Fergalicious Weekend

Memorial Day weekend was packed pretty solid with a few BBQs here and a quick trip home for my uncle's 70th birthday.

One of the BBQs was actually a baby shower/BBQ/a reason for everyone to get together and have cocktails, and even though it was NOT 83 like the forecast said it would be (and I of course dressed for), it was one of the more fun "showers" I've been to. Liam is due to arrive at the end of July/early August.

Sunday we drove through hail, high water and a storm that wouldn't quit until we got about 30 miles in to Illinois on our way to Uncle Don's 70th birthday party. Getting together with my dad's side is always an adventure ...

Apparently Don saw Fergie doing carwheels in stilletos on the Today show, did some research and is now quite the fan. He's even trying to recruit people to go with him to her show when she's in Springfield in August. Rich and his wife hooked him up with a new CD, which we had to listen to the rest of the night ... I don't know about getting old.

We stayed with mom and Larry on Sunday night before heading back Monday morning. Realized we hadn't been there since Thanksgiving, and that we really need to be a little better about that!

It's All About Appliances

When I looked at my planner last week, I was excited that the only thing going on last weekend was graduation brunch on Sunday morning ... lots of time to just releax. WRONG!

Friday night my friend Anna and I tried to play matchmaker with her brother and Jackie and went to a happy hour at Third Degree Glass Factory. It's a pretty cool place, they do glass blowing demonstrations and have some awesome pieces on display. I really liked the bathroom sink that they'd made, the detail was really cool ... and yes I am a dork.

Saturday we did our part to stimulate the economy, deciding that we needed to replace the two upstairs toilets, as well as the kitchen sink and faucet. The facuet was kind of broken when we moved in and we really messed it up trying to fix it so it really needed to go.

We knocked out the toilet installs on Saturday and came up with a game plan for the kitchen. Had brunch not lasted 3 hours on Sunday, things probably would have finished a little sooner, but oh well. The only bad thing about the sink install was having to let the caulk dry for 24 hours before hooking up the faucet. Really makes things difficult when you're trying to make and clean up dinner with no running water in the kitchen!

Heidi's Graduation

Our road trip last weekend took us back to the old stomping grounds at ISU for Heidi's graduation. Now all four of us (Dad included) are officially ISU alumni.

Thankfully, this is the last college graduation ceremony we'll have to sit through for quite a while! But we did take a few nice pictures of the family while we sat it out in the crowd.

It was kind of interesting though. I don't recall any blind people in either of the ceremonies that I went through, but there were three of them in this ceremony. One girl had a dog and was on an aisle by us. It was pretty cool to watch her and the dog interact when they had to do the stairs and walk around.

After the dinner, Rog and I went to visit my old boss, Todd and his wife and kids, Anna and Halas prior to heading to The Pub. I miss those days ... heading to the bar with $20 in you hand and knowing that you had enough for more than one round was awesome. Which probably made making it to breakfast with mom at 8:30 Sunday morning a little rougher than I'd planned.

It was a fun, albeit a short, visit. We need to make a full weekend of it with a group, just like old times :).

Quite the Weekend Pasttime

Not a whole lot exciting to report, my life has revolved soley around work and work-related events for the last week. Wednesday alone we had three special events that I had attend!

I have, however, noticed a trend in our weekend activities for the past few weeks. After the Tulane baseball weekend, last weekend we landed tickets to two of the three Cardinals games against the Cubs. Not too shabby for a sold out series :).

And I'm proud to say that the Cards are 2-0 while I'm in attendance this season. I got superstitious after Friday and had to wear the same shirt, shoes and have the same number of drinks at The Outfield before heading in the gates ... worked like a charm!

Road trip #3 in six weeks is this weekend ... good ole ISU.

Hullabaloos and BBQ

Our road-trip pattern continued last weekend when we took the four-ride to Memphis to catch up with some friends from Tulane.

We rolled into Memphis just in time for the first pitch on Satuday and got to see a 15-3 Green Wave beat down. Each time Tulane scores, the fans congratulate the team with the Hullabaloo - a relatively long cheer that's been a part of the school for ages. I'd never had to Hullabaloo so much in one game, and despite being on the road we had a pretty strong Hullabaloo Krewe.

While we are big baseball fans, the primary reason we headed half-way to NOLA was to catch up with old friends ... mainly Richie, my old office mate who I hadn't seen since exactly August 26, 2005. It was great hanging out with Richie and some of the other Tulane staff again, they're awesome people.

If you're in Memphis and looking for some great barbecue, check out the Commissary ... it really did live up to the slogan "So good y'ull slap yo mamma!"