Milwaukee

I meant to post about my trip to Milwaukee while I was in Milwaukee, but you know how things go. After hours of teaching “Customer Delight” and Safety and Sanitation, a girl has got to do something else besides sit in front of a computer screen, trying to come up with something creative to say about a city she is not even going to get to see.

As far as Milwaukee goes, the airport was very nice. Much bigger than I expected, but recently updated, free WIFI and of course, filled with Starbucks. The Avis Rental Car lady was very nice and suggested that we eat at Knopps (a famous local frozen custard place which happened to be right down the street from the hotel), and we were upgraded for free to an SUV. I have no idea what it was, but the gas pedal was so light, I peeled out multiple times throughout the trip. I was traveling with a co-worker and I think I kind of started to freak her out. I am a good driver! This car was just touchy.

The hotel was a Marriott, so of course, it was really nice. I taught all day Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Wednesday, we went to Knopps and I see why they are famous. They make Vanilla and Chocolate frozen custard everyday, but they also rotate two specialty flavors into the mix daily. On this day, the specialty flavors were Burgundy Cherry and Turtle. I didn’t get to taste the cherry (although I saw people eating it and it was a gorgeous color of cherry red) but I did sample the turtle. It was vanilla frozen custard mixed (and when I say mixed, I mean perfectly swirled) with caramel, chocolate and whole pecans. I was incredibly fresh (made within the hour) and so, so good. I actually ended up with a heaping cone of chocolate in the end and that was also wonderful.

On Wednesday night we had dinner at Noodles and Company around 9 pm and headed off to bed. We planned on meeting at 6:45am to head to the airport. My co-worker said her flight was at 8am and I was sure mine was around 11:45am, so I would just have to sit around the airport.

At 6:45am, my dreams were interrupted by a light knocking on my door. At I leapt, naked directly from the bed to the closet (which was at least 10 feet away) I groggily came to the realization that I had overslept.

“Hold on a second,” I croaked towards the door.

I threw on some clothes, and opened the door.

“Sorry, I overslept.” I said. My co-worker came into the room and stood there as I hastily threw all my stuff into the suitcase (of course I hadn’t packed the night before, what and break my procrastination habit created in the early years of traveling with Krispy Kreme. Always pack the morning of…)

I had glanced at the clock in my naked leap to the closet and it had said exactly 6:45am. Fully packed, dressed and mossy-mouthed and bleary-eyed I looked at the clock on the way out of the door and it said 6:47. Damn, I’m good.

We got into the SUV and peeled out into the rainy grey morning. As we neared the airport, my co-worker pulled out her itinerary to confirm her flight information.

“Uh, Ellie? You’re going to kill me.”

“Why, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t know what happened. I really thought my flight was at 8am.”

“When is your flight?” I asked a little hesitantly, my un-showered body tensing.

“Um, 11:45am!”

There was nothing to do but laugh about it. We were pulling into the rental car return at this point so we figured we would just try to get out earlier. I went to my airline and she went to hers. It was then that I realized that I was also wrong about my flight. I wasn’t scheduled to leave until 1:45pm and at this point it was a little after 7am; and I was scheduled to arrive in Greensboro at 6:10, a full 11 hours from then. I spoke to the lady at the counter. She got me a 10am flight out of Milwaukee, but could do nothing about the flight from Cincinnati. So I sat in the Cincinnati airport for 5 hours until finally boarding my flight home to Greensboro.

Cavin and the Camera

Our camera has broken. Which makes me very sad because it means that I am going to have to buy one now. And we have only had this one for less than one year. Dan's parents bought it for us when Bronwen was born. Well, at least it put in it's time, I have about a million Bronwen pictures saved on the computer.

Basically the only problem with the camera is that the screen on the back is broken. This would be a surmountable problem if there was a veiw finder on this camera, but there is not. So, I can point the camera at things and take pictures. I just can't tell what the picture is going to be until I download it. This should make for some fun blind shooting, but I would like to be able to make some descisions on what pictures I want to take as well.

I discovered that the broken screen was the only problem as I was downloading the pictures from Bronwen's birthday party on to the computer. As I was downloading I was surprised to see two little tiny videos on the list of files downloaded. "Did I take those?" I wondered to myself and was delighted to see a cheeky Mr Cavin smiling back at me in the second video. It was his conviction that it was just the screen that was broken and alas he was right, with a little video to prove it.

Five Pounds of Curry

I have hired a personal trainer. I know, now I am some sort of 30-something, half-posh, middle class, hyphenated stereotype. But it is actually a really good thing. I have been trying, albeit half heartedly to regain my pre-baby body for about a year now, and the time had finally come. This new gym has come to town, and it is a really great place, with free kid care and a pool and all the other stuff I like. As I was signing up (I got an awesome deal through my work) I was suggestively sold a personal trainer package. My justification for paying all of that money was, “she’ll kick my butt into shape so I don’t have to.”

I met with Keisha last week for the first time and we did my measurements (don’t even ask me) and we started working out. I left her the first day thoroughly tired and sweaty, but happy and feeling good.

Yesterday I was scheduled to meet with her again at 1pm. ( I have paid for 25 sessions, and this was number 2.) I decided to eat lunch around 11am so as to be mostly digested by the time I got there. I decided to eat about five pounds of this delicious and spicy curry I had made along with a huge pile a brown rice; excessive, maybe, but healthy, right?

I met with Keisha 2 hours later and she proceeded to beat me to a bloody pulp. We started with stretches, crunches and back, then worked chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps then bicycled, hard for 4 minutes. Then we did it again (when I say we, I mean me!), chest back shoulders, biceps, triceps and then bicycled hard for 4 more minutes.

At this point, I was starting to taste that curry again, and it was not a comfortable feeling. I asked her how much more I had to do and she said one more circuit and I said,

“I’m going to throw up.”

Keisha looked a little concerned.

“What? Why?”

“I ate five pounds of curry for lunch. I don’t think that was very smart!”

She started laughing at me. “You probably shouldn’t do that next time.”

“Okay.” I moaned as I clutched aching head and rumbling stomach.

“Well, we’ll finish with abs then,” she said, and as I sighed in relief, sure my pain was over now, she completed the pummeling by making me do six sets of fifteen crunches (for the slow, that’s 90 crunches).

I stumbled out of the gym, flopped into my boiling hot car and proceeded to drive home. I actually have no idea how I made it, I passed out in my drive way and then finally made it into the house. I had to call into work and tell them I wasn’t going to make it in. What a loser.