Posts tagged bloggers

I’m in a slightly better mood today (I got paid and it’s Friday), so I thought I would finish* answering questions!

Shawna from Pickles & Dimes asked how Ryan and I met. This answer will expose the true dorks we are. Well, maybe not TOTALLY. There are still a few dorkier things, but we won’t get into that. ;-) Ryan and I met in college, which is pretty typical I think for people our age. We met in an extra-curricular activity, which is also pretty typical. What is perhaps not typical is that the activity was pepband (or “athletic band” as the hoity-toities like to call it). And this was not some group that met once a week for practice and maybe went to a hockey game here or a basketball game there (side-note – I HATE playing pepband for basketball. Mostly because I hate basketball). My freshman year we played 72 games, aside from practices most Friday afternoons. That was in a season that started in September with football and ended in March with hockey/basketball. It was nuts. And the 30 of us in the group became very close over the next few years. At our wedding in June, a friend noted that out of the 3.5 tables of “pepband” friends that were there, only 2 or 3 of them had married or were dating outside of the group. But when you spend every weekend together for 3 or 4 years, I guess that’s what happens. We all still come back once or twice a year for “alumni” weekends, even though our college isn’t big into homecoming for alumni or anything. We just all loved it so much (and no, we aren’t music majors – hardly any of the pepband group was…they were too good for us ;-)).

Oh, and because I’m sure you are curious, Ryan plays trombone and I started on flute and switched to trombone my junior year. It’s a much more “me” instrument. Loud and kind of clumsy. Oh, and answering this question also gives me an excuse to give a shout out to all of you that were going to (or did) watch a band over the 4th – yay! Yay band kids!

Aunt Janice (also not a current blogger, but SHOULD BE!!) asked what my favorite memory of my grandpa and grandma’s old house was (it burned down in the early 90s, I believe – I was just a kid, so the exact year is always fuzzy for me). I would have to say that playing in the front yard at their house was always the best. They had this huge old house that used to be a hospital, and it had these open balconies out front that we would climb in and out of (they were on the 1st floor – not too high). We also would climb this birch tree they had in the front yard, and I remember thinking I was SO HIGH, but in retrospect I probably wasn’t. LOL. But I loved so many things about that house. I loved the cat, Garfield. I loved Christmases, which were crazy even then (my mom has 7 younger siblings). I have seen videos and pictures of us all there at Christmas, and it just makes me grin, remembering dancing around to the old records, and everyone gathering in the living room to open gifts. I loved playing with the neighbor kids down by the river, or playing baseball in the field out back. It was all good times. So yah…picking one memory is hard! I feel lucky that I’m old enough to have memories of that house.

Slynnro asked what is the most exciting thing that has happened to me. I have to admit, I lead a pretty ordinary life. I grew up in a small town, went to college in a good-sized but still not huge city, and while I did live in a few other places in my life, I haven’t done anything truly extraordinary. But I kind of like it like that. I guess I would have to say that when I moved out to Delaware after graduating college with nothing but the name of my new roommate (a guy I had never met before) and an address for where the apartment was, that was pretty exciting. Ryan actually was one of the 3 people that helped me move…we had a small car, a Jeep and a small hand-made trailer full of my stuff, and I moved out to Delaware with no job. I lived out there for 10 months, and I loved it. I eventually found and worked 2 retail jobs – at the Godiva in the Christiana Mall, and at Boscov’s Department store. I liked both jobs. I also was volunteering at the “national office” of the National Catholic Student Coalition, of which I was an executive board member. That is the reason I went out there in the first place – they needed someone to come out and help through the summer while all of the students were gone. So yah. It turned out to be a really fantastic experience – I got to travel on the East Coast a bit, and I got to live somewhere with a LOT of history. In Minnesota, if something is 100 years old we are all amazed. I mean, the state’s only 150 years old…but out there…100 years old is nothing! I loved that.

Her second question was about the blog title. And yes, it totally is a reference to South Park. You can read the story here. :-)

Karen asked me if I thought that if the entire world would pay it forward we would have world peace. And I think we would get pretty darn close.

Jenny H asked if I like to watch sports, so I’ll give you my personal breakdown: I love to watch hockey on TV and live (I am from Minnesota, after all). I watch professional hockey sometimes, but I really like college and high school hockey. I watch women’s college hockey because my college has won the Division 1 NCAA title half of the times it’s been played for. They are awesome, and could kick most mens’ teams asses if it was truly a skill competition. But I digress. I also really like football, but I like it more on TV than live (although we went to a Vikings game last fall and it was AWESOME). It’s easier for me to follow on TV. I watch Twins baseball (and listen to it on the radio) because Ryan LOVES the Twins. They are his favorite team of any sport, I think (correct me if I’m wrong, honey). But I’m not a huge fan of baseball. I like it more now than I used to, but I still don’t get too excited about it. I do like going to games, though. I do not watch basketball (hate basketball – it’s ok for other people to like it. I just don’t). I don’t watch soccer because I don’t really understand anything that’s going on (it hasn’t caught on this far north – we are all too obsessed with hockey year round). I can’t think of any other sports that a lot of people watch…also I’ve rambled enough.

*Gahd, I have a lot to say about all of these questions. It appears as though I will have to continue the answering another day, because this is just crazy! But there are only about 4 left, so that should be an easy start to blogging next week, right?

Have a great weekend, everyone! I’ll be back with pictures from the wedding and family visiting next week!

PS. I am aware that I may as well have just said where I went to college, but I didn’t feel like typing it out, OK? Also, I want to make you work a little harder to figure it out. ;-)