Best Day

In my family, we are all pretty attuned to the closing of summer and the advent of fall--that lovely time of year when we all start having anxiety nightmares about bulletin boards, nagging parents, lesson plans, schedules, cleaning classrooms/offices, etc. Yes, we're all teachers. Our body clocks sense the ending of August and rebel against it violently, but alas, it comes every year. To cope with our inherent grief over the end of summer, we instigated our "best day" tradition, wherein each of use takes a turn around the dinner table and reminisces about what each of us remembers as our best day of the summer.
Lucky for me, this was the kind of summer where I can't pin down just one day, so I thought I'd share some of the highlights (in no particular order)...

1. Finishing my half-marathon, my 30th birthday, and my scooter, all rolled into one fun week.
2. Home improvement fun with the parents (Utah & Kansas).
3. Garage sale-ing with Taunya, Dan's mom :)
4. Having my mom down as a guest lecturer at Westminster
5. Coffee with Jones at Alchemy
6. Body surfing with Dan on 42nd Street
7. Beehive Tea Room for Sassy & E-bomb's 31st Birthday (God, we're old!)
8. Riding roller coasters until we were sick on 4th of July with Dad
9. BBQ's with new friends
10. Hiking Timp & Albion Basin
11. Hearing Tom Petty & Jon Mayer cover "Panama"
12. Afternoon movie matinees in 100-degree heat
13. Concert at the Gallivan with my new hip LDS posse (actually, it's Naomi's posse; I just tag along)
14. Dinner with James & Theresa at Mazza
15. Watching Zuz & following along with the Olympics. Go world!

Summer of the Scootie

My darling husband Dan teamed up with my parents for the big 30th birthday and bought me a scooter! My mom got one for her birthday a few years ago, and just last weekend, my mother-in-law Taunya got one as well. If my sister-in-law Karina gets one, we can be a family scooter gang. I am visualizing pink satin jackets or similar. Ahhh, yeah.

Top 5 Reasons I Love my Scooter

5. It has retro white-wall tires.

4. All the construction workers replacing the concrete on our street wave at me when I go by. Amongst other things.

3. I get all the good parking spots everywhere.

2. I filled up the gas tank yesterday. I had gone almost 90 miles without getting gas. Filling the tank this time around cost me $3.68. That's right.

and ....

1. If I really squint while I'm driving up Laird & Harvard Aves., I can pretend I am in Italy. La vita e bella!

Bejing Olympics

My friend Zuzana is competing in this year's Olympics. She is a marathoner and will be representing her home country, Slovakia. She is only the 2nd woman in Slovakia to have run the marathon in less than 2:40. Yes, that's 26.2 miles in 2 hours and 40 minutes. What that boils down to is that Zuz runs marathons in the same time I run a half marathon.
Run, Zuzana, Run!
Her blog is runzuzanarun.blogspot.com and is also on my link list if you want to check it out...

Home Improvement Photos

Home Improvement

We've been putting in tons of work at good old 1438 Logan Avenue, with lots of invaluable help from our wonderful, generous, and now exhausted parents.  We (i.e., Dad) painted the whole exterior, took out the old fence and built a new one, yanked the back garden, and put in a new sprinkler system.  Now we have the rest of the summer to enjoy our sweet pad (and recover)!

So Cal Summer

Just hit "send"

Oh, that magical "send" button.  It represents the last final I will ever have to turn in.  Ever.  That's fairly significant considering I have been in school for just about 25 years now.  But I am henceforth finished with coursework.  Anything I write from here on out will be written because I want to write about it.  And from here on out, I'll be the one GIVING the final exams, not taking them, thank you very much.  Suckers!