Today was my first day back at work since last Thursday. That's right, I had a 5 day weekend. It was wonderful, I went back to Iowa and spent time with family and friends. On Friday my parents and brother went out to eat for supper, we were having a great time until my brother got a really bad bloody nose, it just wouldn't stop bleeding, so we left. We started heading home, when he said he could feel the blood trickling down his throat so we went to the ER. It was a quiet night at the ER, so they got him in a room immediately. The nurses and doctors were able to stop the bleeding and locate the place where it was coming from, and cauterize it. He was told not to blow his nose for a day or two and didn't have any more issues. I nervously knitted and prayed in the waiting room for two hours, what a way to spend a Friday night. It could have been much worse, I am extremely thankful for the quick and capable ER staff.

After that excitement the rest of the weekend was relatively boring. I sewed A LOT. I made 9 pillowcases (6 for friends, 3 for Riverside's annual quilt auction), 12 place mats (for my summer parents, I will give them to them at the end of the summer), and an apron. I probably spent at least 15 hours in the sewing room this weekend, it was blissful.

I stopped at Riverside to drop off my pillowcases for the auction. I ran into a friend there and we had a great chat, he had recently bought a Jewish cookbook, so it was fun to look through that and see a recipe call for schmaltz, chicken fat. I went to the kitchen and visited with the head cook and found out about the goings on of the kitchen. Their summer is going well, making delicious food as always. I miss being there but I will get to cook there for retreats, so it is not like I will never be back.

We spent the 4th with my grandparents in Ames. My grandma made 2 kinds of jello and fried the hamburgers in bacon grease. It was wonderful. I had a great time catching up with my grandpa and hearing about his bowling scores and discussing the finer points of popcorn making with my grandma.

It is good to be back at work at General Mills. We are transitioning to some different aspects of recipe testing for the Pillsbury Bake Off, so today there was a bit of a learning curve, hopefully we will do better tomorrow.