AND.. you can’t leave without hearing “Songs of the Whalemen”

The only time when it’s been outwardly apparent (aside from the British accent) that Ian’s not a US Citizen is when we traveled to Canada for a day last year. It occurred to us that we needed to make sure the entry and exit rules weren’t different for a British citizen than a US citizen. And of course the entry questions were a bit odd… “Why are you here from the UK”, for example. Erm.. we just crossed the border, dude. We are visiting Seattle and thought it would be fun to leave the country and visit the aquarium, ok?

He would definitely have the advantage, if (and we’re definitely not) we were going to Cuba. He would be able to get off the plane. We would get an immediate return flight. We need a special visa and we need to be on an approved sort of visit (being a journalist or traveling with the Pope or something).

We had a doctor’s appointment set for 15 minutes from where we were, which was awesome, since we were in the same neighborhood.

The doctor examined her arm, did a few physical tests, then sent us for x-rays to see if there was a break or fracture somewhere, but luckily, there wasn’t.

We came away with an excuse for gym class for no upper body physical activity and instructions to give her 600 mg of ibuprofen and ice to her elbow for 7 – 14 days.

Crazy day, but it turned out alright.

.. present opening..

.. a few international phonecalls to our dads living overseas..

.. a trip to Lauritzen Gardens, where we viewed lots of interesting gardens and rode the tram (it was a hot day!)

2011-06-19

Then we dined on amazingly grilled amazing steak and corn-on-the-cob.

It was a good day.

The band at the festival was a Native American rock band called Brulé.    We took video but the background noise really took away our ability to do their music justice.   So you can read about them here:  http://www.brulerecords.com/isis/promovid3.html and here: http://www.brulerecords.com/home.html.

We spent an hour or so on Sunday at the Omaha Farmer’s Market in Aksarben Village.   There are a lot of people walking their dogs there, and it’s always nice to meet them.   We bought a few things, like a new collar for Molly, our mini-schnauzer, and some ground beef from Thistle and Clover.  We’re cooking some burgers for dinner (when I say “we”, I mean “Ian”) and topping them with chèvre and some habanero paste from JPaste.

My parents are on their way back to Italy.    They’ve had loads of travelling in the last week.   When they get back, I bet work will be relaxing.  We’ll see.  I always get incredible jetlag (in a flu-sort of way) going that direction.

It was good to see them.   I hope we’ll see them again soon!

This is us (sorry, Ian is taking the picture) laughing because Brit kept laughing.

We ate at a really nice restaurant called Firebirds, which has wonderful steak, by the way.  Ian cooked an amazing dinner of pork chops, potato salad, potato wedges (for those against eating potato salad.. is there anyone?  Oh.. Brittany!), and a lovely salad with homemade vinaigrette.

We toured Village Point’s shopping area, went to Kohl’s to do some shopping, then my dad bought loads of Jiffy cake mix and other various things to send back to Italy.

Oh, and we couldn’t miss going down to the Missouri River to see how overflowing it was.

Have you ever had someone say, “I don’t wish to do that. Do this instead and then you won’t have to ask me anymore.” So you say, “Are you sure that’s what you want me to do”, and they say, “Yes. I will sign off. Just get me the paperwork.”

So you get the person the paperwork and there are all sorts of reasons why the paperwork won’t be signed today. Maybe in 3 weeks. Or maybe not. We’ll see.

It goes on to the point where you’re thinking, “Has this all been some sort of crazy joke to get us to do a bunch of work and accomplish nothing but create a boatload of frustration?”

Then, the papers are finally signed and you can MOVE ON. Moving on is good. Moving on is one less thing to worry about.

No, this doesn’t have anything horrible to do with my marriage.

Anyway, in other news, I have all of next week off. Thank you. I’ve been on-call all week and odd stuff has been happening. So, good luck to who is left. I’m not the one able to fix these things, just taking calls from people who are frustrated due to the problems. So I’ll have a week of quiet where I imagine they’ll have it all squared away by the time I return.

Yay for vacation.

http://thatcloudlookslikearabbit.com/blog/2009/so-here-was-my-morning/

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Happy birthday to my wonderful daughter, who turns 10 today!     She’s been such a blessing in my life.