Mother's Day

Well, I’m finally here and able to send you all a note. I must say that the week was pretty eventful in a good way.

John treated Anna and I to a post birthday dinner so that was nice on Monday. We went to my favorite restaurant and the meal was divine. All of us had a great time catching up with one another in a very nice and relaxing atmosphere. On Tuesday, a small number of us went up to Ames for a presentation. Actually there were four of us from the Des Moines office who headed up there. It’s part of the presentation that we’ve been working on. The funding runs out the end of June so we’re trying to get as many presentations in as possible.

After working at the restaurant on Friday night, I met up with Anna at her high school and we participated in the Relay for Life held at her school’s stadium. Relay for Life is an event to raise money for cancer research and to commemorate those whose lives were lost because of cancer. It’s a very worthy cause and the weather was just perfect for it. We probably walked a good three miles around the stadium, but it definitely did not feel that way. It was a twelve hour event that started at 6PM and went till 6AM the next day.

Prior to working at the restaurant on Saturday, Anna and I went to a graduation party at a former colleague’s house. He and his wife are from Uganda and I’ve worked with both of them. They are very much salt of the earth people and I love spending time with them. It also helps that they have a four year old kid who is just utterly adorable! I cooked fried rice and brought it over to them. Samuel had the grill going with different food AND goat meat! They’ve teased me and said that one of these days they’ll force me to eat goat meat. I told them I had no problem eating goat meat and actually really like goat meat. I was so happy to see it on the grill. The meat was marinated really well and it tasted oh so good. Anna tried a little but did not really fancy it. I was more than happy to take her portion of the meat. We were there pretty early because I had to work at the restaurant and as we were leaving, more people showed up. I’m sure everyone had a grand time.

Sunday was kind of crazy because right after Mass, I bailed straight to the restaurant. I knew we were in trouble when my boss called ten minutes prior to me arriving at the restaurant. Before he could say anything, I told him where I was which was five minutes from the restaurant. The place was packed to the brim and there were only two servers working. From the time I arrived till roughly 1:30PM, it was non-stop touch and go. Talk about relying on my adrenaline to keep me going. Overall, people were very understanding of things. We maybe had one or two customers who were unhappy, but let me assure you that anywhere else you would have gone to, things would have been the same. Personally, I had fun and would not mind going through it again. It would have been much more manageable if we had another server and someone who was doing the dishes the entire time. None of the food was prepped for dinner so Aaron decided to close the restaurant. We were literally out of stuff so there’s no way we would have been able to stay open. Moreover, Aaron was dead tired. That pretty much meant Anna and I got to spend the evening together. We had a nice evening eating leftovers from the Mother’s Day brunch. After that we walked around the neighborhood since the weather was just perfect outside. All in all, it was a great day!

That’s the news from me.