Story A Day

I spent much of my day off with my sister Christy, who’s visiting from DC, and my mom.  Since my sister will not be in town for Thanksgiving, we had an early celebration.  The afternoon was spent making stuffing, baking a turkey, making pie, mashing potatoes, and sneaking brown sugar bites from the top of the sweet potato casserole.  It was a nice afternoon of family time.  When my younger sister Kathy got off work we enjoyed a yummy dinner together, with only a few interruptions from trick-or-treaters.  A very nice day.

My sister Christy is here for the weekend from DC.  We spent the evening chatting, debating politics (of course!) and catching up.  I have the day off tomorrow to hang out with her, my mom and other sister Kathy!  Yipee!  Now, time to sleep

I spent the day hopping around to different colleges for some recruiting efforts.  Despite enjoying what I was doing, it did feel like a long day since I was in so many locations!  I began the day at U of M, headed next to St. Kate’s, went to the office for a few hours, and then on to St. Thomas for the evening.  Hopefully this will translate into some applications for the BSP summer internship!

As I stood scraping the frost from my car windows this morning, I thought to myself, “Why am I doing this?  I have a nice new garage in which to park?”  Sure, it doesn’t have any electricity yet, locks from the inside so I have walk around back and open the door, and is a bit dark at night – but it keeps the frost off my car!  So, Tim and I just came inside from moving our cars to the garage.  And, as soon as we wire it up AND Xcel Energy gets their behinds out here to bury our power lines and connect everything, we will have power too! 

We are making progress in the basement bathroom! Today, I finished laying the bamboo flooring. I’m so proud of myself, because I did the bulk of it without Tim’s help! We got started on it last night, and I completed the rest today. Yipee! It looks so pretty…

I’ve been plagued by a cleaning problem ever since we bought our house.  We have this cool coved shower with ceramic tile all the way to the ceiling.  The problem is that the cove traps the moisture and before long the grout on the ceiling starts to darken.  Grrr.  I usually try to stick to all natural cleaning products, and I tried everything on the grout stains, to no avail!  I finally resorted to Scrubbing Bubbles Mildew Remover, that didn’t work either, and it made my eyes water!  Grrrr.  I decided to try my last resort…bleach.  I mixed a very strong solution, half bleach, half water.  I sprayed it liberally all over the darkened tile grout, and within 5 minutes it was pure white.  YES!  Finally.  I found the solution.  While I’m not a fan of bleach, I feel okay about it in this instance since I exhausted every other possibility.  And now, I can enjoy a nice, clean, white shower

We spent a lovely evening with some friends whom we haven’t seen in a while. They have two young kids, their son is two and a half, their daughter is four months old. We ate pizza, chatted the night away, enjoyed brownies, and played with the kids (thus the trains and babies part of the title ) It was a great mix of kid fun, catching up, and talking about the latest politics and home improvement projects

Earlier in the day, I had the first Saturday of the school year program at BSP. It was so exciting to see the kids again! I’ve missed them since summer The day went very smoothly – teachers were prepared, attendance was good, volunteers all showed up, great energy, a fantastic start to the year!

I got my flu shot this morning. Since then, it’s felt like me upper arm has the flu All achy and such. In addition to that, I felt pretty crappy for about 3 hours of the latter part of my work day. I was in good company with 2 of my colleagues who also got their shots this morning. You should have heard us all complaining at about 3:00. We decided that next year our employer should schedule the shots for later in the day The nap I took when I got home helped a lot. I’ll take a few hours of feeling crappy over getting the real flu any day!

I heard a headline today that scientists have figured out how to erase memories from the brains of mice. They think that within 10 years they will be able to produce a pill that can be used to erase traumatic memories. I recently watched the move “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and I have to say that this concept is downright freaky. I can understand that people with severe PTSD might benefit from this kind of thing, but who’s to stop people from taking it to forget a bad relationship, erase a childhood memory, etc. Creepy!! I can hear the break-up threats now…”Well, I’ll erase you from my memory, so there!” Craziness!!

My alma mater offers training in a group philosophy called “Spiritual Companioning”.  I’ve been a part of a spiritual companioning group with a few friends for a number of years.  I was invited by a friend to join another group, and I gladly accepted the invitation since I find it to be a very enlightening form of gathering. One of the things I especially appreciate about the model is the allowance for silence, and intentional reflection.  Learn more about the philosophy behind these groups at the CSB Website.