Multiple choice weekend

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.

Back to work overshare

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?

Home vacation

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.)

Manhattan on $25

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.

Ice day

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

Holiday hijinks

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!