I've been so uninspired

You may have noticed my lack of posts - I feel like I've not gotten control of my life since my travel to Baton Rouge. Just Friday, I finally cleaned the last of the items out of my garment bag. I must admit, I didn't take it downstairs yet - but I also fly back to Baton Rouge next weekend and leave Sat night. Thankfully, this time someone else organized the travel. I was still heavily involved, but I didn't have to constantly call to fix and change as everyone changed their mind.

It was originally decided that we didn't want to fly out of our airport because it was a bit expensive and we would have 2 layovers each way. If we flew from the airport 2 hours away, we could go on a different airline with one layover BUT, they wanted to take a flight that would require us to leave at noon the second day. I wasn't sure that 1.5 days would be enough time to finish everything and if we left before finished, the entire trip would be a waste. By the time the people we were visiting got back to us, flights from our airport and airport M were sold out, except the 6:50 flight from M (on the same airline we travel from our airport with the 2 layovers). We didn't want to spend the night in the other town, so they started talking about changing the date.

Thankfully, it dawned on me that we could go to airport R which was also 2 hours away. They had a flight that was at 8:15, but we would change time zones so it would be as if it was 9:15. So, if we left at 5:30 am, we'd have no problem getting to the airport and wouldn't have to leave at 3:00 am. On this airline, we could leave at 4:30 pm (meet until 2:30). I would get late enough that we decided to stay at a hotel and drive back in the morning.

Well, someone in the group decided they didn't want to get up too early in the morning, so we have to drive down Sat night and spend the night again.

So, to save a few hours and keep the price down, we are now driving 2 hours, have the two layovers, and spending 2 extra nights in hotels instead of originally scheduling the same flights out of our home airport.

*shakes head*

We now only have 5 of us traveling. One person has a World Club membership (we believe) and can get in two guests. I was talking to one of the directors who is traveling with us and told her that I'm more than willing to buy a one day pass if someone else will (I didn't want to say she should but I did imply it). She seemed willing. This way, we will all have access to the place during all our layovers.

My house is almost clean after being gone, I hope that it doesn't take 2 weeks for me to get stuff back in order after I get return again.

~oOo~

The girls are currently practicing hula hooping. Sarah has finally gotten the hang of is. She has mastered the art of walking and turning around while she is hula hooping.

Sydney is too cute while she tries to hula hoop. We finally got her to understand that she has to wiggle her hips while trying to hula hoop. Four year old shaking hips are too cute. Sydney is actually getting to the point that she can get a circle before it falls. At the rate she's going, she will be able to hula hoop by the end of summer.

The sad part is that my 4 y.o. is doing a better job than I am!! Not that I practice while anyone is home *grin*

~oOo~

Another reason I'm not around much is that I've finally become inspired at work again. Pushing hard to accomplish all the work I need to do (and I do have some big deadlines coming up) really has me pushing hard. When I return, I also will have to work from home a bit as Sydney's tonsil/adenoid surgery is the day after I get home. I do love my bosses because they are letting me work from home rather than find someone to care for Sydney while she recovers. I did explain to them that working from home had less to do with my not wanting to take leave and everything to do with my need to get my deadlines met.

I'll stop rambling. I'll do Sunday Six later (we have a makeup gymnastics class at 9:30 and have to sell cookies again this week for 2 hours - the mom who volunteered backed out, not that I was surprised)

My weekend, or why I wasn't around

We finally had nice weather here - but I really didn't get to enjoy it much.

Sat the girls and I ran errands in the morning. On the way home, I realized it was pharmaceutical drop off day for Earth Day at my church. We got home, scoured cabinets for expired and no-longer-needed meds, I realized I forgot bread and sandwich meats, dropped off drugs, went back to store. I needed to get cookies for the girls scout booth sale the next day, finally got through at 4:00 and headed out to get cookies. Decided to pick up soccer shoes for Sarah (soccer starts late july, but shoes are sold on the schedule of the rest of the nation in our town - much to the store manager's frustration.) Bought the last pair in her size with the pink cleats.

Sydney decided we should eat outside, so while I was picking up cookies and shoes I also went back to the store to get hamburger meat and chips. Eating outside was very nice until I realized the grease on the grill rack caught fire (while we were eating) so I turned off the grill and let it burn out. Sarah is really scared of fire and wanted to go inside at that point. We made her stay out. She needs to start trusting us.

Sunday was church, deliver cookies at coffee hour, grab McDonalds on the way to the store to sell cookies for 2 hours.

At kid's church, we do communion with all the kids standing around an old table. It's very informal. Our priest decided to light candles this week. Sarah wasn't thrilled with the fire so I stood back with her some and held her. At one point, Sydney (who was standing up at the table, my family was the only one who made it to kids church this week) turned around and tried to encourage Sarah with a "be tough" and turned back around. I'm not sure where she got that phrase!

We sold about 70 boxes of cookies at the cookie sale! I'm not sure the girls had as much fun as they would have liked - since we had two moms, we divided into a table where people came in and a table where people exit the store. So, sometimes it was mom and girl.

By the time we got home, it was time to clean rooms and Sydney had decided we were going out to dinner.

LONG weekend.

Sydney came up with another saying that has bugged me. She told me twice that she had a "fat tummy." She has told me that she doesn't like it. I'm not sure where she got this idea. I'm trying to help her understand that it's normal. I might take a glance around dance today while the girls are in their leotards and see if there are enough girls with tummys to help her understand it's normal at 4 y.o. to have a tummy. Thankfully, she doesn't seem to think she needs to diet or do special exercises to reduce said tummy. I'm guessing she's not made the connection yet. I'm not planning on helping her with that either.

Ummm - Opps?

I decided to take a break for lunch today. I ran to the cafeteria and decided to sit and talk with my husband for a few minutes while he ate. As it approached 1:00, I started to wonder why he wasn't leaving to teach class. Then, I realized he hadn't shaved today and that meant it was Thursday not Wednesday and he doesn't teach.

That also meant that I was suppose to have picked my daughter up from daycare to take her to preschool 30 minutes prior.

DH pretty much laughed at me and thought (based on the timing of when I sat down) that I had come back from dropping her off. I grabbed his keys and hoped I didn't get a ticket since my driver's license was in my office. Got Sydney, brought her to school and dropped DH's keys at his office. Course, I couldn't just drop the car in the garage because my card to get into the garage was in my car - which was locked - and my keys in my purse - which was in my office - SO, I had to get DH garage card, move the car and deliver key and card. Thankfully Sydney didn't notice and the preschool teacher did the bumble bee song again so Syd didn't miss it.

While I was delayed doing this, I walked passed a girl who was wearing the ugliest skirt I'd seen in a while. It looked like a 1970s prairie skirt in length and puffiness BUT, it was made out of old ties sewn together, with all the points at the bottom. I really wished I'd had my camera phone with me.

On to the rest of my day!

So frustrated with the media

I've had cnn.com as the page that opens with my browser (and grab headlines from).

I've been frustrated with cnn.com for a while. About half the news stories are these inane "human interest" stories. I didn't mind that so much, but when they ignore real news for it - I get frustrated.

In early April, Eddie Robinson - the famed football coach from Grambling University. While he was coaching, his teams earned 408 wins and sent 200 players to the NFL. This accomplishment was in the same class with Joe Paterno and Bear Bryant. But, his was almost more impressive he began as the coach of the Historically Black College and University (HBCU) during segregation with almost no assistant coachs, minimal budgets, and the inability to stop at a restaurant on the drive home from a game to get the team dinner.

I was in Louisiana when this happened. I tried to find news stories on the internet and found that most of the web based news sites had buried the story. The "other story" block on the cnn.com website included "dog found after 4 years and 1,000 miles away" and "bride gets plastic surgery after accident."

I tried to figure out why the story was deemed by the media as being so unimportant. Was it because he was a football coach? at a HBCU? African American?

Yesterday I watched with horror as the tragedy at Virginia Tech unfolded. I grew up in the DC area, spent 10 years working in Virginia, knew many people who had graduated from Tech. My DH went to grad school at University of Virginia. I went to James Madison. These schools are only a few hours from VT (UVa and VT are arch rivals, of sorts). For a while, my brother attended VT deciding not to return only this past fall. I work at a University.

I found out about what was happening in Virginia when I clicked my browser and was connected to cnn.com. As I read the links about the story, I saw that they had a link for readers to send their pictures from the VT tragedy. I was also told that msnbc.com and foxnews.com had a similar link. Today, CNN.com and foxnews.com have links to view such pictures. msnbc.com has photos, but I'm not sure if they are reader photos are not.

I'm pretty certain that I don't want to keep cnn.com as my homepage on my browser. What they call news used to be items for the National Enquirer.

Any suggestions for where I can go on the web to find the national and international news without sensationalism?

I've started to wonder if I should just give up on the media? I'm ready to give up on human nature's voyeuristic nature that has driven the media to battle for readers/viewers by offering the most sensationalistic news and photos. When did we become more interested in seeing body's being carried off than with just knowing it happened. Do the photos make it more real? More tragic? More preventable in the future?

*shakes head*

So Pathetic

No Sunday six today - I'm too tired.


I was falling asleep at 9:30 last night, went to bed by 10:00 - as 12:00 woke up when Sarah went to the bathroom.

At 2:45, woke to Sydney screaming. Ran as quick as I could to find she had thrown up. We got her cleaned up and DH laid down with her while I put the laundry in the wash.

I"m not sure she fell back to sleep, but then wanted to sit up with me. We sat up for a while, and an hour later, she was throwing up again.

This morning, she is running a fever, but seems to be keeping things down.

She laid a blanket and pillow on the floor and said she didn't need help getting herself situated.

She is wearing a fleecy because she is cold. I hope Sarah doesn't get it.

I'm too old to not sleep!

Three Simple Words

According to Webster's dictionary online, the definition of "Sorry" is:

1 : feeling sorrow, regret, or penitence
2 : mournful, sad
3 : inspiring sorrow, pity, scorn, or ridicule

According to an article on CNN online, states are starting to enact legislation that will allow Doctors to begin saying "I am sorry" without fear that it will be used against them as an admission of guilt in a lawsuit.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/11/sorry.doctors.ap/index.html

If anyone has every had something go wrong in a medical procedure - either through chance or doctor error, you know how important it is to be able to hear your doctor express some feeling of sorrow that this happened to you or a family member.

While I don't know this to be true, I suspect that Doctors need to express their feelings of sorry when something goes wrong as much as we need to hear it (not all docs, there are those who are complete jerks).

I hate that we have to legislate an appology, but if that is what it takes, I'm glad some lawmakers are starting to protect these three little words.

I am home, just been sleeping alot (and cleaning house)

I used to go on travel all the time. It involved getting work materials together, getting my itinerary, arranging for a ride to the airport, telling my room mates I'd be gone.

Last week, I went on travel after having kids for the first time. It involved getting work materials together, arrange travel and hotel for 7 people, arranging rides to the airport, arranging child care for my kids (spring break for Sarah, buying groceries, telling DH what meals are available, writing a note for the babysitter, cleaning house, making "mommy" shirts (printing iron on transfers of picks of me and the girls and iron on t-shirts so they wouldn't miss me as much). Oh so much harder than it used to be.

The meeting went pretty well. Had it's ups and downs. The one interesting thing about traveling as a staff member with grad students and faculty is that you don't really belong in either group. I'm not faculty nor am I a student. For a while, there was another staff member with me, but she is also an administrator, which makes her different from me.

The last night, dinner was at the outdoor side porch of a seafood restaurant. It was nice to be outside as the conference room we'd been in had no windows. Dinner was a crawfish boil (they are in season) and other local fare. I love crawfish and was in heaven. I was really sorry that I forgot to bring my camera as everyone had these disposable roasting pans filled with their crawfish and corn on the cob. It would have made a great picture for the website.

One of the grad students had never experienced crawfish before. As she looked at her pan of red things, she picked the first one up, peeled and ate it and said "it reminds me of the first time I gave a blow job (disgusting but not bad)" one of the local grad students replied (without missing a beat) "Well, some people do suck the head."

On the drive home for the restaurant, I was with two of our grad students. As we drove past McDonald's, she noticed the sign for Shamrock Shakes and decided she wanted one. We quick pulled in deciding to share it. Well, they were out. The driver agreed to pull into the next McDonald's. We almost passed it before we noticed it was there pulled in quick. We got one drink, three straws and as each of us finished out turn, we would pull out our straw and lick the shake off the straw. I know it was silly, but we had so much fun.

The trip home was long!! We had to leave the hotel at 4:45 am to make our morning flight. While we had been gone, our town had accumulated 2 feet of snow and more was coming. The flight to Memphis was fine, as was the flight to Minneapolis. But, we hit a snag when we were starting to fly home. First, the prop plane was delayed for mechanical difficulties. While we were waiting for that, they announced that the flight would take us one town over and bus us the 2 hours home. My boss wasn't a patient person and started the process of reserving a van to drive the 6-7 hours home.

They finally started to board the plane, but first announced that the alternate destination had weather coming in and if they couldn't get us there, they would fly to another nearby airport, put us in hotels for the night and arrange transportation home the next morning. As we boarded, my boss asked me to cancel the van. I finally started talking to the person as we got on the plane and one faculty member decided that she really just wanted to drive home, so four of us got off the plane, went to the rental car place and drove home. It actually only took us 8 hours (it was snowing pretty bad the last couple of hours) and being 4 women we stopped a bit.

None of us had winter coats, although I finally bought a sweatshirt as my light hoddie wasn't quite warm enough. During the trip, we chatted about silly things, silliest thing we did growing up, favorite vacations, first time you got in trouble at school, etc. I learned so much about the group. We all agreed that even if we got home after the other group (and we hoped we didn't) we definitely enjoyed our trip!

According to Joe, the girls did pretty well. The "mommy" shirts were a big hit. I made 2 shirts each. Joe told me that Sydney put her first one on Tuesday morning and he finally convinced her to put on the 2nd shirt at bedtime Thursday night. She wore it 60 hours straight. The second shirt she took off when she got dressed Sat morning as I was now home!

Some of the people on my trip wondered why, when I had so much else to do, I bothered to make these shirts. After knowing that the girls, esp Sydney, gathered so much comfort from them, I knew I made the right choice.

I may be traveling back again next month. I hope the trip is almost as enjoyable, without the flight problems!

Sometimes it's good to escape

Still on my trip. Going ok.

Lots of work.

12 inches of snow at home arrived since I left.

I'm not home.

(and I discovered that exercise dvds, a hotel room, and exercise clothes work well for exercise on travel.)