Recent Happenings

I alluded to a comment I recently posted (5 minutes ago) that I would let you all know how I celebrated my birthday. Most of you know I have an aversion to working on my birthday, and many of you posed the question how I could possibly celebrate while not being your presence…it was VERY difficult.

To tell the story proper, I must start with the weekend before my birthday. I got use of a truck for a weekend and loaded up my old furniture and other bulky garbage I had and took two FULL loads to the dump. My furniture was in such shape that even the college student I had helping me said – no thanks. Later that same day, I picked up my new furniture. I will attempt to attach a picture. Since everybody loves someone with a truck, some friends of mine decided to buy their furniture as well and we loaded up and delivered theirs as well. This was a bit of challenge as they have a tight driveway going up a ridge in St. Elmo. Long story short…I almost needed the full liability coverage I got with the rental. Almost, but due to some superior skill on the part of my spotter, I did not roll the rental truck into a ravine.

Skip forward to my b-day week. To start off – I had lunch on 3/6 after church with some friends and enjoyed a quiet relaxing day. I took the entire week off (week starting 3/7) so as to better meditate and ponder what it means to be 33 years of age. One of the many things I determined was that 33 year-olds should have a clean house, especially when you agreed to host 20 people for a dinner party (and even more especially when your PARENTS are coming for a visit in just a few short weeks!). Now the dump runs the prior week was a good start, and I thought that I would leisurely clean with ample relaxing breaks! Which is pretty much exactly what I did, which is also partially why I was still doing things Saturday AM instead of polishing the silverware. Here is a short but mostly comprehensive list of things accomplished:

Cleaned up the yard, pruned bushes, cut down sapling trees, low hanging branches, and burned all leaves still in the yard / squeaged (sp?) water out of my garage because it POURED Wednesday / cleaned both bathrooms / cleaned kitchen – spotless / cleaned dining room and living room / cleaned both spare bedrooms / shopped for party meal / bought some things for the house.

While I was exhausted most nights, it felt incredibly good to have all of this done. The rain was a bit of a damper though because the ground was saturated and I could not dry out the garage or carport. This was concerning because 20 people do not fit in my house and if it was going to rain, we were going to set tables in the carport – but it was still wet come Saturday AM. God though provided a beautiful day and all worked out.

Dinner (not cooked by me) was influenced by the Milan region of Italy and included bread w/ pan seared cheese w/ figs & port, roasted potatoes, roasted vegetables (brusell sprouts, onions, mushrooms, baby carrots, and zucchini), chicken stuffed with fresh herbs and pancetta (thickly sliced Italian bacon). For dessert – lemon souffle. It was ALL very good.

In the week since, I returned to work just in time to get sick, and be out for half the week with a fever. Not fun, but I got dinner delivered to me by friends which was fun. I also slept for over 13 hours at one time, must be some kind of record for me. Since getting better, I had the opportunity to drive an ambulance emergency traffic to the hospital – which was a thrilling experience for me, though at the time I was a bit nervous.

I think that brings you up to date. Mom, Dad, Katie – I hope to keep my house clean until your visit and maybe by then new habits will have formed to allow me to keep it that way. It is easier though when you don’t have a roommate, there is no expectation that someone else will do it.