First of all, an apology to all of the NASCAR fans who had to miss the past two races because of rain and being rescheduled on Mondays. I'm sure it's all my fault because at the end of July I decided to take vacation time on August 3 and 10, which meant I got to actually watch the races! HA!
But on to my latest project...
Before:
After:
After-after:
My dearest mama came to see us! She stayed with us for 10 whole days. We had lots of fun, though we really didn't do much but loaf around house for most of the time. We did go to the zoo last Monday. I think Jamie might be zoo'ed out for the year, so we might not go back until sometime next year. The weather was pleasant and the crowds were sparse. As far as I can remember, we saw every animal, even though some of them were in the far reaches of their habitats. We shopped. We ate. We played games. It was a fun week!
Mema sent tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, and string beans from her own garden. Mom brought Bum's bbq, collards, slaw, and corn bread. And Mema even sent pieces of her and Grandpa's birthday cakes. They were very tasty!
Congrats to Mom on her one year anniversary! On July 18, 2008 she had her lumpectomy and she's been cancer free ever since. I hope we celebrate many many more anniversaries!
Happy Belated Birthday, USA!!
Jamie didn't have to work on the 4th, but we didn't do anything at all. We just stayed home and watched the race at Daytona. Whew! What an ending! Congrats to Tony Stewart and horray for pushing Kyle Busch out of the way.
Several weeks ago a friend from college sent me an email asking if I'd like to play at her church on July 5th. She said her choir and handbells took the summer months off and she was lining up special music for the season. I love to play! For anybody! Anywhere! So, of course, I said yes. I picked out my pieces to play and diligently practiced them. I'm a lazy violinist and sometimes won't practice for weeks on end, especially if I don't have an upcoming gig.
The morning of July 5th came. I remembered to set my alarm the day before. I had packed my violin the day before. I got up. I got dressed. I put on MAKEUP (yes, MAKEUP). I kissed Jamie goodbye and waved to him as I set off on my merry way.
In 30 minutes I was in High Point, NC, a place I'd only been once before, but never to this particular part of town. I arrived at the church with plenty of time to spare. The pianist and I introduced ourselves and I proceeded to open my violin case. Where I discovered that I was missing BOTH of my bows. About that time, my friend came into the sanctuary carrying a music stand for me. "Shelley! I left my bows at home!!" I exclaimed. She laughed at me and I had to laugh at myself. That was the dumbest thing I'd ever done. There was no way I could head allllllll the way back home and then alllllll the way back to the church before the service started, much less in time to practice the pieces beforehand. The pianist called someone to see if they could bring a bow, but they'd already left their house for the morning. Shelley said not to worry and I could redeem myself later in the summer. Good to her word, she sent me an email asking if I could play August 2nd and I quickly replied that I would and that one bow would be forever GLUED to my violin case.
Needless to say, I came right home and put both bows back in my violin case. Earlier in the week I had messed around with both bows and instead of laying them in the open case with my violin (I usually leave the case open if I'm going to practice a lot) I put both bows on the music stand. When I packed up my violin, I completely forgot about the bows on the stand. Ironically, I had gone in that room that morning to get a safety pin from the closet and didn't even notice the bows laying on the music stand. I am a dingleberry.
Also, we apparently had a shrew pay us a visit. Jamie said he'd been hearing things on and off in the main living area of our apartment (the open kitchen/dining room) and last night finally found the source of the noise. A shrew poked his head out from under the dryer. This afternoon Jamie managed to see how the critter was coming in and out. There was a gap at the bottom of the molding that goes around our sliding door. After he was sure the shrew got back out, he sealed the gap with some caulk. Maybe that'll keep out the spiders and other multi-legged things.
Jamie went upstairs for a shower before work tonight while I was puttering around in the kitchen prepping for supper. I thought I heard him say something, but I wasn't sure since the AC was on. So I scooted around to the stairs to ask if he did indeed say something. When I got there, he was standing at the top of the stairs looking towards the bathroom and said, "There's a really weird bug in the tub."
So, I cautiously went in the bathroom and peered into the tub. Here's what greeted me:
Not much going on at Casa de Hyland. But I did take a few pictures during lunch at work today. They're uploaded to our Flickr album. Enjoy!
Here we are at Lowes' Motor Speedway in Concord, NC for the Nationwide Series Camping World 300 on Saturday, May 23, 2009. This was in-between rain showers where both times the heavens opened up and unleashed a massive flood. Needless to say, we didn't get to watch a full 300 mile race. More pictures from Saturday night are in our Flickr album.
We started off our Memorial Day weekend lounging around watching tv in bed. Luckily, the race wasn't until waaaay later in the afternoon so we didn't have to rush to get anywhere. We packed up our race gear and headed off to Concord after 3pm. We had plenty of time for a quick trip to Concord Mills before the race, where Jamie used some birthday/Christmas gift cards at Eddie Bauer. That was our first trip to Concord Mills and I think we'll probably go back again when it isn't so crowded with holiday weekenders and race fans. As we were leaving the mall, we noticed the very nasty clouds hanging off in the direction of the track. We quickly (for the race traffic) headed down the boulevard and got parked behind the dirt track (across the street from the speedway). I could hear that Happy Hour (practice for the Sprint Cup cars) had just started. We parked closer to turn 4 and our seats were just before turn 1, so we had quite a ways to walk before we got to our seats. About halfway through our walk we came to an almost dead stop. People were POURING out of the stands. We looked to our right to see that it was POURING rain outside. But we were comfortably dry under the stands, even if we were packed in like sardines and not moving fast. Finally we made it to our grandstand and stumbled up my folks. We all stood between the bathrooms and concession booths for probably about 45 minutes before we heard the big jet driers come out to dry the track. Our race started about an hour later than it was supposed to. Luckily, the drivers were able to race to just past halfway before the rains started again. The driers came back out on the track, but the rain was coming down way too fast for them to get much headway on the mile and a half track. Finally the race was called and Mike Bliss, who took a gamble to stay out during the caution, was declared the winner. That was really cool because Mom and I saw Mike Bliss win at her first NASCAR race back in 2005. In the pouring rain, we parted ways and headed back to our vehicles. Jamie and I were back home before 2am.Happy Anniversary to Us!
On Monday, we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. We decided to take the day off and trekked to the zoo, one of our all time favorite places to go.
Here we are in the African Pavilion, which had been transformed into an oasis of orchids. The weather was perfect and the crowds were very minimal. We had an excellent day together wandering from exhibit to exhibit. We got to see ever animal we didn't get to see last time, and the ones that were sleeping last time were awake this time! The only lazy bones on Monday were the lions, but it was late afternoon by the time we got to that part of the zoo so I'm sure they were exhausted from a long day of being looked at by humans.
I've posted a few of my favorite zoo pictures (taken by both of us) to the Flickr album. More will be coming as soon as we weed through all 330 of them.
Mom and Aunt Gloria stayed over Sunday night after their weekend at Victory Junction Gang Camp. We had a good, but very short, time with them.
Friday afternoon (going through this past weekend in reverse order if you haven't noticed by now), we headed over to Reynolda Gardens to have a go around the nature trail since the afternoon was very pleasant and we both wanted to stretch our legs. I sneezed my head off the ENTIRE time, but still liked the walk very much. We took lots of pictures in the woods (it was very green) and took some pictures in the gardens too. This part of the season is sorta in-between for flowers. The spring flowers (tulips, daffodils, etc) are mostly gone, but the summer flowers (day lilies, roses, etc) haven't started blooming yet. All of the pictures from that little trip are in our Flickr album too.
In a few weeks, we'll be heading down to Charlotte for the Carquest Auto Parts 300 Nationwide Race. YAY! Fast cars! VROOOOM!!! Also another great place to take photos.
