Mishaps and other haps

I have been taking a small vacation from work since last Friday to spend time with my parents, who are up from Florida to visit.

It’s hard to think of new and different sightseeing trips. I know they are mostly here to see me, but after making a thousand mile trip (or two thousand if you count the return trip), I always want to provide more entertainment than sitting around my house for ten or twelve hours a day.

When I first moved to Wisconsin, we saw the House on the Rock. On subsequent visits, we hit the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum (soon to relocate to Middleton), Cave of the Mounds, and we’ve also toured most of the downtown Madison sites worth seeing– the state Capitol, the Historical Society Museum, the Veterans’ Museum. We’ve seen the trolls in Mount Horeb and experienced the utter Swissness of New Glarus. I think we even did a little wine tasting in town one or the other.

I took them to Middleton’s Historical Society Museum when I lived in downtown Middleton. This small building included such novelties as 19th C. wall decorations made from women’s hair and a ton of old dentistry and medical equipment (the donor/patron was a local dentist back in the day).

We have NOT toured Taliesin and may never do so because I am not a big Frank Lloyd Wright fan and feel that we could do something way cooler for the price of admission.

This visit we added yet a few more notches to our belts of Wisconsin experiences. On Saturday, we went to the downtown Farmer’s Market and visited Terry, who urged us to accompany him and Connie to a free organ concert at the Overture Center. The Overture organ holds a record (not sure whether it’s national or a world record) for “largest movable object on a stage”, so this was quite an experience. My parents had been inside the Overture Center before and we had toured the attached art museum, but I think this was their first performance there and I’m pretty sure their first organ concert … or first HUGE organ concert.

On Monday we decided to go to the Wisconsin Dells and rode the Wisconsin Ducks (amphibious vehicles used during World War II and the Korean conflict and also for rescue efforts during disasters). We also visited Circus World Museum in Baraboo.

Yesterday evening we visited American Players Theater to see “The Winter’s Tale.” My parents had been out to APT before, back in 2003 when we saw “Pygmalion.” However, outdoor theater is always a fun activity to plan with out-of-town visitors.

Amongst these highlights, we have also been visiting florists to get estimates on wedding flowers, testing the restaurant that will be catering the wedding, visiting the venue of the wedding to see the beautiful prairie setting and get a better idea of the layout of the building and site, shopping for trees, and doing a lot of chatting and relaxing. I have cooked dinner for us a couple of times (with a little help). We visited with Kim (Michael and Joe’s dad) at lunch on Father’s Day.

Today is the last day of our visit and we don’t have too much planned for the day. We’re going to visit with Althea and the kids at lunch and maybe do a little more tree shopping in the afternoon.

It’s been a good visit. I’m not going to worry too much about planning activities for their next visit in October since there will be a wedding going on

I dropped off my dress to be hemmed and bustled this morning.

I ordered invitations this afternoon.

I have two appointments set up with florists this month and am working on setting up a consultation with Grey Oaks Photography, recommended to us by Josh’s dad, David Talbot.

I made a list of “things left to buy” which will probably be updated frequently.

I calculated that we have spent just over $3,000 on the wedding so far.

I cleaned out my pile of “wedding stuff” (some of which was inherited from Maretta) and it looks less cluttered now. A spider scurried out of the crate of wedding magazines and Small Horse pursued it under my desk.

With four months left in the wedding countdown, I am finally booking the less important services, such as photography and flowers.

This week, I discovered that the photographer we planned to use has already been booked for October 10th. Oops, my fault for not calling sooner. I have made other contacts, however, and hopefully we will have a sweet deal booked soon.

At work, we are in the process of moving, but luckily workload has slowed down a little temporarily. I am on vacation starting Friday and my co-worker goes on vacation after I return to work. We will also be starting a new project (next week, hopefully), too, so we will again be busy.

My parents are coming up to visit at the end of next week and I am taking time off to spend with them while they are in town.

That’s about all for this week. My cold is better (still coughing). We saw “Up” and “Star Trek” last weekend. I cried at both. I felt a little silly, but I couldn’t help it.

On the agenda for this weekend: appointment for dress alterations tomorrow morning (probably just hemming and bustling) and a salon appointment for me in the afternoon, followed by babysitting Saturday evening. Shopping and lunch with Michael’s family are planned for Sunday. I hope to also play some WoW.

Quote of the week by Michael, following date night dinner: “You’re more like yourself when you’ve had tequila.”

I have been out of commission with a cold the past few days. I’m hoping to recover enough this weekend so that I can fully function next week. I have vacation coming up soon (followed by two weeks of vacation for my co-worker) and can’t afford to get too far behind at work. If I end up doing some overtime, I’d rather be in good health. Nothing like working when you can barely focus on the computer screen …