a sigh of relaxation

It seems like it has been a long weekend. Friday I had to go to Milwaukee for a green card thing. Ryan very lovingly accompanied me. It gave us a chance to indulge in some terrible, but oh-so-good “road-behaviors”. That encompassed a rest-stop at Target, with a cheddar pretzel for me, and a ham-n-swiss sandwich for Ryan. The appointment went smoothly and we were on the road again in less than 15 minutes. On our way home, we had the urge to stop at the outlet mall...well, I had the urge, and Ryan glumly followed. But he got some clothes; in fact, he got way more clothes than I did! I was very good, in comparison.

Saturday and Sunday we made up for all the excesses, in many ways. We didn’t use the car at all, for starters, we didn’t spend any money, didn’t shop (even online), and we ate entirely home-cooked food! Talk about living efficiently.

We started Saturday right. Whole-wheat toast with butter and jam for breakfast, followed by a beautiful bike ride to Mineral Point and back…slightly over 20 miles. It was a very scenic trail, but no shade at all! Good thing we put on sunblock. When we got to Mineral Point, we stopped by the farmer’s market, and I got a “lavender eggplant”, and also some “Italian bottle onions”. The lady at the stand said that the bottle onions tasted really good when grilled, so I thought we would make a pizza that night and try them on it! We did take some pictures along the bike trail –

















Saturday afternoon and evening we primarily relaxed. We made sushi (second time last week!) for lunch, and it turned out very well. Ryan was happy that his rolls turned out much better the second time. We watched the movie version of “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. Figured it would be a good idea, since we just finished reading the book two weeks ago. The book is MUCH better. For dinner, I tried a new pizza dough recipe – which turned out very nicely – and our toppings were the eggplant and Italian bottle onions from the farmer’s market, and also some tomatoes and banana peppers from my garden. The whole thing turned out very well, and we decided that we will definitely use the dough recipe again. Here’s a picture –



Sunday, I had media duty all morning at church. Afterwards, those of us who had signed up for the praise band jam stayed on to rehearse. We needed to be there by 3, so we had from 1 to 3 to practice. It was a little sketchy, and we probably weren’t as prepared as we could have been. But the event itself was great! We couldn’t hear ourselves because the stage monitors sucked, and I guess I had gotten used to the in-ear monitors….but it was exciting, and we were there worshipping, and it was really cool to see all the area churches come together for one cause. I wish there were more concerts/events like that.

And today we are more than halfway through August. *sigh*