Anyway, here are some of the things I've been up to in the past two months-ish.
I went to Minnesota for a weekend and got to visit with many of the people I know and love there. It was really wonderful, although I wouldn't have hated having more time to spend than just Friday night through Monday morning. When I left Maine that day, it was still really cold here and hadn't really started feeling super Spring-y yet, and when I stepped out of the airport in Minnesota it was a balmy 74 DEGREES at 10pm. I was so pleased! My friend Sarah picked me up and we went to Pat's Tap and sat on the patio and ate cheese curds and caught up on life. Bliss, I tell you.
I stayed with my friend Kendra, who was gracious enough to host me for the weekend even though it was the same weekend her boyfriend was moving in (whoops, my timing has rarely been excellent.) and it was really wonderful to get to catch up with her a bunch, too. On Saturday morning I headed out to get my hair officially un-purpled at my favorite salon in Minneapolis, because it'd been a while since I had a haircut I really loved.
After my haircut I went back to Kendra's and we made our way to Northeast Minneapolis to check out art-a-whirl, which is a big art selling event that happens over a whole weekend, and also to meet up with my brother Jon and his girlfriend. We walked around for a while with them, checked out some cool art booths, chit chatted, whatever. Then Kendra and I headed out to the suburbs for dinner with my favorite family of ten. Well, actually, we visited the Johnson kids at the house for a while and then Nate drove Jen, Sarah, Kendra, and I to dinner in his new "dad van." (Shout out to Bethany for watching the kids so we could go out. That's not a fun thing to be stuck doing, but we appreciate that you did it!)
On Sunday, I went to the Kingfield Farmer's Market, which is tiny but lovely. Farmer's markets were something I loved about living in the city. Granted, Hallowell has a weekly farmer's market, too, but it only has like three booths and it's not the same. Then we walked around Lake Harriet and did some regular old errands and went to eat some yummy food at Hai-Hai and then went to IZZY'S where I bought an entire pint of midnight snack ice cream because it wasn't available as a flavor to get scoops of. #noregrets
That evening I went over to eat dinner with my former bosses from SiP and visit with them and their kids. It was really lovely to see them and catch up, especially since I got to see one's new house and hear about how the other just bought a house and it kind of blows my mind how much things can change in such a small amount of time. By the time I was done visiting with them, Kendra and Brian were already turned in for the night (I guess some people are better at going to sleep on time when they have to work in the morning....weird.) so I just headed straight to bed, too. In the morning my brother came to pick me up at Kendra's and then we got some coffee before hitting the road.
It was a long drive. Some ridiculous things happened over the course of the two day drive (like the part where the driver's side wiper went flying off as I took an exit just outside of Chicago in about five lanes of traffic and I couldn't see anything anymore cause the rain was no longer getting wiped away. Or the time my brother tried to get out of the car when we were at customs going into Canada because he didn't know that you should DEFINITELY NOT GET OUT OF THE CAR WHEN THERE ARE BORDER AGENTS WITH GUNS AROUND!!! You know, normal stuff like that.) but I'm not going to get into all of that. Suffice it to say that by the end of driving day two I was ready to not be in the car with him anymore.
A bunch of normal life stuff has happened since then, too, not least of which was my mom getting married (okay, that might not quite qualify as "normal life stuff" but whatever...) and getting a new position at my job with a lot more responsibility and just having very little time for anything at all. I also have a state park pass that gets a whole car full of people into Maine's parks, and I've been trying to utilize it every weekend. I've been to Popham a couple times and went to Damariscotta Lake with my friend Hailey and her kids one day, too. So if any of you want to hit up a state park beach this summer, let me know!
I'm attempting to do the expert level summer reading challenge on Goodreads, which means reading books that fulfill about ten categories for each June, July, and August (find it here). That's probably something I can do, except I forgot about it until June 20th which means I' started off pretty far behind....I think I'm only going to read books for mayyyybe 7 of the 11 categories for this month. Oh well. I have my whole list picked out for July, so I should do much better with that list.
And maybe I'll even write more than one blog post in the next two months. WHO KNOWS?!?!
On Sunday, I went to the Kingfield Farmer's Market, which is tiny but lovely. Farmer's markets were something I loved about living in the city. Granted, Hallowell has a weekly farmer's market, too, but it only has like three booths and it's not the same. Then we walked around Lake Harriet and did some regular old errands and went to eat some yummy food at Hai-Hai and then went to IZZY'S where I bought an entire pint of midnight snack ice cream because it wasn't available as a flavor to get scoops of. #noregretsThat evening I went over to eat dinner with my former bosses from SiP and visit with them and their kids. It was really lovely to see them and catch up, especially since I got to see one's new house and hear about how the other just bought a house and it kind of blows my mind how much things can change in such a small amount of time. By the time I was done visiting with them, Kendra and Brian were already turned in for the night (I guess some people are better at going to sleep on time when they have to work in the morning....weird.) so I just headed straight to bed, too. In the morning my brother came to pick me up at Kendra's and then we got some coffee before hitting the road.
It was a long drive. Some ridiculous things happened over the course of the two day drive (like the part where the driver's side wiper went flying off as I took an exit just outside of Chicago in about five lanes of traffic and I couldn't see anything anymore cause the rain was no longer getting wiped away. Or the time my brother tried to get out of the car when we were at customs going into Canada because he didn't know that you should DEFINITELY NOT GET OUT OF THE CAR WHEN THERE ARE BORDER AGENTS WITH GUNS AROUND!!! You know, normal stuff like that.) but I'm not going to get into all of that. Suffice it to say that by the end of driving day two I was ready to not be in the car with him anymore.
A bunch of normal life stuff has happened since then, too, not least of which was my mom getting married (okay, that might not quite qualify as "normal life stuff" but whatever...) and getting a new position at my job with a lot more responsibility and just having very little time for anything at all. I also have a state park pass that gets a whole car full of people into Maine's parks, and I've been trying to utilize it every weekend. I've been to Popham a couple times and went to Damariscotta Lake with my friend Hailey and her kids one day, too. So if any of you want to hit up a state park beach this summer, let me know!
I'm attempting to do the expert level summer reading challenge on Goodreads, which means reading books that fulfill about ten categories for each June, July, and August (find it here). That's probably something I can do, except I forgot about it until June 20th which means I' started off pretty far behind....I think I'm only going to read books for mayyyybe 7 of the 11 categories for this month. Oh well. I have my whole list picked out for July, so I should do much better with that list.
And maybe I'll even write more than one blog post in the next two months. WHO KNOWS?!?!
