I Finally See The Dawn Arriving...

...I see beyond the road I'm driving...

But more about that in a minute.

All of our summer guests have gone and the guest room has reverted back to being my office.  Just in time for me to return to work tomorrow.  I'm very excited about that.

We ate dinner on the patio tonight, all 4 of us.  The babies seemed to like it just fine.  I had an idea to put a single swingset in the otherwise unusable part of our back "yard".  Gotta think about that some more.

I made a strawberry-basil pie.  A good experiment, we liked the flavor combo very much, but the "pie" recipe was terrible - more like a soup recipe.  The recipe author even admitted that it was bad, but that it was developed for a magazine and all they really cared about was how it photographed.  I'll have to try some other variation before it's worthy to be in my cookbook.  Boiled over in the oven and I had to run the self-clean feature, so we're all choking on fumes now.  But still, a good experiment.

Spent the weekend watching streaming video of DMB at the Gorge, and it made me re-think wanting to go to the Gorge after seeing it on TV.  It's a venue where apparently no one has a good view of the stage.  You could be in the front row and not have a good view of the stage.  It's just too big.  Of course I do understand that the view is not the reason for going.  But if I were going to spend that kind of money I'd like to have it all.  The view and the fandom experience, both.  Perhaps it is best to just watch it on TV and interact with the fans live on a FB feed, which is what I did.

The really good news lately is that Mike spoke with a career mentor and now has a really clear career path to follow.  Before that, we'd had an idea of what he would like to do and how to get there, but we were still taking it day by day, with no real idea of what the future would bring or how to get from one step to the next.  He has to finish a masters degree, then go to another school to study for a nurse practitioner license, complete a preceptorship, and then get a NP job or open his own practice.  We had a clear plan in place for him to finish his masters degree, but that was it.  Thanks to his mentor, we now know the exact school he will pursue for the NP license, who his preceptor will be, and an offer to take over a practice from someone who is retiring.  We can now see down the road for miles and miles, and it is a good feeling.