It's been a wild two weeks between meeting "someone", having a horrible summer cold and work - where do I begin?
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The Friday before Labor Day (8/30) a friend from work texted me wanting to know if I wanted to meet her and her guy at Denny Arthur's which is a dance club for "more mature" people :) As I walked into the place there was a sweet looking motorcycle outside that I looked at. Julie was waiting for me and I met her guy - along with another couple. Then Gary appeared - the guy that owned the sweet looking motorcycle. He was a friend of Julie's and must have been in the bathroom or something when I arrived :) One thing led to another and I got a motorcycle ride that night and some dancing too :) I told Julie that if Gary wanted my phone number she could give it to him.
Saturday 8/31 Gary finally texted me around 4:00 pm and we texted back and forth for a while and then he called me and we made a date to go to the zoo when I got out of church the next day. So Sunday, September 1st was our first date - at the Blank Park Zoo. After the zoo we went back to his apartment complex to get his bike out to go on a long bike ride. We stopped and talked for a long time to get to know each other and pretty much have seen each other every day since then :)
Below is a picture of him that I have framed on my desk at work. While I really wanted Gary's picture on my desk to look at during the day - I also had to realize it was time to take Mike's picture home. That was kind of hard and kind of not. The one picture of Mike, Butler and Milly had been on my desk for many years - at all the different jobs I had.
Work is starting to get crazy but we haven't hit full-blown busy season yet. And this past week I have had the head cold from h-e-double toothpicks. I have lived on Alka Seltzer Plus continually and it's just now starting to get better.
On 9/11 Gary wanted to make me supper - wow - so the picture below is him cooking burritos for us. And man were they good. Then we went for a bike ride - it was the first evening that the weather wasn't so hot. We rode to Gray's Lake and looked at the flags they had placed for all those that lost their lives on 9/11 - it was something to see. We rode through downtown DSM and I showed him the building I work in, then he showed me where he had worked 23 years before they closed the doors last year. Then back through downtown to head back to his apartment on the south side. Let's just say listening to his bike echo off the buildings was way cool.
Friday night after work a bunch of the "kids" and I headed out for a while to socialize - and help the "old lady" turn a year older. Ok it was a week before my birthday but it was fun. Check out the picture below that has maybe 1/3 of my department in it. Julie - remember my co-worker that introduced Gary and me - we headed out to Denny Arthur's around 8:00 that night to meet our men.
Gary gave me a ride home on his bike - I had left my car downtown since Julie and I had carpooled. Well I learned that it's very important to make sure your foot is on the foot peg and not on the exhaust pipe of Gary's motorcycle. Basically the bottom of my shoe - it was made of rubber kind of - melted all over his pipe. I got off his bike and saw what had happened and thought "crap". Gary walked over to that side of his bike, looked at his bike and didn't say anything...not one word. I'm like, "this is not good and I don't want to look at him." But I looked up at Gary and he just looked down at me. Fortunately he was able to clean up the mess on his exhaust pipes and they look good as new.
Yesterday I wanted to go to Pella to see Dad and how he's doing downsizing before his move. I asked Gary if he wanted to go with me and he said "yes". So I took my guy to meet my dad :) They seemed to hit it off pretty well. Gary also got to meet my niece Chrissy. I had fun showing Gary around uptown and introducing his to Dutch letters.
A little about Gary - he's 61 and lives on the south side of DSM. He was in the Air Force and was an airplane mechanic on an A7/D Corsair II. He has his B.S. in Geology - he wanted to be a geologist. He is a welder in DSM and works really, really hard. The past couple of weeks with the hot days we've had have not been the best working conditions for him. He went to church with me last Sunday and met lots and lots of my church family - and he felt very comfortable there.
As we were driving by the Air National Guard yesterday we saw this plane, a C/17 Globemaster II, which is a troop carrier. It was really cool to look at. And it's really neat to listen to him talk about all the different aircraft the USAF has had and currently has.
This morning was my first Sunday to team teach Puddles (3-4 year olds) with my senior pastor's wife and it was a riot. Check out the kids listening to Danielle as she was passing out animal crackers after the story.
