Day 111: BEER!

After the week I had, I really needed a beer. Or three.

Day 110: Home Sweet Home

Okay, this isn't at my house, but whatever. I'm just glad to be back in Midland and back with my boys.

Day 109: The Atrium

The atrium at the hotel is where breakfast is served each morning. There are water features, plants, and a giant bird cage with a parrot in it. (Photo taken from the 5th floor outside my room)

Day 108: Embassy Suites

I went on a business trip to Dow AgroSciences in Indianapolis. The hotel we stayed at was awesome. The suite was huge with a king-size bed.

Day 107: What?!

Day 106: Quilt

September Quilt Day

Day 105: New Shoes

Remember the tire incident a week or so ago? Well, they fixed the tire (finally) and then sent me a survey thing. Well, I filled it out and filled up the comment section. A couple days later, I get a voicemail from Wayne at DT. I call back and he tells me they want to give me two free tires to say sorry for screwing up. Alcatraz is very happy to have four new tires.

Day 104: 70,000

Today, Alcatraz is 70,000 miles old. She's still lookin' pretty good for that age.

Day 103: Betty Crocker

I've really been Betty Crocker this week. Tonight I made homemade chicken noodle soup (though it didn't really stay soupy) and chocolate chip cookies.

Day 102: Herb Tortellini

Herb and cheese tortellini with a tomato sauce that I sorta just made up, using fresh tomatoes from Mom's garden, fresh basil and oregano, onion, garlic, and a splash of white wine.

Day 101: Spinach Tortellini

Tonight was spinach tortellini: spinach, ricotta, garlic, shredded Parmesan. I also mixed up the filling for herb and cheese tortellini. I'll make them tomorrow.

Day 100: Chicken Tortellini

Last Friday, I used my B&N gift certificate to buy a pasta cookbook (and an encyclopedia of guns). Tonight I went grocery shopping and bought the ingredients to make tortellini. The filling is chicken, grated Parmesan, ricotta, egg yolk, salt and pepper. The "pasta" is wonton wrappers, which are much easier than making dough from scratch. While they were boiling, I made a sauce from pesto and light cream. Holy crap. Though it doesn't look that pretty, it was the most delicious thing I made this year.

Day 099: Rodney's Birthday

We took the dogs hiking at City Forest for Rodney's birthday.

Day 098: Balloons

dkf I went over to Carly and Hiram's for a cook out and then everyone went to the balloon festival at the fairgrounds. I got tired of looking for a parking spot at the fair grounds, so I ended up at a park across from the airport. This balloon floated right over my car. Way cool.

Day 097: Friends

All I can really say is Kevin is just weird. We went to Harveys for dinner and he stuck lettuce in his ear... yeah, I don't know either. ":)

Day 096: Wild Things

The latest book I'm reading. It's a novel based on the kids' book Where the Wild Things Are. It's pretty interesting to see how a kid thinks--how adults perceive a child's action isn't the same as how a child perceives it.

Day 095: Cuddles

Toby and Rodney missed me a lot while I was down in Texas for a week. They have been all over me and very cuddly.

Day 094: Flight

First, I took this photo on my phone on the DL (Fred would be so proud). So, I paid $10 extra to get priority boarding so that I could make sure that my suitcase could be in the overhead bin above my seat. Priority boarding comes after First Class and special needs passengers. So, I get to my row, stow my suitcase and then look at the guy sitting in the aisle seat. He's a young black man wearing a hoodie (with the hood up) and he's sagging his jeans--I can see at least 4 inches of boxers. So, when he tells me that he's paralyzed from the waist down, I don't immediately believe him. My first thought is that he's jacking with me. Thank God I did not say anything stupid. It soon becomes apparent that I'm going to have to climb over him to get to my window seat. Again thank God because I have long legs. It was fairly easy and I didn't step all over him. I stow my bag under the seat and stare out the window for about a minute before I realize that there is still the middle seat. And I start wondering who has that ticket and praying no one. But I know someone does because all the flight attendants have been saying it's a full flight. I hope that the passenger isn’t super old or very big because they’ll never get through. Thankfully, the lady that had the seat was neither of these, though she had to be in her sixties. She tosses her bag and book on the seat, and I pick them up to put them on my lap. Then she hikes her right leg over the guy and manages to land it on her seat. Her left hand is on the seat backs in front of us to steady herself. She then gives me her right hand and I pull her into the seat. Together, we manage to get her into the seat without crushing the guy or smacking anyone in the head. After that, the flight was pretty uneventful. When we landed in Flint, the older lady and I decided to just wait until the plane was empty—neither of us had any interest in climbing over that poor guy again. I was the last passenger off the plane, almost twenty minutes after it landed.  And then things took a turn for the worse: ten minutes later, I’m driving around Flint looking for a gas station with an air hose that works because Discount Tire didn’t fix my tire with the nail in it last Tuesday because they were too busy selling me two new tires. After I filled the tire with air, I got back on the freeway, had a mini-meltdown and missed the exit for Sonic and had to wait all the way until Birch Run to get my strawberry limeade.

Day 093: Moon

Ashley and I met Darrell and Laura at Gringos for dinner. The food was delicious. Then we went to Aunt Rosie's to play cards. The moon was really big in the sky and I kept trying to take a picture on the way, but with the car moving it didn't really work out. I took this picture while standing in the road at Aunt Rosie's house.

Day 092: Shadow Friend

Sunday morning we had several adventures planned for the kids. After breakfast, Amber took the kids out to the beach to pick up trash. When they came back in from that, I took the kids on a pirate adventure and they dug up a buried treasure. Then Wendy took them to collect shells on the beach. Since there never seem to be any shells on Surfside Beach, she salted the beach with store bought shells. On the way back to the beach house, Willow noticed her shadow and started talking to it. I don't know what she was telling it, but she told me it was her friend.

Day 091: Beach Wedding

A few houses down from our beach house, chairs were set up on the beach for a wedding. They were set out fairly early in the morning and all day we wondered when the wedding would take place. It finally happened about 6:00 PM.

Day 090: Family

I was trying to take a nice group picture and this is what I end up with. That's family for ya. ":)

Day 089: Kolaches

For the beach house, Granny and I made kolaches. We made three batches of sausage kolaches (about 120) and one recipe of fruit kolaches (about 40-50). They were delicious, but took us most of the day to make. And, of course, I had to sample them to make sure they tasted good—I ate four.

Day 088: Hummingbird

This little guy is very skittish. I had a hell of a time trying to take his picture without scaring him off.

Day 087: Packing

I was so busy getting ready for Texas that I forgot to take a picture today.

Day 086: Beach Ready

I was going to paint my toenails blue, but then I remembered that I painted them blue for Miami. So I had to paint them a different color. Next year, maybe I'll do orange or pink.

Day 085: AB&E Festival

Marc, Amy, Fred, Gabrielle, and I went down to Royal Oak to visit Dan and Nina and to attend the Arts, Beats & Eats festival. After sampling some excellent Burnt Ends, I decided to take a picture similar to last year's.

Day 084: Fireworks

Went to a Loons' game with Ed, Carrie, Dennis, Marc, and Mandy. The Loons actually won, so that was good. After the game, they did fireworks. I took this picture using the firework setting on my camera. I didn't edit it at all, this is how it came off my camera. It turned out pretty awesome considering the screen stayed black when I was taking the pictures, so I had no idea what I was taking pictures of at the time.

Day 083: Hot

Just when I thought summer was over, we get a mini heat wave. It was in the 90s today and I had to turn on the ceiling fan because I was so hot. Unfortunately, it's suppose to be in the 60s in a few days.

Day 082: Cover-up

I bought this swimsuit cover-up right before my trip to Miami last April, and only wore it once on South Beach before I managed to ruin it. I draped it over the beach umbrella and it got rust on it in very visible locations, so I haven't worn it since. The rust won't come out, so I just tie-dyed it to cover up the rust spots, which worked really well. I think it turned out pretty cool. What to dye next...?