A lovely weekend

I'm tired of all the medical posts I've made recently. So here's a much more light-hearted look at what "normal" life is like for me and Mike.

Mike was in Chicago all last week, doing research at Argonne National Laboratory, which is run by the Dept of Energy. As a result, he now has a government-issued scientist's badge! According to this Venn diagram, I think he officially falls somewhere in the "geek" domain :)

Anyway, he got home Friday night so we celebrated with a yummy dinner at Townhall Brewery. As you can probably guess from the word "brewery" included in the restaurant name, this is one of Mike's favorite eateries. We ran into one of my coworkers (and her husband) there, which was kind of funny because I had also run into another coworker at TJMaxx earlier in the afternoon -- what a small world.

Saturday morning we had to call in an unexpected visitor:

Ugh.

Well, at least we didn't have to call them on Thanksgiving, as we did a couple years ago. Nigel, our technician, was very helpful - not only did he do the "dirty work," he also gave us some tips for avoiding trouble in the future (e.g., keep a quarter in the laundry tub to keep it from draining too quickly and keep a "ladies' sock" - aka nylon - over the washer output to keep the fuzz and cat hair from going down the drain). While he was doing his very loud work, our cats responded very differently. One took the opportunity to nap in the sun on the cat tree. The other (poor guy) cowered under a blanket.

After all that excitement passed, we ran our errands. (This is starting to sound like the lamest blog post ever...) We spent the generous gift certificate to Whole Foods that my parents gave me, then got some wine at Surdyk's. While Mike was browsing for wine I ran walked (slowly and carefully) over to the Bibelot to do some browsing of my own. And ran into my good friend Megan! What a small world - I feel like a real Minneapolitan, running into friends and acquaintances left and right this weekend! Megan and I ended up talking so long that by the time Mike called me to tell me he had bought the wine, I hadn't even had a chance to browse! Oh well.

Then we had Mike's sister Anne over for a summer "picnic" dinner. It was pretty delicious, if I do say so myself.







Salad with homemade vinaigrette, homemade veggie burgers, roasted fingerling potatoes with red bell pepper and onion, and garnishes of: the most delicious $5 (!) heirloom tomato from Whole Foods, fresh basil from our garden, yummy WF guacamole, and an assortment of olives (for Anne and Mike). YUM.

Oh, and we all had two different versions of my favorite tri-layer bars / mint squares / Nainamo bars. I added a garnish of raspberries from our garden to one of the batches. Yummers.


As for a typical Sunday in our household, I woke up around 7:30 and proceeded to read the paper while Mike slept in. Then Mike woke up around 9 and I made breakfast while he read the paper. Then Lucy and I did her absolute favorite household chore: changing the sheets!

See how appreciative she is? (Look at Mike getting all the credit, even though I was the one who did the work!)

Then it was time to avoid doing more work by updating my blog instead. :)  So now I'm off to do some weeding, and go for a (short, leisurely) walk, and figure something out for dinner.

So there you have it. A typical weekend for us when we're not out of town or going to numerous events near home. I have to say that the one (small) perk to having had surgery was that I cleared my schedule for most of the summer, so now I've had much more relaxing time at home - a pretty nice change of pace!

Hope you're all enjoying your summer!