It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Charles Dickens' epic first line from the book, A Tale of Two Cities, sums up how August has gone for me so far. I feel like I've packed about a month's worth of activities into the first two weeks of the month and am definitely ready for life to slow down a bit. Here's what falls under the best/worst category for the month!

The Best of Times...
- My month started out great with a girls weekend getaway to a cabin up north with 5 of my college friends. We did some shopping, ate great food, put together a 1,000 piece puzzle, caught up on each others lives, soaked up the sun, and laughed a lot. We had so much fun and are committed to getting together on an annual basis going forward!

Posing by Babe the Blue Ox, who is the side kick of the American Fok Hero, Paul Bunyan.

- We spent the second weekend hosting Alli and Chris and showing them the sights of Minneapolis. Neither one of them had been to Minneapolis so we did our best to show them the best that our city has to offer. We were gifted with absolutely beautiful weather! I did a terrible job of taking photos of all the things we saw and did, but some of the highlights were walking through the Rose Gardens by Lake Harriet, checking out Minnehaha Falls, walking through my old neighborhood, and eating dinner at one of the best restaurants in Minneapolis.

Alli & Chris by Minnehaha Falls

 - My garden has been producing a ton of fresh produce! I came home from a business trip and picked everything in the picture below, plus a bag of green beans. I already had quite a few tomatoes that I had picked the week before, so I need to figure out how to can stat! My goal is to try to make salsa and spaghetti sauce next weekend.

The Worst of Times...
- I have been so sick. Like the sickest I have been in a very, very long time. After hacking away all weekend during my girls weekend getaway, I ended up going to urgent care last Monday as I'd been sick for a week and hadn't made any improvement. It turns out I had a nasty case of bronchitis. I went to urgent care the morning before leaving for a 3-day business trip to northern California, so the timing was terrible.
 

Starting off my Monday with an urgent care patient bracelet.

- Being sick while traveling for work is HORRID. I coughed through presentations. I was constantly hot/clammy as my body couldn't regulate its temperature and it was so hot in the Central Valley of California where I spent most of my time. The low point of the trip was when I made the mistake of taking my antibiotics on an empty stomach and ended up throwing up one morning. I had to quickly rally as I had 4 different client meetings that day. I was on my own for the first two days and on the final day, the sales rep I was traveling with said I sounded so awful and said he would have understood if I wanted to stay in the car while he went in and did the client meetings. I opted to go into the client meetings with him as I figured I might as well contribute to the conversation since I was already there.

- To top things off, earlier in the month I found out that there was a water issue in the building where the condo I own is and because the connection between the dishwasher and kitchen sink in my unit wasn't properly installed, water backed up in to the kitchen. The laminate tile got wet and warped, so the flooring has to be replaced and I had to get that connection between the sink and the dishwasher fixed. And the oven element stopped working, too, so that is getting replaced.  When it rains, it pours I guess. Anytime I have to shell out money for that condo, it annoys me because I would LOVE to sell it, but it's STILL worth less than the balance of my mortgage. Le sigh. Luckily I have a property manager that deals with stuff like this because clearly I would not have had time to deal with it this month.

So there you have it. It's been a month of insanity. There have been good times, but there have been some tough times. I'm hoping that calmer waters are ahead because I feel like life is totally and completely kicking my *ss right now. Luckily, I have a mostly plan-free week. Thank God. I feel like I've barely seen Phil for the last 2 weeks so we really need some quiet time to just be together. And, his birthday falls this week so I'm glad I'll be around this week so I can help him celebrate it!

What's going on in your world these days?