Housekeeping!

I’m not really sure why I feel that this is a housekeeping post, other than I’m going to jot a few things down here that really have nothing to do with each other.

First of all, I discovered (some time back) a blogger who goes by Sarcastica and only recently stepped out of my lurking-only position (one I have on many blogs since I rarely like to comment on strangers’ lives—yes, even when they put the information about their lives “out there” for anyone to see) on her blog. She is a wonderful blogger with such fortitude and maturity for her age (which I hate adding on there, since many times physical age has nothing to do with actual maturity or grace in life) that I was immediately drawn to adding her to my daily feed. I wanted to draw some more attention to her (not that she really needs it from me *laughs*) mainly because we’ve recently discovered that we have a few things in common that most people don’t really understand. And we both are honest with ourselves about relationships with other people and do NOT let these problems rule us or make us something other than what we want to be. It’s refreshing.

Of course, it helps that she loves me THIS much, too, as evidenced by her giving me such a wonderful award! *chuckles* Since I only recently started talking to her and commenting, I was definitely surprised to find myself on such a list while reading through her latest post. I’m not really a meme person, but I did want to acknowledge the sentiment and just say how grateful I’ve been the past couple weeks for getting to know Jessica (who spells “Jessi” the same way I do, which is interesting to me, as I’ve never met another Jess who did so) and for being able to talk to someone who understands some of the feelings I’ve dealt with regarding certain people in my life. (I’m being purposefully vague here, just in case. It’s really probably not you, though. *winks*) Since most of the people I love THIS much don’t blog, it’s a bit hard to pass the meme on. More of my friends and family need to be blogging. Hmph.

Onward to more housekeeping issues. Neal and I finally jaunted up to Canada since we were less than an hour from the border during our anniversary vacation this weekend. We ate at one of the best restaurants we’ve ever eaten at in our lives (both of us agree on that one), mainly due to the fresh, homemade bread that literally melted in your mouth. Mmmmmmmm. They don’t have a website that I can find, so I’m going to just give you their name—The Prospector Steak House—and let you know they are on Cumberland Street near the waterfront in Thunder Bay. Crossing the border into Canada was fairly uneventful (although we stopped on the border stateside to see the largest waterfall in Minnesota before crossing. This was perfect timing, as it had been cloudy all day but the sun came out right when we reached the top, affording us a delightful FULL RAINBOW from the mist rising up from the bottom of the falls), but we were amused that the border guard sounded like Kermit the frog. He seemed pretty disinterested in us, and Neal said we don’t really look like people going to Canada to do harm. My thought was that if I WERE going to Canada to do harm, I’d probably want to look harmless. Obviously.

Once across, we stopped at the visitor information center and spoke with a wonderful lady who marked our way on the map (and is the one who suggested the restaurant), complete with every stoplight Xed on the map. (She told us she grew up in the town we were visiting.) She also gave us ideas as to where to visit afterwards, and we were definitely awed by the other waterfall we decided to visit (the second largest in Ontario, apparently). We didn’t have much time before it grew dark (and we lost an hour when we crossed), so we’re already planning on returning and spending more time at the falls. (Let us know if you want to join us!)

We did return the favor to the information center lady, as she will be visiting Duluth in just a couple weeks, so we gave her advice on what to do when she came to town (“I’ll be honest,” she said, “it’s just for the shopping. I don’t know anything else to do there.”) She was excited to hear about ColdStone Creamery (the two here in town), since she’d seen it on Oprah once. *Iaughs*

Our trip back to the US was more eventful, with our guard searching the car and finding something fairly ominous in our trunk: our Christmas tree. Apparently, we have forgotten it was in the trunk and haven’t stopped by the storage shed to unload it. The guard found it highly amusing, so we were glad to give him a laugh (especially since his evening was looking to be fairly boring with so few people around at that time of night.)

As a last bit of housekeeping, I’m starting a part-time job next week through the temp agency that is potentially temp-to-hire. It’s low hours, but the money will (obviously) help us out. We’ll take it a day at a time and make a final decision IF they offer me the permanent position (which may not happen at all). Keep us and our decisions in your thoughts and prayers, if you would.

I have a fairly big (to me) announcement to make (that correlates to a recent post), but I’m trying to decide how to make sense of what happened. I wasn’t expecting it and…I’m still a bit flabbergasted at the turn of events. I hate being cryptic, but…as I said, I’m still trying to make sense of it myself and will post when I can do the topic justice.

Finally, I just have to say this: WHOO-HOO! TWO YEARS OF MARRIAGE AND GETTING BETTER EVERY SINGLE DAY! I love you, Neal!

(Sorry for the “general, life-update” post, but sometimes they’re needed just to get a few things out of the way.)