meet the team

i was all geared up to edit some powerpoint slides while watching another world series game last night - and then i realized that the world series was over.

blast.

and when the hawkeyes start the season by losing to central michigan, it's not clear  whether college football is going to be super fun this year or not.

so now who are we cheering for? well. . . .luckily i have a fake team to root for now that the NBA season has started. want to get on board? of course you do. here's who we're rooting for.

blake griffin, (LA Clippers) who made this awesome video during the NBA lockout.

kevin love (MN Timberwolves), who sometimes has a sweet beard

dwayne wade (Miami Heat). i know you already know who he is.

tyreke evans (Sacramento Kings), because i apparently can't shake reminders of PA

marcin gortat (Phoenix Suns) - doesn't he look really happy? i like that he's not trying too look to tough to smile.

tyson chandler (NY Knicks). which at least gives me a partial excuse for my weird attachment to the knicks.

gordon hayward (Utah Jazz). i'm sure you remember the sweetheart that he was during the "butler years." i'll bet money that you were cheering for him to make this (scroll to about 5:40).

jeff green (Boston Celtics). maybe this will be the year the celtics don't bug me.

shawn marion (Dallas Mavericks). uh. . . how could you not cheer for this face?

wesley matthews (Portland Trailblazers) who is totally from madison.

kawhi leonard (San Antonio Spurs). i'm not gonna lie. i don't know much about him. but i will if he ends up being good.

i also have danillo gallinari, chauncey billups, and derrick rose who are all either currently iffy or injured. whatevs.

so that's the team.
here's hoping that i don't end up last again. although if i'm honest with myself, just getting a couple of wins will be an improvement.

PROJECT!

project! it was a toss up between this quote from clueless and ben haper's with my own two hands, but i'm pretty sure that ben is talking about saving the world. and while this turned out pretty well, i'm not quite on that level yet. so, clueless (and karen broman) is the big winner.

matt and i had decided that we wanted to personalize as many things as possible for the wedding. thanks to some inspiration from pinterest, one of the most flexible opportunities for this seemed to be the guest book. we fashioned ours as part guest book part scrapbook. we really love how it turned out, because anyone who found it intimidating could sign as usual, and we get to read a little something extra from a number of our guests. we got everything from sweet, sentimental lines to "i'm missing notre dame for this." :)

the thing is that i have since realized that this could be fun and practical for a lot of celebrations: weddings, graduations, baby showers, birthdays, etc. any time that you think it might be fun to go back and see what kinds of things people had to say about your special day. and it really wasn't difficult. the hardest part was definitely picking out all of the supplies at the craft store. a book, stamps, ink, a few sheets of scrapbooking paper, little cards and envelopes, some card stock, and a lot of the roll-on glue/tape.

i used scrapbooking paper to decorate the inside cover and then laid down pieces of cardstock (left) in different orientations to form the background for each of the individual pages. people who are more ambitious than me could probably create pretty amazing patterns and designs for each page.

then i stamped one of the envelopes for each page, glued them all down, and viola!, lots of pages for people to write down their names and or wedding-related thoughts. assuming that we might have some guests like myself, i also cut down some of the card stock to make a few extra cards in case things got lost, mistakes got made, etc., etc.

we had people seal the envelop with the small seals that one is supposed to use on the outside of their wedding invitations. so far, these have been the primary challenge - it's hard to open those tiny envelopes without ripping the seals. but, we have extra, so i'm not overly concerned about it!

things came out pretty well, if i do say so myself. we've had lots of fun looking through the cards already. i'm sure they'll be fun to reread during anniversaries as well!

pop quiz, hot shot

Q: what do you do when you've officially been married for a week and have *almost* caught up on your sleep?

A: run a 5K in the cold, wind, and rain.
duh.

okay, maybe that's not actually the optimal way to celebrate being married for a full week, but it definitely is what i did. to nobody's surprise more than my own, too, given that when i woke up on saturday morning, i hadn't really gotten a good run in for over a week and this was the forecast:

10 AM start time, of course

yeah.
gross.

post race

but, my friend lauren really wanted to do the run and i'd already paid my registration fee, so i went with her. i actually avoided a lot of the color stations (that stuff is a little tough to breathe through, so if you're thinking about doing a color run, consider ways to cover your eyes and/or mouth) and didn't do the big color throw at the end. the good news is that i survived, my time was slightly better than my time for dam to dam, and since it was a local run with a morning start time, i even had time for a nap in the afternoon.

i'm not even mad at the girl who took this photo from the worst possible angle (top down, people!! always top down!)

i'm glad i did it though. if nothing else, it was pretty rewarding to realize that i'm at least at a place where i can get up and go run three miles if i need to. although i'm clearly going to need some heavier clothes to keep running this winter!!

this week i'm hoping for the same kind of bounce-back at work! :)

unofficial documentation of the big day

it's going to need to be at least 3 times that size

little library along the bike trail

my run this morning, the one that quickly turned from a 3 mile run into a 1.5 mile run (i'm still not convinced that my body isn't trying to be sick), kind of felt like a fail in a lot of ways. however, one success was finally getting a shot of the "little library" that i run past all the time. it's really cute! i really love this whole movement and i wouldn't be surprised if kara tried to get it going in the east suburbs of des moines sometime soon. there are a bunch of them in the willy street neighborhood by my house, and i actually think it makes the whole neighborhood feel more like a small town - where everyone is willing to help each other out. some people are really crafty, too. there is a duplex near the lake that built a little duplex library. it's super cute. the website that i've linked to above also shows some clever creations. cute, right?!

brief tuesday morning update

see, we take pictures sometimes where we aren't making funny faces. isn't that better? second bridal shower is done. and it was lovely, sweet time with family.

on my ride back to iowa, i came across this podcast from this american life. it isn't exactly what i do since my work is often with younger kids, but these are a lot of the "jargony" terms and phrases that i use in my every world. my research fits in here under the question, "how to we intervene even earlier to help these kids be ready before they even enter school?" and it's an interesting podcast, anyway.

and speaking of work, i'm off to it. . .

where did all of these hours go?

the countdown on our knot site suggests that we have only 18 days until the wedding. i'm not entirely certain how that is possible. then again, i just sat in silence on the phone for an embarrassingly long time trying to decide what today's date was. it's baffling to me how quickly time is passing.

since the last post, many things have happened. and also, nothing has happened. in my mind very few days have gone by; yet, given that nearly a month has passed, i suspect that they have actually all just melded into one big blur for me. i'll try to disentangle some of that here.

i have "officially" started to mentor for the run group that i participated in during the spring. i only felt able to commit to the wednesday evening runs (which have turned out to be a stretch in and of themselves), but i am happy to be participating. almost everyone who shows up to that group has a hectic life schedule. it's nice to show up for an hour and be somewhere else, doing something fun and beneficial. plus, it reminds me to keep on track with my own running program. i do have another 5K on the horizon, after all (p.s. although i'm sad that i won't be participating in a september run given my "one run a month" trend since june, i think that was a very wise decision. . . ). AND, i get this super cool shirt that identifies me as a mentor. i don't know that i have a lot to offer in terms of running knowledge, but i keep thinking that if my offering of friendship, inclusiveness, and encouragement keeps even one person coming back in the week-to-week, then i will consider my mentorship a success.

matt and i went to another lovely wedding in southern ohio. you'll likely remember it as the weekend that this happened. we were busy enough that i didn't see any of the game; in fact, i knew nothing of the outcome until someone told me at the reception. i do feel a bit bad for the penn state players. and bill o'brien seems like a nice guy. but, as in their run in the dance a few years ago, OU plays the role of the underdog like a champ. and even i have to laugh at these t-shirts. so, true to my slightly unnerving trek from one big10 school to the next, i feel some mixed allegiances.

my first bridal shower went off seemingly without a hitch. i am not sure why my mom and i are both making weird faces in that picture, but i promise that it is not indicative of the event as a whole. it was nice to be home again and to see people i hadn't seen for quite some time. it was all very lovely and matt and i are very excited about and very grateful for all of the gifts that we received.

as an added gift, my wedding ring is back from being resized nearly a whole week early. given that the arrival date originally posed to us was October 3rd, we are considering ourselves lucky. we also feel lucky that we were able to work out a real fiasco with the hotel rooms last week. thankfully, we were alerted to the fact that things seemed to be going awry and matt was able to persist in finding someone knowledgable and figuring out what was actually going on. so, two potentially close calls have been avoided. *phew*

other than that, this week is full of trying to stay caught up (and maybe even get ahead on) work before wedding shenanigans really take full effect. matt is teaching on tuesdays and thursdays. i have one class as a part of my fellowship, one weekly meeting, and am trying fiercely to get things turned in/passed along to collaborators before october hits. so far my proudest moment of the week was turning some of the delicious veggies that my mom sent home with me into a small pizza. though that is mostly because i like few things more than i like pizza.

and just in case all of that is starting to sound a little bit too hectic for you, my dear family and friends, i'll close with a picture i took of the mississippi river during my drive home last weekend. as it turns out, there is an adorable little rest area tucked away on the MN-WI border that screams "photo-op." it was a gorgeous day, and the picture just verifies that everything is starting to look like fall.