Category: General

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.
(Quote found at the end of an e-mail message tonight. It made me laugh. Had to share.)

Missouri Man Bakes Fireworks, Blows Up Kitchen: About 3 a.m. the homeowner decided to bake some lasagna and turned the oven on. “It blew the kitchen all apart,” said Duddy. ”The walls were all blown out, the oven flew right through one of the walls.”

Lasagna at 3 a.m. – sounds tasty.

Sites I have found to share: SnazzyKat and Little Things. Good reads.

While I was up in North Dakota I discovered that they are talking about renaming the state. Is that not insane? “They” (the elusive they) think that if they take the North out of the name then people would want to go there. Ummm, ok. It’s still 50 below 0 in the winter time, no matter what the state name is. It is an absolutely gorgeous and wonderful state though, with the lowest crime rate in the nation. I would move there. Seriously. Anyways, you can vote in the Name Our State Contest at the Fargo Forum. My personal favorite? “South Florida” – because if you are going to change it you may as well go all the way.

And for Naomi, here is a necklace that I should have bought for you for loaning me your camera. The Manfruit beads. I am laughing so hard over that one… (link thanks to Little Things)

Spent all of yesterday traveling – left Sykeston to go to Bismarck at 8 am; flew out of Bismarck to go to Minneapolis at 11:15 am, arrived at Minneapolis at 12:15 pm to leave again at 1:20 pm; landed in Houston at 4:05 pm. Then you have to get the luggage, go get the car from the long term lot, drive to the Honda dealership to pick up my car (Yeah! My car is all pretty again!) and eat dinner. Whew. I was exhausted by the time I got home last night. I will work on finishing my “vacation journal” over the next week or so – have pictures to crop and edit and so forth. If you want to take a sneak peek of the Vacation Pictures you can – but there are blurry ones in there, the files are huge, and no captions on anything. I uploaded them last night just to back them off of the poor sad laptop which I am afraid is on it’s last leg. When the journal is done the pictures will make sense. I think I will set up an “album” too so people can view just the pictures, but that will be later, after the journal is done.

All in all, I had a *wonderful* time and I am sooooo glad I went. I am very, very grateful to Naomi for letting me use her digital camera – I was able to take a lot of shots that I might not have otherwise taken. It really helped me keep costs down – I didn’t go through a ton of film like I normally do and now I don’t have to spend $100 to get all that film developed. THANK YOU NAOMI!!! And thanks too to Kymberlie for taking care of the cats, fish and plants. It was nice to be able to come home yesterday with the peace of mind that all was well there.

At my Uncle Terry’s house again – we came into Winona for lunch. I made sure I brought my stuff and took a nice hot shower here instead of taking one at the campgrounds this morning. Ahhhhhh… it felt so nice. Never appreciate those things as much as you do when you have had to shower at a bath house with cold water for a few days!

Here is a recap of what we have done so far:

Friday, June 29, 2001 – The trip to Bismarck, North Dakota: Left the house on Friday at 2pm to head to Houston Intercontinental airport. We had a 5pm flight out of Houston to Minneapolis, and then left Minneapolis at 10:15pm to fly into Bismarck, North Dakota. I forgot how big that airport is in Minneapolis – really nice. I went to the TGIFriday’s right by our gate and picked up some French Onion soup which I had been craving all week. It was yummy! Figured there wouldn’t be too many chances for that in ND! Arrived there around midnight, then we rented a car for the rest of our trip at the airport. Got the luggage and headed to the Bismarck Holiday Inn. After we checked in we went up to our suite to go to bed – pretty tired after such a long day. Unfolded the hide-a-bed couch that I was sleeping on with Jason, and when he climbed in he discovered that there were “crumbs” in it – ewww! So we had to call down to the front desk to get clean sheets brought up. Finally got to bed after 1:30am. I was beat!
Written on the plane on the Handspring: The pilot just announced that it is 92 degrees in Minnesota. I thought I was going North to enjoy cool weather! It took us awhile to leave the ground in Houston since the weather was bad. At least we were not delayed too long. It is real comforting when they tell you that we are waiting for a few “more” minutes due to the windshear. Oh yeah!

Saturday, June 30, 2001 – Visiting Bismarck and heading over to Sykeston: Got up and went down to the indoor pool at the hotel. Ordered breakfast from the restaurant to have room service deliver poolside. It took them 45 minutes to get it to us and then they still only brought half of it. My Aunt Rita and her twins, my cousins James & Jewel came over to the hotel to see us and the kids all went swimming. Left the pool around noon and checked out of the hotel. Afterwards we went to Rita’s apartment to visit with them awhile longer; my Dad & I went to K-Mart to pick up a cheap tent so that he could take Jason camping in Sykeston, North Dakota when we got there. At about 5pm we left Bismarck and got on the road for Sykeston – where my maternal Grandfather lives.

That’s all I have time for now. Everyone is waiting for me to hit the road and head back out to the campground. I’ll be back soon!