My crummy mood

Today I am greatful that we get to go to sleep tonight and essentially "start over" tomorrow.  I have felt a funk coming on earlier this week - perhaps related to the crummy weather outside - and it really hasn't disappeared yet. 

Do you ever have those mornings where no matter what you do you cannot shake the feeling that you should just go back to bed, get a couple more hours of sleep, and start over?  That is how I felt this morning - but no can do once you have joined the real world.

So, today I am thankful that tonight I do get to go home, get some good sleep, and start the day over tomorrow. Hopefully sleep will cause the cummy mood I have been in to disappear!

Day 1 in Portland

Recruitment season has begun for me! I started with an appointment with an advisor at Portland State University this morning. PSU is located right in the heart of Portland - very accessible because the Portland Streetcar actually runs right through campus. This was very convenient for me as I did not pick up my rental car until this afternoon so I had a way to get around after my appointment was over. The meeting went really well - a great way to start of recruitment this year. Better to start off on a high note.

I've been trying to work on decorating my office at work, so I decided that I would pick up a postcard from each university I visit this fall and purchase a shadow box or something like that so I can display them in my office. I also pick up pins whenever I visit universities and I plan to display them in a glass container on my desk. That project is a little more pricey than the first :) I picked up my postcard at PSU this morning, but accidentally bent it so I'll have to pick up another.

After my appointment I took the streetcar, then the MAX lightrail, then the bus to where Alice works at Tiger Tiger on Alberta Street. I was proud that I took a look at a map of the public transportation available in Portland and figured out how to get to Tiger Tiger on my own. I ran down the street to pick up some lunch for Alice, myself, and one of her co-workers from a local bakery. I had a fantastic salad with fresh greens, apples, candied walnuts, blue cheese, and a creamy viniagrette. Fantastic! Alice was not working when I was there, but was having one of her co-workers color her hair. When she was done, she took me to pick up my rental car and I headed to the University of Portland, a Holy Cross school with a gorgeous campus. I took a couple of pictures but I don't have a way to get them off my camera right now so I will have to share later.

My visit at the University of Portland went really well. I saw a couple of very interested students and was able to share some information with some advisors. I love visiting college campuses. I think that is one of the way I know that I have choosen the correct career. I love to see the layout of campuses and see the environement where students are learning - I think it tells you so much about the school and the students who choose to attend school there. The University of Portland is situated just off of a cute little neighborhood in Portland fairly close to downtown, but campus does not feel like you are in a city. The soccer teams were practicing as I was walking through campus - there women's soccer team has won several D-1 National Championships, and the campus has tons of green space. I wasn't able to pick up a postcard here because the did not sell any, but I did take some photos. My cousin, Sam, is currently work at UP as an athletic trainer for the basketball team.

The University of Portland is definitely one of my favorite campuses so far. The most beautiful campus I have seen is Santa Clara University in California, but the University of Portland came in pretty close. I'll share photos of Santa Clara when I visit there next month.

After my visit at UP, I headed back to Nick and Alice's and met up with Alice for some shopping. She is in need of new shoes for her cousin Katie's wedding and has not been able to find any so we headed downtown to visit Macy's and a couple of other places. We did not have much luck, but did run into a completely crazy homeless guy on our way home who was standing in the middle of the street yelling at pretty much everyone. Alice and I had actually seen him earlier today when she dropped me off at PSU. He either walked or jumped on the streetcar at some point during the day because he was several miles from where we had first seen him. There are many homeless people in Portland - mostly because of the mild climate, and most of them mind their own business, sometimes taking money or food from people who walk or drive by. But there are some who are very loud and obviously disturbed. Alice and I have talked about this everytime that I am here because it is hard to see all of the homeless and not want to help each and every one of them. It is however, difficult to know how to react to the ones who are screaming at anyone and everyone in the middle of the street - especially when they are dropping the F-bomb and any number of other vile phrases incessently. I struggle internally with knowing what to do or how to react. I feel I fail miserably at being a compassionate human because it is just "easier" to walk on by.

Our trip was unsuccessful (ie, no shoes for the wedding) and after a quick trip to Whole Foods for some miso for Alice (she has a cold and wanted some miso soup), some grilled veggies for Nick, and some brown rice for me to add with the leftover Thai. Alice did find a pair of shoes at Whole Foods so the trip was not completely unsuccessful. The leftover Thai might have been better than it was the first night :)

I love Southwest!

My travel season has begun and I will start out this entry with a little “shoutout” to my personal favorite airline – Southwest! I flew Southwest to Denver today and am now sitting in the Denver Airport waiting for my next flight (on Southwest) to Portland, OR. The Denver to Omaha service is a new service that just started earlier this month and while my flight here was not quite full, I hope the fullness of the flight is a good indication that the service will remain. I find it incredible that while most airlines are cutting flights, routes, and cities, Southwest is actually expanding. I heard that they are in a really good position right now because they elected to lock in a fuel price awhile back so they are not paying the astronomical prices for gas that the other airlines are paying. I also have to believe that they are just really smart about the way they do things. The Southwest crew and staff are always incredibly friendly. It isn’t that the staff and crew on other airlines are unfriendly, I have just encountered some people who really don’t seem as though they like their jobs very much. It seems to me that the Southwest staff always appear to like their jobs. About 10 minutes into our flight to Denver (which is about an hour and 15 minute flight) one of the crew (our crew had 2 women and a man – which I also notice on Southwest fairly often – lots of men on the crew) asked if there were any medical professionals on board and if so, could they come back to the back of the plane. There was some sort of medical emergency with a passenger that lasted pretty much throughout the flight. I felt the staff handled everything in a very calm manner, and most people on board the plan probably didn’t even know what was going on. I was near the back so I had a little bit better idea, but except for the fact that the crew did not serve a full beverage service, I doubt most people even had any idea what was going on. When they first made the announcement I began thinking that we may have to turn around because, let’s face it, there aren’t very many places to stop between Omaha and Denver. I would imagine that one of the airports (McCook, North Platte, Grand Island, Kearney or something like that) might have a runway that would be long enough, but we would still be in the middle of nowhere. While a Denver EMS crew did board the plan and remove the passenger before the rest of us got off, she did walk off the plan so hopefully it was just some several motions sickness, altitude sickness or something like that. The woman in the seat across from me was traveling with two kids (ages 3 and 2) and appeared to be expecting another. I helped entertain the little girl and watched her while she and her son made a trip to the bathroom. All three of them definitely would not have fit. I guess that is a challenge of traveling with kids.

As I mentioned, my travel season has begun. My travel this year is brutal. Between today and November 1st, I will only be spending 3 full days in the office (I think I have 3 half days thrown in there too). That is about 7 straight weeks of travel. Granted, I do get to spend most weekends at home, but it really makes me realize how quickly the time will go by. Think about this…by the time I am done traveling we will be three days away from electing a new president. And yes, I have taken into consideration that I will be spending a great deal of time in California in October and am preparing myself for the barrage of political ads that will be on the airwaves. That completely blows my mind considering that we have been going at this for about a year and a half now. It will be a tough seven weeks. I love this part of my job because I get the opportunity to really step out and show off Creighton to students and convince them to give us a chance, but it is tough to live out of a suitcase for 7 weeks. I usually have enough time at home to empty out my suitcase and repack again. Neither Matt nor I are telephone talkers so we struggle with communication when I am on the road. It is also hard because most of my travel is to the west coast so I often have events when Matt is home at night available to talk and then by the time I am available he is in bed. I try to not disrupt his schedule too much, so sometimes we just know we can't talk to each other. We do our best. Sometime just short message via email or text message are the best way to stay in contact. We make it through and I think it makes us appreciate when we do get to be together.

Wonderful

The wonderful smell of homemade banana bread in the oven is filling my house right now. Matt and I had some bananas that had moved beyond the edible point so I whipped up some banana bread for him while he was at the softball coach's meeting tonight. I'm not a huge fan of banana bread, but the smell filling my house right now is pretty incredible. I'm excited to see how the recipe turns out because it is a new one and I was intrigued because it includes plain yogurt. I guess we will know soon how it turns out.

I stayed home from work today. I woke up at about 4am this morning and felt like I was going to be sick. I never actually got sick, but I still wasn't feeling 100% when my alarm went off at 6am. Stephanie is 38 weeks pregnant and we have an agreement in our office that we will not come to work if we are sick, so I called in. The last thing I want to do is give Stephanie the stomach flu or something like that. The good news is I don't think I have the stomach flu, but I still don't know why my stomach was so upset in the middle of the night.

Matt and I spent Friday night watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. We decided to enjoy some Chinese food to keep with the theme of the evening and then spent the evening ohhing and ahhing over the opening ceremonies. I'm a huge sucker for the Olympic Games and I usually enjoy the opening ceremonies even though some people find them boring. Friday night's ceremonies did not disappoint. The Chinese put on a wonderful show for the world and it was fantastic to see all of the athletes together for the Olympics again.

As a Olympic junkie I've been pretty attached to the television for the last couple of days. However, a DVR is an Olympic junkie's best friend - as long as you can keep up with watching. The US women's basketball team played during my workout on Saturday morning (beating China handedly) and I tried to stay caught up until I picked up my mom for some shopping on Saturday afternoon. I was in desperate need of a new work shoes - both winter and summer and I managed to find a pair of each at Yonkers on Saturday and only spent $55! I found several items at Pottery Barn I could have purchased on the spot, but held off for the time being.

After shopping I came home, watched a little more of the Olympics and then Matt and I headed to Becky and Dan's for their annual fiesta. It was a little tamer this year that it has in the past and we had a great time chatting with them, Becky's mom and playing with Josie - their chihuhua who was absolutely thrilled with all the people at her house (insert sarcasm here). Poor Josie. Interestingly enough - it was the tamest fiesta I have been to, but apparently the cops paid them a visit after we left. Isn't that how it always goes?

Yesterday, my family attended Flip's memorial service. Flip's wife Kathleen, his daughter Rachael, and sister Phyllis all traveled up from Kentucky for the service and it was nice to see them. Ron's brother Richard also attended and while I've heard many stories about him, I had never met him before. We got the chance to laugh and share stories about Ron and his life. And, as would be fitting, we ended the evening at Pizza King in CB, which was Ron's absolutely favorite. I don't think he ever returned to the area without visiting Pizza King.

Matt and I are currently wtching the US Mens' Gymnastics Team in the team competition. Holy Cow! They totally rocked it on the high bar! I love when the underdog succeeds!

Snow?...In June?...In Nebraska?.... (Warning - this is a long one)

It sure looks like snow, doesn't it? These photos were taken the evening of Friday, June 27th at about 7pm. Two hours earlier a sudden, violent, and crazy storm blew (quite literally!) through the Omaha metro area. Matt and I were not at home as we had planned to spend the evening at the Summer Arts Festival in downtown and the storm literally followed him as he drove across Omaha toward Creighton. We waited out the storm in my office and then decided to head home. We knew our house had sustained some damage before we arrived home because Matt called out neighbor, Lee, and Lee told him that our garage door was damaged along with everyone else's on our block. We managed to get home fairly quickly on the interstate, which was a surprise because we heard reports of power outages and traffic jams caused by power outages across the city. We decided to drive to my parent's house first because neither of them were home and their is very unprotected. You can see what greeted us in the picture below:

Those are hosta plants that prior to Friday night were huge, green, leafy and gorgeous. Now it looks like someone ran them through a shredder. Behind the hosta plants was this sight:

This is my parent's air conditioner - which is looks like someone took a baseball bat to it. You can see all of the dented areas.

We made our way around my parents house and except for some MAJORLY damaged plants, bushes and trees, it appeared that their house was in pretty good condition. So, we headed to our house. I'm including pictures below of some of the many sites that we found.

You can see our majorly mangled garage door. It looks like someone took both sides of it and twisted it around. My car was, at the time, stuck inside the garage and there was absolutely no way that we lift it up. The hail you see in the last picture is what was piled inside of the left side of our garage. The wind was blowing so hard that it blew rain and hail all the way to the back wall of the garage after it blew the bottom of the door inward. It also blew the cover of the opening to our attic in the garage upward and dropped the cover back down sideways.

You can also see that the storm blew one of our downspouts off and literally wrung the remainder of the downspout like a dishrag.

We found the downspout in our backyard.

The storm completely shredded the screen off of our bedroom window.

And if you look closely in this picture, you can see the leaves from our gorgeous front yard tree absolutely plastered to the side of our house :(

Matt had to use the hose to get them off.

Once we had assessed the damage outside and made a list of items to discuss with the insurance company, I headed upstairs to change my clothes so we could start some clean up and we were also going to wander around the neighborhood to see how everyone else faired.

Unfortunately, I found this in our bedroom.

Somehow, water got through our bedroom window, ran down the wall, and across the floor. We don't own a wet/dry vacuum so I headed to my parent's house to borrow theirs. I spent the next hour or so vacuuming water out of the carpet and have spent the last four days running fans in our bedroom so we don't get mold.

Matt and I certainly did not count on having to use the insurance that we arranged for last October so soon, but we certainly appreciate the necessity of it now. There was so much damage in the Omaha metro that most of the insurance companies sent catastrophy teams to the area and have been able to respond quickly. Our adjustor visited today and actually dropped a check by our house tonight. We will definitely be arranging for a new front door, a new bedroom window (there are cracks around the seal of the window) and half of our roof (the part that faces west) needs to be reshingled.

We drove around a little on Friday night and traveled to 132nd and Maple, which was completely without power because the power lines were hanging on top of buildings and trees.

The picture above is of a gas station that was hit by wind so violent that it literally shredded the metal off of the sign.

We definitely consider ourselves lucky in the grand scheme of things. Some homes in Omaha are still without power four days after the storm and some estimates indicate it could be Saturday before power is fully restored. Several of our neighbors have damage far worse than ours - windows completely broken by wind and hail, fences literally ripped from the ground or twisted a million times, outside playsets that are completely toppled, and a deck hanging from the back of a house. Our neighbor two doors down had part of his roof completely ripped off and unfortunately his ceiling fell in on Sunday sometime. And one of our neighbors about a block away just finished building a new deck on their house, only to have it hit by a huge section of the fence, and to have most of the vertical supports disappear.

And just so everyone knows, the hail was still in our yard Saturday morning.

He would want a party..

One my my dad's best friends, Ron "Flip" Filkins, died this morning. I'm still a little bit in shock. My dad has a very close group of friends that he has known since high school (or longer) and they get together frequently. Most live in the Omaha/CB area, but Flip has lived away from the area of years and currently lives in Bardstown, KY and was the publisher of a newspaper. Flip (which is virtually the only thing I have every called him) was a funny, quirky, intelligent guy who always had a smile on his face and a great story to tell. My sister interned for his paper during the summer of 2004 and actually lived with Flip and his wife Kathleen in Bardstown. He was thrilled that she accepted the position and she has many stories from spending the summer with them. Flip and Kathleen also gave Matt and I one of the wedding gifts we use and discuss the most - our wonderful ice cream maker.

My family spent the day sharing memories of Flip and decided that he would not want any of us to be sad. In fact, he is probably wondering why we are not beginning to plan the party, because he is the first one who would have RSVP'd.

God speed, Flip. You will be missed.

Matt and I shopped for furniture today. I have had my eye on a side table and bookshelf at Target for awhile and my sister and her roommate bought the bookshelf a couple of weeks ago and we got to see it last weekend when we were at their apartment. I liked it even more after I saw it and convinced Matt to go to Target today to see if they had it. We have needed a side table in our family room for awhile so it made sense for us to get the one that matches the bookshelf. Luckily we had the giftcard we received from Angie and Andrew as a wedding gift to use so we were able to purchase both. We had a little bit of an adventure with the "easy" instructions included with the bookcase and table, but eventually got both put together and they look great in our living room. I will post pictures soon!!

As it is Memorial Day, I thought I would take a little bit of time and give credit to the men and women who have and will continue to sacrifice their lives for my freedom. One of my favorite quotations is, "I disagree profoundly what you say, but I would defend with my life your right to say it," which is attributed to Voltaire. To me, this is the essence of what the men and women in the armed forces are out putting their lives on the line for everyday. When a soldier joins the military they are polled to find out what their views are on particular subject, but instead they vow to defend our country regardless of the rhyme or the reason. And today we have an entire day set aside to pay tribute and be thankful for those who have served and are currently serving our country.

After our "date" tonight (every Friday is datenight for Matt and I) I spent some time on homerealestate.com looking at houses for sale. I'm ready to own a house. I'm ready to paint rooms, landscape (not just plant flowers in planters for our tiny deck), and get "settled in" someplace for the long term. I've never lived anywhere independently where I actually didn't have the thought that I would be moving sooner rather than later. I'm also ready to bring a dog into our lives. I think we are both ready for that one. I want a dog I can take on a walk, who will greet me at the door when I arrive home at night and who will curl up on the couch next to me. So, we are working on that one. Matt and I both love our apartment and it is perfect for us right now so I'm content to wait until we can save the money we need to not only purchase a house, but also purchase the items we need to put in the house. But it is fun to look and see what is out there. There is so much growth in Lincoln and between Lincoln and Omaha - there are new houses popping up all over the place. I've also found some really cool vintage houses that just need some TLC and Matt has been ready have things to do around the house for a long time.

I'm so ready for this 3-day weekend. Minus one vacation day that I took and one unexpected snow day, I haven't had a day off since mid-January. It was definitely time for a long weekend and a couple of days of rest and relaxation. Matt and I have zero "set" plans - just some things we would like to get done.

• We are going to visit Alltel to discuss our cell phone plans because it has been ages since either of us changed ours and we are fairly certain we can get a better deal that what we are paying for now.
• My co-worker gave me some grape tomato plants that I need to find a planter for and get planted.
• We want to clean our apartment from top to bottom.
• We plan to watch the movies we rented: In Pursuit of Happyness, The Holiday, and The Illusionist. However, Matt was very clear that The Holiday is my movie and he will not be joining my chick-flick fest :)
• If the weatherman is incorrect, we may be making a trip to the Farmer's Market tomorrow morning for some fresh fruits and veggies and other fun things.

When Matt and I were in Shelbina at the end of April we gave our nieces Madalyn and Lauren their birthday cards. Both girls have birthdays in May and we were fairly certain we would not see them again before their birthdays. Lauren opened hers immediately and was delighted with the check we had included ( I wish we saw the girls often enough for me to be able to have a better idea of what to give them for their birthdays, but for now, money will have to do). Madalyn, the traditionalist, saved her card (with check enclosed as well) for her actual birthday. When I came in the door after work today, Matt handed me a cute, little, pink notecard, gave me a look, and told me to read the notecard first. I opened it up and it is a thank you card from Madalyn that said "Thank you Matt and Lindsay. You have to explan this check cashing thing to me. Call me (and then she included her phone number) Love, Madalyn" She also included a picture of Matt and I that she had drawn on the inside of the card.

Then Matt told me to read the index card that was included inside Madalyn's thank you card. She basically explained that Madalyn had never received a check before and thought that we were sending her a bill for $20. Chris (Matt's sister) said that after she stopped laughing she had explained to Madalyn what a check was, but apparently she is still doubtful that Madalyn will accept that she is telling the truth until Matt or I calls to tell her that we are billing her for $20 and are instead giving her a gift.

I told Matt that his sister needs to write a book including all the stories of her kids.