f is for forgetful February 28, 2008

Honestly.  I sort of forgot about this.

The other day I was thinking about so-and-so who has a blog and talking about this other guy’s blog and hearing good things about another blog.  And then I remember that I have a blog.  I am a blogger.  I blog.  Or at least I did.  For Kate’s sake – and then she was home for a delightfully long visit which we so thoroughly enjoyed.  And so I forgot.  I guess I’ll resume.  Just the everyday stuff.

For example, I heard from my brother that our delightful Will has new milestones:  picking out his own outfits for school and trying hard to smile for pictures.  This tickled me, and I reminisced about some of the really special outfits that my own preschoolers choose for themselves.  Especially Chris who was very committed to representing his favorite heroes upon his chest:  Sonic the Hedgehog, Batman, Barney the Dinosaur (a brief but embarrassing blip on his 3 year old radar).

We are slowly transforming our garage in to something more functional and attractive.  We are doing small sections at a time and then hope to paint the whole thing early this fall.  Last weekend was a rebuild on some large item storage shelves and putting together some closed cabinetry for storage near the door to the house.  Created a lot of chaos for a time, but we have everything back in place.

I made some really yummy fish tacos for dinner this week and it brought back fun memories of last fall in SoCal where we enjoyed lunch at Wahoos – a crazy place in Huntington Beach.

I had an interesting work experience on Monday evening where I spent 4 hours at a networking/career event for student athletes at UIUC.  I met some really nice students and some really sharp students and some high-profile athletes and sometimes these categories even coincided, which was great.

The big news in town this weekend is “unofficial,” a campus wide drunken brawl disguised as a  St. Patrick’s day celebration.  The whole town is in a tizzy over it, but not really taking any action to solve the problem.  It’s like it just occurred to people to confront the problem two weeks before it occurred instead of say 10 months of advance planning that might actually yield some good creative solutions.  Cynically I think some officials just need to be heard so people get the idea they are paying attention, but by waiting until the last minute, they aren’t expected to actually accomplish anything.

Big college conference with CMP on the schedule for this weekend.  Hoping it yields some forward progress!

u is for unpredictable February 5, 2008

I know I am slightly obsessed with the weather, but this bears mentioning even for the casual observer. The weather here is just weird. Only two weeks ago school was closed due to below zero wind chills. Then it was warm. Then it snowed, enough to close schools on Friday. Then it was nice. Then it was warm. Yesterday it was so foggy I literally could not see across the street. A couple of Tuesdays ago, it went from 59 degrees to 18 degrees in like no time at all, complete with flooding rain, lightning and thunder, ice enough to encase my car like a sarcophagus, and then blowing and drifting snow. Right now on February 4, I am sitting in my living room and watching outside as it pours rain, the thunder booms and lightning fills the sky. If weather had an EKG, we’d be revealing one irregular heart beat after another.

I voted today. I’m not going to reveal much, except that I had to get soaking wet to do it. And I was in line with a dozen people who were also soaking wet. And this was a four o’clock in the afternoon. I’ve never seen that many people in line at my precinct. A good turn out. I wrestled with voting strategy. My husband said why don’t you just vote for the person you want to be president. He is apparently a primary purist to look at it this way. There are too many combinations of what ifs for me…

Today, at staff meeting I felt like I was listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher – you know the “waugh waugh waugh” sound of someone talking but you don’t really get what they are saying. Seems a shifting is in the air, and I’m not sure where or if I fit in.

Kate is safe and sound and this is very good news. I miss her, but she is so happy to be where she is that I am okay. As long as I don’t think about how long it is until August.