hardy har h-mar

Ok, we did it. First half marathon = DONE! Joe finished in as ass-kicking 2 hours, and I was around 2:20. Official results aren't in yet, but that's what my watch said. It was a nice, sunny 60 degree day for the race. It was an out and back course on a scenic dirt road out of Waterbury. So now it's time for pizza and beer!

It's going to be another great weekend day. yesterday we went trailer shopping. cargo hauling, tow behind, enclosed trailer type. side door and end doors. dad found one that suited our purposes just fine. it's black and big enough to haul about anything we would want for 'project birchwood'
we now have internet speed capabilities. had satellite hook up installed on wednesday. there is now a ray gun dish sitting outside at the end of the bushes next to the driveway. i'll tell you, the difference between dial up and satellite is wonderful. no more downloading for an hour, only to find out there was an error. i like it. great for shopping too!
today i'm going to get my dead flowers out of the front and replace with the 'fall decor'. i bought a new scarecrow yesterday to replace the poor old mildew one dad threw out. i have pumpkins, but need some mums, maybe some corn stalks too.
got grandma's computer bought, but now have to hook her up. kinda scary, but i thought i'd give it a try. can always call customer service and talk to 'abdul' for help.
off to seek more adventures for the weekend.

color tour

Yesterday was the color tour, and today my tushy hurts. It was beautiful out...aside from the 20mph winds coming off Lake Superior for the last 32 miles. Awesome. Downhills were not even 'down'hills, they were more of a 'this doesn't suck as much as the other'-hill because I still have to hump it into the wind, but it's not as bad. Make sense?? Anyways, the new bike was great. I'm thinking the frame is a little to short now, but it was the largest women's frame they have, it's the prettiest color I've ever seen on a bike, and I dig the wheels. I will manage until I am a high-powered engineer and design a bike biomechanically suited to us giant Lisius women....in a pretty color like light blue or red-orange.

John and I did it with a bunch of our friends, so it was a fun time, for sure. I think the best part was bringing up the rear of the line when we were all huddled tire to tire, drafting in attempts to not roll backwards.



I may be coming to the greater Waterloo area the Thursday night before the 12th of October. I'm headed over to Sturgis for that weekend, but I have lots of stuff to drop off, and I don't want to drive 12 hours straight. I might as well drive an extra 6 and go to Vermont.

I'm sick now. You can all have sympathy for me. Mouth breathing, lip chapping, snot blowing sick. It's pretty great, not gonna lie.

And now I'm going to sleep.

a picture

Here's a picture of the new fan.














I think I smell my frozen pizza burning. time to go eat dinner and watch the Biggest Loser.

mom adventures

a couple of 'mom' adventures..............quite the outdoors women, eh?

well, now back to my delicious gourmet vegetarian pizza, a glass of red wine, and the 'biggest loser'. later!

Progress

We made some progress on our porch project the past couple of weekends, but I'm not going to post pictures until it's completely finished. Ha! So there. I'm keeping you in suspense for at least one more weekend. I will reveal one little juicy tidbit though - Joe installed a new ceiling fan. That's all I'm going to say.

The weekend here was gorgeous! Temps were in the high 50s, low 60s. Instead of working on the porch on Sunday, Joe and I went for a 10-mile run in the morning (without dying - yay!), planted a new cedar tree in the backyard (ok, so this was mostly Joe's activity), and then went to the Fine Wine and Food Fest at Shelburne Farms. The half marathon is the weekend after next, so this was our last long run before the main event. The 7' cedar tree came courtesy of our next door neighbor who was going to toss it to the curb. Hopefully it doesn't die. The best discovery at the Wine and Food Fest was that Ben and Jerry's is making a limited edition Pumpkin Pie ice cream. Yum.

LOOKS LIKE WE'RE GOIN' TO FLORIDA!! awesome. :P

this dog knows what's fun

no i'm not dead

Oh hello family! Check out the new glasses. They oughta help out the GPA a little bit. At least I look the part now. Dad calls them Half Euro-trash style. I'd agree with that.










Here's a picture of us from the wedding that we went to in Minneapolis a few weekends ago. Nice wallpaper, eh? Ran into Jill, bought some fun things at REI, ate a GIANT burrito at a Chipotle, you know, the usual.



AND I TOTALLY SAW A MOOSE! Well actually three moosies, but Walmart is ridiculous and I need to install their photo viewer in order to get the pictures off of the CD. ((which i am too lazy to do right now.))

Classes started to day. They went pretty well.
I am inches away from having a job at the Keweenaw Brewing Company downtown. I could go for the different atmosphere there; no more secret shop bologna. The owners only hire friends and relatives...and now I've got the hookup. Horray networking.

They don't call it Labor Day for nothing!

We spend the majority of the long weekend playing home improvement expert on our back porch. For those of you who have never seen the rear entrance to our home, it seems to have been built from the scraps of the original 1930s home construction by a hobo who had one too many pulls off the family's jug of bathtub gin - and maybe the help of one or two of his boxcar friends. Then I think coke dealers moved in during the late '70s and layered carpet over the cracked linoleum and peed on it, but not before painting the walls the color of rotten hot dogs. So we had the pleasure of ripping up the flooring, tearing down the side walls, and seeing what was above the 7' high false ceiling.

What we found above the ceiling made us wonder why the roof had not already caved in from snow load. Behold....















ummm...wtf guys? Since when do we support a roof like this? No center beam or truss members to be found. Solution? Fill in w/ new 2x4s and a 4x4 center beam. Warning: installation of center beam may have involved the use of a hydraulic jack to remedy the obvious sag in roof line.















So now we're about halfway done with the ceiling installation:















Thanks to Joe's new toy:





















Yup, after years of begging, I finally broke down and bought him a pneumatic tool set: complete with finish nailer, brad nailer, and compressor (with handy carrying case and free fasteners!).

We're done working for the weekend, and are off to a friend's house for volleyball and margaritas. Oh, and Olive would say hi if it wasn't her turn for chipmunk hole watch duty.

look who's having a birthday.............

HAPPY BIRTHDAY , Anna
our little girl is all grown up!