Wrap Up

In an attempt to be better about keeping this thing current, here I am with another post! I just wish I had something exciting to report. But if you don't know me by now, you'll soon realize that not much is happening in my little world lately. Which is honestly a good thing....

A couple of things from this past week, though. Steve and I attended a pretty cool forum on Wednesday night in downtown GR to put our two cents into the city's new master plan. We were part of a group that discussed how to implement bike lanes into the existing city streets and how to connect different areas of the city by bypassing major traffic routes. Pretty cool stuff. There will be two more public forums in the future and I urge all of my GR peeps to consider attending. Oh - and you may become local celebrities like us :)

Work has been crazy lately. We're currently getting ready to move from our little 3,000 sq. foot warehouse into one that's nearly 16,000 sq. feet. And we're trying to work through it. It will definitely be stressful but I added to that stress yesterday by driving our forklift halfway through the overhead door in the back of the warehouse. The door wasn't pushed up high enough to clear the forklift so as I was backing out to move a pallet, I didn't realize this until I heard the CRACK of the door being ripped out of its frame. Luckily my coworkers came to my rescue with a few hammers and prybars (and lots of four letter words) and got the door back into "shape" within a half hour. I'm so glad I have such a cool boss.

See? Nothing exciting. Although I want to pass along my cousin Brian's blog - he and his wife Shibani are in Nepal to celebrate their one year wedding anniversary and make their marriage official according to Nepalese traditions. They are staying with Shibani's family and have had quite an adventure so far. We went to their wedding last year where they had both American and Hindu wedding ceremonies - it was a gorgeous day.

And finally - Steve and I took a trip out to the lake last Sunday to unwind and watch the sunset. We got kind of bored waiting for the sun to set....

But then it finally did.....So that's that. Hope to have more entertaining news in the near future :)

Damn Can Koozie.....

Geez - over a month has gone by already. Obviously I never posted my NYC trip report, although I think I've probably seen all three of my blog readers since then so they've heard the story already. It was a great trip, though - I really hope to visit again and do some exploring off the beaten path in the city.

Time is still flying by but luckily there's nothing too crazy to report. School is going well - I'm really enjoying my class this semester and have learned some really cool stuff. Most recently I've learned how to hook someone up to an electrocardiograph (ECG) machine and how to interpret the waveforms of the heartbeat. Pretty neat. We were able to practice with a machine in lab and I'm happy to say that my heart appears perfectly normal - although my heart rate was 51 and it set the machine's "low heart rate" alarm off. I was pretty proud of that.

Although my heart is normal, something in my head is not. (I know.... shocker....) Seriously, though, I've been experiencing progressively worse and unexplained dizziness since April and am finally getting some tests done to figure out why. At first I thought I had a sinus infection but I had no other symptoms and my blood results didn't show anything abnormal (i.e. infection). The doctor cleaned out my ears and I thought maybe my problems would go away. They didn't and have actually gotten worse - I now have dizzy spells every day that last for hours. There is no rhyme or reason to them - there is no pattern to when they occur and they don't improve if I sit down or eat. It's crazy and it's been getting me down but I'm hoping to have some answers soon. I go in for vestibular testing in July.

The good thing is that I can still ride my bike, though, and have been trying to get out as much as I can. Steve and I worked at the Lumberjack 100 race last weekend and I am was utterly impressed and inspired by the racers. Part of me almost wants to make it a goal to train and try to race next year.... we'll see about that, I suppose. Steve and I took a quick trip up to the North Country Trail this week and rode from the M20 trailhead in White Cloud. It was just a nice day to be out and tooling around on a bike. Our bikes seem to have enjoyed themselves, too. Maybe we'll get a few new little bikes out of this excursion......

The day after the Lumberjack we went to my dad's to visit for Father's Day and this is what we found in his driveway:

The trailer is full of the water-logged contents of their basement. Due to the torrential rains that hit the Cadillac area (12 inches in 12 hours), my dad's basement flooded and we arrived just in time to help tear out wet carpet and move out wet furniture. It's awful enough to have 3 inches of water in your basement - I can't imagine what the people in the Midwest are going through. The lake levels in Cadillac rose so high that my dad's pontoon boat was lifted up and off its hoist and floated all the way to the other side of the lake. Many people lost their boats and their docks because the lake rose so quickly. Everything is good now, though. The boat is safe (and undamaged) and the basement has dried out and has stayed that way. Here in GR, we haven't had any basement issues of our own and that makes me happy.

And finally, two more pictures. I've been indulging my nesting instinct and have taken on a few domestic projects lately. One has to be kept secret for a little while longer and the other was just completed last week. It's my first attempt at upholstery and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I found this chair for $3 at the Salvation Army and probably spent about $30 on supplies for it. Not bad for a first try - although the problem now is that the cat has taken up permanent residence on this chair in the living room and has added a nice layer of cat fur to my upholstery fabric.

Anyway - I always promise to be better about keeping up-to-date when I end my posts but it never seems to happen. So no more promises - besides shouldn't you be working instead of reading blogs on the internet??

Happy summer!