The birds and the bugs

This morning I noticed Mama Robin standing on the side of the nest and carefully watching whatever was going on inside. I thought we might be getting some hatching action, and I was right! Two down, 2 to go:



And in other news, the 17-year cicadas are crawling all over the place. There is an article in today's paper about them. We've been noticing them for the past week or so, but we've really started hearing them just in the past couple of days. Here's a rather blurry picture of one that I saw on our front sidewalk a few days ago:

Sex report

Aha! I thought that might get your attention (and heaven only knows what sort of Google traffic that title will bring). We just got back from seeing opening night of "Sex and the City" with a couple friends of ours. It was so good!

We wound up double-dating in a rather roundabout fashion. When I first saw the preview on TV about a month ago, I squealed and grabbed Fred's arm and announced, "Oh, we are so going to go see that on opening night!" He reacted with the enthusiasm one might normally reserve for, say, a trip to the DMV to renew one's license--not as bad as an unpleasant medical procedure, but not as much fun as a day at the beach either.

Then last week I saw my friend Angie at a party. She and I had gone together at Christmas to see "Sweeney Todd" and had a wonderful time. She came up to me at the party and shrieked, "Sex and the City! Next week!" And I shrieked back, "Hell, yes!"

Then I came home and told Fred that he was off the hook "Sex and the City"-wise, an announcement I expected would be greeted with some measure of relief. Instead, he looked all disappointed and said, "But I thought we were going to see that together!" So that is how I came to have 2 dates for the same movie and how we decided to invite Angie's husband along and make it a double date.

Fred and I have a long history with SATC. It was the reason we first subscribed to HBO when we moved to San Antonio. And when the last season corresponded with our first year in Germany--where HBO was unattainable--that was the show that prompted me to figure out how to download TV shows off the Internet.

Seeing it on the big screen was just incredible, like catching up with old friends. And it was such fun to watch it in a theater mostly filled with women. I haven't seen that kind of audience response to a film since the original Pokemon movie (and needless to say, the audience was way younger for that one). I know some reviews say it was too long, but from the first opening bars of the familiar theme to the final credits, I enjoyed every single minute.

No spoilers from me, but you can see the trailer here:

Do I look different?

I'm blogging at you from Panera on my brand-new Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop! Fred needed a computer of his own to take to the War College and I needed a new laptop because the old one is one step away from certain death, so last week we took the plunge and ordered his-and-hers 'puters. Economic stimulus indeed!

This morning I set them up side by side in my office and got them up and running. This afternoon I'm test-driving my newly rediscovered mobility by bringing it with me while I wait for Annabelle to be done with her play rehearsal.

So far my review is mostly favorable. With its 15-inch screen, it's bigger than my old laptop, but I think that will be a benefit in the long run as I use it for working away from home (like next week in Alabama). The biggest drawback is that new-car feeling--you know, the one where you love your new wheels but you're just waiting for some idiot to slam a grocery cart into it or for a bird to take a dump on it? I just carefully brushed a cat hair (how did a cat hair follow me to Panera?!) from its keyboard, which is kind of funny when you consider that the screen on my old computer looks like a Jackson Pollock painting--if Pollock chose dust and household grime as his medium.

At last

Finally! The last day of school has come and gone, and now we can get down to the serious business of summer. My days will stay more or less the same except with hardly any meetings and NOBODY turning on the light at the crack of dawn to use my flatiron (I'm lookin' at YOU, Mike).

Trip report

I didn't take a whole lot of photos while Annabelle and I were off on our minivacation, but I did manage to get a few on Saturday night when we went out to Lake Erie to watch the sunset.

Here are Annabelle and Katherine at the beach:



They sure have changed a lot since last summer:



They tried to catch the setting sun:



And here's one photo of just the sunset. I left it big in case you want to click to see all the birds:



Speaking of birds, I still have 4 eggs in the nest on my back porch. I think we might be getting some hatching action soon though! I saw Mama Bird standing on the side of the nest looking in a little while ago. Quick! Boil some water and tear up some sheets!

Are we there yet?

490 miles, 4 Broadway musicals, 2 stops at Starbucks, 1 stop for gas, and 1 detour through IKEA in Cincinnati, and we are HOME! We had a terrific weekend, but it feels great to be home again.

Another lovely day of vacation

We spent today hanging out in the sun and then went to Lake Erie to watch the sunset. I'll be back home tomorrow night, and we'll see how my pictures turned out.

Greetings from PA!

Hi, all! We're having a great time visiting with our friends. I just wanted to take advantage of a quiet moment to pop online and post a quick greeting here.

Packing list

"Cabaret"? Check.
"Wicked"? Check.
"Lion King" (the musical, not the movie)? Check.
"Beauty and the Beast" (again musical, not movie)? Check.
"Sweeney Todd"? Check.
"Annie"? Check.
"Spamalot"? Check.
"Grease" (the new Broadway show with Max--we're Slacker Backers!)? Check.
"Les Miserables" (auf deutsch)? Check.
"Das Phantom der Oper" (obviously auf deutsch)? Check.
"Cats" (again with the deutsch)? Check.
"Little Shop of Horrors"? Check.
"Man of La Mancha"? Hmmm . . . decidedly not check. Must find this.
Carefully edited map showing Starbucks and IHOPs along the way? Check.
Assorted clothes and crap? Check.

Yep, it looks like Annabelle and I are just about ready for our roadtrip!

Busy, busy!

Today was a packed day. I spent the first 3 hours of it at the Toyota dealership waiting for them to replace my tie-rod (I have no clue what that might be). Then I zoomed home and zoomed immediately back out to the middle school for Annabelle's award ceremony. I had a couple hours downtime this afternoon and then went out to a farewell dinner for a friend of mine who is moving. On the way to the farewell, I stopped and bought a headboard I had found on Craigslist (goal for the summer: fix Mike's room so it isn't the pit that it currently is). Now I'm home again and packing for the weekend. Annabelle and I are heading up to Pennsylvania to visit her friend Katherine. We'll continue to blog every day, but it'll probably be short and sweet.

Have a happy and safe holiday weekend!

Mitosis?

Each bassoon having its big, fat say!

You might recall that I had wanted to go to Louisville last Thursday morning to see Annabelle's band perform at Kentucky Kingdom. I ultimately decided that driving in the rain while high on Vicodin was probably not a Good Idea, so I opted not to go. I was really bummed though because that was her first time playing the bassoon with the band. This morning one of the moms who did go on the trip sent me the following picture, which just totally makes my day:

Public service announcement

I hope this isn't cheating to post something Annabelle already posted on her blog, but I wanted to make sure that everybody got a chance to see her first try at animation. For a few days last week, she kept mentioning "this animation I want to do," and I just nodded and said uh huh and thought nothing more about it. Until I got home from Louisville on Saturday afternoon, and she said, "I'm almost done with my animation." And I looked at it. And it blew me away!



I'm at serious risk of becoming a Good Charlotte fan! (I've always been an Alicebelle fan.)

They're ba-ack!

Clearing my schedule

Fred got called back to work last night, and at first I thought about going to the farewell party for our friends by myself. I even drove by to make sure I knew where it was. But by the end of the day, my mouth starts to hurt, and I just wasn't in the mood to stand around chatting and of course I'm still in no condition to really eat (although I did just wolf down some scrambled eggs a little while ago and I swallowed most of a piece of pizza practically whole yesterday). Anyway, instead of going to the party, I came home, put on my PJs, and spent the evening working on my indexing project.

Then today Fred had to work again, so I decided to go up to Louisville just long enough to listen to the band perform at the competition (I thought they sounded great!). I bailed on going to Kentucky Kingdom, and I couldn't be happier about that.

Instead I spent some time this afternoon transferring the video of Annabelle's piano recital last night to my computer. She played Joana from "Sweeney Todd" and did a really great job! Hard to believe she just got started on the lessons last fall:



I don't think there's any hope of getting out of our pre-dawn drive to Lexington tomorrow, so I'm just going to take it extra-easy for the rest of today.

Lots of moving, lots of shaking

Like the cake says, today was the 2008 Movers and Shakers Conference for Mike's Honors Literature/World History class. Each student chose a famous historical figure to study this year, and today was the day where they dressed as their subject and presented everything that they had learned. We had a great assortment of many interesting people such as these:



What is not commonly known about historical figures is that they did enjoy cranking that soulja boy:



Movers and shakers indeed! Nicely done, kids!

Rain, rain, go away

Enough with this stupid weather already! I need some warm and sunny, and I need it NOW!!!!!

I feel amazingly better today, although my sleep is a little wonky--from the narcotics or the steroids, who knows? I woke up feeling FABULOUS at 3:30 this morning. Seriously good, like I would have gotten up and vacuumed or something except that it might wake everybody else up. So I stayed in bed instead and fell back asleep at around 4:30 and slept off and on until 7:30 (our room gets a lot of traffic in the mornings, so there's always something to wake me up). Oddly enough, I didn't feel as terrific at 7:30 as I did at 3:30. Not bad really, just not that fantabulous.

Today has been run, run, run. Fred and I had to go down to E'town to get my car from the garage. It needed a new starter and will be getting new tires soon. If there is a less sexy way to spend money than car repairs, I can't think of what that might be.

I had a school board meeting for most of the afternoon. I had the good sense to skip the board luncheon that we do every month, as I am not ready for solids and I doubted the luncheon fare would feature my basic 3 foods: chicken broth, tomato soup, and lime sherbet. Lime sherbet is a freakin' wonderfood!

Tonight is Mike's honors assembly at the high school. While it's always fun to go hear how terrific your kid is, I DREAD going back out in this horrendous weather. I've already granted Annabelle special dispensation from attending, as she spent the day slogging around Kentucky Kingdom with her band and changed into her PJs immediately upon returning home.

Tomorrow is Mike's historical petting zoo that I told you about a couple weeks ago. I have to get up at the crack of dawn to help Mike powder his hair and then lug all his Beethoven-related stuff over to the school. The show starts at 9, and I guess I'll be there most of the morning, as parents are invited to watch.

Tomorrow night is Annabelle's piano recital followed by a dinner in honor of some friends of ours who are leaving. (I hope they have chicken broth, tomato soup, and lime sherbet!)

Saturday Fred and I will be at Kentucky Kingdom all day with Mike's school band. I can't even begin to express how much I am not looking forward to this. Normally I wouldn't confess such a thing publicly for fear of hurting my child's feelings, but in this case the only person dreading it more than I am is the child who we're doing it for. So, whatever. Where does one get chicken broth, tomato soup, and lime sherbet at Kentucky Kingdom anyway?

And then on Sunday we have to be in Lexington, which is 100 miles from here, by 7 (that is SEVEN! in the MORNING!) for Mike's swim meet. Let's hope they have chicken broth, tomato soup, and lime sherbet at the concession stand.

So I guess it is really good that I am recovering as quickly as I am, although at least if I were feeling worse I could pass the weekend in yesterday's pleasantly stoned Vicodin condition. Hmmmmm . . . is that a twinge I feel?

Please send milkshakes

Well, I survived! All in all, it wasn't TOO horrible, but the local is starting to wear off, so maybe it's about to get horrible. I just took a Vicodin to ward off the horribleness. Crossing fingers . . .

This is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you

For the past few years--at least 10 years come to think of it--dentists have been urging me to take care of a pesky little area of gum recession that is over 3 of my teeth. I, however, am a tremendous wimp, so I have continued to live in denial instead of allowing somebody to cut a hunk of flesh from the top of my mouth and stitch it to my gum.

You know that old--OK, relatively new--saying about how hard work may pay off in the long run but procrastination pays off NOW? I think this is a classic illustration of that bit of wisdom. Over the years that I have been delaying this "procedure," the protocol has gotten easier and easier (or so they tell me in the glossy preoperative brochures). Rather than removing tissue from the roof of my mouth (OUCH!), the periodontist will simply "loosen" the gum tissue and then stuff in some sort of collagen matrix. Easy-peezy, right? Let's hope so.

I have been promised some good drugs, and I'm hoping I may lose a pound or 2 in the following days. I'm trying to reframe this in my head as kind of a spa vacation.

It would seem appropriate to end this post with a reminder about the importance of good oral hygiene, but unfortunately it wasn't sloppy habits that got me here. Instead it was my slightly obsessive-compulsive tendency to pick at any imperfection (squeezing blackheads and peeling sunburns are only 2 of my favorite things). It turns out that when you have something stuck between your teeth, you shouldn't use a seam ripper to remove it. Who knew?

Belated trip report

So . . . about that trip to Alabama weekend before last! We decided to go down so that Mike could attend a breaststroke clinic at Auburn. The instructor, Auburn alum and record setter Dave Denniston, was an enormously successful swimmer until a sledding accident robbed him of the use of his legs. Mike picked up a lot of great breaststroke tips and came away from the 2-day clinic eager to test his new knowledge in the upcoming swim season.

Fred and I joined Mike to hear Dave speak at the end of the first day. We had expected it to be a technical presentation on swimming, but instead Dave just shared his story with us. That alone was worth the price of the clinic! He's one inspirational dude--encouraging the kids to focus on the positive and worry about only the stuff they can control. He's also funny--speaking, for example, of his choice to shave his prematurely balding head ("if they can't play nice, NOBODY gets to play!").

Over the course of the weekend, Dave brought in several of his pals from the swimming world. The names meant nothing to me, but Mike was very excited and took a Sharpie with him the second day so that he could collect autographs on his camp t-shirt. He also had his picture taken with Dave, once in a normal pose and once doing the obligatory MySpace thing:



On Sunday after we dropped Mike off at the pool, Fred and Annabelle and I took off for Georgia to meet my invisible friend Dawn and her invisible daughter who is one of Annabelle's friends. (I refer to my Internet buddies as "invisible" until I've met them in real life.) We had a wonderful lunch and then cruised around Barnes and Noble browsing and chatting:



Sunday afternoon was beautiful (after a rainy Saturday), and after we picked Mike up from swim camp, we all went for a ride on Lake Martin in my father-in-law's new boat. Mike got to drive for a little while:



We had a great time and are looking forward to our next trip down in early June. Mike will be swimming his butt off at a 5-day swim camp at Auburn, but the rest of us are going to kick back and enjoy the lake.