you know i love a glass of red wine!! well, last night was perhaps one of my favorite nights in Baltimore, thus far (And Inga... when you use that golden ticket and come to b'more, we'll definitely be doing this!:);))! Andrea, Mariah, and I met at the Metropolitan in Federal Hill for wine tasting night.
So for $15 we got 5 small pours of different wines from Rhone Valley, France (I guess it was French night), starting with a white and moving into more intense, red wines with each pour.
First of all, Kudos to the server who remembered which glass of wine all of us were on (we were each enjoying the wine at a different pace) ;) Not only did he keep track of our drinks, he was quick! My glass wasn't empty for more than 3 minutes! Secondly, great atmosphere.. small room, dark wood, candle light, warm, not formal but definitely set back from the rest of the restaurant. Lastly, great company!! Lovely friends I am blessed with.. the three of us had a great time!
Oh and for some potentially exciting news for Laura, there is talk of a girls vacation to somewhere warm and beachy! Never before have I been on a trip like that (there was no such thing as "spring break" at my high school, nor did I desire to spend my college breaks anywhere but Iowa!). So... I'm thinking this might be the time to splurge, just a little, and go on a real vacation with my girlfriends!!! I'm very excited about this and hoping it works out. Last year, they went to Cancun and managed to do it all fairly inexpensively. :)
So, its good to be back into the swing of things in Baltimore.. the second assignment at this hospital is turning out to be a bit more enjoyable than the first. I'm slowly but surely adapting to the fact that the nurses are responsible for just shy of everything on this floor... its good to be challenged but I truly can't imagine feeling more drained at the end of 13 hours. Nevertheless, its great to have 4 days of to recoup and get things done! Nothing like sitting on your bed-on-the-floor, blogging, and listening to the beautiful sounds of some crazy, loud saw, slicing into pavement and a jackhammer humming a long. Lovely! (but seriously, this is the 2nd time they've dug this pavement up.. what is going on!?)
I'm off to a coffee shop!!!
Peace, friends.
XOXO
Hello friends!!
I now write to you from the Moline airport at which I seem to be stuck. :( My flight has continued to be delayed all afternoon.. bummer since I have to work at 0700 tomorrow morning and I could have spent the day hanging out with the folks instead of strangers in the airport! Oh well.. at this point I'm just praying for safe flights and an arrival prior to midnight!!
Indeed another beautiful trip to the mid-west has come to an end. I'm sad to leave the comforts of home.. the farmhouse in which I grew up, family, old friends, and of course the Twin Cities. Nonetheless, I come to realize how full of joy and love my heart is when I leave and how these trips seem to rejuvenate my heart.
The midwest was a wintery wonderland.. lots of beautiful, fluffy snow! Got to go sledding with the nieces, and as you saw in the last blog, snow fort building! Quote of the day from Claire while trying to climb back up the hill after sledding down, "Warwa!! My wegs are too wittle! I can't get up in the hill!!!" :)
After some good time with the family, I packed my stuff into the little red car and headed north to the cities of Twin. The drive was a bit emotional as it, too, has begun to feel like home. ah, but mostly, I was just excited!!
As soon as I got to town, I dropped my bags at my old roommates's house (where I stayed for the short duration of the trip), changed clothes, and stopped in at my cousins' house for a quick visit, then to the Nook to catch up with dear ol' John.. my favorite member of the "Nook Regulars" club! :) After that, it was off to a house party to ring in the New Year.. a nice evening with friends.
And so on and so forth (yikes! gotta wrap this up, almost time to leave)... every day continued to be full of blessings as I was able to spend time with and see many of my friends in MN. Staying with my old roommates was one of the highlights.. oh how I love these women and miss having them in my daily life!
On my way home, I took the long route through Des Moines and visited some friends from high school who now reside there... always a great time. Highlights include seeing Lesley's brand new baby girl, Siri.. and Leanne's little adorable Will. My friends have babies- incredible!!! As I headed back to De Witt, I met up with my friend Ryan in Marshalltown for lunch... so great.
It was wonderful to see those of you I was able to ... sorry if I missed you this trip, but I'll catch you in April!!! Not sure where I'll be going after that, but I'm contemplating Oregon if a friend or two of mine decide to travel there with me! perhaps another round in B'more.. who knows.
Alright, I must say goodbye to the Mid-West.. plane departs in 40 minutes!
Thanks to all i was able to see.. I shall miss you!
All my love,
XOXO
Laura
Nope.. Not Fort McHenry, this time we're live from Fort McMangan! Chloe, Claire, and I were busy playing in the snow this week.. and oh, did we have fun. I had to use my years of snow fort building experience to teach the nieces how its done. Thanks to Dad manipulating a huge pile of snow in the yard, we were able to construct a decent fort and the start of a tunnel. Of course, we could have gotten a little further along had Garrett (the most adorable terror-on-wheels 3-year-old nephew you could ever imagine) not punched one of the walls over a few times (imagine big, cheesy, "i know i'm not supposed to" grin, right afterwards, too!). And had the girls not been more fascinated by the taste of snow than constructing with it.. we could have had one heck of a snow fort, but in the end, we had fun and I think this one is pretty groovy! So much so, that I thought it'd be a fun place from which to place a phone call to a friend in California after the parents went to bed! So, I grabbed one of my favorite brews, dressed up in Dad's Carharts, and headed outside! 
As you can imagine, my mid-west vacation has been great, thus far! Lots of fun times with the nieces and nephew, brothers, parents, and some of the wonderful extended fam. Hoping to get in some time with amigos on the last leg of the trip through IA. Tomorrow I take off for the good ol' Twin Cities! Spending a few days up there then hopefully a night in Des Moines, one last night in IA that back to the east. I must say I'll be happy to return to milder weather, though I have enjoyed the snow. I also got to take Chloe and Claire sledding... oh so fun!
Happy New Year to you, dear friends. I pray its been a blessed year and another to come!!!
All my love,
Laura
XOXO
Hello friends and family!!
Another long blog for you but its my day off and I'm feeling very share-y today! Hope you enjoy the stories and updates!
As my dear roomie, Sandy, and I were watching the Biggest Loser last night, quite a bit of excitement occurred. First of all.. today is garbage day, which means last night was "set the garbage outside on the sidewalk night." A little piece inside of me gets really excited about garbage day because its so easy and its a twice-a-week purging all of the garbage from the house. Maybe its such a delight because recycling here is so annoying.. they only pick up plastic and tin every other monday and cardboard only once a month and sometimes they just don't show up for whatever unknown reason and then we end up suffocating from recyclable material, as we are right now.. ugh. So being able to open the front door, twice a week, and just drop the bag of garbage onto the sidewalk is a secret, simple little purging pleasure of mine. :) hmm... enough about my feelings on garbage!
So last night as were sitting in the living room, I heard the rustling of plastic bags outside the window. I knew exactly what it was, because this happened on Saturday, too. Someone was rummaging through our garbage. yup... what was once a satisfactory pile of waste was now an attraction for those in need. I whispered to Sandy to tell her what was happening, we shut the lights off and looked out the window.. and there he was.. sitting on our steps, our front stoop, pulling things out of the garbage. What he was retrieving, we couldn't tell, but only hoping it was the spinach-gone-bad or the rotted apple instead of the pay stubs she'd thrown out. We debated what to do. He wasn't harming us.. he was probably just hungry, but sitting on our step? Rummaging through our stuff.. granted, it being garbage and set outside, i think makes it officially not our stuff anymore, but nonetheless, this was not the fate we expected for our once-belongings. My first instinct was to make him food but of course the mom in me said, "no!" It was a little creepy. Sandy's was to call the cops! lol.. which she did but of course he was long gone and the cops never even came. whatever.. it was alarming, sad, and annoying all at the same time since he left the random pieces of garbage sitting out on our steps. I wanted so badly to step out the door and talk to him.. and I think if there'd been a guy in the house, I'd have felt protected and comfortable doing so. bah..
A bit of time passed and as Sandy was reading me an e-mail she was sending to her boss, I saw movement in the kitchen.. LF. LF is what we named the "mouse" in our house (that's us telling ourselves there's only one). LF is the acronym of a not-nice name.. sorry, but we don't really like him. We'd hired an exterminator who closed up the holes on the exterior of the house, made recommendations, and set traps in places where he figured they were nesting (ewww!). But my friends, if you haven't heard me say it before, I've discovered in my last few years, in different places lived, that city mice are smarter than country mice. I've literally watched mice run around traps. In the house I lived in in St. Paul, the mice were eating the M&M's off the sticky traps. I know!
So Sandy and I scared the mouse behind the love seat and prepared for war. I was in ready position, on the tips of my toes, big tennis shoes on, tennis racket in hands, ready to dodge in any direction and step or swing. Sandy was in charge of moving furniture. We barricaded what we thought was its only other exit with traps and moved the love seat.. even tipping it upside down to see if it got into the couch somehow.. only to find nothing.. no holes, no mouse, no holes in the floor boards, only the rude, random remnants of a mouse. sigh... so LF is still on the loose.. ugh.. all the invasion!
More random thoughts.. since I know I'm going to be here for a while and its getting too cold to work-out outside (too cold for my wussy self), I finally joined a gym here. I went to meet with Carin, my first ever personal trainer, today. She's great! Nice, laid-back, fun, etc. I also concluded that she was a great fit for me as I heard the other trainer next to me yelling at his trainee as a form of encouragement.. like crazy Jillian on Biggest Loser :-/ and my trainer just said, "all right, 'atta girl, 2 more reps! good deep breaths!" perfect! If some hot guy was yelling at me, I'd probably drop the weights, run out the door, and cancel my membership!
Anyway, I'm super, super excited to be a gym-member again. There's something about gyms! I walk in and I'm instantly happy! Without even working out, being inside the gym brings some sort of strange, instant satisfaction. I belonged to a gym the last three years I lived in St. Paul, and I really fell in love with the frequent gym visits/workouts. I think there's something encouraging about joining a new gym, too because I haven't gotten into a routine yet. Its all new and foreign which I think will leave me more willing to try new things and add variety (which is "always important"). wahoo! oh, funny random side note, i love daily mass on EWTN. There's a priest there this week (not sure for how long) who is just phenomenal! I really enjoy his homilies. So as I hopped on the treadmill this afternoon, I was flipping channels (cause the treadmill had its own tv monitor!!) and came across daily mass! I was actually excited to get to exercise and kind of go to mass at the same time- talk about multi-tasking! ;) ;) I'm sure the people behind me thought I was crazy as I smiled at the monitor and laughed as Father made jokes.
So that's all for now.. I'm also excited because Andrea and I are going to do something tonight.. I'm off for a few days because I work nights this weekend and she's out of town the next few weekends, so I'm happy we get to hang out tonight!
I think that's probably plenty to chew on for now, eh?
Thanks for checking in, for your prayers, love, and concern.
Love to you,
Laura
mom is now on her way back to iowa.. and again we had a lovely time despite the first few rainy days here in baltimore. quick rundown (oh, my camera is still being fixed so we had to buy a disposable, thus, picture will be added later!). s
thursday: picked mom up at the airport. we walked all around the inner harbor in the rain! had lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen, got lots of info at the b'more visitors center, perused barnes and nobel, walked through the 2 mini-malls, and went to the top of the world trade center building in baltimore to see views of the entire city!
friday: lazy, relaxing day at home with coffee and time to just talk. friday night, with the helpful suggestions from my lovely roomie, sandy, the three of us went to a small, neighborhood-y theater on charles street that had a fantastic tapas restaurant attached (tapas are fancy little appetizers). We had mini crab cakes, roasted squash, potato soup, and lamb meatballs! We saw the movie, Into the Wild http://www.intothewild.com/ See it if you can.. the amazing story of Christopher McClandness.
saturday: oh whatta day! we took a sketchy (word of the day), but awesomely cheap bus into New York city! With the help of a suggested website hopstop.com (thanks, gruber!) and some friendly New Yorkers, we were able to navigate our way from chinatown to the theatre district right up to braudhurst theatre where Les Mis was playing! it was still raining in the city so we pretty much looked like sad, drowned rats! luckily, we'd packed a backpack with a few extra articles of clothing! :) the show was absolutely amazing!!! we had fantastic seats on the first level and we were both in tears by the final song (my favorite!). The actor who played Jean Valjean was incredible... ah. it was all just beautiful. It was, for both of us, the first time seeing a show on broadway.
And praise be, when we walked out of the theater, the sun was out and the rain was gone! yay!!! we enjoyed the bustle of Time Square and wandered around for a while seeing all the interesting people and sites. We eventually met up with Gruber (and for those who read this and don't know, Gruber [nickname] is one of my dearest friends in college.. we were pretty much attached at the hip for 4 years; an amazing woman with whom I share many great memories and though we don't see each other that often anymore, she will always be an important part of my life and one of the many amazing friends who've helped shape me into the person I am today! Thanks, friends! :)). She's engaged nonw, glowing, and as beautiful as ever! We had an awesome dinner at a fancy, little Belgian restaurant called Marts, then said a quick goodbye and headed back to chinatown and back on the bus. At one point we were giggling and giggling about how uncomfortable and sketchy the bus was.. but it sure makes for some good laughs and stories to share and tell.
sunday: i took off for the farmers market at 7:45a with Andrea and Mariah. Mom had originally planned to come with but that was before when we realized were weren't going to bed before 2am! After a quick trip to the usual spots at the market, we headed over to Fell's Point (one of the many neighborhoods of inner Baltimore) and had an incredible breakfast at Mama's on the half-shell, then back to Fed. Hill. Mom and I spent the afternoon walking around the neighborhood and harbor. Had the famous crab pretzels (I don't know if they're actually famous, but they should be! they're medium-sized, warm, soft pretzels with crab-dip smothered over them). That evening we went to mass at my little church just around the corner. :) we stayed after for the hospitality hour and met a sweet little couple from the neighborhood. :) when we got home we watched Love Actually with Sandy. such a great movie and a lovely way to end the lovely day.
monday: tasty, mexican-themed breakfast at home with a little relaxing in the AM then off to the hospital! mom wanted to see where i worked and i was excited to show her (but not excited enough to let her take a picture of me in front of the sign of the hospital.. sorry folks!). I gave her a little tour and then we took off for Fells Point- to the H&S Bakery outlet. Someone at work had recently brought in this package of cookies and called them Berger cookies. She said it was a "Baltimore thing" and since its pretty much just a big hunk of chocolate on a shortbread, I knew mom would love them so we stopped at got some! when we got home we went for another walk up to the actual hill of Federal Hill. Nice and steep.. and a great view of the city. Came home, I went for a run, which unfortunately involved tripping on one of the many cracked sidewalks of this town and skinning my knee. I write of this because I'd like to say, "ouch!" i forgot how much it hurts to skin the knee! that night we decided to order in my favorite pizza of the neighborhood, Boli's, and watch a movie.. which sadly ended up being crude, distasteful, only occasionally mildly humorous (thanks to the 7-year-old actress) and ultimately a waste of time and money- Knocked up. If you haven't seen it, don't bother!
Tuesday: this morning I realized that I didn't want Mom to leave. :( We managed to literally buy her some more time by paying a small fee to change her flight to a later departure! yay! :) With the extra time we headed over to Fort McHenry, which has been one of my favorite places to run/walk/and hangout at (along with the rest of the young residents of Fed Hill and Locus Point). Anyone know about this fort? Its pretty fascinating.. so if you don't know about it and you're not planning to visit me while I'm here, google and learn, my friends! After a walk around the fort and a stop at the visitor center, we drove up to the Cross Street area and had lunch at Metropolitan with more crab dip! :) We then walked around the neighborhood a bit more and enjoyed the gorgeous weather!!! We came back home and spent the rest of our time sitting on the roof deck, enjoying the view, the sun, hot apple cider and some relaxation before heading back to the airport. Mom should be back on the farm in less than 4 hours and I'll be back to the real world of work tomorrow. this time always comes..
It was a great visit and good for my heart to have my mom here. Oh.. and come to think of it, her and I have now been in Santa Monica, Venice, Malibu, Marina del Rey, Long Beach, San Diego, De Witt :), Baltimore, and New York in less than 3 months! We also figured out that I've been in/driven through 15 states since May: Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virgina, Maryland, and New York! Wow.. what a year! Seems like its all gone so fast but how incredibly thankful I am for all that I've been blessed to experience!
Thanks again for checking in... hope all is well in MN, CA, TX, IA, IL, and everywhere else!
Much love from MD!
LKM ;-)
For the first time ever, after years of talking about doing it, Mom and I are going to the Big Apple together! It is indeed an exciting moment.. after much debate over all the incredible choices of live shows to see, we've decided on Les Miserables! I saw it in St. Paul several times while it was still touring, but never on Broadway and I'm thrilled that my mom finally gets see it, too!
After help from Gruber, we found a bus company that travels to NYC from Baltimore with times that allow us to spend some time in the city before the show and some time with Gruber after the show! I haven't seen Grubs for a lonnggg time.. so I'm definitely thrilled for tomorrow's events!
off to a movie!
Rachel.. LOVE the idea about a sisters event in Baltimore/NYC to see Grubs! LOVE IT!
love to all!
laura