Life in the Cheese Drawer

then i would be done with work.
i had a two day work week this week since i was up at leech lake for the beginning of the week. i really like taking vacation time at the beginning of the week because then you have only 2 days of work, then the weekend again! it’s like two vacations for the price of one.
while i was at the lake, i got a phone call from my mortgage lady saying we were $294 over the limit for rural development. turns out two weeks of 2007’s pay was paid on jan. 4 and was counting toward 2008 pay. they just needed my  jan. 4 paystub and everything is a-ok (for now). then she needed a letter stating why our credit was checked on june 2 (the other mortgage company) and a statement from the bank showing the earnest money had cleared. holy toledo, what a circus.
but! a closing date is set of august 13 (yay charlie’s bday) at 9 a.m. in waite park, so we don’t have to drive down to the cities, which is a nice thing. that’s a wednesday, so i’m taking off thursday and friday (as is nate) and hopefully we can get everything cleaned and painted and maybe we’ll move that weekend. so anyone who wants to help me move, you are certainly welcome!
yay it’s almost the weekend! i’m really beat. i need a nap.

one week of work then my family reunion! woohoo!! i checked the weather and it’s supposed to rain on sunday and it’ll be a little chilly, which is weird, but okay. i’ll just have to brave the lake. i hope i can make it through the week! 🙂
we’re still waiting for a signed purchase agreement on the house. delores said it might take up to two weeks for them to get it back to us. ugh! i want to just finish this and paint already. 🙂

this weekend is my family reunion, yay! i checked the weather last night and it was perfect – 85 each day with nightly lows of 60. i check again 10 mins ago and now it’s 95 each day with lows at 70. yuck! too warm for sleeping and fires. up until last year we set up the tents so they were even with the lake, so it was nice that the wind from the lake breezed in the tents in the morning, but last year we tented up on a hill due to a fire at the resort, and it was stiflingly hot. yuck! we were up every morning at 7:30 because it got so hot in the tents. i hope the spots down by the lake are open this year.
so i’m looking forward to boat rides and swimming and eating grandma’s donuts and hanging out by the fire and drinking beer with my cousins and the smell of sunscreen and getting sunburned and OFF and wearing sunglasses and swimming and seeing my siblings (minus liz 🙁 ) and eating decent food and not wearing shoes and laughing and did i say swimming and the smell of lake and the sun and the breeze in the trees and riding in the boat and not working and hey, swimming and my toes in the sand and nummy drunken sandwiches and the anticipatory drive there and watching the trees turn from oaks and maples into birches and pines and swimming….
i am not looking forward to not seeing my cat for 4 days, not seeing nate for 4 days, and having to be in the company of anthony and sam for 4 days.
oh, and HP is sooo coming with me. i don’t care if people look at me weird. it’s BOOK SEVEN. get over it.

i took a break from doing nothing last weekend and went to visit melissa in fargo. i was up there four days, three nights, one of which was spent at her parents’ house in fertile. i think the highlight of the trip was seeing a former high school associate who graduated a year before i did. jeff miller.
i didn’t even know it was him until about halfway through supper, and considering he was our waiter at red lobster, i must have been blind or something. he does look different, older different. he was still tall (b-ball player), and had his nametag that said “jeff”, but it still took me that long. i don’t know if he recognized me, and i wasn’t going to say anything because i thought that might be weird. 28 and working at red lobster in fargo. he had to have gotten major athletic scholarships for college. well, like melissa said, maybe he’s working his way through law school.
i also got to take home a lot of beef! melissa’s parents had to slaughter their bull because it broke its back while doing its job. (how on earth?…) so now i have hamburger, bologna, and a roast in the freezer. mm mm!!
and i know i haven’t had a short story entry in a while. i’m not having writers’ block, because i know how the order of the story is going to go; i’m just uninspired right now. maybe in the next couple days. we’ll see.

here’s the pirate hat store.
http://www.captjackspiratehats.com/

well i was back last sunday, but i’ve slacked on updating. oh well.
i enjoyed the trip to SD. it got long after 5 days tho. too much time with my parents and my dad’s horrendous driving!
example of my dad driving:

• no blinker, EVER.
• drives 58 mph on the 75 mph zone freeway in SD
• drives 15 mph down city streets with a line of people behind him
• drives 68 on the 55 mph MN highways (does this make sense?)
• can’t hear CRAP (in order to talk to him, you need to yell his name so he has your attention, then you start talking loudly).
• cuts people off BADLY. not only does he cut them off, but he’s pulling a trailer and turns into lanes insanely slow so the person has to slow down a ton or zoom around him.

i just close my eyes a pray i live another day.
i will post pics soon!