my hair dry. And flat-ironing it first when all I want is a trim and a little bit of shape for my curly hair? Please. I am upset enough about my haircut that it might warrant a call to the salon.

We found out this morning that a friend of ours lost her husband of 27 years to a heart attack last night. It’s been a sad day with a lot of moping around and holding each other and feeling empathy for a tragedy that we can’t even begin to relate to. I am glad that we have each other and so much love in our home. We will be keeping Gina and her family, including her debate family, in our thoughts and prayers. I know we both wish that we were closer and that we could do more. We also wish that there was something to do, but no act seems to really make sense.