An atypical Thursday!

Yesterday was a rather different day for me, in multiple ways.

My “usual” Thursday involves: going to the gym early, working from home all day, and then eating up leftovers from the week or cooking at home.

I’ve been playing volleyball on Wednesday nights, and we tend to go out on Friday nights, so I like Thursday to be a pretty chill STAY HOME day in between. I tend to like Thursday nights, too, because it feels like… the pre-weekend, in a way? (I’m a little bummed our summer volleyball league is actually moving to Thursday nights…).

But yesterday, I had to be on-site for an all-day Nursing Symposium.

I did not go to the gym, but instead took Charlie on an extra long walk, in anticipation of leaving him home all day alone.

I then got ready to drive downtown.

My co-worker and I were actually podium presenters at this conference, too! We were sharing about a big process improvement project that we ran that has been a big success.

I know many of you reading this are old hats at presenting at conferences and do this sort of thing all the time. But as a nurse, most of my career did not involve doing this sort of thing. For over 10 years, my job was taking care of patients at the bedside, the end.

My current role is very different and I have been doing a lot more presenting in bigger meetings, etc., but I still haven’t done much “podium presenting” to an audience at a conference.

Anyway, I was a little bit nervous, but it went perfectly great. 🙂

I’m glad we had this trial-run, because we just found out that our abstract was accepted for a much larger national conference in September.

I wore one of my favorite dresses- it’s sooooo comfortable and I just really love it!

The Symposium ran from 10-4. (We didn’t present until 2:15.)

A snip below of the poster presentations in the atrium. (We didn’t have to do a poster, as we were selected for PODIUM presentation instead.)

This was where I went to nursing school!! Lots of memories- my main lecture halls were off to the right, and the library was on the 2nd floor to the right. (This has now been converted to the med school- a new separate nursing school was built across the street.) But I used to hang out in this atrium all the time.

The day was inspiring and also definitely reinforced what makes nursing such an important, unique profession. (Ahem…. Just pointing out, it is most definitely a profession. 🤨)

Afterwards, I was relieved to be done, and it was a super beautiful day. I felt a little “fancy” in my dress vs. my usual work-from-home garb, so when I got to my car (downtown at the main hospital campus), I texted Ivan- hey, want to meet up for happy hour after work??

There’s this cool-looking supper club we drive by all the time (Turn Key Supper Club) that I’d been saying forever that we should check out, but we never had. It’s in a historic old building and the vibe looked cool.

Ivan said sure, but he still had a client meeting so wouldn’t be done until at least 5 and he works far away. (It was only like 4:15 at the time.)

So I had some time to kill! I decided to take a stroll along the lakeshore path, one of the many great spots on the UW-Madison campus. In my dress and leopoard print flats. 😅

I managed to snag this pic with no one in it, but the path was BUSY!!! It made me smile to see soooooo many students (and others) out enjoying the path + the beautiful weather. Runners, walkers, bikers, groups of kids… it was great.

The rowing teams were out practicing, too.

The whole thing made me nostalgic for my days at UW-Madison and then made me think, gosh, the UW campus is sure hard to beat…. (Ethan seems to be leaning toward wanting to go to Marquette University, which is great too, but UW is just… really special, IMO!). We still need to do an official UW campus visit- hopefully soon.

Then drove through downtown and remembered how glad I am to work from home and that I don’t have to deal with that stop-and-go backed up TRAFFIC through campus every day. Ha. Took me a silly amount of time to drive the relatively short drive from the hospital to the restaurant.

We made it just in time before happy hour ended! $5 house wines + tap beer.

The plan was just a quick drink, but we ended up ordering some cheese curds, too, because… well. 😆

Sent a pic to SHU who was like, Ooh! I don’t think I’ve ever had fried cheese before!

And I was like, GIRL, you’ve clearly never been to Wisconsin!! 🤣😅 This is what we do best here, lol. Supper clubs + fried cheese! Haha. She now cannot wait to visit me in Wisconsin. 😁

It was a fun, spontaneous happy hour date! And bonus, we checked off a new place, which has been a goal of mine for 2026 (try new restaurants- we’d been in quite a rut the last couple years, I think, and Madison has SOOOOOO many restaurants within a 30 min drive of my house.)

I want to go back for dinner sometime – and for a fish fry! (fish fry= another classic Wisconsin experience. ;))

It’s pretty crazy to be at the stage of life now where we can just spontaneously do this sort of thing. No one needed a ride anywhere!!! Charlie was honestly my biggest concern- he was home alone all day. But Asher was able to stop home after school to let him out before golf.

This day also made me think of Laura’s advice to do “one little adventure” every week. I feel like even just the walk along the lakeshore path (out of the ordinary for me) would qualify. The walk PLUS the new restaurant happy hour was like, a bonus! 🙂

Today I have to go back to the hospital for another meeting- but just a quick 1 hour meeting and then I can come home. I am less excited about it today, ha. It’s a lot of driving around for a short meeting. I’d be okay returning to regularly programmed scheduling now. 😉 But oh well.

Happy Friday, all. 🙂

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for beautiful weather + a fun happy hour last night + nice conversation with my hubby. 💕

Bonus: Friday funnies: