Being patient....

I got a package from my mom the other day. I have no idea what it is! I promised to wait until Thursday to open it...unfortunately some of the tape fell off!

Ironman

From left: Julia, Babs, Kelly, Kyla, (beautiful balloon thing in background)A couple weeks ago I volunteered at the Madison Ironman with some friends. We had no idea what to expect, but it ended up being really fun. We got there around 10:30am to set up the station and I spent most of my time making a beautiful ballon banner (with minimal help from others--those in photo only pretending to work).
Yay Balloons!

The finished product:The Ironman consists of 2.6 miles of swimming, 112 miles biking and 26 miles running (a full marathon). Julia, Babs, Kelly and I manned one of the two State Street water stations at mile 6 and mile 19 of the running section (the runners had to do a loop and go past our station a total of 4 times). It was exciting seeing them at the very beginning and nearing the end of the race.

Practicing handing off water:Second place guy: Guy handing drink to running guy

Since we had the first shift we got to see/throw water at the top men and women. It was so exciting when the first guy ran by, we all held out our cups of water and yelled 'WATER WATER' at him, he ended up choosing Julia's water (probably because she is a louder yeller and jumped in front of me), but I got the second place guy. Once we realized the names of the runners were pinned to their outfit things, it got really fun. Some of them were taken by surprise when we yelled their names and some gave us little celebrity waves as if to say "yes, ladies, take it all in, I will accept your water if you are lucky".

Working hard:

Guy passing up the Gatorade table because our water was way better:


I still gave him water even though he was walking because I am a good person:

Improv Queen

As I have mentioned before I am in an improv (improvisation) class that I take through the Monkey Business Institute. We just completed "Level 2" which involved a lot of really tough guessing games. We had our improv show last Sunday and it went really well, I was hilarious (of course). Here are some pictures of our group: Improvolone. Level 3 classes start next month!

From left frontrow: Linda, Cat Kyla.
From left middle row: Brad, Harvey, David, Sean
Backrow: Bo

Duluth is a cool city.

On Monday I returned from an amazing weekend in Duluth. I went up to visit my good friend Diana. Diana and I attended St. Olaf together and lived together our junior and senior years. After college Diana moved to Duluth to attend grad school at UMD. She now lives with her boyfriend, Will (also an Ole). Her brother, John, was also visiting from New York City. I've met John a few times when he and her other brother, Dave, visited Diana in Northfield where we went to school. The Ostrowskis have been known to get kind of crazy so I knew that I should expect the unexpected.

Our hosts, Will and Diana:

The weekend started off on Friday. I left work around 2pm and arrived in Duluth around 7pm. I was greeted by two gigantic pizzas and plenty of beer for the four of us to share. We dug in and discussed our options for the evening. Diana and Will wanted to give their out of town guests the Duluth experience, so we went to some of the more popular bars in the area, the Red Star for pints of martinis and dancing and then the Brewhouse for hoppy brews.

Diana excited about her coffee martini:

Diana and I:

John enjoying the beer at Brewhouse:

The next day we woke at the crack of dawn (11am) and after Diana fed us bagels and coffee we hit the beach. Lake Superior was cold and refreshing and the sun was scorching hot. Afterwards the four of us went to Baja Billy's for margaritas (with dollar upshots of tequila) and Mexican food.

The beach and Lake Superior:

Diana demonstrating what to do with the dollar tequila shot at Baja Billy's:

Exhausted, we returned home, took showers, and talked ourselves into getting up off the couch to hit the town again. We started off with some bowling (I won't even tell you my score, but I lost every time), then as all the cabs in town were taken, we ditched plans to go to a bar called the Reef and instead walked to an Irish bar called Dublins. Once there I learned how to play Big Buck Hunter, do the "drunk guy dance", and played air guitar to Guns and Roses' Sweet Child of Mine (Diana and I's favorite karyoke song back in our college days). Only these pictures can truly convey how much fun we had:

John teaching me the "drunk guy dance". It involves half closed eyes, a soft thumbs up and lots of swaying around with your feet planted to the floor:

Kyla, Diana and some random girl who likes to dance:

John still doing the dance:

We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning and swore to sleep in until noon, but once again Diana woke us at 11am and told us we had to have brunch. John, Diana and I (Will had to work), went to a place called Sarah's Table for omelettes, tempeh sandwiches and english muffins. The patio had a gorgeous view of Lake Superior. We talked about our crazy nights only to be upstaged by our waiter who told us tales of his weekend attending the gay pride festival. We were definitely put to shame when he told us that his only solid food in days was a "jello shot pizza".

Later we checked out some stores in downtown Duluth and John and I scored some 'Duluth is a cool city" T-shirts (seen at the top of the blog), something we had been dreaming of since Diana told us about them. Then we hit the beach again, did some swimming and took naps in the sun.

On the way home we stopped at Olde World Meats. We were starving and wanted to buy everything we saw. John told us we needed to buy what we came for and get out before something crazy happened. We scored some brats, burgers and pepperoni beef sticks to grill.

Diana and beef stick:

Overall it was a fabulous weekend and a great way to end the summer. I started school yesterday. I can't wait to find out what fall has in store for me!