Situation Normal

We're Otta-here!

2010-08-31T12:44:00.006-05:00

Well, as you might have guessed, we have left Normal, Illinois and moved on to Ottawa, Ontario. Consequently, I have ended the Situation Normal blog. I admit that my Situation Normal posts have been getting few and far between. (Yes, Facebook ate my blog, too.)
I have started a new Fish Ottawater blog on a trial basis. If anyone other than my mother (hi Mom!) is interested in keeping up on what we are doing in Canada please let me know, and I will try to keep posting.

less Normal, more Canada

2010-02-16T23:12:00.002-06:00

After much consideration, I accepted a 2-year postdoc at the University of Ottawa, ON. Danny and I broached the subject with the kids by festooning their dinner with little flags. The kids knew that we were likely moving somewhere next year, and they were fairly mellow about the whole thing. I asked them for a rating of their feelings about moving to Canada, and this is what I got:

It looks like a neutral from Sam. Joseph very precisely oriented his thumb slightly north of neutral, which is a good sign.
Joseph then drew my attention to a previous conversation in which I told him that I was hoping to get a job as a professor, and that when I did, we could buy our own house. Erm...

Balmer Merlin

2010-01-06T22:48:00.006-06:00

After leaving New York, we visited Baltimore. Here are a few of the many pictures that we look in Charm city.
An unscheduled group picture of the ladies.

Sam on the couch reading Far Side comics with Aron and Ron.

Sam with Benjamin on the couch. Sam was enamored of the Playstation. (As you may recall, we live in lame land with no such thing.) I am trying to recall whether or not Sam actually left the couch, but various people came to visit him.

Rich with Alexa--so far so good...

Joseph, Sam and Grandpa Saul

Grandma Martha, Sam and Joseph. (Two pictures--each one had a different person looking in the wrong direction.)

Joseph, Grandma Dorinda and Sam

Christmas and Staten Island

2010-01-06T21:28:00.007-06:00

After leaving Cleveland, we headed for New York. After the massive snowstorm, road conditions were not too bad, although there were giant snowdrifts everywhere.
The kids had a great time playing in the snow. We all made a massive snowman at the park. All of us except Sam, who erected a series of shrunken snowman heads on posts.

We went to Olde Historic Richmondtownville. The kids enjoyed parts of the toy exhibit, but I don't think that they were that interested in the historic hand-tooled nail collection.

Christmas! Much chaos and presents!
Mike and Karen resting after presents.

Victoria and Joseph playing with the little dogs.

The cousins. Yes, that is Joseph's butt. I cannot tell you how many of our family photos feature Joseph's butt.

Chanukah and Cleveland

2010-01-06T21:27:00.002-06:00

This year Chanukah was so early that it came and went before winter break. And what can be more fun than children lighting things on fire!

This year we started our trip in Cleveland. We had a great time at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. We enjoyed many taxidermied animals and miniature dioramas, which are pretty much the same as when I was a kid.

The kids got to hang out with the otters again. It looks like the otters get bored during the winter and have figured out how to keep kids at their enclosure with a seemingly endless array of tricks.

We met Michelle and Rich for dinner at Lopez (no y Gonzalez. I wonder what ever happened to Gonzales, anyway).

Not too bad a visit. Danny and I found a new regular bar within walking distance of my Mom's house. I did some shopping and got sweaters and various and sundry things (Chanukah decorations!) not to be found in Normal, IL. Argos and I had a bunch of good runs around Shaker lakes (and I didn't get lost once!).

Halloween, halloween and more halloween

2009-11-01T23:06:00.006-06:00

This was the cheapest Halloween ever, luckily for us. Sam wanted to be a scarecrow (from Batman, not the Wizard of Oz), and Joseph was Count Olaf from A Series of Unfortunate Events. I sewed Sam's costume out of burlap and raffia, and Sam sewed on the patches and stitching. For Joseph's costume, we already had this tiny little evening jacket that Sam picked out at the Goodwill in Riverside when he was 3. I have no idea how it survived our massive purge of possessions, but apparently it was too cute to give away. Joseph insisted that Olaf wore blue striped pants, so he helped me pick out the fabric. Under $20 for both costumes together!

The kids had a great time Trick or Treating in our neighborhood. They got about 10 lbs of candy from all the nice senior citizens.

After trick-or-treating, the kids went to the TaeKwonDo Halloween party where they played games, and spun out their sugar high until bedtime. Sam won the costume contest!

And we got a lot of use out of both costumes. We went to the Uptown Treatfest to visit all the Uptown Normal stores.

Joseph participated in the Mulberry School Halloween parade. (Sam was in a parade in his school, but we don't have pictures of it.)

Joseph displaying Count Olaf's most distinguishing feature: the eye tattoo on his ankle.

And last week we went to the Haunted Trail, where Joseph wore Sam's Iron Man constume from last year. He insisted that he needed a Tony Stark mustache under his mask. He later used said mustache to scare rabbits.

Sigh...

2009-10-12T22:15:00.000-05:00

Windy chap

2009-10-05T22:11:00.003-05:00

Joseph got to play "the man" in his class play. For some unknown reason, he chose to play his part with a British accent.

Lung worms: the 5 part series

2009-10-05T21:16:00.003-05:00

Back from Cornwall

2009-09-11T23:18:00.009-05:00

At the end of August I went to The University of Exeter in Cornwall to do some work with a colleague. I have actually never been to the UK before. It was a rather difficult trip with two connecting flights in addition to the international flight. (Who knew that they have internal flights within England?) Cornwall was very scenic. It was kind of like Seattle in terms of weather and coastliness. However it was kind of like Cape Cod in terms of sea-side touristy cutesiness. (Both Cornish and corny). Here are some pictures of the trip.

People drive seriously crazy in Cornwall. And the streets are bound by hedgerows, so there is nowhere for pedestrians to go. On the first day I almost got run over and got stung by stinging nettles in the hedgerows. So after that I cut through the cemetery to get to work.

There aren't really hotels in Corwall, so I stayed in two bed and breakfasts. One of them had loads of blackberries growing nearby, so I got to pick fresh blackberries on the way to and from work each day.

We went to Falmouth for dinner and saw The Red Arrows performing. Apparently, in England, these dudes are allowed to perform feats of derring-do over heavily populated areas. Everyone all around town was hanging out of their windows to watch.

My hosts John and Clarissa took me to visit Trebah Gardens. The gardens had awesome plantings, including monstrous rhubarb. There was a lovely beach with a Cornish ice cream shack.

Here are some pictures of Penryn, where the University is. The streets were old and twisty with many little shops.

And there was plenty of sea-side kitsch. Including the shell toilet at the B&B. Also, while eating my English breakfast I read a very interesting book that was (really) about the history of toast and toast racks. What is a toast rack? Well, the British are very particular that their toast (whether white or "granary") not get soggy by touching a plate or other pieces of toast. Mr. B&B owner had a very complete collection of historic toast racks.

This is a very blurry picture of John and his lab. There was a geology museum in the hallway, which was about 1000x better than either UCR or ISU's geology museum. It had both a robot and charismatic fossils.

Final thoughts about England? First, the work went pretty well--mission accomplished. However, I would have enjoyed the trip more if I wasn't so preoccupied with my imminent unemployment and lack of health coverage. Also, I would have liked the kids to be there, although it will be a long time before we can afford to take the kids to Europe. Second, the exchange rate was awful: two dollars to the English pound. Thus even the smallest purchase was crazy expensive. Third, although it was really lovely there, every time I opened my mouth out in public, people looked at me oddly. I suspect that no matter how long I was there it would still be that way--kind of like when Danny and I were living in France.

Alyn visits

2009-08-31T22:46:00.005-05:00

O.K. I have lost most of my motivation to post to my blog. Is anybody reading this anyway? Last month Danny's aunt Alyn came to visit us in Normal. Alyn is our third (and first!) visitor in Normal. I can't help but notice that we had more visitors when we were living in sunny California...
The kids were delighted to see Alyn. Everyone had many delicious meals, and the kids had someone to play Clue with!
The kids really loved that they got to sleep in sleeping bags on the couch. Argos was also very happy--he would sleep with the kids every night, but we don't let him into their room.

Other weekend highlights included the McLean County fair. Last year we missed the Banana Derby, where monkeys jockeys race dogs. This year we checked the fair schedule to make sure that we caught it. Truly bizarre. All animals involved seemed happy to do their thing and get their treats.

The races are free to watch, but the dude with all the pets makes his cash by letting people take pictures with one of the monkeys. Sam was entranced, and decided to spend his allowance to get a picture with the monkey. (This is not the picture--there is a better one that I haven't gotten around to scanning). Sam was so proud of his picture that he carried it around with him for a week, showing it to anyone who would look. (You can actually see it propped up next to Sam sleeping in the picture above.)

The monkey guy also lets people give the monkey a quarter for luck. The monkey will run over, grab your quarter and put it in a can. Joseph had many esoteric questions for the monkey guy about how giving a monkey a quarter could result in good luck, and the three of us had a good chat about the nature of luck and the role of monkeys.

Happy Birthday Sam

2009-07-27T22:35:00.007-05:00

For Sam's birthday, we went with Sam's TaeKwonDo class to the City Museum in St. Louis. It just gets more and more awesome! They finished the roof area, which includes a giant dragon slide, a ferris wheel, a giant mantis and an incredible view.

Believe it or not, no one fell in!

The view!

Sam and Katana, one one of the rare occasions that they were standing still.

I spent most of the day following Joseph around. He is a pretty good leader. He is very decisive and leads us through every nook and cranny of the museum, but he makes sure that I can keep up with him.

The caves.

Sam got some awesome presents, including his first chemistry kit. Sam was delighted at the prospect of becoming an evil scientist.

The theme of this year's cake was droids versus arthropods. Sam requested Texas sheet cake, which worked pretty well, although it was a little harder to work with than regular cake.

I brought the cake to Sam's TaeKwonDo class, where the kids gobbled it up.

At least we're not Detroit

2009-07-23T22:55:00.003-05:00

Swim time

2009-07-22T22:46:00.016-05:00

It has been an eventful couple of weeks since vacation!
The kids have been in camp. Sam is proud to report that he is the "camp encyclopedia" and performs feats of fact recall for the amusement of the others. (Yeah, kind of Little-Man-Tate/Malcolm-in-the-Middle sad, but it could be worse.)

So far, Sam has not been too badly sunburned and is generally having a good time, Last week, he was also in projectile camp, which he enjoyed enormously (physics+projectiles=fun).

Joseph is at camp at Chesterbrook Academy. It sounds like a pretentious place where they wear little British schoolboy uniforms, but it is just a perfectly ordinary daycare camp. Every week they have a reality show theme, which the kids seem to like. So far, they have had an American Idol week, an Amazing Race week and a Deal or No Deal week. Of course, Joseph has never seen any of those shows, but that is because we make him live in a cave.

Joseph started piano lessons a few weeks ago. He really looks forward to the lessons, and he is OK about practicing at home on his new keyboard.

Also, last week I bought myself a new watch and Joseph decided that he should get one too. By the time we got home from the store, he had learned how to read time (analog) as well as adjust his watch strap. He is just such a competent little guy!

Both kids have been in swimming lessons, too. I really wanted Sam to join the summer swim team because it is the only swim team that is seasonal. The other swim teams in town run year-round forever and ever and ever until you quit. But Sam was having none of swim team, so the compromise was that he would take 4 weeks of lessons for stroke improvement. The classes are the prototypical Red Cross swim classes--exactly identical to the ones that I took as a kid. Sam seems to be getting a lot out of them, and his strokes seem more efficient (chicken-soldier-airplane).

However, the Red Cross classes are NOT AT ALL effective in getting non-swimmers swimming. Both kids have been taking swim classes every summer since they were infants. We sat through 5 years of "pre-swimming" classes per kid, watching them performing "pre-swimming skills" and yet not swimming. When Sam turned 6, he suddenly decided to start swimming and has been swimming ever since. So we had high expectations that Joseph would start swimming this year.

Last Thursday was "Parent Day" when parents (me) were encouraged to get into the pool with the kids. I swim with Joseph all the time, but this time, I convinced him to seal up his goggles and keep his eyes open underwater. He was so delighted that he started diving for rings. The next day at camp he decided to start swimming underwater all on his own! Joseph still can't reliably get up to the surface to breathe in water over his head, so watching him swim is really nerve-racking. But so far so good. Joseph still has 2 weeks left of lessons, so I hope that he will learn neutral buoyancy before he drowns himself.

Will he or won't he jump?

Joseph underwater

Away: Away

2009-07-06T22:32:00.003-05:00

While we were in Cleveland, Danny and I saw "Away We Go." If you missed the trailers for this film, the premise is that a 30-something couple who are reasonably responsible people with good jobs but no permanent home go looking for a place to raise a family. Early in the movie, the woman turns to the man and asks "Are we f%ck-ups? We live in a house with cardboard windows. I think that we are f%ck-ups."

That is totally how I feel. After having recently visited so many places where I one lived I have to wonder: Danny and I have decent jobs and we could choose to live anywhere--why do we live in a house with no garage or basement that has no hose attachment so that we have to carry buckets of water outside to water the lawn? Where is it that we are supposed to live anyway? We have enough money to live somewhere decent, but where?

Away: Oberlin

2009-07-05T23:32:00.006-05:00

Since we moved to Normal we keep driving past Oberlin College without stopping. Danny and I were undergrads at Oberlin and also got married in Oberlin. So we finally stopped to visit all of our old haunts.

Here is Dascomb where we both lived when we were freshman (but not at the same time).

Mudd library. Danny is pointing out his senior study carrel. I was like the work study queen of the library. I got to supervise a crew of students charged with vacuuming the tops of every one of the 1,000,000 books in the library.

I think that this was the student co-op that I lived in for my first summer. My recollection of that summer is that it rained for three weeks solid. Every piece of clothing that I owned was laid to dry on the floor because I couldn't get the half-mile to the laundromat in the rain. Also, every morning at 6 am, the quad filled with small children practicing bagpipes as part of the Midwestern Scottish Games. And if you love bagpipes, you would really love the bagpipes played by many small children (somewhat) simultaneously.
And as if on cue, while we were walking through the quad we heard the constipated peal of a pod of bagpipes

Asia House where I lived after I came back from China. It was a lovely dorm that used to be a monastery. There were catacombs and an ancient gym underneath. And the gamelon group used to practice in the basement, which made weird chimings and gongings come up through the ventilation system.

Noah Hall where Danny was living when we met. He had a functioning cuckoo clock in his dorm room. Consequently, we didn't spend a lot of time there.

Danny thinks that this is Mold House where we (like to think that we) first met. I am not so sure that this is actually Mold House. Anyone?

The chapel where Danny and I got married. Very cute. Cobblestones and an ancient pipe organ.

Gibson's--which now sells not only snacks and delicacies but also sells alcohol! Oberlin was a dry town when we lived here--we used to have to go across the county line to Johnny's to get alcohol!

The kids were distinctly non-plussed by the whole nostalgia trip. In their youthful narcissism, they have no interest whatsoever in anything that happened to their parents before they were born. However, they did enjoy their ice creams.

Away: Cleveland

2009-07-04T10:05:00.005-05:00

On the way back from New York we stopped in Cleveland to see Dorinda. It was a short but action-packed visit. Argos and I did a lot of running (and getting lost) amidst the mansions of Shaker Heights. We ate some of Dorinda's delicious (no, really!) home cooking. Danny and I went to a $5 movie at the Cedar-Lee Theatre where we got to drink Great Lakes Elliot Ness beer and eat $1 Lindt bars!

We all went to the Cleveland Museum of Art which is undergoing a major multi-year renovation. Every time we go it just gets better and better! Last year, only the oldest exhibits were open. Now they have restored a lot of the modern art. The kids (esp. Joseph) were a little squirrely, but they had a good time.

We went out to dinner with Michelle and Rich at Lopez on Lee Rd..

It looks like Michelle's birthday garden gnome was enjoyed by many.

We went to UDF for ice cream after dinner. Oddly enough, it was the only place anywhere nearby that sold ice cream. (WTF CH-UH?) We drove around to visit places of nostalgia while everyone was eating.

Afterwards, torrential rain and a rainbow!

Away: Manhattan

2009-07-03T18:39:00.007-05:00

The main event in New York was Karen and Mike's wedding. Although it can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours to make the trip from Staten Island to Manhattan, we all got there ahead of schedule.

The ceremony and reception were at the historic St. Bart's Cathedral which was lovely. The kids had never been to a mass before, but they seemed rather nonplussed by it.

After the wedding: Mike (Danny's brother) and Marie (Danny's mom)

Alyn (Danny's aunt), Joe (Danny's dad) and Marie

Us!

Corey (Victoria's half-sister), Victoria (Mike's daughter) and Callahan (Mike's son)

Cameron (Mike's son) and Corey

Although there was a sudden torrential downpour during the outdoor pre-reception drinks, the reception was in a beautiful hall with excellent food.

Sam, in one of the rare moments that he wasn't reading his book.

Joseph took this photo of Mike and Karen. Joseph really had a good time taking photos--he must have taken 200 pictures, mainly of people's feet dancing. I will try to post some of them on Joseph's blog soon.

The photographer himself.

Away: Staten Island

2009-06-30T22:40:00.007-05:00

After leaving Baltimore, we spent a few days on Staten Island with Danny's family. Danny's brother Mike was getting married, so there was a great deal of activity and we got to spend a few days at the house by ourselves. (On the plus side, the many small dogs were boarded so Danny and I got more sleep than we usually do.)

Without Joe and Marie in the house, there was a mad scramble for the best chair in the TV room.

We amused ourselves with various activities, including a visit to the Staten Island Zoo.

We also took the SI Ferry to meet Aunt Alyn at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan.

Joseph was super-crabby and unfocused and had many meltdowns. It was rather a long and eventful road trip overall, and I think that Joseph hit his low point on this particular day.

There was this sculpture that looked like a less cool Millennium Park Bean. On the way home a bunch of models and fashion photographers were doing a photo shoot there, much to the annoyance of the kids.

Our main goal in going to the Seaport was to see the historic ships. Although the price was right ($5), the ships were kind of lame compared to the ships in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

There was a dude ("Brendan the Prettygood") juggling things, which the kids enjoyed.

Away: Baltimore

2009-06-30T20:29:00.006-05:00

We spent a week with my grandparents Saul and Martha in Baltimore. It was an exciting week: (1) there was a family party for Father's day which (2) was interrupted by my cousin Melissa going into labor.

Danny and Saul at the Father's day event.

Sam, Joseph, Ben and Jonah had a great time hanging out. The boys decided to have a piano recital and spent more time planning the advertising and cajoling adults to attend the show than actually practicing for it.

We brought the remainder of our stash of baby board books to Saul and Martha's house for Aron and the little grandkids. Sam and Joseph had a good time reviewing and explaining the various baby books to Grandma Martha.

Some of us went a little wild in the backyard woods. We also caught a few American Toads (named Sally and Patty) who came home with us as pets.

I have been desperately missing the ocean since we left CA. So we went to the beach at Rocky Shore on Middle River as a consolation prize (sigh).

You mihgt think from this picture that it was a lovely place. But it was not.

Grandma Martha and I went to the hospital to see Melissa, Kyle and baby Alexa.
.
Now whose house but Saul and Martha's would have a candy dish proffering Hershey's kisses, breath mints and Robitussin cough drops?

Our family curse (or at least one of them) is that women in our family lack sufficient eyebrows. But not Martha! After years of eyebrow pencil, Grandma has opted for a permanent solution. And they look perfect! (So now I am not the only one in the family with tattoos!)

Away: Idaho

2009-06-30T16:50:00.008-05:00

I have not been home in almost three weeks. And where I have I been? First, a week in Moscow, Idaho for the Evolution meeting. As some may recall, Danny and I (and briefly, Sam) lived not far from Moscow in Albion, WA when I did my Master's at WSU. I have not been back in 10 years.

Some things looked the same as I remembered them to be (Steptoe Butte, the rolling hills of wheat and Dissmore's IGA).

Some things were very different (the WSU campus).

Some things I did not recall, so I have no idea whether or not they had changed (The U of I campus is really lovely). And some things that I thought were true when I was living there were revealed to be untrue (no comment).

I had a great time catching up with people from WSU, UCR and everywhere else. The meeting served the purpose that academic meetings usually serve for me (1) a child-free week with my various academic friends (bad-influence and otherwise) sciencing and drinking (2) re-invigorate my passion in research, which sometimes gets trammelled down by the realities of actually conducting scientific research (3) make new friends/contacts.

That the meeting was in the Palouse made the whole thing oddly poignant. I met with people that I had not seen in 10 years, which was lovely and kind of odd--I think that 10 years ago I was not really a grown-up yet. And now I am.

Friiking out

2009-06-06T22:39:00.003-05:00

This week has been pretty rough. Monday was Joseph's birthday, both kids are home from school, and Danny and I were both swamped with work. I feel like Danny and I should get some kind of prize for having survived the week. However, a more cynical/socially conservative person would say that one of us (me) should really be a stay-at-home-mom, so this was a problem of our own invention.

Regardless, with many late nights and me taking off from work as much as I could, Danny was able to get his work done. I am still struggling, though. I finished the experiment that I have been suffering through for the last 2 months. However, I am currently working on revisions on 4 different manuscripts at the same time.

It's like whack-a-mole: as soon as I finish one, a co-author or editor sends me another one back for revisions/corrections etc. On the one hand, I am delighted that things are happening on these manuscripts, but on the other hand, it is really hard to keep re-focusing on each paper. Also, I am supposed to deliver a talk in less than a week at a meeting in Idaho, and I have not yet finished it.

On an unrelated note, a few weeks ago, we made a proposal to the kids. They really wanted a Wii, but frankly, we have never spent more than $50 on any form of family entertainment. So we told the kids that for every $1 that they put into the Wii fund, Danny and I would match with $4. I figured that it would be sufficiently hard for them to raise $50, so we would have several months to raise the matching $200. We did not count on the many generous cash gifts for Joseph's birthday. The kids were able to raise $50, and so we went out and bought a Wii! I have not had a gaming system since I was 10 (Atari)!

Fully equipped

2009-06-06T21:34:00.005-05:00

I am still not entirely sure how we ended up in hockey. Joseph expressed interest in an ad at the rink last year and somehow we ended up here. Last session the kids were enrolled in Hockey 1 which taught basic skills. Surprisingly, both kids learned all of their skills and graduated to Hockey 2.

And now the equipment starts. Helmet with face mask, shin guards, elbow guards, gloves, girdles and sticks. The gear is both expensive and complicated to put on. We rented Joseph's stuff, but we had to buy Sam's. We also needed a tutorial from the equipment guy about the proper order to put all of it on, and we had to practice at home before we got to the rink.

Both kids were very excited to push the puck around and Sam got to have a little scrimmage. Afterwards Joseph was really wiped out. We usually go to the Bloomington Farmer's Market after hockey, but today Joseph was so tired that he wanted to go straight home.

Near death by vacudefenestration

2009-06-04T21:05:00.004-05:00

Last Friday I was walking home from school. As I crossed through the parking lot of a student apartment building, I turned my head and out of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like an enormous dark bird swooping out of the sky. And then there was an explosive crash. Some a-hole had thrown a vacuum cleaner out of a third-story window directly in front of me! Luckily, I was not hit by either the initial impact of the ancient 30-lb Eureka upright or any of the ricocheting parts.

But what would possess someone to do that? Clearly, they weren't aiming for me, but they also didn't bother to look outside before they threw it. If I had been walking faster, I would have been seriously hurt. I saw an alarmed guy at the open window who quickly ducked down when he saw that I had seen him.

Joseph is 6!

2009-06-01T23:04:00.005-05:00

Today was Joseph's 6th birthday! Both kids were off from school, so I stayed home to hang out with them. Joseph had a wonderful morning opening and playing with many excellent presents including a pop-up Spiderman book from Grandma Dorinda and a very creepy robot hornet from Grammy and Grandpa Joe.

In the afternoon we had a party at Mess it Up. I was a little leery about this. In CA, we usually had home parties, so the pre-packaged party thing is kind of new to me. As you may recall, last year's party at the Children's Museum was a total fiasco/rip-off. (We were promised games, activities and decorations, but were instead confined to a bare room with no entertainment or decorations AT ALL for AN HOUR before we were allowed to go out into the museum.)

But Mess it Up did a really good job with Joseph's party. I think that the place is a recently decommissioned Make a Mess and the new owners really made an effort to help us out and keep the facility functioning. Because it was a Monday, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Joseph chose a dragon theme. Believe me, dragons are not popular this year, and it was extremely difficult to find decorations and party favors.

The kids had an awesome time. (Even Sam, who was rather jealous and touchy). In fact, there were no major meltdowns/potty accidents/injuries at all, which was impressive given that we had 11 kids there. And Joseph got quite a haul of birthday presents. It took him two days to play with everything. And when he went to bed, Joseph said that it was the best day of his life!

Unlucky Penny

2009-05-24T14:54:00.008-05:00

Yesterday we went to feed Penny the turtle, and found that she had died. We were rather shocked because Penny had previously shown no signs of illness at all. Judging from the very unappealing state of her body, she must have died the previous day--it was a closed casket funeral. We buried her under the tree in the front yard (under three layers of mulch and a layer of shade cloth--it was quite an undertaking (ha!)
The kids made a memorial. The kids were bummed out, but not much more demonstrative than that. Sam really enjoyed taking Penny to school the other day--it made him exceedingly popular. (Hopefully Penny's death was unrelated to her outing). Ironically, Saturday was Lucky Penny Day.

Today Joseph has been playing with a wooden snake, carefully tending to it and feeding it smaller snakes. I asked him about his snake, and he told me:

When it was a baby, it got chased into the garden by a wolf. The lake was mutated and it got mutated into a grown-up. Now its poison doesn't hurt you, but its poison has AIDS in it. The AIDS attack your white blood cells. But because it was a baby, it has to bite you many times to kill you. It can only give you one AID at a time. But if you feed it it won't bite you. Do you want to feed my snake?

Let's be gods!

2009-05-21T21:23:00.003-05:00

This morning Joseph greeted Danny with: Let's be gods today! Which one are you? Joseph was the God of Thunder, but he couldn't decide whether he should be Thor or Zeus. Danny told Joseph that Thor rode a goat, so Joseph decided to be Zeus. Danny was (Famous) Ray, God of Pizza, raining pepperoni down on humanity.

Since moving

2009-05-13T10:15:00.005-05:00

This is a list of things that have happened since we moved a week and a half ago:

We spent 12 hours giving the old house a professional clean out.
Our old landlord told Danny that "the house could be cleaner" and announced that he would be withholding our deposit because there was a small stain inside one of the kitchen drawers and some vandals dented the garage door.
I drove by several hours later and it appeared that our landlord was having a massive party at the old house.
We unpacked completely. After all of our hard work downsizing, we were able to fit everything into the new place.
We found that the new house has some weird batchelor-type features: the washing machine is not hooked up to the hot water, someone installed vinyl siding over the window in the storage room and there is no outdoor water spigot. Our new landlord has a plumber-friend coming over to install the hot water and spigot.
I decided that the new place is not bad at all--the neighborhood is very quiet and green with no students, the house looks pretty good with all of our stuff in it, we have nice neighbors, the dog loves lying out on the front porch, and the walk to school is not too bad.
Sam was very upset because he got lost on the way home from the bus stop. (Hard to imagine--he gets dropped off 4 blocks from our house on the same street.)
Penny the turtle got to visit Sam's class. Apparently she had a helluva time: she enjoyed some fruit, tried to escape and had a fight with the classroom turtle. (It makes me think of Bart Simpson's elephant Stampy because "Some animals are just jerks!")
Joseph rode his bike to school. He was extremely pleased.
I bought blackout curtains for our bedroom. The house is already really well sound-insulated and between the curtains and the lack of drunken student yodeling at night, I sleep much more soundly. I think that also my complexion has completely cleared up. (Alternatively, the fact that I don't have a decently-lit mirror anymore prevents me from knowing if I have any pimples.)
We are having thunderstorms and torrential rain now. The new house appears to be completely water-tight (even the porch!) and we can park the cars a yard from the front door. I hope that the old landlord is enjoying his leaky basement and the long walk down the flooded mudslick of a driveway that he never got around to re-gravelling.

Action Figure

2009-05-11T23:11:00.003-05:00

Joseph came home from school with this happy little guy. Upon questioning, he told us that it was a baby Darth Sidious named Darth Bidious. Well, of course--what else could it be!

Anothra Mothra's day

2009-05-10T22:35:00.005-05:00

Does anyone care what we did for Mother's day? If no, stop reading now.
Today I rode my craptastic/vintage bike to work for the first time--I think that I looked like Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie. Anyhoo, after a delightful morning watching crickets mate (and not mate), the guys picked me up for some delicious St. Louis-style ribs at Famous Dave's. We had a lovely meal which ended up being freakishly cheap. The guys gave me some lovely presents, including a hand-made paver (Joseph tells me that it represents an ant feeding a honeydew aphid), Ephemere beer, organic Rubens chocolates and books of Kenken puzzles. (I think that this pretty much covers all of my vices, no?)

We then took a road trip to the mall in Champaign for some shopping. (Oddly enough, I gave the kids the choice between skating and the mall, and they chose the mall.) It would appear that the economy has hit the mall hard because there was no longer a book store--the kids were pretty bummed out. Also, my main destination Ann Taylor Loft has apparently up-sized their clothes. I am exactly the same size as I was last year, but now I can no longer wear a size 2 and there were very few clothes available in size 0. (Seriously, I am NOT a size 0!) Aaarrrghhh!

I finished the day by taking Argos to the dog park where he HURT HIS LEG. You may recall that last year Argos messed up his leg at the dog park and was limping for months. We were all scheduled to take him to the vet school for imaging when it miraculously healed.
UPDATE 5/11: I took Argos to the vet and he is now on anti-inflammatories and reduced exercise. As an unexpected twist, I found out that Argos somehow recently gained 8-lbs of fat. This is totally unacceptable to me because I have a rule that Argos is absolutely not allowed to weigh more than me. So the dog is on a diet.

Noooooo.....

2009-05-06T22:42:00.007-05:00

What the heck is it with this time of year? After months of nothing much going on, suddenly everything happens NOW. So this weekend we moved to a new house. It was hellacious, but thanks to Jeff and family, we were able to get all of our stuff crammed into our new place (tiny--and no basement or garage) by Sunday night.

Monday Joseph had homework due, Sam needed a plain white T-shirt for tie-dying, and there was a parent's meeting (didn't go!). Tuesday Sam had a (surprise!) concert. Wednesday was Pajama Day for Joseph (where the heck did we put his favorite pajamas?). Thursday is the last possible day to mail (belated?) Mother's Day cards. Friday is the deadline for summer camp/swimming lesson registration. And we have been invited to multiple end-of-year parties/drinks/events that we have been too crazed to attend.

And all week Danny and I have been trying to simultaneously unpack the new house and clean out the old one. Our old landlord has a reputation for spurious deposit-witholding, so Danny and I did a professional quality clean-out on the old place. (Yes, Danny and I are professionals. Remember?--we used to own a green house-cleaning company?) Meanwhile I have been doing cricket mating trials every other day and have been trying to help a grad student prep for her defense.

We are adjusting to the new place. It is really nice living in a quiet neighborhood without ISU students yodelling obscenities and pillaging all night. The walk to work is not that much longer. Danny has been walking Sam to the old bus stop every morning and the dog and I have found a new running route. Argos had some mishaps with the new electric fence but eventually decided that the new yard is an OK place to go to the bathroom.

Night of stars

2009-04-29T14:38:00.006-05:00

This year, Joseph's class performed The Sneeches by Dr. Seuss and sang a song about Hermie the worm. You might recall that last year Joseph was struck by stage fright and accompanied his performance with a series of Tourettes-like socially inappropriate behaviors. So this morning Joseph and I reviewed last year's video tape and discussed stage etiquette. The play was very cute (and mercifully short) and Joseph's performance was free of nose-picking, armpit and crotch-grapping and chest exposure.

loooong weekend

2009-04-29T10:55:00.010-05:00

I could swear that this weekend was about two weeks long. To begin with, we move next Friday. Enough said about that.

The Gamma Phi Circus was giving their annual performances this weekend. We went Friday night and I have to say that it was MUCH better than last year. There were several new comedy and clown bits that I had actually never seen before. And more importantly, the whole show was pared down so that it did not run on and on indefinitely as it did last year. We also had much better seats closer to the ring. Also, clowns dressed as flies came and sat next to Sam and Joseph as part of a skit.

Saturday we had the WORST YARD SALE EVER. Weather predictions for the flyover region tend to be eerily accurate, reporting the timing of most weather events to within the hour and the weather for Saturday was supposed to be completely clear and warm. However, as soon as we hauled all of the crap onto the lawn, the sky opened up and a torrential rain started. We hauled everything back inside and waited. The weather eventually cleared, but we missed the crucial 8-10 am slot when all of the serious yard-salers make their rounds. We moved all of the stuff to the garage and sold a few things Saturday. We decided to extend the yard sale to Sunday, and sold quite a bit of stuff. However, as we had already sold most of our valuable discards on ebay and Craigslist, we only made @ $125.

Saturday morning, the kids had hockey lessons, which they seemed to enjoy. Last week the kids were accidentally put in Learn to Skate/Figure Skate classes, so this was actually their first week of hockey. I guess that I had never seen a kids' hockey class before because I was rather surprised. There seems to be a bimodal distribution of ages/skill levels. On the one end were these tiny little 4-year-old bruisers with full equipment and serious skills and at the other end a bunch of boys around Sam's age who were rather unsteady and had had no hockey experience. My guess is that serious hockey people start their boys young and everyone else waits until their kids are @ 8-10. Joseph, as an anomaly to this distribution was in a class with two teachers for three little kids.

Saturday night we had people over for one last potluck party in our old house (or maybe ever--the new place is rather claustrophobic, so I don't know how much entertaining we can expect to do there). Everyone appeared to have a good time, and there was some great food. Sam and his friend Katana had fun making concoctions in the kitchen and looking for bugs.
In addition to all of this, I had to work both Saturday afternoon (with Joseph as my helper) and Sunday morning. Not at all a restful weekend.

Multiple choice weekend

2009-04-19T21:29:00.009-05:00

O.K., so this post will be in the multiple choice format. See if you can match the family members to the deeds:

Two people went to a parent-teacher meeting and found out that one person was doing quite well.
Two people had a hockey lesson.
One person went to yoga.
One person went to the grocery store, Target and the health food store.
Two people have sore throats and stuffy noses.
Zero people went to the TaeKwonDo tournament.
One person went to the hardware store twice.
Two people finally finished all of the unfinished furniture.
One person bought cheese twice.
One person had explosive diarrhea.
Three people thought that Neko Case's Middle Cyclone was awesome.
Four people went to the Normal Children's Museum.
Four people went to the ISU family swim (trick question).
One person sanded the claw marks off of the storm door.
One person packed up the winter clothes.
One person forgot to plant the bush beans.

Here are some clues:

One person doesn't take very good pictures, but can make O.K. videos.

Tuckus ruckus

2009-04-16T21:35:00.004-05:00

Lately Joseph has been writing a couple of books a week. But his latest tome about the tuckus is especially entertaining.

(Joseph always draws a bar code on the back covers of his books, but this one looks like a butt.)

Easter Weekend

2009-04-13T22:48:00.008-05:00

This weekend Danny's parents Joe and Marie came to visit us. Everyone had a lovely time. Joe and Marie stayed at a the Davis Rose Inn B&B near the historic David Davis Mansion. It was very quaint and charming with excellent food (Candlestick phone and mouldering top hat included at no extra cost).

The kids dyed easter eggs. I bought these easter egg dyeing kits on sale for 27 cents, and they were awesome--one was a tie-dye kit that, much to my surprise, actually made they eggs look tie-dyed!

Joseph decided that all of the hologram stickers would look better on his shirt than on the eggs.

Sam just finished reading The BFG by Roald Dahl, and wanted to create his own Revolting Recipe for nightmares and good dreams. Luckily, I had both unflavored gelatin and jello-egg molds (the molds which inadvertantly caused The Vodka-Jello Egg Incident many years ago) and we were able to create these monstrosities.

The weather was very nice for the family easter egg hunt.

Dividing up the loot.

Other trip highlights include many delicious meals, including pub food at Maggie Miley's and the bloody mary bar at the Medici easter brunch. Joe and Marie came to see Sam and Danny at TaeKwonDo, and also had a tour of the David Davis Mansion. But mostly we just hung out around the house.

Here are the good byes:

Happy Passover and orthodontia

2009-04-08T22:14:00.005-05:00

Today I took off of work early to get ready for Passover. I think that this is the first time that I have attempted to do the Passover seder mid-week. We usually push it off to the weekend, but as we are having company this weekend, we did it on the actual day.
Sam did a great job setting up the Passover plate.

Everyone got all dressed up. If you look closely, you can see that Sam got his expander put in this morning. He is having trouble speaking clearly and eating, but he will get used to it.

The kids' favorite part of the Passover seder is always the plagues. And thanks to Grammy and Grandpa Joe, we now have plague finger puppets to help reenact the whole thing. (My favorite is lice!)

The kids and I made matzo ball soup, which the kids loved. Somehow, no matter how small I make the dough balls, they are always enormous after cooking.
I made gefilte fish again. This year, the butcher claimed that he no longer filleted fish (OK, if you don't fillet fish, how can you call yourself a butcher?) so I had to make a whole whitefish with eyeballs and fins into something edible. It was very educational.
Surprisingly, Sam really liked the gefilte fish, as well as the haroset this year. Joseph tried everything, but mainly ate matzo balls, matzo, eggs and chicken.

Ta-da!

I made haroset cake for dessert (with soy ice cream). It was very good, although a bit crumbly.

Joseph and I made sorbet bombas for the kids to eat for dessert.

The race for the afikomen.

This is a video of Jospeh and the four questions, with help from Sam. Joseph was extremely proud of himself afterwards. The video starts out sideways, and then I remember to turn the camera. Sam is a little hard to understand because he is not used to his new upper jaw expander.

Surprise vacation 3

2009-03-30T23:22:00.002-05:00

We got home from Cleveland on Sunday. Joseph said goodbye to the Peanuts sheets that were mine when I was a kid.

Sam and I tried on Dorinda's crusty old suede 70's skates and skated around the driveway.

Yes, Dorinda, we stole and ate all of your stoned wheat crackers.

The weather turned nasty mid-way through the drive, with big moist snowflakes whipping around. Apparently, Sunday morning in Normal there was a thunderstorm with snow.

But by the time we got back to Normal, it was clear and lovely. I was sick with a cold when I left Normal, and I am still sick, so nothing much has changed. (Although I got my mom sick too--sorry!)

Surprise vacation Part deux

2009-03-29T22:55:00.004-05:00

Other highlights from our trip to Cleveland:
We went up the street to Lee Rd. to see my old high school and check out the newest converging waves of revitalization/gentrification and decay. I actually visited Revive, the fair trade store that I mocked the last time that I visited, and it was awesome! (Actually more awesome than the Goodwill where I used to buy my clothes.) I bought some jewelry and the kids had a great time looking at stuff and pretending the changing room was a airplane cockpit.
We went to the Phoenix for coffee/hot chocolate and were underwhelmed.

Highlights also include a trip to the library and a problem with the water heater. Joseph's tub unexpectedly filled with rusty water, which reminded the kids of one of the illustrations in their library book "Two Bad Ants."

On Saturday we went to see Michelle and Rich's lovely new house in Solon/Twinsburg. Oddly enough, the kids spent hours playing with those 20 sticky rubber cockroaches. The hallway was painted with gloss paint that didn't get marked by the roaches, so the kids had a great time hurling, dropping and catching the little buggers.

I also discovered that my Mom prints out my web posts of Situation Normal and stores them in a binder. (Aaaarrrggh...) Danny warned me that if I post this picture, the universe as we know it will be sucked in on itself and implode. (So of course I had to do it to see what would happen.)

Surprise vacation

2009-03-29T21:36:00.003-05:00

The kids had Spring Break this last week, and we impulsively decided that we really needed to leave Normal, so we quickly packed it up and went to Cleveland for a 4-day weekend.
The kids had a great time with Grandma Dorinda.

We went to the Cleveland Museum of Art. I hadn't been there in ages. There was quite a bit of construction, but we got to see the armor and the other old galleries. It was kind of bizarre--some exhibits had been moved but replaced exactly in other rooms, giving the impression that everything was exactly as when I was a kid, but somehow the orientation and light had changed. Sam was super-excited about the armor and weaponry as well as any paintings dealing with death and gore. Joseph had a fantastic time filling out this treasure hunt sticker book that one of the guards gave him. It was very tricky, and really got both of us to stop and look at some of the paintings that I tend to skip over.

The gardens were still open, and it was a beautiful day.

The kids strike their best superhero poses.

Next, we went to Coventry Rd to eat dinner and browse the post-post-hippie gentrified stores, etc.

We gave each of the kids $5 to spend at the novelty store Big Fun, and it took them nearly an hour to make up their minds. Sam bought some growing animals. Joseph was delighted to discover that for $5, he could buy 20 sticky rubber cockroaches. When we got home he carefully made a cockroach enclosure with leaves like the one that we have in the lab.

The kids had a great time and the playground, especially rolling down the sledding hill over and over again until they were really stoned.

Danny and I amused ourselves testing the weight tolerances on the playground equipment.

Bring on da Funk

2009-03-21T22:33:00.005-05:00

This Saturday TaeKwonDo was canceled, so we went to Funks Grove Nature Center. Sam and I were a little sick and Joseph and Danny were a little crabby, but it was a beautiful spring day and everyone had a lot of fun.
In Imagination Grove, there was a ladder nailed to a big tree. Sam climbed it in his slow and cautious way, and eventually ooched across and down without incident. Joseph decided to give it a try and nearly gave us a heart attack. He is very confident and actually quite agile.

Tire swing!

Zip line!

Poking the creek with big sticks.

Upgrades

2009-03-21T22:32:00.007-05:00

This was a week of big happenings. First, Danny got a raise. So here were are toasting him with champagne, apple cider, fine cheeses and sausages.

I noticed Sam's shoes (as usual) under my bed, and on a whim, I tried them on. AND THEY FIT. I think that that has to be a milestone of some sort. Here I am wearing Sam's shoes and his Ironman shirt. I am trying to get Sam to pose with his size 0-3 months onesie from when he was born, but he was having none of it.
Also, this week Joseph started calling us "Mom" and "Dad" rather than "Mommy" and "Daddy," although I have no idea why.

Sam was Einstein in his school Play/Parade of Great Americans. He was very specific about how he wanted to look, but luckily the party store actually sells Einstein wigs and mustaches for kids! (The rest if the outfit is courtesy of TJMaxx).

Sam doing his Einstein presentation.

Green day

2009-03-17T20:46:00.004-05:00

Perhaps it is a new record--9:00 and both kids are asleep. Not only was it St. Patrick's Day, but it was an unseasonably balmy 73 degrees. I came home from work early today because I forgot my laptop cord and I ran out of battery power. We took the kids to see Prairie Thistle Pipes and Drums the local bagpipe and drum troupe play at Maguire's and Fat Jacks in Bloomington.

Despite the fact that it was 5:00 many local people had their drink on, so we didn't stay long. The kids seemes nonplussed by the wall of kilted hooting and thumping, but I feel like I have done as much as could be expected to put them in touch with their Irish 1/8th. One of the bartenders made Guinness cupcakes, which the kids enjoyed.

Last St Patrick's Day the town went nuts: the ISU kids starting drinking early and were outside shouting, vandalizing and hurling in the bushes until late. This year, everyone was out drinking on their lawns and playing bags ("cornhole") starting in the early afternoon. However, the little dears must have worn themselves out/passed out because it is rather quiet outside now.

Tripping it up

2009-03-12T19:23:00.004-05:00

This was the week of the killer field trip. On Wednesday, I went with Sam and the Glenn Elementary 4th graders to Funk's Grove Maple Sirup Experience. It would have been an excellent experience indeed if not for the fact that it was @10 degrees, and we had to spend 4 hours outside in the woods. By the end of the trip, my feet, hands and face were numb/windburned and swelled up and my back hurt from continuous shivering. The kids had a great time and we all learned much about maple syrup (and sirup).

An enthusiastic volunteer with a tomahawk tells us the story of the Native American discovery of maple sap, and how Native Americans boiled sap into syrup without metal cookware. So very cold...

We go in the barn to learn how the maple sap evaporator works.

We go inside for a few minutes to learn about grades of honey and taste some samples.

Recess outside with relay races.

Sam playing some boy game.

I find Sam's interactions with his classmates puzzling. He clearly doesn't have much in common with the other kids, so he tends to keep to himself. But everyone in his class seem to be friendly with each other, with no clear friction or bullying/cattiness. When the kids are put in groups or given free time for running around, Sam engages with the other kids readily. The other kids seem to like him and sometimes seek him out. There are particular kids that tend to gravitate toward him/he gravitates toward them, but when he gets to pick his own seat on the bus, he chooses to sit alone.

We re-enact the functional anatomy of a tree.

Practicing tree tapping.

The real thing. Of course, as cold as it was, the sap was not flowing.

Thursday, Joseph's kindergarten class came to the ISU Planetarium, which is 6 feet from my office. The show was OK, and I offered to give the kids a tour of the lab afterwards. The kids enjoyed the Madagascar hissing cockroaches and crickets that we had in the lab, as well as the bug-shaped graham crackers that I gave them. But the parent chaperones clearly thought that I was some crazy bug-lover which was disheartening. The lab is a clean functional space, but I suppose that it may have looked shabby and antiquated to people who think that labs are supposed to look like on CSI. It gave me a new perspective on what I do that was not at all helpful.

Bowling for emos

2009-03-05T21:46:00.006-06:00

I have a new favorite stunt. When the weather is nice and I am running with Argos in the dark, we will often be startled by a cigarette ash or the flash of a cell phone by the gutter--the disaffected youths of Normal tend to hunker on dark stretches of suburban curb trying to look cool.

Lately I have let Argos buffalo into them and climb onto their laps for a smooch and a pet. It totally cracks me up to see the kids break character and as they are bowled backwards into the grass. I have done this three times (so far), and I love how it forces a genuine smile out of kids who generally try to avoid such embarrassing behavior.

Toothsome

2009-03-04T23:11:00.004-06:00

Today Sam got the discolored spot on his tooth filled. Surprisingly, the large white band is now completely invisible!
Sam is due to go to the orthodontist in a few weeks to get his upper jaw expander.

Before:

Happy Casimir Pulaski

2009-03-02T08:24:00.003-06:00

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day everyone. Surprisingly, this year, Sam does not have the day off.
But Joseph does.

Random pictures o interest

2009-03-01T22:22:00.002-06:00

OK, so this time, I'll post the pictures, and you all get to guess what they are about.
Have at it!

Incriminating photos

2009-02-23T22:22:00.007-06:00

As part of our downsizing operation, Danny and I have managed to compress 10 years of college and graduate school nostalgia into a single file box. I have unearthed various treasures including the contact sheets from my various art school photography classes. Recognize anyone?

In other moving-related news, Danny has been logging lots of time on ebay and Craigslist. He has managed to sell two old laptops, Ivy's old crate, and the kids' beds (they are now sleeping on mattresses on the floor until we can get to IKEA).

Downsizing

2009-02-17T20:36:00.006-06:00

This week Danny and I have been downsizing our possessions. Our new house is about 2/3 the size of our current house, which is not so bad. However, the new place has no garage and no basement. We got rid of loads of stuff when we moved here from CA. But this recent downsizing is pretty extreme.

Some of the stuff that we are getting rid of we will likely have to buy again in the future. (But it would be cheaper to do that than rent a storage unit.) We have been selling off furniture on Craigslist, and the kids will be getting a more space-efficient bunk bed. We have also had to get rid of all sorts of nostalgic stuff. However, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I have been trying to convince the kids to part with various large and bulky toys, but I have had little luck. I have no idea how we are going to fit their stuff into this house. So, to the viewing audience and all ships at sea, I implore you not to give us anything large. Also, if you have ever admired anything in our house, ask us--it may be up for grabs...

Straightening things out

2009-02-11T21:10:00.004-06:00

Today we went to discuss Sam's teeth with an orthodontist. As you might have noticed, Sam has some dental issues. He has an underbite, which needs to be corrected now to (hopefully) avoid a surgical correction as a teenager. He will have to wear this bizarre headgear 14 hours a day (at home) for six months.

Sam also has a narrow upper jaw that has to be corrected with one of these racheting expanders.

And by the way, none of this will correct his crookedy teeth. He will need braces again when he is 15. On the plus side, the orthodontist seems like a good guy with a much more professional practice than the disorganized and haphazard dental school where I had my orthodontic work done. Also on the plus side, we have dental insurance.

Not a renter's market

2009-02-08T22:47:00.004-06:00

This has been a long weekend. We have to move out of our current house by May 8, and we have had little luck with finding a new place. We can afford a big, nice place, but oddly enough, although we have been looking since December, there is nothing big, nice and allowing kids and dogs. However, going into the weekend, we had two leads on available rentals.

House #1
It is tiny, near some questionable apartments, and the train tracks run directly behind the back yard. But it is within Sam's school district. There is a for rent sign on the lawn and we have been calling and calling for 4 weeks. The landlord calls us back about once a week and tells us that his wife will call us to set up an appointment to show us the house. And then she doesn't. Finally on Saturday we saw the house. It was reasonably clean but extremely small, with no closets at all and a leaky basement. The landlord's son who showed us the house denied that there was a leak, although I showed him where water was dripping out of an overhead pipe. The landlord said that he would drop an application in our mailbox on Saturday afternoon, but it is now Sunday night and no application has appeared. The house is so small, that even with our recently downsized possessions, we would have to get rid of or store half of our stuff.

The second house is in a quiet neighborhood, but is exactly one block outside of Sam's school district. We have the option of applying for a variance to allow Sam to continue at his school, but he would be ineligible for the bus, and we would have to drive him every day. On Saturday we were supposed to see the house, but the landlord forgot out appointment and we ended up standing around outside the house for 30 minutes for nothing. He called us back on Sunday, and we had to leave family swim early to meet him. The house is decent. The landlord is a nice guy who lives nearby and only owns the one rental. The house has a very odd layout, but is clean and larger than the first place. There was no basement or garage, so we would still have to out some of our stuff into storage.

And the winner... House #2. We sign the lease tomorrow. Sigh...

Happy Anniversary!

2009-02-05T22:36:00.003-06:00

Today is Danny and my 19th dating anniversary! Sooo old...

Sam's bad day

2009-02-05T22:16:00.004-06:00

Sam had a day of bad surprises yesterday.
A few days ago, Sam was really excited that we actually had snowman weather--usually it's too cold around here to make snowmen because snow tends to be powdery. Last week Sam made an awesome mutant snow goon with three arms, three eyes, horns and fangs. He was very proud of it. As I sat at my desk facing the front window, I saw several people walking by smile at the weirdness of this snowman. And yesterday some a-hole kicked it down.

Especially irritating is that we are the only people on the block who shovel the sidewalk so that the little special snowflakes can walk safely to school (and home from the bars). So whoever knocked over the snowman was walking along the path that we shoveled when they decided to cross our lawn to assert their a-holery.

Also, because our landlord has decided to sell our house, we have been looking for a new place to live. We have mentioned this a few times to Sam, but apparently he has not been paying attention. Joseph has helped me look at a few potential rentals and has been much more engaged in the house-hunting process. So, I think that Joseph mentioned moving to his teacher. And when Sam and Danny came to pick up Joseph from school yesterday, Joseph's teacher asked Sam if he was excited about moving. Sam did not take this well, and cried when he got home. He seems better about it now: I think that Sam was just taken by surprise.

Skating and suppositories

2009-02-03T22:07:00.004-06:00

Today I took the afternoon off to accompany Joseph on a field trip. His school got to skate with the Bloomington Prairie Thunder in the hockey arena. The kids had a great time, and the hockey players helped teach kids how to skate. By the end of the time, most kids were able to shuffle around at least a little bit. Joseph wore his helmet and practiced both skating and pratfalls. The hockey players brought out a bunch of chairs for the non-skating kids to push around.

However, when we got home, we had to tackle the issue of Joseph's uncooperative bowels. He has been complaining about stomach pains at home and school for at least two days, assuredly because he has not had a bowel movement for several days. He generally eats an "intestinally-friendly" diet with lots of veggies, fruit and fiber. For the last few days, we had been trying him on laxatives and stool softeners, but not luck.

So today Danny went out and got glycerine suppositories. Believe me, Joseph was not a willing participant in the application of said medication. Yesterday NPR had a story about boys molested within the Hasidic Jewish organization. I fear that one day Joseph will recall the glycerine suppository incident, and we will get a call from his lawyer. On the positive side, the suppository worked almost immediately, and he feels 100% better. The poor child was attempting to pass something so dense and unflushable that we ended up having to dispose of it by bagging it in a dog poop bag and taking it out to the trash can.

Best cartoon ever!

2009-02-01T15:56:00.002-06:00

Bye bye Blago

2009-01-29T22:43:00.000-06:00

This @#$% thing is %$#@ golden...

Clip it good

2009-01-25T21:39:00.006-06:00

I am very proud of myself! I cut the boys' hair myself--and it looks perfect! I have been watching haircutters doing clipper cuts on the boys for years. I initially assumed there was some kind of trick to it, maybe professional quality clippers or some kind of beauty school training. However, after watching closely, I never saw much technique going on. So, I paid $20 for the clippers, and after cutting the boys' hair 1x each, they have paid for themselves.

There was an article in the NYTimes the other day scolding people for baking their own cupcakes and doing their own nails because they were robbing good bakers and aestheticians of their livelihoods. However, I have always baked my own cupcakes, washed my own car, and mostly painted my own toenails. So this is actually the first thing that I have done to adversely affect the economic growth of the country. However, I defend my actions by pointing out that even after two years, we have never really found a place around here to get the boys' haircut that successfully balanced skill and price. (So, hardworking barbers of Normal, if you want my business, stop giving my kids bad haircuts with random wisps of uncut hair, and put those naked lady magazines out of sight!)

Sam after the haircut. No, he's not bald on top--its just the picture. He looks exactly like he does after the barber does a good job. For both boys I used a longer clip on top, so they won't look like beanheads.

Joseph! He is never delighted to get his hair cut, and he sassed me more than he would the barber. Next time, I will provide a handsome bribe for compliance.
Joseph is rather vain about his hair. He feels that his hair looks good when he slicks it forward with his sticky little hands. I keep trying to get him to brush it to the side, but Joseph has some very strong opinions.

Obama dream overshare

2009-01-23T09:07:00.003-06:00

Last night I had a dream that Barack Obama was mad at me. In my dream (and actually for real) I was out drinking with my PI and lab mates. When I returned to the lab (in my dream), I was told that Obama was on the phone for me. I was delighted! But when I picked up the phone, he bellowed at me that a humidifier running in the growth chamber sparked a particulate explosion that injured a facilities worker. (Why were these facilities guys in my growth chamber anyway?) I explained that we did not have money to buy a sparkproof system, and Obama grudgingly said that he would earmark some money for that.

Good news and Normal news

2009-01-20T21:31:00.005-06:00

Ahhhhh. Much better.
I had a crappy day, but any day without Bush as president is a good day. I listened to the Inaugural address 3x to hear the part where Obama pledged to devote more attention to Science.

By the way, the Pantagraph has kindly summarized the top stupid local news stories for your persusal.

Cold phobic

2009-01-17T20:56:00.006-06:00

I have overcome my fear of extreme cold weather. By Friday, ISU was open, and I couldn't stand being cooped up anymore. Sam and I went in to the lab to try to freeze-dry some samples. (Arrggh--the freeze-drier broke! Why does this always happen when I am on a deadline!)

Later I went for a run with Argos. It was @0 degrees, and I wore many layers. Note to self: when running at 0 degrees, never take a break! I stopped for @ 1 minutes to blow my nose and the condensation on my balaklava froze solid! Argos was delighted to be running again, but wearing all those pairs of long underwear and socks made me feel like I was running through molasses.
www.insanecats.com

More snow day

2009-01-15T16:12:00.007-06:00

We are all still at home. The temperature never got to 0 today. I think that the high was -5 with a windchill of -33. The kids' schools and ISU were closed. Tonight it is supposed to go down to -22 (with windchill -40).

The news emphatically warns that no one should go outside unless absolutely necessary. This piece of information is eating me alive! All morning I gazed longingly out the window at the perfectly clear blue sky and brilliant white snowdrifts. I can't stand it when someone tells me not to do something--it makes me crazy to do the thing.
Luckily, I got an email from work telling us that even though the university was closed down, we should risk death and come in because we had a job candidate visiting and we really needed to hear his seminar. My reaction to this commandment is (not surprisingly) hell to the no. However, now that I am doing the opposite of what someone wants me to do, I can lie around and enjoy my home incarceration.

I went in to work yesterday while Danny watched the kids, so I watched the kids today. Activities of the day:
The kids and I did a thorough room cleaning.
We freed all of the small toy parts that were trapped in the crack in the play table.
We watched Yo Gabba Gabba. It was the episode about manners--so great!!
I did lots of laundry and cleaned the kitchen walls.
We built waterbugs out of Bionicles. (I answered many questions about water bug copulation and egg-carrying behavior, as well)
I made them open-face cheese melt sandwiches for lunch.
Joseph played with Legos
Sam practiced spelling bee practice words. (Including watching the Futurama song where Bender defines 'irony')
We baked foccacia.
We did yoga, including both real and child-invented poses.

Also, the dog is really disappointed with all of us. He spent a few hours outside, with me peeking out at him every 15 minutes to make sure that we wasn't dead. Every time I looked out, he looked back at me as if I were nuts. He was totally comfortable, sunning himself in a snowdrift and watching the crows. At our usual running time, Argos got all excited and I had to give him a bone to alleviate my guilt.

Snow day

2009-01-14T21:34:00.003-06:00

Last night it snowed 6 inches, so today the kids were home from school. Surprisingly, ISU didn't close, so I had to trudge in to campus.

Tomorrow the high temperature is predicted to be 0, so school will be canceled for the kids again. I am really hoping that I don't have to walk to school in sub-0 temperatures with 6 inches of snow.
Argos: the only dog at the dog park. He had a mighty good time running through snowdrifts and trying to track down foxes.

I took off work early to take the kids sledding. It was rather difficult sledding weather: it was so cold that the snow fell as a fine powder that didn't pack well. Joseph got mad and stopped sledding after he slid into the side of a snowdrift.

Video of a little sledding accident

Where is blogboy?

2009-01-13T20:25:00.003-06:00

So why hasn't Joseph been keeping up on his blog posts? He tells me that he is too busy doing his nails.

Wedding Bells

2009-01-12T22:14:00.006-06:00

Why? Why is this a top news story? It has made the national press big time--I have been hearing about it all day.

Admittedly 'off-beat' couple gets married at Taco Bell
By Mary Ann Ford and Sharon K. Wolfe, The Pantagraph

NORMAL -- Paul and Caragh Brooks wanted an off-beat wedding and they got one Friday evening — at Taco Bell.
Caragh Brooks, dressed in a $15, hot pink dress, said her vows with Paul Brooks, who wore a lavender shirt and purple and magenta tie in honor of Taco Bell’s colors, in the dining area of the fast-food eatery at 1527 E. College Ave., Normal.
The entire wedding cost about $200.
“It’s appropriate,” the groom said of the Taco Bell choice. “It’s an off-beat relationship and we figured that would be off-beat.”

So, yes, I have heard the story about the couple who got married at the Normal Taco Bell. So stop asking!

Slow start Sunday

2009-01-11T15:00:00.007-06:00

No--cornburgers!
Today is off to a slow start due to technical difficulties. I have discussed in previous posts my 5-year-old's remarkable ability to produce bowel movements of enormous size. Twice in the past 12 hours have I needed to use the restroom, only to find that the toilet was entirely obstructed. I would guess that my son optimistically flushes the toilet and slams the lid down. Any plumbing problems that he may have created are usually discovered by me, at the most inconvenient time possible. This morning, I had to sit with my legs crossed for 90 minutes while Danny snaked the toilet to clear the clog. We had planned to drive out to Starved Rock State Park to see a sled dog demonstration, but our technical difficulties put the kibosh on that.

So, I decided to get some work done. I wanted to make some lovely publication-quality graphs on Excel. However, I had not anticipated the incredibly retarded renovations to Excel that were made as part of Office 2008. It took me over an hour of puttering and web searches to create a graph that would normally take less than 8 minutes to produce. Thanks Microsoft! I can only imagine how horrible it will be when next I teach. The students could barely produce Excel graphs when the software was reasonably intuitive.

On the plus side, I finally bought new towels for the bathroom. I have been putting off buying towels for so long that our current ones are fraying into shreds. I have tried to buy towels at least three times in the past two years, but there are so many choices between features that may or may not be important that I get overwhelmed. When I came home with lovely new brown towels, Danny reminded me of this David Sedaris story which kind of brings things back around to the topic that started this post...

Back to work overshare

2009-01-06T19:35:00.010-06:00

Aaahhh. Back to work. I have been putting off doing some challenging revisions, so I have not been looking forward to going back to the lab. However, it felt great to take care of all of the loose ends that have been nagging at me. After a day of lab minutia and revisions, I feel much better.
Also, I have almost lost the weight that I gained from all of the delicious food in Baltimore and New York. (The fact that I have a cold and everything tastes like snot is a big help, I would guess.)

Also, every single morning of my vacation at home my shower was disturbed by someone or another coming into the bathroom to drop a deuce. One day I will have two bathrooms! Now that everyone is on weekday schedules, this elimination problem has been eliminated.

Also, we had a light snow last night which gave everything a beautiful dusting of white. Except for the black splotch of ice that was revealed when I slipped and smashed my knee on the way to work. On the way home from work I noticed that there were two more assprints in the same spot, so I guess that I wasn't the only unlucky one.

Alyn, I saw this cartoon and thought of you. Maybe the muttsies aren't just begging for food and attention?

Blog-related cartoons

2009-01-06T11:11:00.003-06:00

This is my new favorite blog-related cartoon. I think that it's from Natalie Dee:

This one is good, too:

Home vacation

2009-01-03T13:23:00.009-06:00

Last year we got home from the east coast early and had a great time on vacation at home. I came to the shocking realization that if I didn't actually go to campus and sit in my office for 8-10 hours a day, no one came after me to do things. I was able to catch up on household chores, play with the kids and also get work done.

This year we had a week off of school at home. I spent the first few days convincing the kids that despite what they may have been told by their grandparents, they are not the center of the universe. Also, I do not wake up every morning with the goal of finding new and interesting ways to amuse them. That said, we had a good time this week. The kids, Danny and I did a major toy sorting and reorganization to make room for new toys. We wrote thank you notes and finished mailing out our holiday cards and newsletter. (Hint: if you didn't get one, we may not have your snail mail address!) Joseph worked on a pictorial diary of his vacation for school. I painstakingly cut and glued 100 cricket box lids, restocked the groceries and cooked about 25 meals. I got to go running during daylight hours, which Argos and I enjoyed very much.

We went to the Normal Children's Museum for their 3:00 pm New Year's Eve countdown. The kids had a good time, although a little boy snatched Joseph's truck and ran away shortly before the countdown. Joseph couldn't get the truck back because the little bruiser had a death grip on it, was too young to be reasoned with and was unsupervised. Joseph spent the countdown sulking under the table.

We looked for a hiking trail at Lake Bloomington, but found nothing. The kids enjoyed one of the many playgrounds. Argos discovered a new favorite snack plentifully spread across the ground--crunchy frozen deer poo.

The historic Normal theater was showing Wall-E. Sam and Joseph were the only kids in attendance, but they enjoyed themselves.

We went skating for the first time this season, and Joseph learned how to skate on his own!

A little girl noticed Joseph and offered to teach him to skate, and I think that her attention (you know how Joseph is such the ladies' man) may have spurred him to risk letting go of the wall.

He can skate on his own without help, and can get up from the ice without pulling up on the wall! By the end, he was getting kind of fast and reckless--next time I will have to bring a helmet for him!

Video of Joseph skating (and falling)

By the way, if you lived here, you would have gotten this delicious cookie assortment... (Yes, those are vanilla vodka/coconut rum balls.)

Big city haul

2009-01-03T09:45:00.004-06:00

Every year, I amass a list of things that I can't buy in Normal. I count on our trips east to complete this list, and this year was especially bountiful. I scored several decorative window menorahs on sale ($5 each at Staten Island Pathmark!) as well as Light Coconut Milk from Trader Joe's and fancy pearlized brown rice (Pikesville SunSplash Health Foods). Danny and I also acquired several unusual family heirlooms: a set of rooster cocktail glasses (they each have one owlish eye that follows you wherever you go...) from Danny's mother and a small glass barrel with Polish on in from my grandmother ("You could put toothpicks in it!")
I also scored @90 new containers in which to individually house crickets for the lab (Staten Island Dollar Depot: 3/$1). Believe me--we have been looking all over the Bloomington-Normal area for containers that meet our exacting specifications with no luck. I have spent the better part of the weekend modifying the lids and inserting screens for proper cricket ventilation.

Manhattan on $25

2008-12-31T23:39:00.008-06:00

We go into Manhattan every year. Last year Joseph was not old enough to walk long distances (but too old for a stroller) so we were stuck driving into the city. But this year we decided to ditch the car and take public transportation. We took the Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan and the subway to the American Museum of Natural History.

The kids' first subway ride!

I love the origami tree the AMNH has every year. This year's theme was fossils, so the tree was covered with delicate origami skeletons, ammonites, etc.

Joseph had a meltdown in the Hall of Birds of the World. He sat down in a corner to sulk, and I sat down on a nearby bench. He attracted the attention of a crowd of young Japanese women, who took pictures of his spectacular pout. When Joseph peeked up to make sure that I was still watching him, caught me looking at him, and then dramatically turned away and scowled, the girls all giggled and "Awwed" at him. Eventually Sam came over to show Joseph the secretary bird, which got Joseph out of his funk.

There was a Kwanzaa festival in the Hall of Biodiversity, so we didn't get to see most of the exhibits that the kids were looking forward to. There were dancers, though.

Because we didn't have the car, we had the chance to go out of the museum to find lunch. I had an amazing chicken cutlet sandwich at a deli. Now why can't they do that in Normal?

Yet again, I tried to get a good family picture. No luck, but here are the attempts.

Christmakuh on Staten Island

2008-12-31T22:29:00.005-06:00

We all spent an exciting time in Staten Island with Danny's family. The kids were very enthusiastic to see Grammy and Grandpa Joe (Danny won't let the kids call him 'Gramps' because it makes him think of cramps). The kids got Egyptian-themed Christmas presents, including a pyramid to excavate, a wrap-it-yourself mummy and a little archeologist with a tent and digging kit.

Joseph got to play with his cousins Cameron and Callahan and Karen, Danny's brother's fiancé.
Cameron, Callahan, Joseph and Karen

Cameron, Callahan, Mike and Karen

Due to the overlap between Chanukah and Christmas, we lit the Chanukah candles on the sideboard next to baby Jesus.
The kids lighting the candles with Great-aunt (Sister) Alyn in the background. By the eighth day, Joseph was able to light the candles and say the Chanukah prayer without help!

We took our bi-annual trip to the Staten Island Zoo. It was a misty day so very few people were at the zoo. The animals were all oddly happy to see us. The reindeer looked pretty malevolent and kept trying to escape.

The petting zoo animals were all ravenous for Rye-crisps, and the kids were happy to accommodate. Joseph was especially eager to feed the turkey. After Joseph finished dispensing crumbs, he cheerfully announced: "I'll be back to eat you at Thanksgiving!"

Mellowing out in Baltimore

2008-12-25T20:48:00.010-06:00

Danny, the kids and I (and Argos) went to Baltimore for Chanukah. Grandma Dorinda couldn't come, so the kids got to spend more quality time with their great grandparents than usual. It was a low-key holiday, and we spent most of our time doing nothing in particular.

I think that everyone had a very nice Chanukah. Saul and Martha opening presents:

The angry young artist explains his artistic vision to his fans.

Lighting the candles. We had kind of an excess of chanukiah. I brought our two menorahs from home, and my grandparents also had two.

Later, cousin Melissa brought Aron over to visit. Sam really enjoyed playing with him, although Joseph was a little jealous and stand-offish.

We spent one morning visiting the Inner Harbor. The Torsk has received some minor restoration since last we saw it.

Joseph has been reading books independently for a few weeks, and he was delighted to show off his mad skills to Grandma Martha.

Joseph reads:

Joseph did all of his own menorah-lighting this year, and he is gradually learning the prayer. On this night, Grandpa Saul was humoring us by lighting one of the menorahs, although with so many people saying the prayer, Joseph got a little lost:

Ice day

2008-12-19T15:56:00.010-06:00

The crickets have taken me hostage again. I am determined to finish this experiment before I leave for Baltimore, but it has been an incredible hassle. I have been working long hours all week in preparation for the main event, which was scheduled to take place today. And what else was scheduled for today? A massive ice storm, of course. One bizarre aspect to living in the flyover region is that weather forecasts are dead-on accurate. An ice storm was predicted for 8 pm last night, and darned if it didn't start raining at exactly 8:00.

School was called off for both kids. We had 1.5 inches of ice accumulate in the night, and I was awakened at 6am by the sound of a massive tree limb rolling down the roof and crushing our fence. Surprisingly, the electric fence wiring that we had woven through the chain link was intact, so Argos can still go out without escaping.

In the morning I strapped on my crampons and hiked to work. And bizarrely enough, the place was hopping. I usually get to work @ 8:30 and I see no one. However, today there were tons of people around, each vying for the "Look at Me--I Risked My Life to Get Here and I Am a Martyr for Science" award. Eventually ISU issued a statement saying that only "essential employees" should come to work today, so perhaps we all harbor feelings of self-importance.

The experiment went reasonably well, but now I am stuck here waiting for the last few stragglers to do their thing...

Sledding on Jersey Hill before the ice storm

Triple-score!

2008-12-12T09:32:00.017-06:00

Yesterday was a lucky day indeed. After two years of searching, I finally found a 15-35 degrees C winter coat that meets my stringent criteria: waterproof, hood, windproof, fit well, non-ugly color, not too expensive. I found a girl's Astoria North Face coat at Dick's on sale. Score!

I also stopped by Target and bought my dream boots! Ever since I found out that I was moving to the midwest, I had an idealized pair of winter boots in mind: wedges, waterproof, grippy treads, lined for cold weather, black, close-fitting but roomy enough to tuck your pants into. And here they are!! Score 2!

As an aside, lately I feel guilty when I go out shopping. So far, Danny and I have felt zero negative effects from the recession. We don't own a house, our investments are diversified, our jobs are so far unaffected and we have no debt. And when I go shopping I get to buy cheap gas and take advantage of all of the economy-stimulating sales. I feel kind of like the Bubba Gump shrimp boat, but maybe with a little economic survivor guilt added in.

When I got home from shopping, I got the best news! All week I have been freaking out about the F.D.A. panel evaluating asthma drugs. I have always had exercise-induced asthma. Until I was put on Advair 5 years ago I had never been able to participate in any aerobic activity. Numerous gym teachers forced me to run until my lungs got hot and raspy and I couldn't breathe. The first time in my entire life that I successfully ran a mile was as an adult grad student.

I have been really enjoying the past five years. I run daily and try whatever sports and sporty-like activities present themselves. However, in the back of my mind I worry that it will all go away: one day I will lose my health insurance or Advair will be pulled from the market and I will gradually slide back into a permanent sedentary state. However, today is not that day. Advair was given a positive recommendation by the F.D.A. panel. (Score 3!)

not Blivin Santa

2008-12-12T09:00:00.006-06:00

Apparently Joseph caused a bit of a ruckus in his kindergarten class last week. He announced that he did not believe in Santa Claus and was basically booed down by the other kids. Joseph, as I have mentioned before, is a very independent guy, and does not easily bow down to peer pressure. But he has clearly been thinking it over.
Joseph sometimes draws what we call "kinetic" pictures: rather than drawing what happened at a point in time, he draws action as it occurs. The end result of these kinetic drawings may be hard to interpret (especially if night falls, and he colors black over the whole picture). I think that in this picture, the "not Blivin Santa" character with the sword seems to have slayed the "Blivin Santa" character. Or maybe the one transformed into the other?

Goodbye Rodblagojevich

2008-12-10T08:56:00.006-06:00

Ow. The whole thing is so awful that I'm embarrassed, and I'm not even from Illinois.

One more birthday card

2008-12-09T14:40:00.004-06:00

Here's the final word about Danny's 40th birthday from the good people at Toothpaste for Dinner. Happy Birthday Danny!

Do you like gingerbread?

2008-12-08T21:11:00.005-06:00

Well, do you?
Probably not as much as Joseph does.
Yes yes yes!
No no.

Holiday hijinks

2008-12-07T22:50:00.016-06:00

Our social calendar is booked this time of year! This weekend, before and after taking Danny to Chicago, we went to the Phi Sigma Biological Honor Society Holiday party and the ISU Children's Holiday Party. The Phi Sigma party is always great, but this year it was held in the Bloomingtion Center for the Performing Arts, which is a fantastic venue, so it was even better than usual. The event is potluck, and everyone around here is such a great cook that it was really a feast! There was free beer and wine with a professional cash bar for the other drinks.

There was even a band! The (unnamed) band was loud but good, and drove the old folks out. The kids had a great time: the room was so large and high-ceilinged that they were able to run around in one part of the room without bothering anyone in the dining/induction ceremony area. Santa came and gave some gifts, too.

Joseph's dance mix, including a little break dancing, some pole dancing and a one-man stage dive.

The supposed highlight of the ISU Children's holiday party is a performance by the Gamma Phi Circus, one of only two collegiate circuses in the US. The performances were a little uneven, with a little too much focus on athleticism and too little on showmanship? There were no major falls, just a lot (A LOT) of bobbles, drops and minor falls.

Sam thought that he was a little too mature for the circus. Luckily I wasn't, so I poked him until he enjoyed it in spite of himself.

Santa visits the circus! Also, Al Bowman, the president of ISU visited the circus. Now, if they had gotten Santa and Al Bowman to do the Russian swing, that would have been entertainment!

Joseph requested a snake from the balloon-bending man. Wow--you should have seen the guy sweating it out to make this finely honed piece of craftsmanship.

Our special little snowflake!

Birthday surprise!

2008-12-07T21:33:00.006-06:00

I have been keeping a secret these past few weeks. (And boy am I bad at that!) I have been sneaking around and planning a surprise for Danny's 40th birthday. I arranged to have my friend MaryJane babysit overnight so that I could whisk Danny away for an evening in Chicago.

I made reservations at the 4-star Amalfi Hotel in Chicago a few weeks ago. I was sure that the gig was up when Danny noticed the charge from Orbitz, but he assumed that it was an academic conference-related charge and didn't question it. Also, I told (warned) the kids about the trip the day before, but they totally forgot and didn't rat me out. So, when MaryJane showed up on Saturday afternoon, Danny was pricing gutter pipes on line and was completely and totally surprised.

The Hotel was gorgeous! And it is in the middle of everything! We were able to do a little window shopping, admire the architecture and walk around Millennium Park.

Also, there was another surprise: I had arranged to have Danny's friend Matt (and my friend Beth) meet us for dinner. Cafe Iberico seems to be in a Google black hole. I had noticed that the street address of the restaurant didn't match the hundreds on Google maps, so I called the restaurant and asked them if they were on the corner of LaSalle and Kinsey, and they said yes. However, they are actually on the corner of LaSalle and Superior, many blocks away. I told Danny that we had 6:00 reservations (they actually don't take reservations) so we had to hop a cab (I love Chicago!) to get there "on time." We got to the restaurant before Matt and Beth, so I had to secretly call them on the phone and sneakily get the hostess to give the two of us a table for 4. But Danny was completely surprised when Matt and Beth showed up!

Here's Danny's description of the event:

"I had no idea we were leaving for a night in Chicago. When MaryJane showed up I thought maybe she and Susan had plans. I was so surprised I felt my brain working about two steps behind what was happening. It was especially surprising that the kids had kept the secret. They were quite casual about it all. Susan produced a packed suitcase out of nowhere and we left in 15 minutes!

The drive to Chicago was easy and the hotel was beautiful. We got to walk around with the holiday shoppers and spend a little time in some very snazzy stores, including an entire store devoted to olives (one of my favorite foods) and a Lego store with a life-size Darth Vader - the picture is sure to give me some street cred with the kids.

Then we went to a fabulous tapas restaurant. I was a little suspicious when they set the table for four but couldn't for the life of me think who would be joining us. Believe me that I was stunned and delighted to see Matt and Beth. The food was fantastic and the company was even better. I enjoyed a wide variety of drinks and was glad not to be driving back to the hotel.

The following morning (when I finally woke up) we walked around admiring the Chicago architecture in freezing sunshine and ended up in Millennium Park. It was a wonderful end to an unbelievable trip.

Did I mention I have the best wife in the world?"

Happy Birthday Danny!

2008-12-03T23:12:00.003-06:00

To celebrate the momentous occasion of Danny's 40th birthday, I present you with images of the world in 1968.
Classic styles and fabrics:

Stylish hair:

Haute cuisine and interior decor:

High quality entertainment:

So, being 40 is not the worst thing in the world. At least you don't have to wear polyester and horn-rimmed glasses. Happy birthday Danny!

Back from Ohio

2008-12-01T22:30:00.009-06:00

Ahh how relaxing. We went to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, where we had a lovely time enjoying the company of friends and family. We ate some fabulous meals, drank some lovely drinks, and generally relaxed and had a good time. I have been back in Normal for 16 hours and I think that my head may explode at any minute.

Here we are enjoying a delicious Thanksgiving diner. My mom does not (and probably should not) cook. In fact, 10 years ago she decided to move her oven to the basement to make more space in the kitchen. Consequently, cooking Thanksgiving dinner was a bit of a challenge. Michelle and Rich brought over the turkey, and I made sides as best I could.

Turkey shredding after the bash.

Michelle and Rich came over to hang out and give Danny a birthday present.

We took Danny out to Lolita in Tremont, which is one of Iron Chef Michael Symon's restaurants. Everyone looked very dashing. The food was amazing, especially the smoked meats. The kids snarfed down a big plate of goat cheese mac and cheese. Danny had a duck confit pizza and I ordered various sides, including chicken livers, and Dorinda had the MahiMahi.

Danny gave his seal of approval to the cappuccino (and the martinis!)

I haven't been back to Cleveland more than twice in 10 years, and it is striking how some things have changed and some things never change. The houses remain, but the people have all changed. I didn't randomly run into anyone that I knew, and in in fact I ran into few people may age that I could conceivably have known. It never occurred to me that people that I knew who remained in Cleveland have moved off into other (younger and hipper) neighborhoods.

I met up with my long-lost friend Jennie and her family. The kids had a great time playing with each other and Argos and we helped my mom eat up Thanksgiving leftovers.

The road trip back was a pain--we had two traffic delays (@30 minutes each). The kids were happy travellers because I introduced them to Mr. Bean.

We were all rather shocked to discover that it had snowed 6 inches while we were gone, and we came home to a winter wonderland (and a plowed-in driveway).

TaeKwonDo testing and dog fu

2008-11-25T20:26:00.006-06:00

Danny and Sam tested in TaeKwonDo this weekend. Both guys did great! And they ended up getting paired up with each other for sparring, which was a first.

It has been unseasonably hot and Argos enjoyed the early winter heat at Maxwell Park.

Booze hound

2008-11-15T20:32:00.004-06:00

Today Danny observed the dog messing with something in the backyard. Upon further inspection, Argos was burying a sealed bottle of Smithwick's. Indeed, there were several unopened bottles of beer throughout the yard. Argos is peeved at us because we locked the recycling bin so that he couldn't gnaw up our recyclables. Apparently, the dog had carefully carried several bottles of beer in his mouth from the mud room, down the stairs and into the back yard.

Weekend hijinks and the 5th

2008-11-12T19:50:00.008-06:00

Another action-packed weekend in Normal. Sam and Danny's TaeKwonDo teacher had set up his place for an elaborate Harry Potter party for his daughter and her girlfriends last weekend. This weekend he had people over for a magic-themed party. Joseph was Dumbledore.

Sam was some kind of evil wizard, although he has taken off his robes to challenge Katana to a duel over who can sit in front of the hot fireplace longer.

I was a mathemagician. Here I am inverting someone's matrix.

Danny was the CheeseWizard.

Sunday we went to the pool on campus for Faculty/Staff Family swim. The kids had a great time, although Joseph still can't swim on his own and is resistant to try.

I baked foccacio. (I could swear that I baked two of them. Hmm...)

And of course, every time we go swimming, Joseph gets sick. After we got back from the pool, Joseph's face was bright red and he was acting squirrely. We deduced that he had 5th disease. (See--that giant pile of parenthood preparedness books that I read 10 years ago when I was pregnant with Sam did come in handy!)

Monday, Joseph had no school, but we had to take him to his school with us for a parent-teacher meeting. By the time the red-cheeked "slapped" look starts, the 5th disease virus has run its course and is no longer contagious. But to avoid suspicion at school until we could get a doctor's note, we told Joseph that his red face was an allergic reaction to the Dumbledore beard. When he was asked about his face, Joseph said: "I had a surgery on my face from my Dumbledore beard," which was kind of cute and inexplicable until we explained that he meant "allergy" not "surgery."

Trees and arrows

2008-11-10T21:51:00.007-06:00

I used to be more outdoorsy, but being married to an indoorsy New Yorker for 15 years has taken its toll. I generally don't get to get out anywhere unless it is near and I can go alone (with the dog). When I do get the crew outside, I have the uncomfortable feeling that everyone is waiting for me to produce something entertaining out of the bushes and protect them from any and all natural dangers.

I want the kids to have some appreciation for nature. Usually I try to get the kids to appreciate the suburban/rural nature that is near us. Both kids have a good knowldege of the taxonomy of insects and other invertebrates.

But, periodically, I do drag everyone outside and I thought that I'd give the Moraine View State Park a try. It was the closest state park--40 minutes away. But it was a lame state park. Miles of trails, but all were inexplicably closed to hiking except for the 0.5 mile archery trail. The kids and Argos had a good time, though.

Good ol' Normal

2008-11-07T22:52:00.003-06:00

As reported in the Pantagraph:

Suspects drive by robbery victim while he was giving description to police
NORMAL -- Normal police believe they were able to solve an attempted robbery within minutes Friday night because the suspects drove by while the victim was giving an officer their description.
A man in his 20s told police he was confronted by four people at 6:25 p.m. on the ground floor of the parking deck at the Junction Place apartment complex at Main Street and Hovey Avenue, police said. One suspect had a knife, he told police.
He ran away after the four demanded money, and the suspects ran in another direction, he told police.
As the victim was giving police a description, he saw a car pull out of the parking deck and said, “Well, that’s them,” said Normal Police Sgt. Kevin Henderson.
Normal police stopped the car a short distance away. By 6:38 p.m., two men, a woman and a male juvenile were in custody, police said.
“They didn’t plan out an escape route very well,” Henderson said.

Much better

2008-11-06T22:31:00.004-06:00

The sky is bluer, the grass is greener, the air is autumnier. Everything is just much better now. As the election results were announced, I could hear screams of enthusiasm coming from campus. (I am still not sure whether as an ISU employee with restrictions on my freedom of speech I would be allowed to join them.)

Joseph has taken down the hundreds of Halloween decorations that he has drawn and is starting to replace them with happy Obamas.

Used car?

2008-11-02T22:11:00.004-06:00

Would you buy a used car from this fellow?

How about if this fellow drew you a complete guide to Creatures of Death including "Giint oktpos," "anglr fish," "giint taradaktl," "vampiyr ghost bat," "spitr," "small crab," and "babbi bug?"

Green tomato cake

2008-11-02T21:47:00.003-06:00

Although today it was >70 degrees F, last weekend nighttime temperatures dropped below freezing, so I had to pick the remainder of the garden. I had a ton of these green tomatoes, so I went online and found some recipes. This one for green tomato cake was awesome! It was a really delicious cake, and the green tomatoes were kind of sweet and tangy, like kumkwats.

Halloweenies

2008-11-02T20:14:00.010-06:00

Am I going nuts, or has Halloween blossomed into a massive extravaganza of a holiday? It is no longer just a kids' holiday: it is a giant inflatable lawn ornament and porch-decorating holiday and a college student binge-drinking holiday, too. (In fact, ISU has moved parents' weekend to coincide with Halloween to keep the undergrads under control.)

This year costumes went on sale at the beginning of September and all of the good ones were sold out before October. I think that the idea is that if you buy costumes in advance, the kids will change their minds or ruin the costume in the intervening two months and you will have to buy another one. I tried to sell the kids on home-made costumes, but no dice. This is the first year that no one needed for me to sew them anything elaborate. Snif. Sam wanted to be Iron Man and Joseph wanted to be Darth Vader, so I bought costumes in September and stuck them in the closet for safety. Is it just me, or does Joseph look like Dark Helmet from Spaceballs?

We went to the annual Halloween Planetarium show (for a detailed description, read last year's post). Soooo corny... I was chatting with the fellow who runs the planetarium the other day and I had an epiphany--he records the cheesy audio tracks for the shows!!!

Normal has the annual Uptown Normal Treat Fest for kids to go from store to store and get candy (and coupons--what every kid wants!) But this year was insane--there were just too many people for the length of the street, so that everyone ended up gridlocked and unable to move forward, even though there was plenty of candy (and coupons!) We eventually gave up and stopped for dinner.

Joseph's school has a Halloween parade, which Danny attended. Sam's school also has a "Halloween walk-a-thon" which we didn't see.

Darth Vader makes a skeleton out of Q-tips.

After we went to the Harvest Festival, Sam asked if we could make a scarecrow. So we dipped into the discarded clothes collection, and stuffed them with plastic bags (the ones that I can't use for crocheting). However, the day before Halloween, it was (not surprisingly) stolen off of our porch. So we made another one for Halloween. Sam helped stuff it and Joseph made the mask.

Our neighborhood is awesome for trick-or-treating! There are loads of older neighbors who recall Halloween nostalgically, and stuff handfuls of candy into the kids' bags. Our neighbors also do this awesome haunted yard. Sam was a little freaked out, but Joseph spent a long time examining each of the corpses and ghouls.

We left a big bowl of candy on the porch and when we got back from trick-or-treating, although it looks like some kids helped themselves the bowl was still there! And the biggest surprise--after Halloween weekend, the scarecrow is still there, and the pumpkins haven't been smashed!

Blogboy

2008-10-27T22:38:00.008-05:00

Tonight Joseph asked to do a blog post about funny jack-o-lanterns. (Check out his spelling--it is really getting much easier to interpret!) When he finished, he announced that he wanted to write a poem about Halloween which can be seen at the end of his blog entry. To elucidate the poet's intentions, I have included a video of the poem read aloud. Sam has pointed out that Joseph's poem is rather like an inverted haiku in structure.

gloing lit apon the grawnd
stiks move and glavs grab
on haloeen niiete