Miscellaneous Monday

You all proubably thought I was kidding with my "Get on a plane and fly to Nashville" to do in the "tagged" post back on Thursday. I wasn't, I really did get on a plane that night. I was gone for only 38 hours, but it was worth it to see my friend Britany, who lives down there, and her husband Scott. If I hadn't gone now I would have run the risk of not seeing them until Christmas, so I had to squeeze it in. I was working away in the airport and on the plane, and while Britany was in class on Friday, so it wasn't a total loss of work time. It seems totally crazy given how busy I am, but I firmly believe that people are my best investments, and Britany is one of my longest friends. We had a lovely time, despite the fact that I brought the rain with me to Nashville.

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I'm sure most of you are aware of the torrential rains and horrific weather we had the last two weeks in Southeastern Wisconsin. There has been a lot of flooding all around us. A few nights Hubby had to take some very interesting routes home to get around all of the streets the Root River had submerged. I ran into a camera rep from California on the first day of the storms and he was like "Is this normal?" Umm, yeah. But if you aren't from the area, you might have missed this video. Please click and watch it, it is amazing. What is happening there is that Lake Delton got so high with flash flooding that the lake formed a new river for itself and then emptied itself into a nearby lake. That new river did what you see on the video. The waters here are so high, that part of I-94 is actually closed north of Delafield. I'm hoping that gets fixed before my next Madison wedding (hi, Silva and Felipe!)

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Yesterday my family took my Dad to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago for Father's Day. Great fun, but whoa - are there a lot of misbehaved children and parents out there. Whew! Ironically, my Brother-in-law, Jake, bought a book on how we are raising a "pacifier nation" to read on the train home.

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Ringo Update: He has started to sort of lift his leg at the end of a peeing session - Hubby is so proud!

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This Miscellaneous Monday gets a special boost with a Birthday post. Normally these are standalone posts, but well, this one is belated, and I have so many weddings and engagements to post about I'm making room. My good friend Britany's Birthday was last Tuesday. I won't reveal which one it was, but let's just say she has caught up to me now. Every year this happens and we say "how did we get to be xx old?", it always seems so improbable. So, from here on out, we have agreed not to mention the numbers, just celebrate generic birthdays.
Britany is an amazing soul, someone who deserves much more than a belated blog birthday wish. We have been friends since we were freshmen in High School and I couldn't ask for a better one. I don't know if she really knows how much she means to me, but she has been a great constant in my life, who has always been grounded, fun and positive. To illustrate what an incredible friend Britany is, I will tell you this story, which I was reminded about while talking to Monica last week about her "Gonna be a Bridesmaid?" seminar coming up. I asked Britany to be a bridesmaid in our wedding, and she quickly accepted. Well, at the time, she was in school part time to get her Master's in education, attending on Saturdays and a few Fridays. Since there were so few class dates, missing just one automatically dropped your grade, two meant you failed. I remember expressing concern over this to Brit, and she quickly brushed it off. It turned out that one class she needed to take had a Friday and Saturday class the week of our wedding. So, if she took it, she would fail for having missed the two classes. What did Britany do? She dropped the class, walked at graduation without really graduating and is starting that class this week to make it up. Me, I didn't even know she had done this until long after the wedding when she accidentally let it slip in a conversation. To her it wasn't even debatable - of course she would do it. Amazing friend, no doubt.

Happy (belated) Birthday Britany!
Here is Brit and me at my wedding:

(photo by Heather Cook Elliott)