Everything I wanted

Today is payday #2 for me! I finally received my first adjunct professor-ing paycheck, and it's a bit larger than I'd guessed to boot. I'd do a happy dance, but the moolah is being combined with our tax return to pay off our credit card. THAT calls for a happy dance, hopefully by this time next week we will be consumer debt free!

I'm in a good place right now. Working hard, definitely. Struggling to manage my time correctly and achieve everything I wanted, for sure. But still, doing well. Upbeat and happy with life. I came across something this week which is apt:

Damn it's a lot of work to have everything I ever wanted.

I laughed when I saw that line. Its certainly true! I've told DJ a few times that I'm really enjoying the right now as well as daydreaming about the future. 

We're headed over to Jackson Hot Springs near Dillon this weekend, in search of snow to cross-country ski on. Though it is actually snowing today, we've been snow-free for the vast majority of the winter. It's the weirdest thing. So we're GTFOOT (Getting The F Out Of Town) for a bit and exploring an area we don't know much about. Looking forward to it. 

And with that sunshine and unicorns update, I'm off for the weekend. Happy Friday :)

A slow Saturday morning...

Wow, what a week. Especially for one only four days long. But I made it; we made it through.

My lectures for class this week were... a push. I can't discuss history without starting at the beginning, which meant the geology of the northern Rocky Mountains. Suddenly on Monday night I'm cramming about igneous and sedimentary rocks. It was a little nuts.

Nonetheless, I achieved what I set out to this week. Gave two decent lectures. Was up at 6:15am each morning, and in the office no later than 8am. Avoided "double dipping"; working on class lectures while at work for the City. Knocked out a couple of important projects at work.

By Friday DJ, and probably the doggie, felt a little abandoned. I barricaded myself into the office on Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week to prep lectures and basically ignored them. DJ has been a very supportive husband while I try to teach this class, which I appreciate so very much.

We celebrated the end of a trying week with a great dinner at Over the Tapas; goat cheese-filled croquettes, bacon wrapped steak, lamb sliders and a steak salad. OMG, we may have a contender for new favorite restaurant in Bozeman. The best part was leaving without feeling that we needed to unbutton our pants.

From Tapas we went to Lowes to pick out tile for the fireplace, a project which is finally happening next weekend. I'd still rather tear out our entire mantle and put in built-in bookshelves and a smaller mantle, but I'll compromise on just finishing the damn thing.

Upon arriving home, I poured a whiskey drink and got in bed with a book. DJ watched "Gold Rush" (yeaaaah, the quality of television ranges widely in our house). By 10:00pm the lights were out and I slept wonderfully until 6:30am, when my internal alarm when off. It was nice to snuggle in our warm, comfortable bed for an hour while thinking through gardening plans for 2012.

Now I'm in the office with a cup of coffee. DJ went downtown to meet friends for the Saturday morning coffee date, but I stayed home to enjoy a quiet house. I'm giving myself until noon, after which I'll start working on lectures for the next two weeks.

How was your week?

Christmas Cheer

Inspired by this post by one of my favorite bloggers, I tried my hand at photographing our Christmas tree tonight. Harlow-dog was, as usual, a very excellent helper dog. She especially excelled at being the dark dog head-like mass in front of the camera.

Like Linda (the blog attached above), I like Christmas ornaments with stories. As such, when I give an ornament as a gift I try to link it to something I've experienced with the person.

This is from 2009, when I was working for Montana Gift Corral.

My parents have a long tradition of giving my sister and I an ornament every Christmas. They say its because in their first Christmas as a married couple, they had no ornaments. I received my ornaments as a wedding gift. I'm not entirely sure, but I think my dad is the ornament-buyer. He usually gives pretty sentimental gifts.

My dad gave me the doll-house ornament below when I was 15 or so. Its a reflection, or, almost an exact replica, of the doll house that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was two or three.

It even opens in the back like my childhood dollhouse did.

I try to buy an ornament for Dusty and I every time we travel. This one is from our Hawaii trip in the spring of 2009.

And, I think my mom gave us this one, a photo from our wedding.

This is another parent-gift ornament. My parents were trying to sell their house when I was three, but had mice in the kitchen. Apparently a would-be buyer arrived, and I was giving them a tour. I asked them to "come see my kitchen, where my mices live!"

This isn't really an ornament. But I'm making it one. My parents are hugely generous this year, which is humbling. After wanting a road bike for nearly a decade, my dad insisted on buying me one as a Christmas gift. I can't wait to ride it on the bike trail at the lake, and have promised my dad (a road biker for over 20 years now) that we'll go together.

It seems to me like the Holidays are mostly about channeling your inner child, aren't they? Kind of a time of nostalgia and looking forward. All of the ornaments on our tree make me smile.

August 26 Friday Farming

Sigh. It's a Friday Farming post, as Friday is about over. I have photos for last week's Friday farming post, but never got around to actually posting them. Summer flies by so fast! 

August has been, well, rather stressful. Working to get all of the work items taken care of, personal items attended to, and trip thoughtfully planned before we leave has just been a lot of...work. It feels like Monday through Friday has been an absolute sprint. 

But in between all of the to-do lists, and the waking up at 5am with thoughts of things-to-do running through my head have been a couple of really good things. My friend Alli, the one of the the great hike, and who did the awesome pamphlet map for our wedding invites became engaged last weekend. I'm thrilled for them! But even better is that Alli and her almost fiancee Bill are visiting us for 'Cat-Griz weekend (rivalry weekend in college football, the weekend before Thanksgiving). I'm so excited to have them here! 

Along the wedding lines, I had a chance to loan out my wedding shoes to my "little sister" in the sorority, Jenni, who is doing her engagement photos next week, and getting married July 7, 2012. I'm so excited to get to pass along these great shoes which are apparently now not available. It makes me happy that Jenni will get such joy out of them too. 

And holy shit, did you know we're going to Europe?! Gah, I have so much to tell you :)

But let's focus on the purpose of tonight's post: Friday Farming. Because man, this yard/ garden is doing really well right now! Who in their right mind scheduled a major vacation in early September, just as all of the peppers and tomatoes were coming in? Oh... me.

First, Hydrangea. Specifically: twist and shout hydrangea. Makes me smile every time! 

Know what else makes me smile? Sunflowers, which FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY bloomed!

I mean seriously, I've only been waiting for this since, oh, March.

Um guys, I may have overplanted the garden. There are areas I can't really access because vines are going every which way and there is nowhere to step. Oops!

My gladiolus are blooming!

And the early girl tomatoes are ripening.

We've been consistiently picking early girl tomatoes off the vines for a few weeks now. They're delicious!

I think this pumpkin has evil plans. Plans to grow over the house and strangle us in our sleep. Seriously. This thing grows like 18" a day.

There is supposed to be a walkway in there, somewhere.

Winter squash!

Pumpkin! Question: I think I once read that after getting a pumpkin vine to set fruit, I should snap all of the other flowers off of the vine in order to direct all of the nutrients to the existing fruit and make it big? True? Not?

Zucchini! I see zuch bread, muffins, stir fry, etc. in our future. :)

Roma tomatoes! Wayyyyy bigger than last year's Roma's. I'm pretty certain they'll all ripen while we're in... Roma. Thankfully we have someone house/ dog sitting who can pick my tomatoes and save them for me to process.

Summer squash, some of it destined for our Saturday night pasta.

Glads!

Pepper!

More pepper!

Eggplant!

Spaghetti squash!

Sunflowers!

Gladiolus (apparently I'm really proud of these...)

Clematis on the top, sweet peas trellising up the bottom.

Front yard.

So I seriously thought these sweet peas weren't going to do much this year. They start so damn slow!

But clearly they come on late.

And man they smell good.

My Autumn Joy sedum is starting to turn pink. I think that means fall is around the corner...

Bell peppers!

Cherry Bomb bell peppers. So funny story. Wednesday night I was making salsa for an event on Thursday night, and I had a ripe Cherry bomb. I chopped it up, tossed it in the bowl. Then I chopped up a tomato and tossed it in the bowl, but a little into my mouth. HOT!!! Hot! WTF why is that tomato HOT! Ohh... these little suckers pack a punch!

Hungarian wax pepper.

Black-eyed Susans.

The herbs.

The mint (currently in my mojito).

My bee balm, which is getting powdery mildew from being directly sprayed by the water.

Bed along the driveway.

Snapdragon! Starting to bloom. Guys I grew this from seed!

Fern gully.

What's not shown: that I've harvested all of the garlic and it's in the coat closet drying. That we've got a pile of juliet tomatoes on our kitchen counter. That I'm seriously sad to be missing the best part of summer gardening while we're in Europe; everything is just about to start being prolific. That by the time we get back, it'll be well into fall. That I'm a bit scared/ intimidated by winter this year. That I want to plant evergreens by our front steps. That I can't wait to spend 17 days trapsing about with my husband.

Life, my friends, is good right now. Busy, incredibly busy, but good.

Hiking Blackmore

Dusty and Harlow and I hiked Mount Blackmore today, from the Hylite Lake parking lot. It's an elevation gain of about 4,000 feet; from 6,000 feet above sea level at the parking lot to the peak at 10,100 feet. 

I don't know if it was because I worked out pretty hard on Friday and Saturday, but this hike was a serious grunt. It was WAAAY harder for me than either hiking the ridge with Alli, or the Beartooths hike we did last summer. More difficult physically and really tough mentally. I also have some wicked blisters to show for it, including the bottoms of my heels. OUCH. 

The scenery was pretty difficult to look at though.

Harlow is becoming a good trail dog. She's figured out, for the most part, how far up ahead of us she can go, where to drink water from and also not to... do business... on the trail. She's also an expert map reader.

Remember when we had a puppy? This photo is about a year old, of Harlow and DJ reading the map during our Beartooths hike.

A few snowfields are still up there. We found one fun way to keep the pupperoni hydrated while not diminishing our water supply. Fetch, with snowballs.

Such a lady, with her paws crossed.

At our last stop before the summit push.

We finally made the summit, and were rewarded with some pretty amazing views. From Blackmore, looking down onto Bozeman in the Gallatin Valley, with the Bridger Range in the background.

And looking south, towards Yellowstone National Park. See those clouds forming? Yeah, I'm terrified of being on a peak or a ridge during a thunder and lightning storm. We took one more photo and booked it out of there. We got back down to the truck after only ab it of rain, but some big booming thunder.

Us, on top of Blackmore!

It was a haul of a climb, and coming down wasn't a cakewalk either. I'm always amazed at how well DJ and I manage during times of uncomfortableness. We kind of give each other our space, but keep an eye on the other person's safety and mental state. I feel like the physical pain of hiking, of doing something really, really HARD together somehow makes our marriage stronger.