Monday, March 18, 2024

Spring Break

I've been kicking Roger out of the house because he's been antsy. He's hiked a lot of miles and found a couple antlers and went fishing when he wasn't successful hiking. It was harder this week because it's been snowing pretty good and it's spring break. 

He brought no fishies home.

Rog has also been holding down the fort at work with his boss on vacation for spring break all week. He also has Stu as a helper, but who knows what they're really doing all day. Our Ford Escape is finally done at the mechanic's and turns out the problem was a tiny valve, but you have to take half the engine out to get to it, so nobody would touch it except our friend Rich from church. Rog is excited to have it back, so we'll see how it does. 


Couldn't be me out there. (Everyone was ok.)


I finished Brandon Mull's Dragonwatch series (sequels to Fablehaven) and have been working on a few other projects for PT related stuff. Also going through mission journals and writing notes about good stories so I have more to pull from. 

Since all of our events were cancelled this week (including my group CFM study), we went out to eat a few times and did some shopping together. We got some ice cream and mozerella sticks at Sonic and then we got cajun food and mac and cheese and cornbread at Satchmo's (cajun & bbq). 

Rog and a few of his favorite things. 
(As illustrated by me).

 We also went to Carol's after church and watched the women's broadcast and had a potluck - enchiladas, chicken salad, a green cake for St Patty's. I'm gonna be honest that the womens' broadcasts are not my cup of tea. Everyone talks in the same whispery voices and there's not a lot of meat to the messages. And I need to be chastised more, so I'm better in PH. 

New Trailer

 So we ended up getting that trailer with a tent up top for a pretty good deal and Rog already started packing/unpacking and rearranging things. It's definitely opened a lot of space in our storage area and under the bed, but we're still consolidating. 

We also got free eggs from 2 friends - my coworker Jade and my buddy Mike (and Rog's old bishop) who just showed up on our doorstep with a shirtful of them. And the nice thing is that Rog did a bunch of freezer meal prep for breakfasts - so we have a bunch of packets of various meats and hashbrowns - just add eggs and cheese for a nice scramble. We tested them out and they're pretty good. 

Rog's little cousin Payton joined us for VB on Monday and wasn't annihilated, so that was nice. And we're still having a decent group show up mostly. 

For YW, we did a spa night with a foot bath and face masks and nail painting and hot cocoa. I assisted to my best ability with painting some nails, but it wasn't great. 

The missionaries also came over for spaghetti and salad (but I was the only one that ate the salad). The spaghetti was delicious. 

Also, after taking that new needling course, I ordered some bigger needles and caved to buy the big electrotherapy machine (costing me about $1K), but I've already used it 3x this week, so it's worth it for my job and maybe I can get a partial reimbursement. We'll see. Let me know if you need a 9cm needle in your butt. Therapeutic reasons only. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Phoenix

We missed VB last week due to illness and every single player being out of town. That's ok. I went to the gym instead. 

We had a YW revamp and now I'm only in charge of Sundays and not activities. But still working with the younger group, which is fun because they participate. We went and heart attacked some new girls with the 3 younger kids available this week. That's a fairly typical turnout but it's always different girls. 

Rog and I went out to BW's for dinner and a show. This time it was a college ball game with one post from Michigan absolutely running the game. It was fun to watch. Then we got some Crumbl cookies on our way home. 

I had taken Friday off for part 2 of my dry needling course in Phoenix. The instructor asked us to make groups with only 1 inexperienced person in them to help things run smoother. So we had 1 newbie and 1 person who also took part 1 before. But turns out that was last week and she still didn't know what she was doing. Then randomly like 30 minutes later, this one kid didn't have a group so he joined ours and turns out he was also a newbie with the pokiest fingers known to man and zero attention span. But he didn't tell us he was new and the other lady didn't mention she took part 1 last week until they asked me to be the patient first and then none of them knew what a spinous process was. Yeesh. 

Some of these needles are 9 cm long. 

After that, I took over and we had a better time of it. But rough start. By the end, the other new girl felt confident and the other two were iffy but probably won't kill anyone, so that's good. I also had a classmate from NAU that was in the course with us, so we got to catch up for a bit. 

The other unfortunate part of this course was that the instructor was very strict on obeying the projected timelines. Which meant we didn't get out until 8pm day 1 and I was late meeting Cenita and Colton for dinner. We still ended up with the most delicious burgers, hot tubbing, and having a good chat. I like them. So much so that I didn't go to bed until midnight. 

It was a long 3 day course, but I was back home around 5 and still had some energy left to check out a trailer Rog has been investigating. I liked it. We'll see.