Mama Saugatuck

Well, I missed my One Week anniversary here. But I think this might be the anniversary of my posting? Or something? No maybe not. Doesn't matter.
I've been here roughly a week. It's all been fine and dandy. I'm getting to know my way around the outskirts a little more, now, and I'm getting used to the uber-small town feel.
What really helps is that I'm being taken care of pretty well.
This past weekend, as most would know, was Memorial Day. National holiday to celebrate and remember those who've fought for the freedoms of the country since the civil war. Naturally, this little town with more guns than people has some patriotic spirit.
There was a nice parade in the morning (9am on a day off...I was not prepared for that) and anybody who's anybody had a barbecue.
Overall the weekend was pretty good--I'm describing it all a little out of sequence, sorry.
But the weekend started late Friday when I drove up to the Ludington to see my parents. We had a quaint little weekend of patrolling the streets of a town that I now consider to be Gigantic. Lots of good family memories.
I followed this by heading back to the Saug' on Sunday morning. There was a little Sunday barbecue/get together where I got to meet and spend time with most of the rest of the family, here. Kind of a way to make family memories with NOT my family.
But yeah, it was fun. I learned to play Mancala. I kicked butt.
I then played 12 hours straight of the board game Sequence. My butt got kicked. I'm just no good. At the end of this 12 hour tirade of my sucking, we decided to switch to Euchre. And that was when the Giant arrived. He lives over on the East side of the state where I'm from, but I'm here living with his family, so he decided to come visit for a few days (starting late on a sunday night...weird). So yeah, he arrived and we played Euchre with Auntie and Muncle(derived from Uncle M) for about 3 hours. It should be noted that we were in Auntie and Muncle's house. And Muncle is a master barbecuer. So he had made ribs earlier that day. Which means that I ate ribs when everyone else did. Then with Giant when he arrived. Then again that night while playing Euchre. Then again with the Giant before we dove for our respective bedrooms before we went into food comas. Tasty.
The next morning was the parade. We all ran down there to see it. It was nothing big, fancy, or spectacular like apparently happens on Labor day. It was just nice. It had the Miss Saugatuck Area there. a Model-A driven my Oma, my keeper. A Jeep Willy(Oma's) but driven by her son Da Jimmer. A small regiment of the veterans in the area (Including 3 of Oma's sons). And a marching band the size of small car. It was a band of all the kids from 6th-12th grade. Maybe 40 kids total. but they got the job done.
Anyways...The parade did stuff and there were speeches and a 21 shot salute and such. Easy peasy. Very interesting.
When we walked back from that we retired back to Aunti and Muncle's house. We played about 3 hours of Euchre. Then another 12 hours of Sequence.
Clearly these people dont play games when it comes to playing games. (play on words?)
I did better at Sequence, though.
Anyways, that was monday, and that was ALL of monday.
So Tuesday morning the Giant headed back to the East side and I had to head into work.
First thing in the morning I had a conference. I'd brought in our designer from Wisconsin. So I got to talk with her and then we skype-video-conferenced with my programmer in the UK. I felt very fancy. I got to call a conference with people from NOT my town...and the responded to my call. Overall the conference went very well. I think I impressed alot of people.

And now onto some even better news.
I've really impressed them, here. The work I do for the state only offers me 20 hours a week at my office. So the office is offering to pay me a nice sum of cash to work as a 'Professional Systems Consultant'. Which I can handle. So I'm making that extra bank. They're also paying to have high-speed internet installed in my home (hopefully by early next week). And they just picked up probably $100 worth of groceries so that they could entice me to eat lunches with them and teach them things.
Pretty sweet.

Ummm....Aside from all that?
I got nothing.
Wings are doing great--
There are people who run websites who pay bloggers to post regularly on their sites. I'm going to see if I can nab just a little position doing that. I mean...what could be better? Get paid to watch sports and talk about it. There are quite a few positions open for the Wings, so that's good news. I'm going to look more into it once I've secured my high-speed internet in the house (exciting!!).

So for now I think that's it.

Umm...when I came home from work last night, Oma was planting some flowers and doing a little bit of weeding. Now, if there is one thing in the great outdoors that I hate more than anything else....It's weeding and planting those little flowers. But I figured I'd offer a hand...I just had to drop off some of my papers and such in the house. When I came out she gave me the run down. It went something like this: "I dont care too much. I'm not the gardener here. Opa is. And he's not with us any more. And look at these! people say their weeds...but they're so pretty." Needless to say, I was pretty pleased. We did some tandom work and got it done pretty fast. What really put a damper on the whole thing though, is that i got a mosquito bite on the TIP of my finger whilst planting my FIRST flower. ouuu, I was mad.

But yeah.
We did that, I cleaned up some weeds and stuff and she went inside to fix us some dinner.
American Chop Suey. It was very tasty. I'll have to spend a blog post talking about my views of her dietary intracacies someday. I did the dishes from the table and then while she was cleaning the things off the stove, I took a shower. Then we sat down, watched the game all the way to the end. She fell asleep in her chair. and I ran off to bed at 10:50.
Moral of the story?

I'm turning into an old person.
I actually ENJOYED watching Antique Roadshow the other day!
How does that happen!?!?


Hopefully ya'll are being as well taken care of, out there.
My thoughts go out to those lives who are being touched by those who don't necessarily come to bear benevolent fruit. Especially my prayers go out to the members of my sister's church, in Nepal. Hopefully these tragedies only serve to strengthen your resolve and show that your devotion to a spiritual sanctuary is more important now than at any other time in history.

And to Buffalo: Take good care of her for me. She's very important to many people back here and I know that you have the undying gratitude of so many people here for ensuring her happiness and keeping her safe for us. Thank you.

Take care, everybody! I hope I get to talk to you all soon!