Monday Miscellany

Happy Monday, and a belated Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian readers!  I actually have today off as the bond market is closed for Columbus Day.  Hooray!  I heart long weekends.  Here's a hodge podge summary of what's going on in my life these days.

- The weekend before last one of my best college friends, Heidi, flew in from Austin for a girls weekend.  It was so much fun to spend a weekend with some of my closest college friends.  On Saturday we went to an apple orchard that also had a vineyard and that evening we hosted some other college friends that lived in the area for a girls night in (which is my kind of Saturday night).  I also got to introduce Heidi to Phil and he got a chance to spend more time around my friends as we ordered in pizza on Friday and included the boys and the kids.  I think the quote of the weekend, though, happen on Saturday morning.  My friend Brooke's little boy who is almost 4 was snuggling on my lap at breakfast and he said, "You smell like my grandma."  Hahaha. This is actually a compliment because my friend's mom is pretty much more fashionable than me (I am not kidding) and according to Brooke she wears nice perfume.  ;) 

Cheers to drinking at 11 am on a Saturday morning!

- Last week was not a great week.  A pipe in my wall leaked and flooded the carpet in my bedroom and damaged some of the wood floors in my living room.  I didn't discover the wet carpet until 10 pm on Tuesday night, which meant maintenance came at 11:45 pm.  I ended up driving to Phil's at midnight to spend the night as they said they'd be my unit for 2-4 hours.  My apartment is still torn up because they have to replace the carpet padding and that won't happen until later this week.  Then they have to replace some of the wood floors.  And patch the big hole in the wall that they cut to fix the pipe.  And hopefully they will clean before they leave because my wood floors are disgustingly dirty.  The timing of this wasn't great because I was already feeling overwhelmed by my schedule and I suck at handling chaos/disruptions to my life.  I just hope all the repairs are made and my home can return to looking clean and organized by the time my friend Lori arrives on October 24th for her weekend visit.

- On a positive note, Phil and I celebrated the 2 year anniversary of our first date on Friday!  The anniversary of our first date was actually on October 2nd but Heidi flew in that night so we had to push back our celebration.  We both prefer casual dining restaurants so we celebrated by going to this cute Cuban place called Victor's.  The food was awesome and it was fun to reminisce about the early days of our relationship.  It's kind of crazy to think about all that has happened over the last 2 years...  However we focused on the early days and did not travel down the memory lane of 2013 because that is not fun for either of us to reminisce about.

- I also got to host Iowa Amber last weekend as she came up for a book fair in Minneapolis. We were drawn to this event because Stephanie Perkins, author of Anna and the French Kiss (and 2 other books) was speaking.  It was fun to listen to her speak!  After the book fair, we went to two independent book stores in the Twin Cities (Micawbers Books and Magers and Quinn). I am shocked that I did not buy any books!  We capped off the day by meeting up with Phil, Lesli and her husband and Allison and her husband for dinner and a game of trivia at Chatterbox Pub, which is a fun restaurant with lots of board games. It was fun to host Amber and get a chance to really catch up.  We had great talks about books, careers, relationships and friendships.

Amber and I having some fun with the props in the Teen tent where Stephanie Perkins spoke!

- I leave for Charleston tomorrow to attend a conference put on by one of the bond issuers we work closely with.  I am hoping I have some down time to do a little exploring or at least some walking around but these conferences tend to involve dinners every night so we'll see what I can fit in.  At a minimum I want to go for some runs as the morning temps will be so mild!

What's on your mind today?  I won't be posting while I am traveling so have a great week everyone!