Early February, Early Mornings

Whooooooooowwww

Its now, what, 4 weeks into this full time working/ part time teaching thing and I am... Tired.

Here's the routine for a week: up at 6:15am every day, shower, to the office by 7:45am. Work through the day till 4:45pm, when I dash out the door to the gym. Exercise for an hour, then home for dinner. After dinner is devoted to working on class lectures and slides.

I've found that I can't lecture without a slide show. Talking about history, especially historic built landscapes is such a visual thing. So lecture preps bounce back and forth between searching for the image I want and fact checking what I want to talk about.

I've probably spent an average of 6-8 hours on every lecture. This is the first time the course is being taught, so I'm totally building it from scratch. And because I wasn't sure what I'd want to change after a few weeks, I didn't plan lectures or slideshows very far in advance. So its a lot of work.

I knew it would be a lot of work. Its work I enjoy, really, but it's been a bit of a relentless grind building this thing. Even something like a lovely surprise weekend from my sister can throw my whole "things to get done and when to do them" schedule off.

And every week I seem to fall into a pattern of totally nailing the Tuesday lecture, walking out feeling on top of the world, and then falling flat on my face for the Thursday lecture. Or vice-versa. Its unnerving and confidence-killing. Nothing to do but get back on the horse though. Especially since I'm getting paid to do this.

DJ has been awesome, absolutely awesome about giving me time to work on class stuff. I've neglected housekeeping, demanded he turn off the light by 9:45pm so I could go to sleep (oh the irony!) and generally demanded that all things fit my schedule. He's made dinners, hung out with the dog and kept the house stocked with toilet paper.

And I have a wonderful sister and friends, did I mention that? I turned 29 on Tuesday. And Harlow turned 2. In advance of the birthday, Gretch drove over from Pullman and Ali drove down from Helena for a Chico Hot Springs afternoon and Livingston Saturday night. We stayed at the Murray Hotel (awesome historic hotel across the street from the train station), had dinner at the rib and Chop house and then did a Livingston bars lap. The most entertaining portion of the evening was walking into the Mint Bar and finding it FULL of hipsters. HIPSTERS. In LIVINGSTON. That.... Was unexpected. With their serious black oversize glasses and serious conversations.

Dusty made a delicious dinner of salmon, mashed potatoes, garlic bread and broccoli for my birthday. I received flowers, cards and phone calls. It was a nice, low key day. Which is my style for birthdays. 


This weekend is packed with getting my poop in a group. Writing the handout for the paper my students have due at the end of the month, prepping this week's lectures, prepping some AOII stuff for the annual Corporation meeting at the end of the month. Budgets, agendas, membership, etc. I'm good at that end of the organizational spectrum, I hope. 


And with that, I think I heard the coffee ding that it's ready. Time to get to work!

A busy three day weekend

I spent pretty much all day today preparing my lecture notes and slides for class tomorrow. The kicker is, I still don't have keys to my office, keys to my classroom, or any certainty that I can turn on the projector in the classroom. I know I can turn on the computer, but I didn't test drive the overhead projector when I as in class last Thursday. Foolish of me, since I've now spent 10 hours or so prepping this lecture.

This week, especially tomorrow's lecture, will be a little tricky. It's a subject area I don't know well, so I've had to do a lot of re-learning over the last 18 hours. I think I'm good to go.

In an effort to wind down and sleep at night, I'm making myself stop working between 8 and 9pm tonight. I'd originally hoped to have all the lectures for the week completed by 8pm on Sunday (Monday, this weekend since we had today off for MLK), but chose to not miss out on the Moonlight weekend instead. C'est la vie; I can work on the lectures Tuesday and Wednesday night. And Thursday's subject area is much closer to my knowledge base, so it shouldn't be quite as much work.

I keep reminding myself of the advice a fellow adjunct in the History department gave me: "Contex, contex contex; why is this important, why are you teaching this to students?"

It's been a busy weekend. DJ's mom worked in Helena last week, and will work in Butte this week, so she stayed with us through the weekend. I worked until 5pm, then ran down to grab dinner with DJ and Michelle. After dinner friends picked me and my cross- country ski gear up so we could say in Moonlight for the weekend with our wonderful friends the Kuntz'es. We've nabbing a weekend at Moonlight Ski Resort since 2010, and I think it's one of my favorite weekends of the year.

Saturday morning we fought hangovers and ventured out for some cross country skiing at Lone Mountain Ranch. It was wonderful to get outdoors in the sunshine, mountains and with wonderful friends. DJ and I need to do this a bit more often.

Kelly (due with their second child, whom A calls "Soucie", in early March), Me and Emily. 

DJ and Michelle came up on Saturday afternoon while we skiied. It was fun to show her the amazing "mountain home," and have her get to spend some time in the mountains with us. DJ made great home made pizzas for dinner, served tapas style. Mmmm, that man of mine, he's one heck of a cook!

Saturday morning we wolfed down breakfast before heading down the mountain to Bozeman, a snowstorm, and lecutres and slides waiting to be compiled. I've been in the office of our house since about noon on Sunday compiling information to share with my students.

It looks to be another difficult week in terms of management of expectations and time. Hopefully I can keep getting up early, making it to work and being productive! At this rate, the spring will fly by.

Food hoarding?

I ran into the grocery store on Saturday at noon to get supplies for having our friends Corey and Shawna over for dinner. Shawna was an AOII with me, and Corey's the guy who got DJ into brewing beer. 

Exciting sidenote: Shawna is 18 weeks pregnant. Which is SUPER exciting for them. They're also selling their house in hopes of building a new one next spring. Which is EVEN MORE EXCITING to me. Seriously. You could give me the option: have a baby, or put our house on the market and build/ remodel a new one? I'd pick the house options. Don't get me wrong, I love our current house. I'm still house-fluffing it even. But... redesign stuff? squeee!

But back to my point, which is: holy shitballs, veggies are so much cheaper in the summer!!! I know, this isn't news to anyone, really. But I've paid $2.50 for a red bell pepper in January. Saturday? They were $.79 apiece! I bought four of them, despite only needing one for the salsa I made. So cheap! So yummy! 

That reminds me, I need to go home and slice the remaining three up for take-along-to-work veggies. 

And now, with this veritable cornucopia of cheap, delicious fresh veggies around, I'm trying to think of ways I could buy up a bunch of cheap fresh veggies in the summer and... hoard them for the winter. No, we're not of the mindset that we should have a three-year supply on hand for the coming Last Days. We just like good food, and I prefer to not pay out the ear for bell peppers during the winter. 

And part of me likes playing old-timey housewife. But I'm not dressing up in a hoop skirt to do it, like those reenactors you see in Virginia City. Those people are just grown ups playing dress up, and when thy subject their kids to playing dress up too, it's wrong. Borderline child-abuse. No kid wants to come back to school and show and tell that they played "ye olde timey shoppe" with their parents all summer. That's a recipie for getting beat up on the payground. 

Speaking of recipes, this post does have a point. Hopefully will have hoard-worthy veggies later this summer when all the tomatoes and peppers in my garden come in. But what if I don't? What if I'm in Europe when all the bell peppers ripen? 

And how the hell can I hoard them for winter use?

I don't know how to can things, but I'd be willing to learn. 

We have a food dehydrator. 

I could make a LOT of salsa. 

Can I freeze bell peppers? I heard once you can char them on the grill and then freeze them?

I think I'll be spending some time with the googles this weekend. And the MSU extension office! 

Wedding photos, really quickly.

I meant to include these in yesterday's post, but couldn't get blogger to let me upload photos. 

My favorite, from El Weddingo:

All photos taken by my dear friend Anne Sherwood. 

Flying

Man, last weekend rocked.

First there was a quick trip to Anaconda for my friend Ashley's birthday party. Ash was my "little sister" in AOII in college. It always amazes me how quickly I pick back up with any of those girls; and always wonderful to see Ashley. I stayed the night and we went for a quick walk around Anaconda before I left Saturday morning.

Fun history fact: you may have heard of the recent death of Hugette Clark, the mystery heiress to William A. Clark, one of Montana's "Copper Kings". Clark's main rival, when he was building his fortune a century ago, was Marcus Daly, who founded Anaconda as the company town for a smelting mill. History, it's all around you.

I stopped off in Butte on my way back to Bozeman, to quickly browse through the antique stores and see the finished Hennessey Market on East Granite Street in Uptown Butte. Now I know you're going to make fun of me, people who don't "get it" usually do, but I have a big crush on Butte, America..

Saturday afternoon I gardened in the heat, while DJ worked on landscaping stuff. Then we grabbed a quick dinner with Ali Judge, her son Cole and fiancee Jim. Ali, always rail-thin and willowy, looks pretty much exactly the same as she did when she got pregnant. Damn those girls and their lithe, athletic bodies. Good to see them, and meet the little man.

Sunday morning I went for a long bike ride, then showered and walked over to Allyson and Chris' for Allyson's 32nd birthday brunch. The day was capped when 3 year old Aiden Kutnz handed Allyson a larger jewelry case, totally fit for a necklace. Instead, Chris handed Allyson an engagement ring. I'm so genuinely excited for them!

Sunday afternoon was more gardening and generally putzing around in the heat. We ended a beautiful weekend with BBQ'd salmon, red potatoes and chives, bread and a salad. A quick walk and chuck-it playing made Harlow a Very Happy Dog.

Overall, about the best weekend I've had in a long, long time.

Superbowl Doughnuts

DJ and I obviously like to entertain. We designed our downstairs spaces to function well when having large groups of people over. One of the annual events is a Superbowl party, which DJ gives themes to. The 2008 theme was "Deep Fried", 2009 was "Deep fried, part 2", 2010 was "Pork Products" and this year was "Gravies of the World."

(Did you just vomit in your mouth a little?)

We interpreted gravies pretty liberally: any liquid or semi-liquid condiment. Which meant that home made doughnuts, with a liquid icing, could be considered.

The dough pretty much exploded out of the bread maker.

I made DJ set the fry-daddy up in the garage. I couldn't handle the smell of fried food in our house. 

Then the doughnuts came back inside to cool. 

Before being dipped in icing. 

And voila! A pile of doughnuts for our guests enjoyment. 

Of course, Bozeman being health-conscious Bozeman, we had about 2/3 of that pile o'yummy leftover by the end of the game. They went to work with DJ this morning since I don't want them in the house!

October

So I've fallen off of the blogging wagon, haven't I?

Rather than apologize and blather on about how busy I've been, the craziness at work, the craziness of travel, the craziness of people visiting, and basically everything I didn't document, I'm going to just move on and tell you what's going on with us.

Gardening:
Is first and foremost on my mind today. I just ordered 2 yards of compost (she wanted to sell me 3) and 3 yards of peat moss (she wanted to sell me 5) to till into our veggie garden this weekend. Doesn't that seem like an incredible amount of dirt for a 20 X 16' garden plot?! The nursery reccomended a layer 3" deep of compost and 2" deep of peat moss. So we're adding 5" of stuff to our garden bed!

Since it slopes away from the house, should I be worried about all of this amendment to my clay soil running off under the barbed wire fence?

Why am I adding so much "stuff" to my garden? Well... because it was a spectacular failure this year. I even failed at growing zucchinni. I didn't know that was possible! About the only thing that thrived were the tomatoes I planted in cointainers in the front yard. And even those weren't exactly a wild success.

I'm blaming this on a number of things:

• Clay soil with few nutrients. I applied Miracle Grow occassionally, but not with many real results.
• Poor watering/ moisture retention. This is primarily caused by me planting in north-south rows when my drip lines run east west. I also need to do a better job of mulching the garden with grass clippings to prevent moisture loss.
• Crappy-ass weather in June and early July. We live in a cold climate, I know that. But I don't know that we hit 80 degrees until after July 15th this year. Bad weather for peppers, tomatoes and other such items.
• I did a crappy-ass job of weeding the garden. See also: clay soil is really hard to weed in.

So yeah, now you know what we'll be doing this weekend. I need to start by pulling everything that died from our first freeze on Monday October 11th. It's funny, we didn't really have a frost, but raher a 22 degree freeze.

... I'm thinking about starting a specific gardening blog. Are y'all bored to tears about this stuff?

House:

It's amazing to me that nearly a year later we're still getting settled into the hosue. I bought fabric to recover the chair in our bedroom to match the comforter.

 I did hang curtains in the guest room and office before the DD girls visited over Labor Day. We moved my loveseat up there a few weekends ago too. Funny that the Office and Guest Room/ Guest Bath are the most "complete" rooms in our house, isn't it!? ! I also sewed a new dog bed since Harlow was destroying the other one.

We still need a linen closet, and haven't cashed in our wedding gift cards for new towels because we'll have no where to put them. I may have found a viable linen closet, but need to drag Dusty out to see it. I'd really rather have a wardrobe with a mirror on the front door, since we don't have a full length mirror in the house.

We still need to insulate and reoganize the garage. This might require the assistance of a professional organizer like my dad.

A new bed/ maste bedroom set is also needed, although I'm not sure i'm ready to spend the $2,000+ that'll require. I'd prefer to collect interesting items, you know?

Friends/ Family:
We've had a solid 8 week stretch now of taking trips and having people come see us! It's been a lot of fun to catch up with everyone. Alli was here this weekend, and Harlow helped her bake Bobcat cookies for Homecoming. My sister also turns 21 next week!

 

Work:
Subtle changes are happening, and it seems I have the opportunity to shape the job I want within the position I already have. I'm grateful for the opportunity for growth and change. More on that later.

Dusty:
Continues to brew beer like we're never going to have the opportunity to purchase it this winter :) He's got quite the system down now! It's a good hobby for him, and he's enjoying thinking about what beers we'll want to drink as the weather gets worse.

Oh, and Harlow is going to be a ballerina for Halloween. I have tulle left over from El Weddingo to get rid of. I'll sew more on this weekend!

 

Still here

So it's been what, three weeks since my last post. Yikes. I've had a lot going on. Given the staffing changes at my job, and committments I signed up for before the staffing changes, the workweek has been a daily triage of "what must absolutely get done today".

Those weeks have been followed, respectively, by a roadtrip/ houseguests (wonderful, wonderful houseguests!)/ party at our house one weekend, then a roadtrip/ football game/ grandma day/ roadtrip then a one day trip back to Missoula for a funeral.

Yeah. That last one? The one today? That was awful.

But it put things into perspective a bit for me. I drove over and back with two dear friends and sorority sisters of mine. We spent six hours in the car gossiping, eating chocolate covered cinnamon bears, discussing everything from marriages, having babies (and the medical options to do so), mutual friends, personal tragedies and the ovewhelming tragedy before us.

And then I came hope, on a rainy evening in September, to a husband in the garage making home brew, a furry golden retriever who wants nothing more than to cuddle with me, and, well, a life that I really do love. And am grateful for.

I need to spend a little more of my emotional energy finding things to be grateful for. The last three years seem to have been bogged down in work, family, personal and other obligations. I want to work, this fall, on being grateful for those committments. For people and organizations that find my role in them so valuable that they keep asking me to keep coming back.

Today I am grateful for the people in my life.

Moonlight Weekend

We spent Friday night in Moonlight Basin with three other couples. I know all of the girls through AOII, and all of them have married great guys.

We scored this awesome rental house, that sleeps 12. It'd be an awesome place to spend extended time in both the winter and the fall.

I'm not a fan of "rustic" decor, but this place did have a nice warm, stury feel to it. Couches and chairs to sink into. Fireplaces to light. Amazing views to watch.

All of those things, combined with great friends and random word association games, make for a really fun time.

Especially at 2 am, after a long round of beverages.

It's awesome to have friends with whom you can so easily fall right back into the groove with, even if you don't see each other often (yet live in the same town).

And Kelly and Ryan brought the entertainment. A gets cuter, funnier, and cooler to be around every time I see him.

Especially if there is a hot tub, rubber duckies and Mark to hang out around.

Kel thanks for setting the Moonlight weekend up! Sorry we had to bail early; I hope you had a great time snowshoeing!

Dunkin' Doughnuts girls coming to visit?

Dudes we’ve got a guest list of 300 people. That means that if (the average) of 2/3 of the guest list attends… we’ll have 200 guests at El Weddingo.

And when we put together the list for this thing, we actually went through the spreadsheet and noted people we thought wouldn’t come. I mean, lets get real; we’re getting married in July, in a not-so-convenient place with very few hotel rooms. I recognize people have other things to do in mid-summer.

Although it’s to early to really say, without RSVPs and a count of who actually showed up, we are hearing from a lot of people who we listed as “probably won’t come” on the spreadsheet that they’re planning to attend. And for some reason I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that so many people would make the effort to attend. That so many people love me, DJ, and us.

What a nutjob, huh? I mean, why is it so hard for me to accept that 300 or so people love and support us?

But today’s post is not about my awkwardness with large crowds of people who love me. It’s devoted to a certain group of women who love me.

In 2003 I rode my friend Katie’s coattails on a summer adventure. Kate had decided to work at a kids sleep-away summer camp as a ropes instructor for a camp in New York, about 100 miles northwest of New York City. I’d spent the previous summer as a lifeguard and swim lesson instructor at Riverside Country Club in Bozeman, but thought Kate’s idea sounded like fun. Somehow I made my way onto the camp’s lifeguard and swim instruction staff.

Soon after arriving, maybe the day of, I met Lauren. Lauren is, I think, my Jewish twin. Same chubby cheeks, same curly brown hair, same affinity for Nissan vehicles.

And as Lauren and I were walking across the camp grounds, Lauren and I ran into Lis and Nyv, who were returning from a shopping venture. Lis is a native of Chico, and has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I know. Nyv too, is someone with a sharp wit, a wonderful sense of humor, and an infectious spirit, not to mention a kick ass New Zeland accent.

Me, Lauren, Nyv and Lis.

Over the course of 10 or 12 weeks the four of us became thick as thieves, all working in the pool area and all having the same day of the week off. We spent one very fun day sitting in Dunkin’ Doughnuts laughing our asses off at things I can’t even remember.

We stayed in touch as best as possible after the summer ended. I returned to Bozeman, Lauren to Long Island, Lis to Chico, California, while Nyv headed onto the second stage of her trip around the world for a stop in London.

Lis, Lauren, Nyv and me in New York City in 2005.

We managed to get together in the fall of 2005 when Nyv stopped through the United States en route home to New Zeland. We met in New York, stayed with Lauren’s parents and spent evenings sitting under their back deck, hanging out, drinking wine and laughing uproariously. Later that fall Nyv stopped through Kentucky to visit for a week.

Nyv and I trying on hats in KY in 2005.

While we don’t get to see each other often, and don’t get to participate in each others lives in a daily basis, I appreciate each of these women so much. They’ve taught me about endurance, tolerance, sense of adventure, a giving spirit, and mostly how to laugh.

And the best part- they’re either coming to our wedding in July, or to our second reception at our house in September (I’ll write about it more soon!). And when I read the email exchanges between the four of us, I can’t help but bounce a little in my seat. Mostly because I can’t wait to laugh, laugh, and laugh till I cry with these fabulous people. I can’t wait to show them where I live (lake or Bozeman), and can’t wait to have them around for a bit.

Because I recognize that good friends are hard to come by. And a little part of me is still amazed to be lucky enough to have so many people who love me. And who let me love them.

Isn’t it amazing what putting together a wedding teaches you?