Fireworks, Noah's Birthday, and Independence Day Walk

Last night, we went to my brother Brian's house to watch his fireworks display. The cities aren't doing fireworks displays this year, but even if they were, they don't compare to Brian's. He puts work into his all year, and as a bit of a perfectionist, he makes sure that it's amazing. The house that he and Becky have been building is done, and their whole property is just awesome. Perfect for a fireworks show!

Here is a short clip (about 15 seconds); but the whole show was probably about 10 minutes long.

My sister and Shawn came in from Illinois (they both had COVID tests the day before) so it was really good to see them. I hadn't seen Shawn in three years. I've always been close with Shawn--I actually have more in common with him than I do my own siblings!

We also celebrated Noah's birthday (just my family at my parents' house) because that way Jeanie and Shawn could celebrate with us, too. Noah is going to be 16 years old in nine days!!! I can't believe it.

Noah wanted a cookie cake from Mrs. Fields. When we get cookie cakes, we always try to get the most frosting on it by extending the typical "Happy Birthday"--so "Happy 16th Birthday Noah Benjamin" would yield more frosting. Haha! (Usually, they write much bigger than they did on this one--it would have covered the whole cake)

Riley definitely approved of the frosting :)

Today, the scheduled walk for my Cookies Summer Run/Walk Challenge was the Independence Day Walk--walk four miles (for the 4th of July) while wearing red, white, and blue. This proved harder than I thought--practically NONE of my running shirts fit me. And I didn't have any that were red, white, and blue.

So, I settled for wearing my American flag compression socks.

Unfortunately, it was HOT today. I wore capris for the walk, but my socks came up to where my capris ended, so it looked ridiculous. But like I said, I'm determined to complete the list!

Jerry came with me and we brought Joey. About a mile in, we stopped to let Joey jump in the lake and cool off. Then we ended up walking him home because it was just too hot for him to be walking with us. We dropped him off at home and then walked a couple more miles on our own.

It was nice to go for a long, relaxing walk together without any real agenda!

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June Recap and July To-Do List

I like that I wrote a "to do" list instead of a list of goals last month. For some reason, calling it a "to do" list seemed less intimidating than setting goals. So, if I can manage to remember, I'd like to do this monthly.

For June, my To-Do List was as follows:

• Finish hanging the drywall in the garage
• Dye my hair (my grays were horrible!)
• Spring clean the house
• Read one book
• Use up all the meat we have in the freezer
• Open the box with my new serger and actually try it out!
• Start the annual Runs for Cookies Summer Run/Walk Challenge
• Clear out my inbox

I did fairly well with these! I didn't complete them all (or at least entirely) but I did knock a few off.

- I finished hanging the drywall (both walls and ceiling) and I actually got most of the taping and mudding done, too! I didn't expect to get that far with it at all, but I worked on it a LOT. There was a period of about a week where I just didn't want to even look at it, so I didn't; but I made up for that time tenfold once I started the mudding. This is what it looked like while I was hanging the drywall on the ceiling (and the insulation):

- I did color my grays--finally. The box of dye had dust on it because it sat there for three months during the quarantine! Unfortunately, I also decided to cut my hair differently than I usually do, and it was WAY too short for my liking. I just want it to grow back right NOW.

- I did not spring clean the house to my liking, but I did do some things that needed it. I don't feel bad about this, however, because I got a LOT of the garage done. The taping and mudding is done, and now I am ready to sand and paint!

- I've actually been reading two books, and I'm in the middle of both of them. So, this is a yes/no as far as whether I completed it. I'm reading "The Happy Runner" and "Delay, Don't Deny" (Amazon affiliate links) I like them both so far!

- I used up about half of the meat we had in the freezer. I think all I have left is the seafood--salmon, mahi-mahi, and shrimp. The problem is that we all (Jerry, Noah, Eli, and I) have different tastes, and it's hard to make a meal out of one particular item. I like all three of those; Jerry will eat them, regardless; as far as the kids, one of them likes salmon, the other does not (and the same for mahi-mahi and shrimp).

I used some frozen chicken breasts to make some Chicken Taco Soup. (Actually, while I was working the drywall, I told Noah to make it--it's so simple! You just throw everything in the slow cooker. And Noah felt proud that he made it himself.)

- I did open my serger and I tried it out for a short period one day. But today, I actually used it to mend a couple of shirts! The armpit seam came apart in a shirt of Eli's and a shirt of mine, so I used the serger to fix them. I couldn't believe how easy it was and how good it looked! SO much easier than using the sewing machine for that.

I also unthreaded the multi-colored threads (shown below) that came with the machine and I threaded the machine myself with white--which is a big step! With four spools, it's intimidating. This is what it looked like straight out of the box, and I did the practice piece just to keep note of what each color did in the stitches).

- I did start the annual Runs for Cookies Summer Run/Walk Challenge on the day of the summer solstice. I didn't do as many walks/runs as I would have liked so far, but I am still working on them. I feel really determined to complete the list this summer! So far, I have only been walking (no running) and I'm okay with that. As long as I complete it, I will be happy. Here is a photo from my "Penny Pincher" walk yesterday:

- I did not clear out my inbox; nor did I even come close. With making the face masks and then having so many of them get lost in the mail, I was emailing a lot of people about those. But I need to schedule a day that I dedicate solely to working on my inbox. If you've written me and are awaiting a reply, I am SO sorry... I will get to it soon!

I want to say that I don't avoid my inbox for negative reasons; I'm just the type of person who likes to reply individually to people that write me and I tend to get wordy (surprise surprise! My blog posts aren't wordy at ALL, hahaha). So, emails are not a nuisance (except for the spam ones)... I just need to set aside time to dedicate solely for that purpose. If I haven't gotten back to you, I promise that it's not personal.

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So, I think of June's list as a success. I'm happy with what I've done, even if it's not "complete". As far as July goes, here is my "to do" list:

Prime and paint the garage

This is the fun part! Now that the mudding is done, I can start making it look like a "finished" garage. And then I'll get to hang trim and do finishing touches. And then FINALLY have my garage back again!

Clear out my inbox

As I said, I didn't do this at all in June. So, I'm going to try to make it a priority in July. Now that Jerry is working nights, it'll be easier. I can use the evenings to work on my blog and emails and all of that. (Not that I couldn't do it when he was working days--but I liked spending time with him in the evenings.)

Touch up paint around the house

This sounds odd, but I've noticed a few nicks and scratches here and there in the paint from moving things around (even from when we installed the flooring) so I want to touch that up. I still have the leftover cans of paint for this purpose.

Make a plan for the front porch

This is SO frustrating! We've had several people come out to give us estimates on how much the porch will cost, and we've asked a couple of them to do it; however, they don't call us back. I really want a concrete porch, but if we can't get someone to give us a definitive date soon, then I might just have to build a porch with wood. Then maybe in a few years we can try again. Our porch is literally falling apart and it's a hazard to even step on! We literally cannot wait another season to do it.

This is horribly embarrassing to post, but this is what it looks like now, so you can see why I am desperate:

My dream was to have a 10x16 concrete slab close to the ground (so we wouldn't need a railing). I wanted to put some chairs out there so I can sit and drink my tea in the mornings. Right now, I just sit on the steps of our porch that is falling apart. The porch itself makes the exterior of the house look shabby.

Pull out the enormous bushes on each side of the house

These things are daunting, but they need to come out. The guy who sprayed the house to keep the spiders away said that these bushes are basically "spider magnets". I also want to pull the weeds from the landscaping. Basically, we need to redo the landscaping altogether, but for now, I just want to take care of those bushes. (Shrubs? Bushes? I don't know the difference, and a Google search wasn't very specific.)

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Okay, I'd say that's a pretty big list for July. I might even have to start cross country practices this month! Technically, I can start them whenever I want to, but last year we started in mid-July. Renee is going to coach with me with year(!) and I'm so excited about that. We are going to get together soon and talk about it.

Well, I am going to my brother's tonight to watch his fireworks show (which is amazing--literally, it's better than the city's fireworks). Have a great 4th of July tomorrow! (And if you're doing the Cookies Summer Challenge, I can't wait to see your red, white, and blue running/walking outfits!)

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Penny Pincher Walk

I planned on writing my July "to do" list today, but I have been so busy that I haven't even had a chance to think about my list.

I woke up at 6:00 and felt really good. I slept through the night from 12:00 until 6:00! That's a huge improvement for me. And I know exactly why it is, too--Jerry's first day back to working on midnights was yesterday, so I had the bed to myself. When I woke up at 6:00, I was surprised to see that I actually felt energetic.

I saw the list on my nightstand for my Cookies Summer Challenge, so I decided to pick an item from the list and go out for a walk. I chose the "Even Split Walk", where you walk 3+ miles with each mile time being within five seconds of each other.

When I went outside, I saw that the fish flies were bad again. I thought they were done hatching, but I was wrong. Still, I was dressed to walk three miles, so I just kept going. A few minutes into the walk, I noticed that I hadn't turned my Garmin on!

Anyway, I wasn't far into the walk when I noticed a dime lying on the ground. I picked it up and decided to count it as my Penny Pincher Walk (finding a coin while out walking/running) instead of doing the Even Split Walk. It's not always guaranteed you'll find a coin while out walking, so now I was able to knock that off my list.

Shortly after that, I found another dime (it was hard to tell whether it was a dime or a penny, because it was SO scuffed up and dirty. A little ways later, I found a penny. And then another. And another! All of the coins were spaced throughout the route. It's clear I haven't been running in a while, because I certainly would have picked them up!

I did see another penny, but it was embedded into the asphalt and I couldn't pull it out.

At first, I was walking at a fairly comfortable, enjoyable pace. After a mile and a half or so, I noticed my heart rate was 118 bpm. I was curious how fast I'd have to walk to get it into the MAF training zone (at my age, 38, my zone is 132-142).

I started walking really fast, and my heart rate was barely climbing. I picked up the pace as quickly as I could, and I saw that as I was approaching the end of mile two, I was able to dip into the MAF zone at 132 bpm. Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could do a full mile in my MAF heart rate zone.

It was tough! I was walking as fast as I could throughout the whole third mile, but I actually did it! I even got toward the top of the zone a couple of times.

I don't know if I'd want to do that all the time (it's not easy!) but it'll be nice to see if walking regularly will help me get faster. I'll have to go faster if I'm able to stay in that zone. Or, just start running again.

Anyway, it was a great walk and I love that I was done with it nice and early. (Also, it was 93 degrees this afternoon!) I had enough energy left to work on the garage some more. I am 99% done!

Tomorrow, I am going to sand it. Today, I bought the paint for it (and I was in sticker shock--I forgot just how expensive paint is). I had to buy a five-gallon bucket of primer, a 5-gallon bucket of paint, and a few gallons of ceiling paint (I'm sure I'll end up needing more, but I didn't want to buy a five gallon bucket if I don't need that much).

I had absolutely no idea what color to choose for the walls. I wanted something light, so that the garage wouldn't look dark and dreary. But I didn't want anything so light that all the little scuff marks from things in there will show up easily. So, I ended up picking Sherwin Williams Argos, the same color that is in my kitchen and dining room (a very light gray).

I can't wait to get started with the painting! I hope I did a good enough job on the taping and mudding so that the paint looks good. As my brother always reminded me when I was working on my house, "Paint doesn't hide the flaws, it just changes the color of them". Haha! Very true, I've realized.

Okay, I'll recap June and write about my July checklist tomorrow.

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Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day Walk/Run

After working so hard on the drywall in the garage on Monday, I was SO sore. When I woke up on Tuesday, I declared that it was going to be a total rest day.

So I literally didn't do much of anything yesterday. I set up a cozy spot on the couch, watched a couple of documentaries and played Best Fiends on my phone. I should have been replying to emails or something, but I truly just didn't want to do anything productive.

And you know what? It felt great! I felt a little guilty at first but I got over it and enjoyed the day.

Today, I woke up sore again and I was tempted to do another "nothing" day; but I couldn't do that. I really am looking forward to finishing up the garage. I went out there late-morning and worked into the mid-afternoon. I am SO happy that I finished getting all of the drywall tape over the seams and put the first coat of mud on them. Just a little left to go!

To totally finish the mudding and sanding, I probably have about four hours of work left. Then, I'll be ready to prime and paint!! I can't even tell you how exciting that will be. By the end of next week, I should be ready to add trim to the windows and attach the light fixtures.

Anyway, today is one of those odd made-up holidays... Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day. Fun, right?

When making my checklist for the Cookies Summer Run/Walk Challenge this year, I added a run/walk on this day... basically, do your run or walk and then follow up with an ice cream (preferably a creative one!) and share it to the Facebook page.

After working in the garage again today, I was hot and tired and I really didn't want to go for a walk. However, I really want to complete the challenge this year, and today's walk wasn't optional if I want to complete the entire list.

I decided to go for a "stroll". If I hadn't taken Joey with me, I probably would have liked to walk a few miles; but I had Joey, so I just did a few blocks of my neighborhood (a little over a mile) and called it quits. Joey just pulls on the leash and then starts jumping when he sees another dog (he never barks--but he gets crazy excited). It's a workout just to walk him, and I just wanted a relaxing stroll while listening to an audiobook.

I know this sounds absolutely crazy, but I actually haven't been into ice cream lately. Like, I can't even remember the last time I ate it! I haven't even been eating many sweets--I've been all about potato chips this year (dill pickle Lay's are the BEST). And the thought of ice cream just didn't sound very good, but I figured I could just have a little to count it toward my ice cream walk.

I let the kids pick some out at the corner store (they chose chocolate chip cookie dough). Since that didn't seem creative, I put a couple of small spoonfuls in a bowl and then added some toppings. I decided to make it a "monster cookie" flavor--I added dry oatmeal, chocolate chips, coconut, raisins, and peanut butter.

I didn't really expect to like it, but it was surprisingly good! Hopefully it won't start me down an ice cream path again ;)

I'll recap my June "To Do" list tomorrow and write a new one for July. Today went by so fast!

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RECIPE: Keema

I feel like every time I post a recipe, I say that it's my favorite food ever. But this dish is truly on my top five list. I have no idea what "Keema" really is, but I found a similar recipe years ago on SparkPeople and it sounded interesting, so I gave it a try. (The original uses beef, but my family prefers ground turkey instead.)

It is SO GOOD. It sounds a bit odd when looking at the ingredients, but I promise it's worth trying. I never would have thought to put these ingredients together. I'm so glad I tried it, though! It's very simple but it tastes amazing.

Here is a printer-friendly version!


Keema

Ingredients:

2 tsp olive oil
1 pound ground turkey
1 onion, chopped
1-2 large peeled diced potatoes (about 10-12 oz) (the potato in the photo looks yellow because of the curry powder--but I just use regular russet potatoes)
1 cup frozen peas
1 (15 oz) can of diced tomatoes
1 (15 oz) can of crushed tomatoes
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1 Tbsp curry powder
Cooked white rice for serving

Directions:

Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat and add the onion and ground turkey. Cook until the turkey is browned. Add the potatoes, tomatoes, cinnamon, ginger, and curry powder.

Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to low and simmer for 25 minutes. Add the peas halfway through cooking time. (Add water if it becomes too thick. It should have the consistency of chili).

Serve over rice. Makes 4 generous servings.

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My Aching Muscles!

Today has been an exhausting day--my body hasn't ached this much in a long time!

Since we got the garage set up yesterday to make it easier for me to work on the drywall, I decided to start on it first thing this morning. I went out to the garage at 8:00 and got right to work taping and mudding the drywall.

Being Monday, a couple of my favorite podcasts released their weekly episodes, so I was excited to listen to them. I also downloaded a couple of new podcasts to listen to as well, and I really like one that I listened to today. It's a true crime podcast called Going West.

At around 10:00, my parents came over with Luke and Riley (my nephew and niece). The kids had stayed the night at my parents' house and my mom wondered if they could come over and swim in our neighbor's pool. I checked with him last night to make sure it was okay (he put up the pool a couple of months ago and told us we could use it any time--we hadn't taken advantage of that until today).

I don't like to swim, but I stopped working on the garage so I could go watch Luke and Riley swim. They are so cute! I cannot believe how fast they're growing. My mom and Eli got in the pool with the kids.

When they were getting ready to go back to my parents' house, Luke asked if he could come inside to see the kittens, so I brought him in the house. When he was leaving, we was waving bye to everyone, including the pets. As he was walking out the door, he called out, "Bye! If you need anything, just give us a call!"

I was dying laughing. I'm assuming that he's heard Brian and Becky say that as they leave people's houses. It was so cute! Kids really do pay attention to every little thing that we do and say, that's for sure.

After they left, I went right back into the garage to work. Jerry took Eli fishing and I wanted to get as much done as possible while they were gone to hopefully surprise Jerry with my progress. I couldn't believe how much faster it went now that we made more space in the garage!

I was able to finish taping about 90% of the garage. I stayed out there all afternoon, and finally came inside at around 4:00. My legs felt like I'd been doing squats all day (when I'm on the ladder, my legs are constantly flexed while I keep my balance). It's a tough workout.

I took a cold shower and then just plopped myself on the couch and didn't move. My muscles were dead. It was nice to just chill and play Best Fiends on my phone while Jerry made dinner. Tomorrow, I'm going to see if I can get a second coat of mud on everything that I taped today! If I can even get out of bed--right now I feel super stiff, haha.

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Garage Progress

Today was a much better day than yesterday. With the quarantine letting up here in Michigan, more and more things are opening and happening, and I just feel overwhelmed. We have doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, etc, and it's back to reality.

Yesterday, I drove Eli to Jerry's sister's house to do some work for her in the yard. He's trying to earn money to buy a new fishing reel, so he asked some family members if they have any work for him. He pulled weeds and replaced mulch, and did some stuff with the landscaping for Laura (Jerry's sister). I'm glad he took the initiative to earn his own money!

Jerry was off work today, and there are going to be some big changes with his schedule. He's going to start working nights again! We are both very excited about that. The night shift works better for all of us, and he sleeps much better on nights. He'll still work a swing shift (meaning his shifts during the week will change days, but it'll still be the night shift).

When he switched to working day shift, it was SO HARD to adjust. I was looking back at my weight log, and I noticed that he'd started working straight days just before I started gaining weight. I felt so overwhelmed and stressed out, and I was eating to try to ease my stress.

I really hope that now that his shift has changed, I'll feel less stressed out and I'll be able to finally focus on taking better care of myself. Jerry is happy about it, too--he always slept better on nights and he'll be able to spend some time alone once in a while.

On days, he NEVER gets "alone time" to do whatever he wants to do (watch wrestling, play video games, etc). When he works nights, and he it's his day off, he still stays up all night. So, he'll use that time at night to catch up on "his" shows, play the Xbox, and stuff like that--uninterrupted.

I know exactly how important that "alone time" is. If I didn't have time to myself regularly, I would be a total nightmare to live with.

Today, we spent time working on the garage. First, he took Eli to a couple of grocery stores to return cans and bottles (for deposits). No stores were accepting them since the quarantine started (and only a few stores accept them now), so they just built up and were taking up so much space in the garage. Also, after Eli worked for Laura, she gave him seven bags of cans/bottles in addition to paying him for his work! (It ended up being nearly $50 worth of deposits. He was thrilled.)

While they were gone, I worked on some more taping/mudding the drywall in the garage. When Jerry got home, he and I worked on moving all of our "stuff" to the side of the garage that is already done (as far as the taping and mudding). I sanded the mud on that side as well, so it's ready for primer and paint! I am SO EXCITED to be able to prime and paint everything.

Here is what one corner looked like before and now (in progress). Keep in mind that the walls and ceiling still need to be painted, so it doesn't look good right now. But it's progress!

I still have about two-thirds of the garage to finish with the taping and mudding. Still, we got rid of a lot of stuff while we were moving things around today and now I have a lot of space in the rest of the garage. I think I'll be able to get the taping and mudding done in 4-5 days.

Now that I'm done with that one side of the garage (not "done" done, but just ready for paint), we moved almost all of our stuff to that one side. That made a ton of room on the other side of the garage so that I can freely move around to tape and mud the ceiling and finish the walls.

This is where we moved all of our stuff...

And this is the space where I have to work! Once I get to the far wall, we'll move that other stuff. For now, I can finish the ceiling and the walls that aren't obstructed. The seams only have 1-2 coats of mud on them now.

Jerry has the next couple of days off, so we're hoping to pull out a couple of enormous bushes--I don't know what they are called, but they look like this (this photo is not of mine--I just have one of these bushes on each front corner of my house). And mine are HUGE--they are taller than the house!

When we had Tim come out and spray our house to keep the spiders away, he said that those bushes are the biggest attraction for spiders. They also just look way too tall for the house. Since we're going to be replacing the porch, we need to work on the landscaping anyways. So, I'm happy to get rid of them.

Cutting them down and pulling out the roots is going to be a challenge, but I hope we'll be able to tackle it while Jerry is off work. I'm excited to see what the house will look like without them! I know nothing about landscaping, but Nathan's girlfriend, Alex, is into it. I asked her to help me out when I'm ready to work on it.

Anyway, it's been fun seeing the changes as we progress. I'm thrilled with how the garage is looking--even thought it's not finished, it already looks so much better. (And I have to admit, I'm pretty proud that I've done all of the drywall by myself.) Thankfully, I remembered to take "before" photos, so I will post everything once it's done!

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Just Not Feeling It Today

Today was a really bad day, and I just don't feel like writing. Nothing terrible happened--it's just one of those days where nothing seems to go right and I feel extremely overwhelmed. I wrote yesterday how I was super tired and I went to bed a couple of hours early--but I didn't end up falling asleep until after 1:30!

So, I'll just share a funny photo I took yesterday. Eli was making a sandwich and the kittens smelled the ham. They went nuts for it!

Duck is vocal when he wants something, so he was sitting at Eli's feet meowing. And then Chick is the climber/balancer. He literally climbed up Eli's leg to get to the ham! Once Duck saw Chick do that, he tried to do it, too, but he wasn't as good at it.

Chick looks like a squirrel when they come get nuts from us. If I'm sitting down on the deck, they'll crawl up my leg to grab a walnut.

Anyway, I thought this picture was funny!

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Lost Mail (Where does it go?!)

It's only 10:50 PM as I start to write this, but I'm so ready to go to bed now. I usually stay up until 1:30 or 2:00 AM (way too late, I know, but I just don't get tired until then). I'm going to keep this post short so I can get some sleep while my body is actually looking forward to it.

I've been working on two projects the past few days. First, I've been making more face masks. About 20 of the people I sent them to never received them... ugh!

Where does lost mail go, anyway? Is there some warehouse somewhere that just has mountains of "lost" mail? I had a return label on all of them and I took them to the post office to make sure the postage was correct. I just find it so crazy that 20 pieces of mail can get lost like that! There were people in California and even Alaska that received theirs; but a couple of women who live less than an hour away from me have not.

Anyway, I've been making more masks for the people that didn't receive theirs, and I finished those this morning. I love the new fabric! I also bought some nose pieces from Amazon so I don't have to use the pipe cleaners anymore. Not sure if these will feel any different, but I was worried that the pipe cleaners will eventually rust--and these nose pieces are supposed to be anti-rust.

Hopefully they will reach their destinations this time!

I've also been working on taping and mudding the garage. I have about one third of it done. (Yes, it's taking forever.) If I didn't have to work around all of the stuff in the garage and if I didn't have to go up and down the ladder eight million times, it would have been done ages ago.

(We have a zero turn lawn mower that takes up SO MUCH SPACE and it's not something that can be easily picked up and set aside. We also have a super heavy set of shelves, my various power tools, tables, a couple of couches and other big things that need some time to move around. Very inconvenient!)

Instead of doing the first layer of mud on the entire garage, and then the second layer on the entire garage, etc., I've been working in sections (so I don't have to move all of our "stuff" each day). I basically divided the garage into sixths and I'm working on each section (walls and ceiling) at a time.

I'll put the first coat of mud on, let it dry 24 hours. Second coat, 24 hours. Final coat, 24 hours.

Once I get a full section done, I use that spot to move all of our stuff and then I'll have room to do another section. I've caught up on all of my true crime podcasts, and I had been using those as a motivator to go work. I need to try out some new ones.

Anyway, I'm off to bed! I'll try to get some progress pictures of the garage tomorrow. (It just looks ugly, so it's not really worth showing--it'll look much better when the whole thing is done!)

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Everything Sucks!

If you were born circa 1980-1984-ish, then you MUST watch the show on Netflix called "Everything Sucks".

Jerry and I watched several episodes over the past couple of days and it makes for some serious nostalgia and laughs in general. The storyline is kind of corny, but I love seeing all of the references to the late-90's--things that were popular when I was in school.

I very rarely buy music (maybe 1-2 songs per year) but I bought about 8 songs from the soundtrack of this show! Hahaha.

I was born in 1982 and graduated high school in 2000 (Jerry was born in 1980 and graduated in 1999). This TV show takes place in high school in 1996 in a city called Boring, Oregon. Boring is actually a real place! I was so excited when I saw it on the show because my friend Thomas runs a half-marathon there pretty much every year (the "Boring" half marathon").

The show caught my attention right away with the song by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "The Impression That I Get". Once I heard that, I couldn't stop watching. And I was spotting all sorts of 90's references!

Here are several that I noted:

- pagers (no cell phones). This is the one that I had! (It was my mom's but she made me bring it with me when I went out with friends):

- Song: The Freshmen, The Verve Pipe
- Song: Wonderwall, Oasis
- Song: Two Princes, Spin Doctors
- TV stands for classrooms

- Dennis Rodman (just a reference to his looks)
- hair styles--buns, twists (I was a fan of the mini buns, as evidenced below, haha)

- Song: Ace of Base (after Amy Grant, this was the second CD I would buy!)
- choker necklaces
- a LOT of music videos montaged into a parody (this is the BEST! It's in episode 2, if you just want to watch that--totally worth it.)
- Song: Lovefool, The Cardigans
- Slang: "cool beans"
- dial-up internet and waiting for a graphic to download
- Food: Surge

- slap bracelets
- wearing socks with sandals
- Slang: "phat"
- hair with a middle-part (both guys and girls)
- collared shirts with a t-shirt underneath
- scribbling with a pen until it was burning hot and then touching someone with it (hahaha! This is horrible, and I didn't remember it until seeing it, but... well, it happened).
- Discman (this is the one I had... it was actually my older brother's, but I borrowed it for the one or two CD's I owned!)

- Food: Zima (This photo is from when I took "before" photos from my brother's bathroom--there was a random bottle of Zima next to the shower! Apparently, Zima was "back" for a time recently... I don't know if it still is...?)

- Slang: "Holy Schnikes!"
- Song: A whole conversation about "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette
- Food: Fruitopia
- Food: Pizzerias chips

- Slang: "...all that and a bag of chips"
- Food: Ring Pops
- JTT (Jonathan Taylor Thomas!)

There are so many more than I'm forgetting, but if you're a late-90's high schooler, you need to watch this just for the nostalgia! It's a fun show. And even though it has a corny storyline, it's cute to watch :)

The show ended with a cliffhanger and I don't know if it was canceled or what. The first season was from 2018, so I don't know if we'll ever see another season. I hope so!

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