My family has a tradition that when a girl marries, you get a piece of wedding ivy to carry in your bouquet. The ivy is a cutting of the ivy that my grandmother carried in her bouquet on her wedding day and that is still going strong 65+ years later. I was thrilled to have a piece for my bouquet and carefully brought it home so I could root it and ( Read more... )

The adventure of the fall was a trip to Prague with my mother. She had, for some years, been saying that she "needed to see Prague before I die!" I finally told her that if she really did want to see Prague, she just needed to tell me that she wanted me to take her to Prague. She said, "fine, take me to Prague!" So I did. :)
( Prague! (long, because PRAGUE!) )

The four family Christmasses all went pretty well - the kids were loud, my brother was late, my grandpa insisted on talking about things that made my grandma crazy - you know, quality family time. The only really unexpected thing was that the usual suspects were not the most appalling at the Hetzel family Christmas. Instead, my aunt's brother in ( Read more... )

So, on top of everything else going crazy this week, there has been some Quality Family Drama wherein BOTH of my grandparents got to spend some time inpatient at the hospital. The family dynamic is... tense, we'll say, and the only other family member with solid medical experience lives in Montana, so I drove out to Milwaukee on Wednesday to put ( Read more... )

...is spending a week in a one-bathroom cabin with six other adults, three extremely poorly behaved/oversugared children, a toddler and two flatulent dogs.

Oi.

Planning a mid-week 36 hour "vacation from my vacation" was the Best Plan Ever. So happy to be back in Madison and my own bed and my own bathroom. :P

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So, I had plans for this weekend, but they were derailed when my mom contacted me mid-week for help moving my grandparents, who need to be out of their condo ASAP but who are nowhere near packed. This would have been something I was entirely willing to do except 1) I had plans and 2) thinking I had a quiet, relaxing weekend at home, I scheduled my ( Read more... )

"If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try." - Seth Godin ( Read more... )

Today my sister called to let me know that my brother-in-law got into the pharmacy school in Madison and that she, her husband, and the niblings are moving to Madison this summer. I'm wildly conflicted about this ( Read more... )

I've been in DC and/or NY the last few days ( Read more... )

Some highlights/lowlights of the year:

( blahblahblah... tl;dr )