Weather Dodge Ball

A fun and eventful weekend...Friday after work started out with me breaking my phone (cracking the screen which pretty much makes it useless since it's a touch-screen). More on that later...but Friday evening I went to a final happy hour for my good friends Brian and Jossie who are moving back to Florida. We will miss them lots, and I look forward to visiting them sometime. We were able to sit outside at Whistle Binkies for awhile before the rain/storm hit, and then found tables inside to talk, laugh, reminisce, etc.

Saturday after a leisurely morning, we headed up to St. Paul for my cousin's wedding. A very fancy affair, at one of the University buildings on Summit Ave (next door to the Governor's Mansion, so you know it was pretty nice). Again, beat the rain and storm enough to have an outdoor ceremony (the reception was of course indoors). Much talking, laughing, and catching up with friends and family.

Sunday evening was my final Notochords jazz band gig for the "season" (we start back up again in the fall). Pine Island - again, the weather just looked like it was going to be ominous, but after some cloudiness during the day and 5 minutes of hard rain (which stopped me from finishing the lawn), it actually got pretty pleasant in the evening. We had a good crowd at the band shell, 100+ people they said, and a fun evening of big band music.

A few dates of note...the important one being today, marking 4 years that Erin and I have been together. Yes, 4 years...hard to believe. Somewhere in the next week or two are also the 2-year birthdays for our kittehs (we don't know the exact dates), as well as both Erin's and my birthdays the first half of July. AND, the first week of July will mark 13 years for me at IBM. Combine that with the 4th of July and another fun wedding event this weekend and there's a lot of fun going on :)

Bionic Kitties!

OK, this one is near and dear to me for so many reasons...

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-06/british-amputee-cat-first-get-bone-grafted-exoprosthetic-paws

I've seen so many cat and other pet accidents, disabilities, etc. and am always amazed at how resilient they are. The most recent story my friend Bill told me was about a cat with one leg missing that his friend adopted - the cat pretty much just dealt with it and made it work and after being around it awhile you hardly even noticed.

I'd certainly take a pet with a disability in a heartbeat. But it's cool that they can do things like this now (hopefully some of this pioneering is going on in the "people" medical field as well!)

Star Trek meets Ke$ha

I have to be a little proud when my wonderful (and non-geeky) boyfriend finds things that combine our interests:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/21/star-trek-gets-much-neede_n_619791.html?ref=fb&src=sp

(in fairness, he DOES like Star Trek but probably not as much as I do)

Landscaping

A great start to what will likely be a long, multi-year project...


From top to bottom, there is some variety of lilac (with rosemary cover), lamb's ear, parsley, wine & roses, lamb's ear, and some kind of azelia (with rosemary cover).

The weather wasn't the most cooperative yesterday, but it didn't pour so I guess that's a good thing (it cleared up about an hour after we finished of course :)

Massive Birthdays

My niece is rapidly becoming famous for her over-the-top birthday parties - both activities and number of guests. Here is a picture of one of the primary attractions of this year's:


and the present I got her (if you don't get it, you need to watch the "Big Bang Theory" TV show):


A fun day!

Holy Close Calls

OK, I guess I need to pay more attention to the local news occasionally. Thursday night Southern MN was hit with some very strong storms and weather. It was very windy and hard rain that I could see. I was keeping up watching the local TV station, and as the sirens went off, they were insisting that there were no tornadoes in Rochester and they assumed it was because of the high winds (70mph). Wrong I guess:

Graphic of the Tornado's Path
(and original article: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/arx/?n=jun1710)

Now...if you look at the picture, and you know where I live, I was less than half a mile away. The article said it was an EF1 on the scale, the "weakest" of tornadoes (if you can use the word "weak" and "tornado" in the same sentence). Still...kinda scary now that I know. I saw where it must have gone across 50th ave when I was driving to work the next morning, and obviously with the damage it did to the Menard's building and all the town houses in Lincolnshire, it must have been strong enough.

I guess I'll be thankful I didn't see it, and that we had no damage.

Bazinga

I saw my 5-year-old niece this weekend, and one of the first things she told me was "Bazinga" - Sheldon Cooper's word from the Big Bang Theory. I couldn't have been more proud of her :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSqestqf63k
(CBS, HD)

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skQGve3XksU
(more bazinga but lower quality)