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.

weeks went by: part 3

Kassi & Grandma

the grand finale, so to speak, on matt's time in madison was a weekend with my parents and my niece. a mere 72 hours before kassi moved to college, she was here talking with matt and i about financial aid and helping mom and i craft ideas for a wedding guest book and escort cards (more on those projects later).

it is never an enviable task to try to find the few common hours in the schedules of five people and i'm incredibly thankful that we pulled it off. i think by the time that my mom and i were really ready to choose a weekend, we might have only had this one left. and it still involved some fancy scheduling.

we all went miniature golfing and out for dinner once everyone arrived (and post however much time it takes five people who haven't seen each other in a while to get caught up on general life stuff). there is a place here that we discovered when i first moved in that has multiple courses and is pretty fun. for some reason, i got many fewer holes in one this time around. BUT i won a free game at the end and kassi got some fun pictures with some of the characters on the course, so it was all worth it. i mean, have you ever actually seen anything this wonderful? yeah. i thought not.

before: lauren, paula, becky, kara, milo, kristen

matt left only a few days after my parents, and that basically brings us all the way up to last weekend. my friend kara and her husband brian came to madison because kara had agreed to participate in the dirty girl mud run with my me, my friends paula and lauren, and our friend kristen, who we went to central college with, but who i haven't seen in what feels like ages.

kristen and paula on one of the obstacles

this run was an interesting test of my will. what kind of will, i'm uncertain, but it has to do with my longstanding, overwhelming desire to not get dirty. seriously, this dates back to not even liking dirt as a child. or lake water. or grass stains. or walking through puddles. i'm not saying that these things never happened, but they would not have been included on my list of things that were fun. the only exception to this seemed to be our sandbox. i'm not sure why, but that never seemed dirty to me (although if you made the mistake of wearing your shoes in, you were totally screwed). maybe because my dad built it? i'm not sure. but basically everything else that was dirty was something that i didn't like. especially mud.

after: lauren, becky, kara, kristen, paula

fast forward to last weekend. i felt like i had to force myself to get into it on one of the first few obstacles, or i was going to end up being the girl who came to the mud run but tried to stay clean. i need not have worried. i had 3.1 miles of running and obstacles and lots, and lots of mud in front of me. i actually found myself getting into it (apparently i'm quite good at sliding through spreads of mud on my stomach - and thankfully so, because it was about 1,000 times easier than trying to run through it without falling down).

the cleaning up part was pretty much as awful as you would imagine. i *might* still have mud in the corners of my toenails, actually. i probably won't be signing up for another mud run anytime soon, but i had a great group, i actually got a good workout (thanks, all of the weird walls that we had to climb), and it benefitted a great cause. i'm glad that i checked it off of my "to do" list!

the two who didn't lose their glasses: paula & kara

that makes three 5Ks in three months. september is a little full, but i'm already signed up for another color run in october. actually, i may be running a second 5K in october as well. i've been asked to serve as a mentor for the running group that i've been participating in since the spring. part of the structure of the program is that former participants serve as mentors to help and inspire first-time participants. i can't be at every run, obviously, but i'm kind of excited about staying active in the group. and flattered, of course, that they'd ask me to serve such a role. anyway, the point of the group is for the first-time participants to run in a "goal race" at the end of the program. along the way there is a mentor's race as well. i think it sounds like fun.

this almost got my photo-taking privileges revoked

while the details of all of that are getting worked out, i'm prepping for a weekend away with my girls. as a bachelorette/pre-wedding hangout, they've booked some time for us at a cabin on a lake just an hour or so north of madison. i don't remember the last time a bunch of us got to hang out - and it even looks as though we're going to get a beautiful weekend to grill, get some sun, and play outdoor games.

it's been quite a month. i could have sworn that it just started. but at least you haven't had to read about work stories for the last three weeks, right? :)

weeks went by: part 2

so, for the second half of our time together, we had already planned to cash in a groupon that crossed my desk almost immediately after i returned from ohio in july. there is a sport cafe in one of the madison suburbs that was offering what equated to a 2-for-1 kayak rental for half a day. matt has been telling my that i would enjoy kayaking, so this seemed like a perfect excuse to try it out.

as it turns out, he was mostly right.  aside from an afternoon-long fear of falling in the very, very seaweedy water, i really enjoyed myself. i was better balanced than i thought i would be and (perhaps because we were in a lake instead of on a river) my arms weren't as painfully exhausted as i thought they were going to be. i should say that this type of excursion usually is not a lake trip, but because the summer has been so dry, the river won't carry a kayak like it should. in any case, i dare say that we championed lake ripley like real troopers. i would definitely go back. especially if every day was as gorgeous as the one we got.

actually, the majority of the second half of matt's visit was spent in beautiful weather. this was great, because we like to spend time outside. after one fairly productive day, we trekked to the historical union terrace, where you can sit by the lake, have a drink, listen to live music, and just chat with good company. and - because this happens more to matt than to anyone else i have ever met, this little bird basically came and joined us. do you see him sitting on the railing in the picture? our table is pretty much pushed all the way up to where he is perched, but he just sort of flew in and hung out. it was almost reminiscent of the peacock that followed matt around the milwaukee zoo.

true to form, happy hour turned into hungry hour. we headed back to the willy street neighborhood, which is quickly becoming one of our faves. it was a short walk from the lot where i rent a parking space to the blocks and blocks of adorable little eateries. i think we both pretty much knew that we would end up at one of our favorite little pizza joints (they make a spicy pizza sauce). we got to sit outside and take take in both the sun and the yummyness.

actually, you can see the pizza place behind me in that picture, i think. i'm pretty sure that the big red block is where all of the outdoor tables are at. (we walked past it at first like we might eat somewhere else. . . yeah right).

he didn't say anything at the time, but i can tell from this photo that matt was done being amused and ready to eat.

but i couldn't help myself. it was so gorgeous out and i kind of really love this town.

weeks went by: part 1

date night!

today i dropped matt off at the airport in milwaukee and, somewhere on the way home, realized that i had racked up zero updates for the month of august. not due to lack of things to recap so much as lack of moments to recap them.

matt was here for about two weeks. the first week was almost insanely hot. as has been most of the summer. so, we'll call the first part of this trip the "hot part." perhaps needless today, this was the part of the trip focused on indoor activities. although our date night picture was taken out of doors, for example, we were on our way to dinner and a movie. matt had seen a preview for beasts of the southern wild and sent me the trailer below along with an e-mail saying that we should try to see it. not two days later i had a message from the local sundance theater saying that said movie was to be in town during matt's visit. fate? obviously. as suggested by the trailer, the movie was spectacular. gut-wrenching and tear-jerking. but spectacular.



the little girl (whose voice you hear) was phenomenal. i actually still can't believe how great she was given how young she obviously is.

secret ingredient

yummy. . . 

it was actually shortly after matt got here that we headed to chicago to visit with dj and laura. i apparently took no photos of this, but this seems an appropriate time to share the laura-inspired recipe that we made after we got back. since it was still a little warm, we tried to spend a few days cooking using the crock pot. remembering laura making us delicious, italian beef sandwiches, we decided to give a simplified version our own shot. like really simplified. beef broth, roast beef, and spicy giardinera. rumor has it that the giardinera really makes the experience. we haven't ever found it in athens and it seemed not to be available in state college. madison kind of pulled through for us non there. i'm not going going to lie - the hot version is definitely hot. like, "don't-pile-it-on-unless-you're-ready-to-set-your-mouth-on-fire" hot. however, it was also delicious. we don't eat that much red meat at all, but we're definitely having this one again.

and as long as in an "i'm-not-going-to-lie" mood, i'll tell you that i was pretty proud of myself for just happening to have a potato on hand to toast up a tasty side dish. just like a real grown up.

two more things to round out part one of what promises to be a roughly three part saga. first, i forget why, but matt and i definitely made a trip out to dick's sporting goods. i forget what we were looking for and i don't honestly remember if either of us bought anything. but i can tell you that i was pretty ridiculously humored by this mannequin.

holding its own hand.

what is this display supposedly saying, anyway?
and what type of sporting product would it sell to the average consumer?

tough call.
but very funny.

and finally, in addition to delightfully collecting RSVPs for the wedding, we've been getting a good number of invitations to the weddings of others. unfortunately, many of them are right around either the time of our wedding or what will be our honeymoon. what is not unfortunate, however, is that we are still pretty delighted when things come to us addressed like this:

most of our invites actually aren't for formal affairs, but there have been a few that have come addressed to dr. and dr. it's kind of fun still. and it also definitely feels kind of weird. kind of makes me wish we would have added a few "drs" to the invites that we sent out.

sorry, dr. friends. we'll try to step it up a notch with the thank you notes.

from last to first. . .and back to last again

remember last year when i was so excited that i won our division in fantasy baseball? i *might* have neglected my team for a few weeks this year. look what happened :

ouch. dead last. is it even mathematically possible to make up 19 games in 4 more weeks? it doesn't seem probable. or at least not ideal. blast this summer of so many things going on.

in a kind-of-related-to-sports vein, our group run was cancelled again tonight given that it was over 90 degrees with the heat index. anyone surprised? yeah. . . i thought not. doesn't change the fact that the mud run is coming up in just under three weeks.

it's gearing up to be a busy august. i'll try to get you some good pics.