The Blog With No Name

School is back in session. The daughter is is eighth grade, and will, I hope, soon be in the jazz band. The jazz band rehearses at 7:00 a.m. Getting her there on time is going to be, um, interesting.  The boy has a new teacher, who looks like she’s 14 (everybody looks like he or she is 14 to me now), but who seems to be on the ball and has placed him so that she can keep an evil eye on his desk. She does not allow messy desks! Yay!

The booster group at his school seems to have attracted a few new and potentially-really-active people, so we are trying to think of ways to give them some meaningful work but not so much that they run away in terror. Ideas?

The paper budget at her junior high school has been cut by 2/3. PAPER. As in, NO PAPER. So in addition to lunch money, it seems I might be buying cases of paper to donate to the school as well. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY.

Hey, other than that, it’s been a great day. Weather finally turned warm, we went to the pool, had lunch with some friends, every day should be this way.

We just had the great joint birthday party, and I took all of one photograph. Oh well. It was fun! Now it’s all done! And school starts Monday! Woot!

(goes off to have a glass of wine)

The Boy has got some drums for a combined birthday/school band (that part won’t start for a few years) present. Drums. I do own many sets of earplugs, strategically placed throughout the house…

• My in-laws live in Cedar Falls. Great portions of Cedar Falls are now under water. My in-laws’ house may be in that category. Oy.
• My daughter’s new principal phoned us just now to let us know that she will be in all possible advanced classes. YAY!!!!!!!! Cannot EXPRESS how much this has been worrying me.
• Went to a baseball game last night. Kids are now old enough (!) that they can walk around the stadium (in the case of the daughter, with her posse) by themselves. Wow, we actually got to watch the game!
• Fireworks following the game (the home team won, but the enemy team was a Cubs farm team – oh the tangled loyalties…) – why is it that “Sweet Home Alabama” goes so perfectly with fireworks?

The Boy is out of school, The Daughter still has a week, and all of a sudden I am consumed with worry about getting her into the proper classes in junior high school. The left hand of the school district knoweth not what the right hand is up to. The house is a wreck, the bills aren’t paid, checkbook isn’t balanced.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

TIME TO FOCUS!

We saw the Crystal Skull last night. Overall it was quite fun, but. Harrison Ford is too old for this shit. That’s just all there is to it. Or maybe I’m still a little squicked at the “abandon your wife and run off with the anorexic chick” crap. Dunno. Cate Blanchett makes a fine villain, and that Shia kid is a cutie. Extra added bonus – I understood all the vulgar Russian things the bad guys were saying during their car chases. Heh heh.

So, when I was at Target today I picked up DVDs of the first and third Indiana Jones movies (there was a second movie? really? la la la, I can’t hear you……) and we watched the Last Crusade this evening. Very entertaining, hearing the kiddies discuss the theology/science of living eternally. They kept asking me whether Dr. Schneider was a GOOD GUY or a BAD GUY (she was the Nazi mad scientist). I tried to explain the non-binary, oh-so-subtly-nuanced nature of her, um, nature, but I don’t think I succeeded. They decided she was just crazy.

It was also sad to see Denholm Eliot’s character turned into a buffoon (sort of like Gimli in Lord of the Rings). Oh well.

I am in a monumentally bad mood, and have been all day. Perhaps not co-incidentally, my car is full (to the point where my nice neighbor is loaning me her car tomorrow morning to take the kiddies to school) of obsolete computer equipment that I have collected from work and church and various individuals. I am going to recycle it at the electronic demanufacturing facility in Davenport, Iowa. I wonder whether, once my car is empty, I will feel better. I always feel like the clutter is weighing me down, waiting to pounce on me, and in my car right at this moment that is literally true – heaven help me if I have to stop suddenly, I’ll get a monitor straight to the back of my skull.

(Of course, I could also be in a bad mood because my children are complete dorks, but it’s more fun to be all metaphysical about it. Plus, I have just started reading It’s All Too Much.)

Went to DC. Had a great time. Holocaust Museum – stunning. American Indian Museum – also stunning. Possibly the two best-designed museums I’ve ever visited.

I have gotten as far as moving our photos from the digital camera to my computer. Next step – getting the kids (esp The Boy, who seems to have photographed every item at the Air and Space Annex) to pick which photos they want to have online to show their classmates. Will be on Flickr Real Soon Now, I promise!

Got all over the place (even out to Dulles to see the Air and Space Museum Annex [space shuttle!!!]) by public transportation, thanks to Charles’ l33t Metro-website-surfing skillz. Feeling somewhat smug about that. Also, SMS (text-messaging) plus Google equals PURE AWESOME. I found addresses, opening/closing times,  phone numbers, etc etc that way.

I noticed that most of the jobs previously seen to be held by African-Americans in DC (e.g., McDonald’s staff) are now held by Spanish-speaking people, presumably (but not inevitably? I’m trying not to leap to conclusions here…) immigrants. I would not have thought this possible when I lived here twenty years ago.

I dined with Merujo *waves* in a part of town that, twenty years ago, you could not have dragged me there with a Mack truck, such would have been my fear of being mugged/accosted by drug dealers/etc. Now, staggeringly, they have a by-God TARGET STORE in the area.

I want to know where all these non-gentry people are living now that their neighborhoods are being taken over. You can’t just wave your roll of architect’s drawings and make that many people *vanish*. This can’t be healthy.

Back home. Kids tired of school. All tired of the DAMNED WEATHER. My daughter’s re-introduction to soccer games in pouring rain and freezing wind did nothing to make the sport appeal to her, oh well.

I am applying the “you can do anything for 15 minutes” principle to making a listing of the parochial archives stored (improperly) in my office. I figure that the synod might be marginally more interested in at least some of them if I can tell them just what we have. Keep y’alls fingers crossed on that one, please.

I need someone with a cattle prod near me at all times, to make me write!

The kids are on break. Luckily, the weather is not so dreadful that they can’t play outside occasionally.

The Boy is now obsessed with Runequest. I do mean obsessed. I plan to nuke their computer and reinstall everything this weekend, and I plan to do it verrrrrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwwwwwly.

I now have an 80GB iPod Classic, and much to my disgust I find myself watching videos on it – mostly of CNET tech news, but still, after ragging on the kiddies so much for watching TV shows on their tiny little nano screens, it’s a bit embarrassing.

Hell Week at work hasn’t been as terrible as I thought it would be – I had to finish the bulletins for Th/Fri/Sun today, as my volunteer collator wanted to come in this evening to put everything together. That means tomorrow I can do all the little things that always get put off, so I can leave for my long weekend with a clean desk. I like that.

The Daughter and I are having a spa day on Monday, Charles’ Christmas present to us. Both very much looking forward to that, I must say!

Trying to figure out what to wear to the wedding in late April – have been told by numerous people to check out J. Jill, so I guess I’ll have to take a look.

The daughter finally got her ears pierced the other day (here is a  photo for once snapped at just the right moment). The last time she had this in mind, I managed, by dint of motioning wildly behind her back, to get the guy having his ear pierced ahead of her in line act as though it hurt a whole lot. That put her off for, um, three years I think. Her friend has two sets of earlobe piercings and one cartilage (!ouch!) piercing, at the tender age of 11. Of course The Daughter is already thinking of ways to store the earrings she will doubtless accumulate over time, unknowingly abetted by my neighbor, who has a crafty daughter who makes jewelry storage systems out of picture frames and so on. It always comes down to containers, it seems.