Robb + Jessie Married & in the Badger State
So long! And thanks for all the fish!
A favourite teacher of mine, Mr Doug Kimball, is retiring this year from his post at Redmond High School. Many students will remember him as “Big Kitty”, as a soccer coach, and as teacher of English, yearbook, and newspaper. A fine teacher with a big heart. I spent many days in the newspaper room fixing layouts and encouraging my staffers to write more than one word “news” documents. Not to mention putting up with Cathy’s and my desire to learn how to use the darkroom (now non-existent in the new RHS). Good memories!
Thanks Big Kitty.
Sink Satisfaction
(No, this is not my sink, but I wish it was!)
I know this sounds very house-wife-ish, but I have come to stand by this way of thinking in the kitchen:
A sparkling sink becomes your kitchen’s benchmark for hygiene and tidiness, inspiring you to load the dishwasher immediately and keep counters, refrigerator doors, and the stove top spick-and-span, too.
I suppose my desire to have a clean sink comes from the house I was raised in. Everything feels in order when the dishes are done and put away. I don’t mind making a mess in the kitchen. In fact, that is how I cook (especially, how I bake). But until the sink is clean, I am not satisfied.
I feel extremely messy, dirty, and disorganized when dishes (and food) are left in the sink. I take pride in my clean kitchen, so it becomes difficult when other people don’t see eye to eye with me on this issue. I think they just don’t understand how my brain works.
I didn’t really know that anyone else felt like this until I was reading How to Speed-Clean Your Kitchen on RealSimple.com. The article referred to the author of Sink Reflections and creator of the housekeeping website, FlyLady.net: “‘Keep it empty and shining,’ says Marla Cilley.” Why? Because it is a simple task, easy to accomplish and maintain. If you always have a starting point or a constant, everything else will fall into place. Plus, it keeps bacteria from forming layers of biofilm (yuck!).
While you may not find it necessary to always have an empty and clean sink, it is for me. And I can almost guarantee you will find my sink in order. Otherwise I will be slightly (to majorly) distracted until it is.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Welcome home!
Ah. It is great to be home.
I posted photos on Flickr from our trip and the wedding
Rachael and Jonathan’s beautiful wedding cake:
Celebrating my 24th birthday in rainy Duluth:
And now for the Stankey Road Trip Recap …
- I felt like my mom, in a good way, when we left. Packing a tasty lunch and bringing a roll of paper towels and extra water bottles. All of which were needed.
- We listened to half of John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise. At one point, I was laughing so hard (while drinking water) and I ended up spitting it out…quite a wet pants situation. (This is where the paper towels came in handy.)
- We watched the gas prices increase from $3.80 to $4.05 as we drove north and spent $175 in gas over 900 miles.
- We were adopted into the Cushing family as Rachael’s long lost Cottey College sister and were invited to the yummy rehearsal dinner.
- We took advantage of our hotel (Polynesian Water Park theme) and acted like kids, sliding down the huge water slides and screaming during each turn.
- We took around 300 photographs during our trip, only the good ones made it onto Flickr.
- We, once again, were adopted into the Cushing family as they invited us over after the wedding for pizza and beer with the whole family.
- We helped set up and tear down for the wedding. We liked this much better than actually being in the wedding.
- We celebrated my 24th birthday in Duluth and then driving home to Madison.
- We bought some tasty dark roasted coffee beans from the Whole Foods Co-Op, as recommended by Jonathan and Rachael.
- Robb majorly stubbed his big toe when we were packing up the car to go home. Tore off about a million layers of skin. Emergency trip to the grocery store where I stocked up on Band-Aids, ibuprofen, and cookies.
- Enjoyed 9 hours of thunder and lightening and rain storms (apparently most of Wisconsin was on Tornado Watch when we were driving home).
- We found a quaint indoor mall near the water in Duluth and spent a while walking around, enjoying being warm and dry.
- Treated ourselves to some coffee after being severly under-caffeinated (Jessie, mainly).
- Robb provided breakfast in bed at the hotel (via the contential breakfast in the hotel) consisting of cereal, homemade waffles and hot chocolate. Yum! And we watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend and decided it was better than the reviews claimed.
- And we went to Robb’s favourite for lunch: Famous Daves. Not half bad. And my birthday cake was a big serving of Bread Pudding.
I hope you have enjoyed our little recap. Quite an eventful road trip, especially for our first one.
Hello from Duluth!
We made it to Duluth, Minnesota for the wedding of my good friends Rachael and Jonathan.
