Monday Sports Report

It was a Monday sports day! I gotta say I wish all football games were playing during daylight hours. Perfect lighting and great focus. This switching to 8-man football also brings me a few yards closer to the action! 

I stopped at our Royals' JV game after work. It started at 5 p.m. and book club started at 5:30 so I knew I had time to shoot pictures of one quarter at the most.

It was just enough time for me to catch a long kickoff return for a TD!

What made it special is that the varsity squad had finished practice and were watching from the end zone. Loved to see their excitement and support for JV!

Jim was actually officiating at the game. He said it ended in a 22-22 tie. Since it was 90+ degrees out, everyone was fine with ending it in a tie. I don't even know if they keep JV stats/records anywhere to see how they compare to other schools in the conference!

Put me in the right frame of mind for book club since the main character of the book also played some football. If you get a chance to read Life & Death & Giants, do so. A brief synopsis:

Shunned by her Amish community in Lakota, Wisconsin, Rachel Fisher lives on her own and gives birth to an 18 lb., 27" baby boy. Orphaned at birth and not knowing who his father is, Gabriel Fisher ends up being raised by his older brother, his Amish grandparents, and the local veterinarian who delivered him. Over the years, Gabriel rapidly grows to become a giant in height and weight. He spends his entire life trying to fit in; both literally and figuratively. However, no matter his size or where he went, he was loved by animals and people alike.

It got high marks from us all! As I've said many times, I love my book club. We rotate picking out the books so there's always something I never would have thought to read! 

And yes book club is a SPORT. We're exercising our minds! 😀

Comfortable Sunday

Today was our "Quilters' Sunday" at church. (Photo way before service!) Not only did we have a loose change offering to support their work, but we got to see all that group accomplished before we ship those gorgeous quilts around the world in a few weeks.

I'm always jealous of their work because it's the same thinking pattern as me (as a scrapbooker)... What colors blend well and how can we keep the patterns different enough to make it interesting?

But do I need another crafty hobby? NO!

Since Jim was golfing with a buddy at Lake Arrowhead this afternoon, I focused on a different hobby. I realize Crop-toberfest is more than 6 weeks away, but I figured I better order a few more prints so I ordered a few prints to be sure have enough work to do!

Very low-key day other than that. I got some steps in – not 10,000 but I could go outside and be ambitious after this! 

I can hear your laughter. Since I only have 5,101 right now. I can see why we'd be both be hesitant!

I'll fill you in tomorrow. With an honest report. Promise!

Rainy Day To-Do List

I woke up listening to the rain and it was just cloudy/dark enough outside, I snuggled deeper under the covers and tried to go back to sleep. Which of course I can never do. But it sounded like a good plan. 

All these wonderful Rainy Day choices and I chose the cleaning one? Something's not right. But I had to tackle my Oh My God room, which is also my office, which is also my Scrap Cave (and all things crafty). A lot is packed into this 10x10 room. And it is not organized!

So I got the "office" work space looking a bit better – even ran out of Lysol wipes! But I have so, so far to go with everything else. Things just accumulate. Anyone need any random note pads?? This old newspaper reporter thought she'd always take notes on paper, I guess?

If I find any goodies that need a new home, I'll be sure to pass those along.

Of course, I did find a loose screw and wonder what's going to fall apart next. Probably me!

And yeah, yeah, I know. I've always had a screw loose. 😜

A Loony, er Lunar-y, Night

When we saw the early evening moon outside our Yee-Haw party shed last night, I was sure to capture it. Then I got totally confident about catching the "deep partial" eclipse later ... with the BLOOD MOON.

Give me points for trying!

Full disclosure: This just my phone. Not my "good" camera. But I could see the "blood red" with the naked eye AND when I didn't zoom in too closely.

When it was close to peak viewing just before 11:12 p.m., it was just (to my phone camera's opinion) a dark side where it was getting eclipsed.

Then the clouds moved in and I don't remember anything after that! 

Thank goodness I do remember our Yee-Haw cast party! It was beyond positive. Everyone reported they'd received countless feedback – all 100% positive, that's for sure! How exciting and also fulfilling that we could give people some entertainment, kindness, humor (sort of), and a teeny bit of inspiration.

We came to the conclusion that – like the rare Blood Moon deeply partial eclipse – some things just can't be replicated!

Please share any decent shots of that darn eclipse last night! 

Your Long-Awaited Yee-Haw Review

Finally home long enough to go through photos, etc, for my version of a Yee-Haw recap! Why does it matter? Well take a look at this graphic and see what our summer of work – and a 2 1/2-hour show – accomplished.

Our fundraiser benefitted St. Philip's Church in Rudolph, the Portage County Power of 5 organization, and the Parkinson's Foundation. Thanks for your support! SALUTE!!

A couple months ago, I think we probably started with twice as many jokes and way more verses to the songs. But it seemed it was going to be a 4-hour show... and we didn't want anyone to suffer through that. Gradually we cut jokes (even though they were all hilarious in a corny way) and reduced the number of verses in a lot of songs. It was quite a process!!

And we did not coordinate what we were all wearing to look like cast members of the old Hee-Haw show...

But Amazon has everything! Search for Hee-Haw outfits and they've got 'em! Probably made in Hong Kong, but it fit!

And look at our uncoordinated coordination! It's like we could all be cut from the same cloth – picnic table cloth, that is!

The night of the show we were amazed at the growing crowd! My biggest surprise was my twin Raylene and hubby driving 4+ hours to attend. We were kind of into Hee-Haw when we were young!

Her son, my nephew Tony, came over from Green Bay and knew but kept a very good secret!

There were a few co-workers who attended, too. I mean I've been hounding them for months about this!

My "co-writer" Tom and his wife – who Jim and I have known for 20+ years in various publishing roles.

Dalen, my current graphic designer, was there with his mom. Not to see me necessarily since his dad (who happened to be Carter's grade school band teacher – small world) was playing with the warm-up band! His mom insisted on a photo because all the moms think I am their child's "work mom." True in many cases, but not all. Ha.

Our "picnic table cloth" selfies were plentiful. Here I am with my friend Sara, who married into the OG Yee-Haw family.

And her beautiful daughter Lydia, who've I've adopted as my own forever!

Our pre-game warmup – a.k.a. pep talk and the Lord's Prayer. Let's do this! Yee-Haw!

We had so many friends there, too. My friend (and golf partner) Molly was there and close enough to the front I could motion to her to try and get a picture of Jim and me together since I wasn't always next to him on stage. This was the best we could do because that darn microphone stand was in the way!

In the end, it was like, WOW. What a crowd! And a standing ovation! Every one of us on the stage had a minimum of half a dozen people tell us we need to do it again. One lady from my church was there and the next morning she gushed on and on about how wonderful it was. Her daughter's like, "She won't stop talking about it!"

Too bad we didn't set up Yelp reviews!

Tomorrow night we're gathering again to celebrate the successful show. I wonder if we should have our swinging barn board on hand to kick us in the butt for a bad joke or very bad idea of what we're doing next. LOL.

Love our HA-HAs family. We're so grateful they "adopted" us Austins into the fold!

Land of the Lost :: Office Version

This was our second week of the every-other-week schedule of being in office. For the next 40 months. Nothing quite seemed natural yet since I parked on a different level of our parking ramp and had no idea how to get to my desk!

Sort of a maze to get to the only set of elevators in the building!

I was thinking in the morning that I needed something to identify my "street" to turn down... aka row of cubicles. So I brought in my two purple Carter beanie bears to sit on top of the tall cabinet. But they weren't tall enough. (For my height anyway.) So I ran to Hobby Lobby at lunch and was tempted with a lot of beautiful fall decorations and even Christmas stuff.

But you know Hobby Lobby has everything so I found the sign above in their Big Foot/Sasquatch section. Totally appropriate for our situation. So I found the ribbon row and the scissors row to be able to hang the sign at the end of our "intersection."

It helped me and a few others.

I also reached out to the employee I'm sharing a desk with. I realize he must be a tall person since I had to lower the desk, lower the arms of the chair so I didn't look like I needed a booster seat, and lower the height of the seat so my feet could touch the floor. I apologized that we'll both have to make adjustments when we come in for the next 3-4 years. 

And asked if I could keep some items in one of our shared locker drawers since I didn't want to haul stuff back and forth constantly. I mean important stuff like my birthday fairy supplies and well, signs to hang on the cubicle. 

I am so used to personalizing my space, I know this will be an adjustment. So I'm grateful he said take all the space I need.

Do you know what I didn't have trouble finding today? SentryWorld!

It was so fun after doing our United Way outing yesterday for our foursome to get back together for league (which is just 9 holes, by the way). We just kept the same running jokes and laughs going from yesterday. For those who don't know, that's the cure for a stressful day at work!

Got home in time to blog... and start to edit those senior photos from Sunday. Have a good, relaxing night y'all! If you're lost, ask someone to help you find the way! 

FORE! the Kids

I love working for a company who is so committed to philanthropy and charitable giving on all levels. And we employees are invested in it, too – especially our annual United Way campaign. (Which of course benefits far more than just kids.)

Since our golf outing is consistently a popular and successful fundraiser, we hold it in August (across two days due to the high interest) as sort of a pre-kickoff to the official kickoff in September. So today was not a bad day at the "office." 

Our organization's theme this year focuses on the magic of giving so naturally we had some Magic Kingdom vibes going. This is our golf league foursome and I think we've done this several years now. Going with the theme, our team name was It's a Small, Small SentryWorld!

I call this one "Channeling my Grandma Minnie's spirit!" She's been gone too long! 😟

They tied in some unique activities, too. On the first hole for every Disney trivia question we got right, we'd inch closer to the hole for our first shot. We rocked it so we bypassed Pluto, Goofy, and Minnie to start at Mickey – just 50 yards from the hole! Nice.

The weather was perfect and views were stunning, per usual. So much fun!

Our scorecard looked pretty, too. We finished 5-under par, which we're pretty sure is our best finish yet. No prizes for us. The leading team was magically 25-under!! That's why we focused on having fun in the sun!

It's going to be tough to return to the real office tomorrow. Thank goodness it's our golf league night right after work! 🏌🏌