From my iPhone

Ooops.  I haven't updated this in awhile.  A good friend of mine reminded me that I needed to recently (thanks Tad! :)    So here it goes.

I'm too lazy to hook up to my external hard drive to get pictures I've taken over the last few months, so I'm going the easier route and using pictures from iPhone.  Enjoy!

1. For Ace's birthday in February he told me that all he wanted for his present was to eat at Fogo De Chao in Minneapolis.  So we went and ate delicious meat.  If you're ever near a Fogo De Chao, don't think, just go.  You won't be sorry!

2. For Ace's second birthday weekend he suggested  we should go to Lincoln, NE so that I could see my friends.  It was his sly way of getting back to Nebraska.  Luckily, I love my best good friend (and David) so I was easily swayed. 

  3. Rachel and I hadn't seen each other in a long time.  When we spend long periods apart, the following is bound to happen......

Yes, we are awesome.

David even thinks we're awesome.

We really should live closer. It would be better for both of us :)

4.  This is what the end of the parking lot at work looked like on March 22.  It's now gone.  This means spring is finally here!!!!!

5. Remember my finger injury? Well the nail fell off exactly 2 months after my finger met its fate in the car door.  The following is what it looked like then and how it looked a week ago.  I feel the need to document this because I'm weird.

6. My mom texted me to tell me that she got me a present and that I would love it.  Well the "present" was actually a package of random items from my childhood.  The items included a painted small tote bag, a cross stitched Taz picture, a Taz Pez dispenser (I really liked Taz as a kid), a "Rachel" stamp, an orange Illinois pencil, a 4H pin, and my personal favorites - an I <3 Petty pin, and a jewelry box of random rocks.  Yes I used to collect rocks. All of the cool kids did.

7. This is Mr. Pig.  He was my Christmas present and I love him.  I think he's going to live on my front porch once it's finally warm all the time (he's thick ceramic, but I was afraid the ice and cold would crack him).  He lives inside for now, and is doubling as the Easter Pig!!

8.  Last week I was in Brookings to visit Ace.  It was SDSU's Little International.  They go all out for this event, and even bring in colored wood chips like at Louisville.  Basically it's a giant showmanship contest for all species.  There are two divisions, novice and advanced.  Ace put on an alumni meats judging contest so I hung out in the meat lab all day and then we experienced the Little I.  I wish Illinois had had something like it. I think it would have been fun!

9. I spent two weekends in March at Ace's parents house in Nebraska for calving season.  I've been pretending I'm a good ranch hand.  Really I'm just there to see the cute little babies!



10.  My big brother is ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!    Congrats Rob and Brooke!!

Graceful

My mom always said I was graceful.  I think it goes back to when I was five, and it was a few weeks before my Uncle's wedding and I was the flower girl for.  I don't remember much, but I remember running full force, face first into my metal swing set.  Luckily, you could barely see the black eye at the wedding.  Since then I've been pretty much a walking accident.  I truly have a gift for injuring myself in stupid ways.  This week was no exception.  I was traveling to a plant in Minneapolis on Wednesday and had to go early to pick up the rental car.  The windows were frosty and so I had to scrape them.  After driving over to R&D to pick up some coworkers I got out of the car, shut the door, and found my glove was in the door.  Only when I tried to pull the glove out I realized my finger was also in the door. My fingers were so cold that I didn't even notice that I shut my finger in the door so my finger was in the door for probably 30 seconds before I opened the door.  I pulled the glove off and my fingernail was instantly black.  I'll save you all the nasty details, but after trying to relieve the pressure last night I think I was in some of the worst pain I've ever had.  It still hurts today.  I walked around at work looking like I was giving everyone the "I'm number 1" sign because I was elevating my hand to keep the swelling down. I'm also double medicated on cold medicine and ibuprofen.  I'm also learning to type without my right index finger.  Try it sometime, you don't realize how much you use your finger! Hopefully I don't lose my fingernail, but I'm not holding my breath.

If I had someone to take a picture I would show my normal finger with the swelled one because it doesn't look that bad here but holding it up to the regular finger makes it look huge!

Welcome 2011!

Happy New Year everyone!!  Another year has came and went, and I can't wait to see what 2011 has in store for me!  I had a fabulous New Year's Eve.  Ace, Adam, Jessie, and I rang in 2011 here in Austin.  Somehow I failed big time and didn't take a single picture all night.  I'm not sure how that happened, but you'll just have to take my word that we had a great time.  We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and watching fooball.  I loved having a house of people, and I was sad to see them go this morning.  Now it's back to work tomorrow and time to get started on those new year resolutions.  :)  

You Make Me Smile

One of my favorite quotes is "If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans." I feel like this has applied to my life so many times.  I wanted to go to grad school in Champaign, and I ended up in Iowa.  I said I would never move further north, and I end up working in Minnesota.  I've had so many plans change, and 99% of the time they have worked out better than I ever could have planned for. 
Life has changed for me once again. I don't know who actually reads this random rambling blog of mine, but some of you already know this but to some it might come as a surprise.

A very nice boy from Nebraska has been coming around again.  Remember him? The one with the strange name who shares the strange love of meat judging?  Yep - Ace.  The story of how this all came to be is long and somewhat complicated and doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. What matters is that I'm super happy and he makes me smile everyday.  He is now living in South Dakota working on his PhD in meat science.  We're a little over 3 hours away from each other but we're making it work. 

He's been requesting to be back on the blog so this post is for him :)   If he starts making regular appearances now you won't be surprised.

Meaty Halloween

Happy Halloween!! 

I hope everyone has had a great weekend! I've had a blast!  Halloween is a big event in Austin. Mostly, because my friend Katie goes pretty overboard about it.  We've been having weekly "committee" meetings for about the past month.  Really these were just an excuse to get together.  Last week we carved pumpkins, and this week we decorated cookies and cupcakes for Katie's party last night. 

I wasn't sure what I was going to dress up as this year.  It was going to be hard to top the tacky tourist of last year.  Then Lady Gaga gave me the most perfect costume! If you didn't hear, Lady Gaga wore a meat dress at the MTV Video Awards this year.  It was made of actual dried meat, complete with meat shoes, a meat hat, and a meat purse.  She had some weird political reasoning behind the dress, but being the meat lover that I am, I loved it for the mere fact it was made of meat! So I set out to recreat the meat dress.  I actually found a do it yourself video on youtube.  Sadly, my costume was not made of actual meat.  We had talks at work about how I could use real meat, but I figured it would be too messy :)  So here is the finished product. It turned out awesome! I'm not sure the pictures do it justice. It looks much better in person. 

What do you think compared with the real deal??

Katie the Lady Bug, Joni the Donkey, Lady Gaga, and Holly as Pippi Longstocking

Katie's boyfriend Brad as a Gnome, if he turned his hat around he also doubled as a wizard

 KISS Army

 Kim Jong-Il

 Pumpkin Carving!!

 My cute front porch (there's an orange mum between the pumpkins

In other news, I caught a second mouse.  I'm really really hoping that's the end of the mice.  It's too stressful getting rid of them...

I'll also be home this weekend for Katie Steber's wedding.  I'll be home late Thursday/sometime on Friday for the rehearsal dinner then I'll have to go back on Sunday.  It will be a quick trip, but I'm excited to be home for a few days! Mom and Dad recently bought a hot tub and I'm excited to try it out! 

Mouse

I caught a mouse today.  It was a major triumphant, and my mother was not supportive.

I discovered this mouse on Sunday after being gone all weekend.  My loaf of bread had a large hole burrowed in it.  So Monday I went a little overboard and bought six mouse traps.  I decided I would only set four of the traps and keep the other two.  Tuesday went by with no mice sightings.  I came home today from being in Osceola for work overnight and found this.

He was stuck, but still alive.  The stuff in the middle is the large glob of peanut butter I smeared on the trap to lure him in.  I discarded of my house guest with minimal screaming/freaking out.  I've decided to leave the other traps out in case he has any friends.  Thanks again for being supportive, Mom.

In other news, it's cold.  Winter has caught up to me once again.  Ugh.

That's all I've got for now.....

It's a brand new car!!!

Like I said in an earlier post, I bought my first brand new car a few weeks ago!!  I must say the whole process wasn't as painful as I thought it would be.  It doesn't hurt that I somewhat fell in love with my salesman, Dave.  He was really straight with me, and didn't try to sell me something I didn't need.  I just got a letter from Dave thanking me and how much fun he had during the process. I know this is probably standard operating procedure at Rochester Toyota, but I like to think that I'm Dave's favorite customer of all time! I now have all the fun things that come along with a brand new car like the new car smell, it's shiny, everything in it is clean, it starts everytime (the Solara is starting to have an issue), and debt. Ok, so maybe the debt part is not so much fun, but now I suppose I'm like everyone else in the country! I also forgot how much work it is to keep a dark car clean.  I've had my gold car for long that I've been oblivious to just how dirty cars can get.  So far, I've had my new car for about 3 weeks, and I've taken it through the car wash 3 times already.  It doesn't help that they have my road completely tore up and the dust from the construction is horrible.  I've started driving completely out of my way just to avoid it! I'm becoming quite obsessive about keeping it clean.  I feel like this is going to be a problem once winter gets here and it's covered in salt all the time.  Ugh! However, at least the car is all wheel drive so hopefully I won't have to worry about being stuck in snow drifts this year!  Thanks Dave!