July in MN/IA

I'm sorry for lack of posts.  I'm having a hard time keeping up. Since I last wrote I've kept myself busy.  My 4th of July was very low key, borderline sad.  I had to work that night at 11p, but tried to at least go to my pool and was disappointed to see that is was completely filled with college kids slamming beers and being obnoxious.  I'm pretty sure 3 of the 50+ people at the pool actually lived there.  I lasted about 20 minutes sitting in an upright chair because all the lounge chairs were taken before I got too annoyed.  I spent the rest of the day watching Moneyball and relaxing.

That following Saturday I went to the Basilica Block Party.  They have three stages around the Basilica, which is gorgeous.  We saw The Lumineers, Fitz and the Tantrums, and O.A.R. It was super fun!  Made me realize how much I miss seeing live music!  I can't remember the last big concert I attended.

O.A.R.

Sunday night I went to dinner and a movie with my new friend Lauren.  We saw Magic Mike.  I'm not even ashamed.  I was there to see some dancing abs, not a plot.  I got what a wanted.  :)

Tuesday I met up with two friends from high school who live in the area and their significant others.  We spent the evening on a boat on Lake Minnetonka.  It was so great to catch up with them and sooo nice to be on the water!! 

Sunset on Lake Minnetonka

Friday I headed to Iowa to my mom's for a family reunion (step family side) for the weekend.  I also stopped at the DMV to get a license and register my car.  Yep, you read that right.  The population of a small town in Iowa just got a bit bigger.  I was really sad to give up my DC license.  She practically had to pry it out of my hand.  You might be wondering why in the world I got a license in IA instead of MN... well, I don't have a permanent address here in MN and I certainly don't want to have to change it every 3 months until I settle somewhere.  It's much easier and less risky to have everything sent to my mom's house than have things accidentally get sent to an old address and missed.

The family reunion was a lot of fun... a little overwhelming at times with about 40 people in the house all of which were new to me except my immediate family, but fun none the less!  It consisted of lots of food, booze, crafts for the kids, kickball, slip-n-slide, and a fireworks show.  The slip-n-slide got to be quite to competition amongst the adults.  It was a great weekend and made me so thankful that it's so easy for me to be around for events like that now.  One of my brothers and I stayed a day extra and made a trip to Greene, IA where my grandparents built their dream home when we were young.  It was an acreage complete with barn, windmill, and for some time horses.  My grandma had an apple orchard, grapevines, and a HUGE garden.  We spent countless hours as kids driving the riding lawn mower around, climbing the windmill, snooping around the barn, playing with the animals (dog, cat, horses), or just playing in the dirt.  Easter egg hunts outside, making chocolate chip cookies with Grandma, bingo nights (complete with prizes), and fireworks shows were just some of my favorite childhood memories at that house.  My grandpa bought us two go-carts and made a large track out in one of the fields for us to race around.  We would also drive up and down the gravel roads with them for hours on end.  The town was so small our visits as kids would make it into the newspaper.  It was also here that my grandpa would let me sit on his lap and drive his car.  I guess you could say I learned to drive several different things here before I could drive!  Grandpa also had a tractor he would carry us around in the front loader.  Needless to say driving past the acreage brought back a lot of great memories.  We were driving by slowly and taking pictures, then noticed the current owner in the window taking pictures of us, lol.  So we pulled in and knocked on the door to explain our history.  The guy thought it was weird, but was relieved to know we weren't crazy, but he unfortunately did not invite us in for a tour.  Dang!

Adults and kids love the slip-n-slide!!

Grandpa's Acreage

Wednesday, Lauren and I took part in the Aquatennial's Torchlight 5k.  I haven't been running much since I've been here, so my pace wasn't the best, but it was great to get out and run!  Thankfully the weather had cooled down a little for the 7:30pm race.  It was followed up by a parade, although we only managed to see the last couple floats.

Thursday Lauren and I continued our participation in the Minneapolis Aquatennial by going to see the Twin Cities River Rats perform.  It's a waterski show with acrobats on the Mississippi River.  It's a free show and they do it every Thursday.  The MC and skit stuff was a little corny, but the stunts were cool!

Now it's off to work night 5/7 which will bring me right toThursday morning when I will fly out to DC for a long weekend.  I can't wait!!!!!!

It's Been A Month!

I've been here just short of a month.  It's crazy for me to think that my guaranteed time here is 1/3 over. It's starting to put more pressure on me to get myself out in the city and meet new people.  I feel like for being here a month I haven't made a whole lot of progress in exploring.  I have, however become quite familiar with several highways/interstates and car dealerships.  After weeks of research and searching I finally bought a new (to me) car.  I love it, and more importantly I am so relieved to be done searching. I am NOT a fan of car shopping!  I absolutely loath the "typical" car salesman... probably because I don't appreciate condescending people.  Anyway, I bought a 2010 Mazda CX7.  The sales guy was showing me another car and I saw it across the lot and said "I want to drive that one!" It was sorta fate.  I'm pretty happy.

You may remember that my first day off orientation at work was a little crazy, well that really hasn't changed.  I've developed a black cloud.  I've never really had one before!  It's exhausting!  Every day I work is busy.  I have yet to have a normal patient (mentally), with a normal pregnancy, with a normal labor, and a normal delivery.  Weird things happen on the unit when I'm there.  I've heard more than once "that never happens".  It's a joke (reality) that it's me.  I keep telling them things will go back to normal and calm come September when my contract is up.  Although, for some reason the staff seems to want me to stay.  We were talking about the craziness the other day and one of the nurses said "Yeah, but the nice thing is, is that you can handle it." and another nurse in reference to me wanting 12 hour shifts if I were to take a permanent job said she told our manager to "Give her whatever she wants."  The job has been a little exhausting between the 8hr shifts and being constantly busy, but it sure helps when I feel like the nurses respect me and like me enough to want me to stay.  I say that not because I worry about people liking me, (I think I'm pretty easy to get along with) but as a traveler and learning a new unit you inevitably feel like you need to prove yourself.

This past week I met two new people.  Both are friends of friends.  I met each girl for dinner in Uptown.  I really liked both of them and hope that we will be able to hang out again.  I am dying for a social life.  It was also so nice to get out and explore.  Both restaurants were fun and I love Uptown.  Super cute and reminds me of places I would go in DC.

I've also started two weeks of going "gluten free".  I'm on day 4 and it's going pretty well!  It takes a lot of planning ahead and is quite expensive, but I'm surviving!  I went grocery shopping the other day and it took forever because I kept having to google whether something was gluten free or not.  I probably looked like a smart phone addicted crazy person.  There are several things that are clearly marked, but many things that are not.  I'm giving it two weeks to see if it makes a difference in how I feel.  I've been told that 2 weeks is enough time to notice a difference.  We'll see!

Today I went and walked around Lake Harriet.  It was pretty humid and hot, but it was nice to get out.  The lake has great paved paths for bikers and runner/walkers, separated which is nice so no one gets in each others way.  I would have loved to run it, but I didn't think I was in good enough shape to run in the heat.  After a lap around the lake I found a shady place to read until the free outdoor concert at the lake started.  They have free music or movies every night during the summer, which is AWE-SOME! Basically means even if I never make any friends there's always something easy/free to entertain me.  It was slightly annoying at the concert as I had found a nice spot clearly by myself and this woman with her two children comes up (with plenty of space around) puts her blanket down like two inches from me and then proceeds to summon her friends and their children to put their blankets down all around me.  Now let me preface this by saying, I love kids and I like people, but these people were not friendly.  The couple in front of me barely watched their kids, although I do have to say they were well behaved, but it was just weird.  I didn't appreciate the invasion.  It was fun though, to take in some Minneapolis culture and get some good people watching in.

I anything planned for this week except on Tuesday I get to see my friend Katherine from DC.  She's originally from Minneapolis and is in town visiting family.  She's actually the one that put it in my head to move here.  I'm so excited to see her!!  Other than that, I've got several days of work.  Hopefully the Labor Gods will be kind and take my black cloud away.  Please?!