Catching up

I swear, I feel like I spend half my blogging time apologizing for being so behind! Why should today be any different?

I have pretty much healed from my cat bite injury. The bite itself finally healed just this past week, which was much longer than I had expected. I finished off the series of rabies shots (we got word after the second one that the cat had tested negative, but I finished the series anyway) and am officially declaring that whole chapter to be closed. So yay for that!

This month has been crazy busy, which seems to be our M.O. for this summer. Here's a glance at our calendar. You might want to go get a snack to have on hand; this is going to take a while.

Thursday, July 5: Fred, Annabelle, and I said goodbye to Mike at the crack of dawn and flew to Columbus, Ohio, where we rented a car and drove on to Pittsburgh.

Friday, July 6: We toured the University of Pittsburgh, which was quite nice. The Cathedral of Learning is without a doubt the most unforgettable college building I've ever seen and also makes for a good point of reference when you're lost in the city:



The chapel is also pretty:



Here are the Litchfield Towers, which house mostly freshmen:



We had a great visit at the study abroad office and then at the Honors College. Our Honors College meeting was a little bit smooshed because we were in a lobby that was way too small for the group. Turns out that this was because they had half of the cathedral off limits because President Obama was speaking just down the street at Carnegie Mellon!

After Pitt, we set off to find the clinic where I would get my third rabies shot the following day and to do a little exploring at Carnegie Mellon.

Annabelle and I thought this was the happiest lost/found cat poster we had ever seen:



We also liked the dinosaurs. There was a colorful triceratops at the School Board building:



This fellow in front of the Carnegie Museum sported a dapper beret:



Here's a pretty cool sculpture on the Carnegie Mellon campus:



Saturday, July 7: We started off our day with a good breakfast and a rabies shot and then went back over to Carnegie Mellon for the information session and tour. Annabelle has taken them off her list for a host of reasons that have nothing at all to do with the tour, but I have to say it was the most ridiculously large tour group I have ever seen. At first I thought maybe they had an unexpected number of visitors or that the other 10 guides called in sick, but judging from how well our 2 guides did, I have to think no, that's just how they do business there. I mean seriously:



Is that crazy, or what?

There were a couple of cool things though. The fence was still painted from the president's visit the day before (apparently painting the fence is a huge tradition):



Annabelle said I was a tremendous creeper for taking this next one, but I'm sorry--the robot has ears and a tail. How am I supposed to just walk right by that without taking out my camera?



After our tour, we grabbed lunch and hit the road back to Columbus.

Sunday, July 8: In the afternoon, we dropped Annabelle off at Ohio State for her week-long linguistics camp, and I took Fred to the airport to fly back to Kansas. I spent one more night in Ohio before heading off to Kentucky where I would pass the time that she was at camp by visiting friends and eating all my favorite Kentucky foods.

Tuesday, July 10: Mike left for his 4 weeks of Field Training at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. I'm not sure if Fred got any better pictures. Mike sent me this one from his phone:



Friday, July 13: I drove back up to Columbus to pick Annabelle up from linguistics camp and fly back to Kansas. She had a great time! Here she is with her group:



Wednesday, July 18 - Friday, July 20: Annabelle was over at KU for the Youth Civic Leadership Institute. She was one of 2 kids from her high school chosen to go, and there was a nice little write-up in the summer newsletter about them (click to make it bigger if you want to read it):



Here she is with her group in a photo that I stole from her Facebook page because--as we established earlier--I'm just creepy like that:



Saturday, July 21: Mike turned 20 at Field Training, and we got our first letter from him. It sounds like he is doing really well! The anticipation of FT has cast quite a shadow over much of the last year, so it's nice to hear that it isn't as horrible as he had expected. He's almost halfway through and will be home (briefly, before going back to Florida State) before we know it!