Happy Sweat-aversary!

When I met my husband the last year of college, I pretty much just stopped working out. I had been a gym rat thorugh high school and college, but I guess I just got happy and didn't care anymore. Three years and a zillion pounds of happiness later, I went into pre-wedding panic mode and started going to a personal trainer. That was last July. And I've been pretty consistent - 3 or 4 days a week, some weeks more. So I guess that's something.

It's amazing how much better I feel, and yet, I didn't really lose any weight (which was kind of the point, despite trainer warnings to the contrary). But I do feel different. Jesse (trainer and freak of nature) says it takes years to build enough muscle to eat fat. Now that I'm at a year, I hope that starts soon. In the mean time, I've gotten incredibly strong and can kind of beat Mike at arm wrestling.

Fireworks at Mount Rushmore

Last night we went to the Fireworks at Mt. Rushmore - I had never been, but Mike got us the VIP hook up through his job, so we took my parents as a payback for our New York City trip (ha, ha). We got reserved parking, reserved ampitheater seating, and they had a nice little BBQ reception thingy for dinner beforehand. VIP was definitely the best way to navigate around the crush of 20,000 people.

We still got there pretty early, not really knowing how long it would take with all the traffic (people park along the highway all the way down to Keystone, 3 miles away). There are public lots at Rushmore, but they fill early in the day.

Once we found our seats and and checked out the reception; we saw the Lieutenant Governor there, Dennis Daugaard, and Rep. Stephanie Herseth had a reserved table, but she didn't show up at the reception (although she spoke later in the night during the program, so maybe we just missed her). After that, we sat through a couple hours of program (National Guard band, presentation of the flag to the last surviving World War I vet - 106 years old!, more speeches, lots of recognition of the military peeps in the audience).

Then at 9:10 they did a B1-Bomber fly over - it was so fast you barley had time to look up. While we were at the reception, a stealth bomber did a fly-over. If I saw that and didn't know what it was, I probably would have thought it was a spaceship - totally doesn't look like any plane I've ever seen. Anyway, both flyovers were very loud and very cool.

At 9:15 the fireworks started. It was fantastic. If you were going to have an epileptic seizure, that show definitely would have been the trigger. It was just an unreal amount of fireworks, and the finale was so dense with explosions it lit up the whole Black Hills.

Anyway, a great experience. At moments, I even got a patriotic feeling I used to get a lot ... but it's been a while. Many of the things that have gone down in the last 8 years have made me, well, sad and hopeless. But the fact that I can be a lone liberal in my entire family of GOPs and the worst it brings out is some healthy arguments at Christmas dinner - I suppose that's what being free is all about. The fact that there is a chance that after 8 years of an ideology I don't agree with, we are allowed the opportunity for change - that's freedom, too.

Lunch Hour Tourists

The office ladies and I went on a Deadwood trolley tour today. Since our Sioux Falls counterparts were have a picnic at the home office, we decided this was how we'd celebrate the fourth. It was pretty neat, actually, a little hokey but a good way to see the town. A couple fun facts I was surprised to learn (I use the work "fact" losely - I'm going from memory):

1. There is still 40-50 years worth of gold in Homestake Mine in Lead, but the cost of mining it was more per ounce than it was worth in the years prior to closure in 2002. Though the price of gold has risen again, the mine was required by the government to remove 150 years of massive equipment from the depths of the mine when it closed. The cost to replace it would far outweigh the benifits.

2. Since the mine was chosen as the finalist for a National Science Foundation deep underground lab, the miners who lost their jobs are being given first rights to the 800-1000 jobs the lab will bring in. I didn't notice it at the time (hey, I was in college - I had beer to drink!), but the loss of the mine was catastophic to the area and state - it had been the second largest industry in South Dakota.

3. The end of prostitution in Deadwood (in 1980) was devastating to a community which, at the time, had basically no other industry. The madames were actually a hugely supportive force in the community. They bought Deadwood's last two firetrucks actually. An old guy who stopped by our office one day told us a similar story - he said the madames sponsored softball teams. Wonder what the team name would be. Hehe.

There was more, I should have brought a notebook. Anyway, not a bad way to spend lunch hour. Tonight it's off to Mt. Rushmore for the fireworks. Mike got us VIP parking and ampitheater seats through work so we're lucky ducks. We're taking my parents - I would bet money Sandy will bawl like a baby.

I'll post some pics tomorrow. Peace out.

Regularity

As a person who works in the internets ever day, I REALLY need to practice what I preach and get to posting on this blog regularly. I find nothing more irritating than having my interest piqued by a blog, and then returning time and time again and finding nothing new. Not that my tens of readers (that's a generous estimate) really give a rip, it's just the principal of the thing. And it's fun, anyway. At least it will be in a couple of years, to go back and read a chronicle of the ins-and-outs of my daily life, even if it doesn't matter to anyone but me. I kept diaries from middle school through college and they are horribly embarrassing, yet hilarious and sacred. I chronicled my first crushes, the first time I drank a beer, leaving home, my study abroad trip to England, the first time I met my husband. Special stuff. I would like to do that again, and a blog seems an appropriate medium.

So I am resolute. I'm turning over a new leaf - prepare to be blogged.