Apr. 25 - Iowa trip/Saturday - pt.2

After some detours and a confused Garmin Robot Lady Voice we eventually made it to the Quad City Botanical Center.  One of the first things we noticed was that there were several little girls dressed in very colorful dresses, wearing fairy wings and carrying sparkly wands.  Turns out we'd come on Pixie Tea Party day!  It was very cute but it just made our whole adventurous day that much funnier.  Still, we paid our entrance fee and stepped carefully around over excited little pixies and made our way thru the gardens.

Some weird thing hanging by a cable from the ceiling.

Don't remember the plant but the pic is awesome.

Bananas!

 Weird curvy tree.

We wandered around the outside gardens too but there wasn't much in bloom yet, so there was nothing overly picture worthy.  After killing some time outside we decided to move on.  But where to go?  It was still too early to head over to the baseball stadium but too late in the day to go home and relax for a while.  My sister suggested we go to the RME building...place...thing.  I didn't really understand what this place was, and I still don't, but it's a music place.  Do they record there?  Have classes?  Just jam and practice?  I don't know.  I'll let you click this LINK if you want to learn more.  The website states:  'The RME is a nonprofit helping build the Quad-City music scene through diverse live music and unique educational programming.'

 When we got there a group of teenage boys was performing on the small stage set up right in the front windows.  They were pretty good.  I have no clue who they were.  I joked to my sister, 'Were they the Jonas Brothers?!'  Hehe...no.

We went upstairs to find a small music museum that my sister had heard about.  One display caught my eye right away...

Jimi Hendrix display.

We actually wasted a huge chunk of time here and most of it was spent doing absolutely nothing.  The museum takes maybe 5-10 minutes to browse, the rest of the time we were just sort of lollygagging around, using the bathrooms, reading articles on the wall, revisiting the few exhibits over and over again.  Finally we decided to head over to the baseball game.

The local team, Quad Cities River Bandits, were playing the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers that night.  We'd seen these teams play each last summer here in Wisconsin.  It would be fun to see this rematch on foreign turf.  I had my T-Rats shirt on and hubby had our T-Rats hat on.  We were two of what seemed like only.....two T-Rats fans in the whole place.  LOL

Cool bridge right next to the stadium.

We lost.  They cheated.

It was a good came.  We made a small comeback in the end but it wasn't enough.  And it had gotten pretty darn cold as the evening went on!  We were glad to get into the warmth of the car and head back home.  One more stop to be had though....a place called Whitey's.  I think my sister said recently that Whitey's has replaced Wisconsin's own Cedar Crest as her favorite ice cream.  The place was quite busy when we got there.  (Is it always that way?)  We were momentarily excited to see an ice cream called Vikings Pride or something like that, but then found out it was peanut flavored and passed on it.  We got our yummies and slobbered them down on the drive home.

And FINALLY we were back at my sister's house, after a very long and busy day.  Our plan at this point was to try and stay up long enough to see the Doctor Who season premiere at 11pm.  I was so tired and not interested in watching so by 10:30pm I dragged myself up to bed.  I thought (hoped) I could get to sleep and have some time to stretch out in that tiny bed before hubby joined me but no, they all gave up the fight and headed for bed by about 10:40pm.  I was so soooo tired that night that I couldn't get comfortable and couldn't fall asleep.  Hubby didn't seem to have a problem.  When I heard his deep peaceful breathing after only a few moments I wanted to kick him.

The night dragged on and on and on.  And on.  There was no radio, which would have greatly helped me because I leave a radio on at night in our bedroom.  I couldn't even really toss and turn because space in That Tiny Bed was so, well, non-existent.  Whenever I did feel myself just drifting off, you know that moment of total heavenly peace before you're really out.....I would jerk awake for whatever reason.  And still, hubby slept on and on.

I don't know when I finally fell asleep for any real amount of time but I woke up again at 4am to the sound of hubby's really annoying snoring.  It's not a normal snore.  I could probably tune that out.  His snoring is often a gurgling, choking kind of noise.  Sometimes I can nudge him enough that he rolls over and the horror sounds are gone.  Sometimes he's oblivious.  Like this night.  So now I was over-tired, sore, cramped....and bitchy.  I tried tuning him out.  I tried kicking the bed, jiggling the bed enough that he'd hopefully move.  I fell into a pattern of sleeping for a few minutes and jerking awake again.  And by 5am or so I was fuming so I actually started kicking him.  The pattern was then fume, doze off, jerk awake, kick hubby's leg, fume some more.

Around 6am I apparently gave him a good enough WHACK that he woke up and was up for the day.  He got up and I considered using this quietness and open bed to grab and hour or so of sleep.  But on the other hand, we'd mentioned to my sister that we'd probably head for home early Sunday, so if I got up too we'd be able to head out.

We quietly gathered our things and were ready to leave.  But wait.  Should we just leave or wait for them to get up?  Hubby went outside to have a cigarette while I sipped my morning Dew and pondered the situation.  Luckily my sister got up not long after us and came downstairs asking if we were leaving.  A bit of morning chitchat and yep, we were on our way by just before 7am.

It was a busy and fun weekend, and we were glad we'd made the trip down to see them.  Oh, one thing I don't think I mentioned was that the trees and flowers and everything were already blooming when we were there.  The trees had leaves already...small, but definitely more than buds.  Heck, the lilac bush in their backyard was in nearly full bloom!  Back here in Wisconsin our trees were just starting to show bits of green.  Not many spring flowers were blooming yet.  And certainly no lilacs yet!  So when we got back home that morning we were looking all around to be sure we hadn't imagined it.  lol

One last pic....

About to cross the Mississippi back into Wisconsin.

Apr. 24 - Iowa trip/Saturday....pt. 1

The previous post covered our drive to Iowa, the hockey game, the tiny bed.....

So, Saturday morning we were up around 8-8:30am.  For me, that is major sleeping in!  My brother-in-law made breakfast and clogged our arteries with lots of bacon while discussing what to do all day.  The baseball game we were going to wasn't until after 6pm that evening so we had pretty much a whole day free.  It looked like we would be going to the zoo until I heard mention of shops in The Village.  I quickly voted for that one!

We cleaned up, gathered everything we'd need in case we didn't come back before the game, and headed for Davenport, Iowa...to the village of East Davenport.  I knew nothing about this place before spending time there.  It's an old historic area just a stone throw away from the Mississippi River, with lovely old buildings that now mostly house quaint little shops of all kinds.

Many of the shops had handcrafted bath and body products so of course I had to check them all out.  Alot seemed to be the melt-n-pour base types, and most were not even from Iowa makers.  There were products from California, the UK, all over.  Makes me wonder how they get into these little midwest shops.  But I did find one made right thee in Davenport so that's the one I bought.  Support the locals!

We ate lunch at an awesome German place called the Bierstube.  It was also small and quaint and oh so German.  I loved it!  German beer, food, flags, decorations, music, radio.....awesome.

I wasn't really hungry enough for a heavy meal but I knew I should eat something because who knew when we'd be eating again in all our running around.  So while everyone else savored the possible choices on the menu I had flashbacks to the Lancers meal of the day before and couldn't make up my mind.  In the end, they all ordered their steaks and sandwiches and fries and salads and sauerkraut, and I ordered.....

Black Forest Cake!

Even though my cake was heavenly I couldn't help sampling some of hubby's German Potato Salad.  I guess I needed something salty with all my cake sweetness.  Hubby had gotten some pork steak thing covered in a mushroom gravy.  Blech!

After this we went over to a confectionery shop called Lagomarcino's.  The others got dessert here but since I'd just had my monsterous piece of cake I was not feeling much like having more dessert so I browsed the candy section in another area of the shop.  I wanted to get some but...wow...it was expensive.  I hope that's damn fine chocolate because....yikes.

We were going to head over to the zoo next because we still had time to kill.  I'm not sure exactly where it was located but we drove all the way over there only to find it was closed.  Closed!  It was like the scene in Vacation when the Griswalds finally get to Wally World.  LOL  (I'm not sure why it was closed.  Renovations or something.  It will be re-opening in mid or late May if you're anxious to go visit.)

It was decided that we could go to the Quad City Botanical Center.  Brother-in-law got the Garmin going and the lovely robot lady voice was guiding us to our new destination.  After a while I noticed some detour signs and all traffic was turning off but we kept going only to find....Road Closed.  LOL!  Another bad Griswald moment.  So we turned around and then Garmin Robot Lady Voice got all confused.  Since I was just along for the ride I found it all quite amusing.  Not sure how my brother-in-law felt though since he was doing the driving.  Eventually we got there.....

(To be continued.)

Apr. 23 - Iowa trip/Friday

Almost a year ago my sister and her husband moved from Illinois to Iowa.  I sucked at visiting the whole time they lived in Illinois and haven't gotten off to a very good start with Iowa either.  Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a huge baby about driving.  This is probably THE biggest reason my visits are so few and far between.

Last summer they discovered minor league baseball in their area.  Over the winter they discovered minor league hockey in their area.  Last summer they came here to see 'their' baseball team play 'our' baseball team and we joked we'd have to get a tradition started, traveling to see our teams play each other.  We wanted to try the same thing with hockey but we don't have a local team in their same league.

Anyway, I'd been wanting to visit her early this year so we were comparing schedules to find a good weekend.  She discovered that one of the available weekends had not only the end of the season for hockey but the beginning of the season for baseball.  We all agreed that would be the weekend to visit even though it was a little later in the spring than I'd originally hoped for.

So this past weekend was our Iowa Sportsfest trip!  Casey didn't want to go because he's an anti-social homebody like his mother.  Ty had a slight interest in going but in the end it was easier for the boys to just stay home.  Ty wouldn't have to miss work, Casey wouldn't have to miss school, and there would be someone here to tend the house and animals.

Hubby and I both took the day off work Friday, April 16.  We left late in the morning so we would arrive there mid-afternoon (about a four hour drive).

Randon southern Wisconsin countryside.

Once we got past Madison it seemed all of southern Wisconsin was made up of these rocky hills that the roads were cut through.  We pass somewhat similar landscape over in western Wisconsin when we go to Minnesota (pics can be seen if you scroll thru THIS post) but over there it's a much smaller area.  The southern display seems to go clear down to Iowa.

This one (above) was big but...

 ...this one looming ahead was ginormous!

Approaching the Mississippi River.

(Click the pics to see larger versions.)

The bridge over the river is just ahead and still we have the giant stone wall/hills.

Crossing the Mississippi River.

The pic above was the coolest thing we saw as we zipped thru Dubuque, Iowa.  I don't know what it is.  We thought this city was rather dirty and crappy looking...at least the part that the freeway led us thru.  It was very easy to get thru though, none of the exits and turnoffs and usual bypass chaos.  Once we got past Dubuque the scenery looked very much like our home area of Wisconsin.  It was strangely comforting and familiar.  It was so similar that I never felt the need to take any pics.  Huh.  Even when we got to the small town my sister lives in, and all the time we spent there, I never took a pic.  Well duh me.

So we arrived mid-afternoon, sat and chatted with my sister while she adventurously indulged in her very first blood orange.  I didn't have any but man that thing looked weird.  She survived, so it must have been ok.  lol  We decided to go get something to eat before the hockey game and headed over to a local place called Lancers, but should have been called Let's All Pick On Deb.  Ah yes.  The waitress brought the menus and I was half browsing while talking.  The waitress came back and asked if we were ready to order, and hubby said we needed a few more minutes.  The waitress came back a few minutes later and I was like 'Doh!' cuz I still hadn't decided what I wanted.  I said to go ahead and take their orders and I'd decide in those extra few moments.  Hubby ordered.  My sister started to order then started draaaaaaaaggggggggiiiiiiiiinnnnnngggggg out her words to buy me more time.  And then!  The waitress staaaaaarrrrrrrtttttssssss doing it too!  LOL  So I just quickly picked some kind of sandwich to be done with it.  

Apparently I continued to be a Chatty Cathy because one minute we're eating and talking, and the next minute I realize hubby and my sister are done with their food and I still have about half of my sandwich.  We were a bit crunched for time because we needed to get back home and meet up with Sister's Hubby to get over to the game.  I shoveled in the rest of my sandwich and tried to drink my whole Dew but in the end had to sacrifice about half a glass of that precious yellow goodness.  Then it was back home, switch vehicles, and head for the hockey game.

Hubby and I found it amusing that we drove from Wisconsin to Iowa to go see a hockey game in Illinois.  The local team is the Quad City Mallards, based in Moline, Illinois.  They were playing the Fort Wayne Komets that night.  Hubby and I had never been to a hockey game.  We didn't know whether to support the local team or cheer for the opponents just to keep it interesting.  In the end, I was neutral but hubby became a Komets fan.

They did a Locks For Love thing during one of the intermissions.  There were something like 78 people getting their hair chopped out on the ice.  One little girl was four years old and had never had her hair cut until now.  It was kinda cool to see the amount of people doing this.

The little girl, center, red outfit.

 Mascot Mo meets the little girl.

There is alot I don't understand about hockey.  Going into this game I knew nothing about it, but thought I could pick up things along the way.  It was baffling to see player substitutions seemingly in the middle of play.  There was one fight and I was shocked that the refs (umps, officials, whatever) just let it go on and on.  The game went into overtime and that was confusing at first too.  In the end the Mallards won.

Back at my sister's house after the game we ended up watching The Knife Show on some shopping channel on TV.  It was so dumb!  And yet we kept watching.  I think it was after 11pm when we finally went to bed.  Sleeping was interesting too.  Hubby and I have a queen size bed here at home and that often feels too small.  In my sister's guest room we had a mere full sized bed, if even that.  Wow.  We were horrified at the thought of possibly having to snuggle.  Bleah!  That first night I think we were both too tired to care or notice, because sleeping wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

But the next night......oy.

(To be continued.)

Apr. 14 - Clear the streets!

Yes, Casey passed his driver's test this morning!  WOOT!!  You have no idea how glad I am to be done with this part of parenting.  Casey is alot like Ty was as far as learning to drive....pretty much had no interest in it.  I know, I know, that's just not normal for teenagers.  But they're both such home-bodies, neither very social outside of school.  They had no place they were anxious to be so they didn't care if they learned to drive.  So it was a pain in the butt for us to have to take them driving, make them learn, get them ready for road tests they didn't care if they took.

Why make them do it then?  Because I didn't get my license until way later and it sucked.  After Ty had his license a little while and did some coming and going on his own, got a little more confident, he loved being able to drive.  I'm sure this will happen for Casey too.  He just needs a bit of time to get a taste of that freedom, some time to drive on his own without someone judging his every move.

Ty failed his first road test.  In some ways I felt more confident in Casey's preparation, but in some ways I was a bit more worried.  I really didn't know which way it would go today.  When they got back and the lady said he'd passed I was glad...greatly relieved!...but I guess I wasn't surprised.  He was happy to get back to school so he could brag.  I told him not to be a snot about it but hey, let the boy enjoy his success a bit. 

I had a bunch of other things to blog about but as always I've put it off long enough that I'm tired and my brain doesn't want to function clearly enough for blogging.

Another day then...

Apr. 8

So, one week ago we were almost 90 degrees.  Sunny, beautiful.  Packing away the winter jackets.  Working in the yard.  Admiring the flowers already blooming in the spring flowerbeds.  And today we woke up to this:

We are not amused.  There was at least an inch of heavy, thick, slushy snow.  Luckily it was warm enough today that most of that is gone already.  Here's hoping that was Mother Nature's last little winter laugh.

We saw this bumper sticker on Etsy and Ty had to have it for his car.  Don't worry if you don't understand why he needed it.  It's a World of Warcraft thing....hehe.  And what's even more funny is that Ty's main character IS a Night Elf Rogue.

This was ordered from Wilson Graphics, on Etsy.  I thought it would be just a normal 'cheap' bumper sticker but it appears to be quite high quality.  Oddly, it seems almost too permanent now for his car.  I was thinking it might have been one of those removable window cling type things.  Hmm, not sure if he'll actually put it on now or just kinda tape in the window as a joke.

Also got our full size jar of the strawberry-pineapple jam I ordered last week.  This is from Hope's Pantry, also on Etsy, and is the same jam that we'd gotten the sample size of jar of.  Looking forward to some lovely toast in the morning!

Did I ever report back about that other jam we had ordered?  The apple-butterscotch one?  I don't think I did.  It was disgusting.  Hubby finished his piece of toast that he tried it on but didn't like it, said he might try it on pancakes but he'd never eat it on toast again.  I couldn't even finish the one bite I took.  I knew things weren't going to be good when I saw how the liquid part of it just soaked immediately into the toast and made the bread mush.  Blech!  I put the jar in the fridge for hubby to try on pancakes but we don't eat pancakes very often and I suspect I'll be tossing it out before then.

And that's about it for my boring day off.

Apr. 5

Jennifer's Body (2009)
After a supernatural romp with a satanic emo band, hot cheerleader Jennifer (Megan Fox) is transformed into a demon with an insatiable appetite for high school boys. Now, it's up to Jennifer's BFF, Needy (Amanda Seyfried), to protect the guys from the bloodthirsty man-eater. Penned by Diablo Cody (Juno), this one-of-a-kind horror comedy co-stars Adam Brody as the devil-worshipping band's lead singer.

I wasn't quite sure what to think of this one.  I see in the description above it's considered a 'horror comedy' so ok, that makes me feel better because half the time I was wondering if it was meant to be serious or not.  Being the Twilight geek that I am, I kept finding all these Twilightish things about it and now wonder if it was meant to be that way as part of the 'comedy' or just me being dorky.  Ah well, it was pretty good if you're not expecting too much.

Still didn't take any flowerbed pics.  That just makes it all the more exciting, doesn't it?!  Wondering what it looks like.  Oooh, the anticipation....

I didn't really do squat today.  Puttered around with my Etsy shop, played a tiny bit of UO, took Casey out to practice driving for a bit, and in between all that was a whole lot of nothing.  Tomorrow is my first day back to work since the layoff began.  I've been off 12 days this time.  Part of me is ready to go back because this has been a very boring layoff, but part of me really hates the thought of returning to same old grind.

Bleah.

Apr. 4 - Happy Easter!

~Happy Easter~

We didn't do anything special today. The Easter Bunny filled baskets, left they boys' baskets outside their bedrooms because everyone is too old for the hiding/finding thing these days. The Bunny screwed up and brought the wrong video games. Doh! One they already had, and the other they didn't want. No biggie, they went to town today and exchanged them and got what they wanted. Ah, the joys of having kids old enough to do this stuff for themselves. Our third son Matt has been here all day. We....I mean, the Easter Bunny.... even made up a tiny little basket for him.

We colored eggs last night.  You just have to color eggs at Easter.  Geez.  Funny though, it's only been the last few years that we've done this.  When the boys were little we didn't bother because we didn't do egg hunts and because hubby was the only one who would eat Deviled Eggs or egg salad afterwards.  But as the years went by and the holidays became more boring and like any other day, we decided we were going to bring some holiday tradition to our lives.  

(Matt & Ty)

It's funny also that the boys are always uninterested until they actually start doing it.  Then they try to get creative and outdo each other.  This year Casey was anti-fun but Matt was excited right from the start.  (Again, makes me wonder what his home-life is like.  Do they do nothing??)  I think Matt and Ty had more fun than anyone else.  They were using a white crayon to draw all kinds of, uh, interesting decorations on eggs.

Somewhere in Matt's mind if you make a mistake in your drawing you can just scribble it out and it won't show up after dying the egg.  LOL  He also traumatized himself when he cracked the shell of different egg.  LOL!

Ty assesses the damaged egg....

In the end though we ended up with two dozen colorfully entertaining eggs and fun was had by all.  Except Casey.

As I said, we didn't do anything special today.  No family get-togethers.  No Easter dinners.  Nothing but lounging around home and nibbling candy all day.  Well, we did have sliced ham and mashed potatoes and carrots for supper so I guess we did have Easter dinner....heh.  Oh, and guess what the Easter Bunny brought hubby and I!  Paranormal Activity!  Yesss!!!  Nothing says 'Happy Easter!' like demons and scaring the crap out of yourself.  Woohoo!

Hubby and I worked on the flowerbed project a bit today.  I didn't think to take pics of our progress though.  I'll go get some pics tomorrow if the weather is decent.  We got the landscape timbers placed today.  It's just a simple, one layer design, just to sort of outline the flowerbed.  It was so windy today that we didn't bother trying to plant anything after we got the boards set in place.

It's been sooo windy for so long now.  It's really getting old.  *grrrr*  My fancy new birdbath/feeder actually blew over, broke apart, and flew halfway across the lawn the other day.  Our poor greenhouse is really taking a beating.  One whole section of the roof is torn off and several other sections and starting to tatter.  And we can't even fix it yet cuz it's still so dang windy.  Gah!

Spent most of my Easter Sunday working on soap stuff.  Labeled a ton of bars, photographed a bunch of bars, then spent forever updating the Etsy shop, the website, the Facebook page.  And for what?  Nothing.  Sales have pretty much come to a halt lately.  And I still go back and forth on if I want to quit or totally throw myself into it even more than I have so far.

While I continue to ponder that, I will leave you with this....