So This Is A Week At Home....

So I haven't very often been able to share a week at home with you, so I thought I give you a little glimpse of what keeps me busy from my plane landing at home through the end of a full work week in the office.

We start with last Thursday night when I left the Columbus airport headed for home. I just had to begin with a picture that made me laugh -- apparently the Columbus airport is so expansive that the police need to saddle up on top of the line mountain bikes to make it from Gate A to Gate F in a timely fashion. We wouldn't want to actually wear off any of those good old midwest, OH love-handles... you have to eat a lot of doughnuts to get those finely tuned!

While I had been away in Pittsburgh the week before, I finalized the death of my one filling. About 2 months ago, I began to feel this crack in my filling and I became a little concerned. Around that time, I had gone out to lunch with some friends from church. John is a dentist at the naval hospital in Great Lakes. He's completed like 20 years and is getting ready to retire so he's branching out and starting to work at a dental practice and he has two days he works now, every other week. His wife, Mistele, was just giving out his business cards to everyone saying "if you need a dentist" and for some reason, I felt a sense of doom. Things usually happen for a reason, you know. And to be honest, I haven't been to a dentist in YEARS! Actually, the last time was when I lived up in Hartland, WI (for those of you who might know about how long ago that was :)). I had been trying to be really careful with my filling, but the week before, while I was flossing, sure enough, the floss caught my filling and -- POP -- out it came. So, I called John's office the next day and found that I had to wait until the following Friday to get in. Which meant that I went from Monday evening, though that Friday, and finally got in the next Friday. I was actually getting used to not having it and was beginning to think that maybe I could just call and cancel because I really didn't have time to go. But, I decided I need to face my time constraint fears and just go. It would have to happen sooner or later.

Needless to say, within an hour I was in and out with a brand new filling and another appointment for a cleaning in another few weeks. I think the thing that I liked best was that I had to repeat how I actually lost my filling --- flossing.... :)

I left the dentists' office around 10 and headed to the office where I ran around completeing all these stupid reports that were needed ASAP but were given to me the day before. I then did a webinar conference call with a group of our sales reps in FL and LA and did a 30 minute training spot on enzymatic detergents which was then followed by some uncomfortable banter between my boss and his boss and denial of knowledge of a project that I had been given permission to work on -- and needless to say, a lot of other -- well, you know what. It was a really really long Friday.

So - I had already scheduled to hook up with my friend Kim. We had a pedicure and then headed to this great Thai restaurant near us called Green Basil (YUM!) and because it was such a crappy Friday for both of us, we decided that the Pina Colada and the Mai Tai sure looked like they were needed. And then our Pad Thai and Mango and Sticky Rice came - and Friday ended with a big smile and sigh....

Saturday was spent - I can't even remember how, except for the evening which was spent with a group of friends who came over to hear about the ministry of my friend, Jodi, who is with Campus Crusade in Hungary. She'd actually been with me since that Monday, but had gone downtown to stay with a friend there on Wednesday and came back Saturday morning (oh - which I remember Saturday was spent picking nephew up from airport and going to niece's high school graduation). So, around 6 we had about 5 people over and Jodi made some Hungarian food and we ate and she shared what was happening with her ministry in Budapest.

Sunday, it was my first time back to church in like a month because I've been out of town on business every weekend before. It was good to get back to my little monkeys in the 2s and 3s Sunday School class. They were actually all really happy to see me and it felt good to sing "Zaccheus" and "Jesus Loves Me" and all those other fun songs with them. Jodi and I then had some other friends over for lunch on Sunday afternoon and repeated the dinner that we had on Saturday night.

It was way too hot starting Monday, I did office and then had to just go and work out inside and when it finally got cooler, I grabbed my little Cal Cal and we took a stroll around the forest preserve down the road from us. It was still quite warm and Cal was really hot near the end so he was going slow. We ended up getting picked up by the Forest Preserve Police and had to ride in the back of his car back to the parking lot because it was "past sunset" -- it was one of those cop cars where you couldn't open the door from the inside. I'm so proud - the first time I rode in a cop car -- and it was a Forest Police :)

Monday evening, after work, Jodi and I went over to another friend's house and they hosted a "share" evening again for Jodi's ministry. There were actually about 12 people there and some youth group kids. It was kind of neat. I was really sad that I had to drop Jodi off at the airport the next evening :( Our time together was way too short!

On Wednesday, office again, and then I ran over to a church in the area to pick up a bunch of donated shampoo and conditioner from Avon for a group that I'm working with for the third year called International Workers Outreach. We're basically a group from a bunch of churches who try to welcome all the international students who come for the summer to work at Six Flags. This year, there are students from Ecuador, Jamaica, China and Azerbaijan. We have these Welcome Bags that we put together and give out to them before our Welcome Party. They're filled with a variety of essentials, including shampoo and conditioner. It was awesome getting all this product as we have to assemble about 125 welcome bags.

From Wednesday on, the weather was a lot cooler and kind of misty. It was actually nice weather to do the dog park, so we went over a few nights. Out last night there, Friday, they had posted these signs saying that the park was going to be closed for about a week as they were paving the parking lot. As you can tell, the dogs were not quite happy with this notice and decided to express their extreme displeasure....

And now we're back to Saturday. I had the WHOLE DAY HOME! That hasn't happened in months! I had bought some cucumbers and tomatos and a bunch of herbs that week and had to get them in the ground. The garden was pretty nasty and the roto-tiller was just given to a new home so I had to pick axe it all by hand... My back kills :) Calvin enjoyed checking out my work and then grazing on some chives and mint...

I decided to keep the tomatos in pots this year as they didn't do too well in the ground last year and were really hard to keep up on with such limited time so I figured if they were in a pot, I'd have less I had to worry about. I also got this huge rosemary bush that I put in a pot -- it smells so good on the back porch now and I know its someplace that actually gets quite a bit of sun.
At some point, I need to get to the front garden as well. I'm so exhausted even looking at that one... Dad's roses are doing quite nicely if they could just breath from among the weeds, which I must say I just chopped down last fall when I winterized the roses.
And now I'm over at my sis' house watching White Collar. I hadn't really eaten today and I had bought hot french bread, tomatos and fresh basil last night so I made a little caprese on toasted french bread brushed in olive oil. So yummy....
And tomorrow is Sunday - with Sunday School and then doing some more shopping for the International Workers Outreach Welcome Picnic -- found all the party stuff at the Dollar Store. Jodi just introduced me to that place and I am quite intrigued with it....

By tomorrow night at this time - it will be the death of another weekend :(