June is over! I can hardly believe it. Summer is a third of the way gone and boy is it flying fast. I’ve completed 23.5% of my summer to-do list (although, if you take into consideration I realistically only thought I’d get half my list completed, I’m 47% done).
This week started with an impromptu romp around Gilbert. Gilbert is a tiny town in the middle of Iowa. I went to primary school there and have since become a resident. After my mother and I did some basement work on Monday I decided to walk around the town. It was half-past nine so nothing too terribly interesting was happening while I ‘explored’. I did have fun doing a lap around the track. Yup, I actually put ‘fun’, ‘track’ and ‘lap’ in the same sentence. Granted, I did the lap barefoot. Sure running barefoot may not be brilliant, but running in Toms would not have been a good idea either. Also, it’s just so squishy. Any who, my favorite part of the walk was when I was a block away from my house and I realized this random pine tree had lit Christmas lights on it. I don’t know who did it, because it is right by the co-op, but I like them.
Perhaps the decorator was just getting ready for ‘Christmas in June’ a couple days early? I argue this only because I drove past a couple days ago and the tree wasn’t lit. I didn’t necessarily see any lights on it either, but it was dark. We celebrated at my office by listening to Christmas music all day. Although we all agree that it’s too bad we can’t listen to Christmas music more often, after the eight hour binge, we decided we are all set for awhile.
Between scheduling and rain outs I hadn’t made it to any of our sand volleyball games. That all changed last Thursday. The lemons, again united, had a blast losing all three games. That isn’t sass. We did have fun. It’s hard not to have fun at sand volleyball. It is innately so much more chill than regular volleyball. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season! We had one more player that wasn’t there but this Thursday, I think, we’ll all be truly united again. Unless I’m forgetting something, which is likely.
A fun part about being office DJ is that my coworkers get to enjoy my musical whims as well. For instance, this summer we have replaced ‘Free Choice Friday’ (where I would ask a coworker what they want to listen to and inevitably they say “oh I don’t care”) with Foreign Friday. Yup. We’ve gone international. Last week we listened to the spotify mix Entro to Hungarian Pop which introduced us to a whole slew of new artists. Certainly more than the three we had started the summer with. Our mix of Sigur Ros (Icelandic Rock), Julieta Venegas (American-born Mexican singer) and Toe (Japanese group) has grown considerably. You can never have too much music, right?
The thing about summer is, no matter how much you have during the week, weekends are also packed. This weekend was no exception. Enjoyably we went up to my sister’s in Minnesota to celebrate my nephew’s third (three and a half actually) birthday. Although getting there was tricky with roads closed for flooding, once we got there it was perfect. Breezy so the humidity wasn’t terrible, and the rain stayed away until after the party. It came down by the boat load as we drove home, but at least we weren’t washed away while eating cake. Then, before I knew it, Sunday passed in a wink. With the storms in Central Iowa taking most of yesterday’s attention, we are already to Tuesday (and subsequently July). With July brings a new endevor. Now that I’ve been able to keep up my daily sketching, we’ll see if I can add writing to the mix. However, since I don’t have many interesting things to say, it will come in the form of responding to creative writing prompts. I decided to create a separate blog for that (qfreewriting.wordpress.com). That’s it really. Let the summer march on!
Until next time
~Q
Summer Series: Intro | Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four
Summer 2014
Nap in a Hammock- Have a Bonfire
Play Sand Volleyball- Visit an Iowa Winery
- Go to the Zoo
- Eat Sushi
- Go Stargazing
Christmas in June- Rainy Day Picnic
Make a Summer Soundtrack- Visit a Bed & Breakfast
- Ride a Carousel
- Go Camping
- Watch a Baseball Game
- Harry Potter Non-Stop Movie Marathon
- Radio Silence (no music, tv, computer or phone for 24 hours)
- Watch a Movie Outside
- Go Roller Blading
- Go to a Concert
- Go Wading
- Go Bowling
- Make Caramel Apples
- Meal Over a Fire
- Launch a Firecracker
Urban ExplorationHave a BBQ- Make a Quilt
Blow Bubbles on the Porch- Play Bocce Ball
- Go People Watching
- Fill the Tank & Drive
- Make Wind Chimes
- Draw a Landscape
- Go Berry Picking
- Take a Weekend Trip Alone
Paint a CanvasDo Yoga- Make a Meal using only Farmer’s Market Food
- Spend the Afternoon on a Riverbank
- Watch a Sunrise
- Attend a Street Market
Listen to Rock Music (from a different country)- Picnic in the Park
- Start a Wish Tree
- See a Drive-In Movie
Make Sangria- Go for a Hike
- Go to a Fair
- Make a Banana Split
Sketch Everyday- Give to Others (donate old clothes to charity)
Nothing says Christmas like carnage right? That’s what I found when I went to War Horse. That play is phenomenal. Who ever developed that deserves a gold star. I was shocked at how they were able to portray even a slight degree of the genuine terribleness (bad word, sorry) of war. *Spoiler* There was this scene where the horses were going into battle. There were the two main horses at the front of the stage and then a handful of others lined up next/behind them (they were standing parallel to the front of the stage charging the other side). As they are charging machine fire starts and bombs start to fly. All of a sudden you see the torso of a man fly off one of the horses. Very blunt, it put things in sharp focus and it was only a puppet. Only during intermission was my mind able to process that the back horses had never had actors on them, but it was too late. The die had been cast and the impression made. Spoiler over. Anyway, I really enjoyed the play although I don’t know if I could go through that emotional rollar coster again. It was quite tasking in that way, I cried twice, so exhausting.
Afterwards, once we returned home my sister and I set about decorating the Christmas tree. This was the first year we got a blue spruce (usually go with a fir of some sort) and it was fun getting something new. Although we did have to wear gloves to decorate it, the needles were pretty spiky, but the end result was quite lovely and new.
It was a fabulous day of cooking, although I should have read the instructions more clearly. Then I would have known I was making five dozen sugar cookies. Ah well, the more the merrier, right? I also made Ninja bread men and bark. Two kinds of bark, one would have done, but peppermint and M&M were made and enjoyed. Later that day, after the cookies had been rolled and cooled I popped in Little Women which is always bittersweet. I enjoy the movie so much, but it is so very sad, bits of it anyway. This viewing of it was just the same in that regards.
I finally met my goal of getting my cards out on Monday!! Yes, later than I expected, but done…and before Christmas to boot. So that was a good ‘Christmas’ task done. The picture is a bit rough, decided to use the digital file for showing the inside and the lighting in my apartment is special so that’s why they don’t quite match up – color wise.
Last year we tried to implement everyone wrapping with a different color, why I can’t recall. Since we all live apart that was pretty easy to do. I have been on a green kick (if the Christmas cards weren’t a clue) so I continued that onto the wrapping I did for my family. (Which worked out because only one other family member did green and she chose dark green.) I even decided to print out some special cards at work. I figured eventually my nephew will be in charge or handing out so I designed the tags to have both faces and names (since he wont really be able to read at first). Now if I can only remember where the files are next year…
I decided to get my gal pals gifts that could only be gotten (bad grammar I know, but not sure which other word to use, acquired?) in Story City. Oh what fun that was. I had already picked out little figurines for them but made them notepads at work to go with them as well. Finally finished the notepads and was able to wrap them too (it was a bit of a shoty job though, it’s hard to wrap hippos and pigs, and don’t get me started on eagles).
arty
Oh, I also realized that I had a TON of goodies. I guess I didn’t really keep count of just how many tupperwares I was filling while I’ve been baking over the last month. However that didn’t keep me out of the kitchen, oh no, I just didn’t make the Bon-bons and other miscellaneous things I was going to try. Instead I tried making home made bath crayons for my nephew. I HATE melting stuff in the microwave but it felt weird to put soap on the stove to melt so I tried it. I’m pretty sure these will crumble as soon as they hit the water but hopefully he can get one use out of them.
Q the Adult 