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The Bloys are Back in Town

We have arrived back in NoVa. YAY! After being in Wisconsin for 8(ish) days, we’re finally home. Tonight I sleep in my own bed, and much like Baby Bear’s bed, it will be neither too hard, nor too soft.
But first, a brief re-cap of our Wisconsin adventures.
We stayed with Amy and Luke in their newest house. We are very appreciative of the free place to stay on our long visit and it was fun to help unpack and organize their kitchen and schlep boxes to their basement which is exclusively made for those under 5’9”. Poor Luke. I wonder how many times over the next few years he’ll bang his head in the basement.

Christmas with the Bloy/Reese/Melton families was fun and a good haul for Adam who now has way more toys to play with and we have some great books to read and movies to watch. (thank you, everyone!) Adam really enjoys his new puzzles and train set and had those out the minute we got home. We spent Dec 25th (at night) with Brian, Erin, Luke and Amy. Family is great, but after you’ve been with them for almost 2 straight days, you need a break.
We spent a couple days up in Spooner and got to see Eric and his parents, whom I have not seen in ages. I also got to see pictures of Eric’s brothers, their wives and their kids. We also had a little trip to Rice Lake (Eric, Mike and I) where we saw the Norske Nook (As always, 9 inch pies!) and made fun of the accents. Adam had a blast with his grandparents up in Spooner who spoil him rotten and took him for sled rides out in the snowy back yard. It wasn’t as bad up there as I thought it might be. I’ve been away for a long time, so it was good to see that not much changes up in the North Woods.

Back in Madison we also met up with Brian, drove all over Madison trying to find a quick dinner on a Thursday night. and had drinks with Parter at the now smoke-free Paul’s Club.

I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to see, but I’m sure we’ll be back in the spring or summer and will have a chance to see everyone again.
We left Friday morning for DC and hoped to make it home by 3am or so, but the horrendous traffic in Chicago in the mid-afternoon ruined those plans and we ended up staying outside of Pittsburgh Friday night.
Now I am sick with some irritating sinus congestion, Adam does not want to sleep, and its 39 minutes til 2006.

As soon as it goes to midnight, Mike and I can celebrate our 6th anniversary of meeting — and what a wild, crazy 6 years this has been. I fear, however, that tonight I have lost him to Civilization 4. Maybe I’ll be able to drag him off his brand-new Christmas computer and get a kiss at midnight — providing I can stop sniffling and sneezing long enough to enjoy it.

Happy New Years, everyone!

This one is Erin's fault.

Your Christmas Stocking Will Be Filled With a Puppy

Well – one cute, soft, cuddly puppy…
And a very soiled Christmas stocking.

What Will Be In Your Christmas Stocking?

My Elf Name! WTF?

Your Elf Name Is…

Trixie Snowballer

What’s Your Elf Name?

Life at the Bloys*

*Now with extra body fluids!
So last night as I’m putting Adam to bed with limited success I hear a panicked call from Mike up in the loft. He needs help and tissues and by the sound of his voice something has gone terribly wrong.
I abandon Adam in his room, grab a roll of toilet paper and run up to find out what’s wrong.
Mike’s foot is bleeding.
Profusely.
All over our new carpet.
It appears that the blister he acquired last weekend ruptured violently under his desk when his foot collided with (a machete?) the desk.
I went to get the the Resolve and a couple towels to clean the little spots of blood he left on the carpet. Not too bad, until I saw the enormous pool of blood under his desk. Like the Shining, only without the elevators and the scary dead twins.
In the meantime, Adam has gotten bored and wandered into our bedroom and is emptying Mike’s nightstand drawer. The half a liter of water I drank had hit rock bottom and Mike has decided to put his foot in the bathroom sink to clean off his blood-soaked/stained foot. Then Adam comes in to join in the circus. (Good thing we have a big bathroom)

So there we are, all three of us in the bathroom and Adam decides at this precise moment he NEEDS to use his potty chair and starts unzipping his pajamas. Not wanting to discourage his sudden interest in the potty, I help him undress and remove his diaper. (Mike is still soaking his bloody foot at this point and I hadn’t moved from my spot, either)
Adam sits and then wails “PIECE” and stands up, stark naked, looking for the little boy guard piece to prevent pee shooting over the toilet instead of into it, which I locate and give to him.
In a great feat of manual dexterity for a 2 year old, he puts the piece on and sits down for 3 seconds, decides he doesn’t want to be on the potty, and runs into our bedroom and lies down on the carpet.
I retreive band-aids and neosporin for Mike and his no-longer bloody toe and fetch naked Adam off the floor and take him back to his room to get him re-dressed.

At this point all appears to be looking up. The combination of new stainmaster carpet and Resolve have removed the blood from the carpet, Mike’s toe is bandaged, and Adam is in his jammies and standing on his changing table. Its only 9:30 and we all may get to bed relatively early after all.

Then Adam leans forward as if to hug me and suddenly my left ear and neck feel very warm.
I touch my neck expected to get a fingerful of warm Adam snot, but then I catch a whiff.
I have vomit in my hair and on my ear.

Mike comes in to offer to put Adam to bed and laughs (or else he may go mad).

The good side on all of this? I got to take a very long, hot shower without worrying about hot water for anyone else and I have something to blog about.

Now who wants to have kids next?

Stupid Quizzes (Again)

How evil are you?

Tapped Out...

Winter Haiku:
Light days grow shorter
The dark is growing longer
My feet are quite cold

Burning wood is nice
Until the embers have died
Now our house is cold

But seriously, its pretty darned dark outside. When we get home our uber-bright but very pretty LED Christmas lights are already on and shining brightly! I’m glad Mike is motivated enough to do Christmas lights. It looks very, very pretty. No giant inflatable winter creatures in our yard — not that even if we wanted them(which we DON’T) we would have room for them in our tiny little front yard.
So it’s dark.
And it’s quite cold (I know, not WISCONSIN COLD, but cold enough)
And I have not had a vacation in years. I mean a REAL vacation with a week or more off of work where I didn’t have any responsibilities. Sure we’ve had roadtrips to WI, Maine, Boston and NY, but never more than a few days, usually over a long holiday weekend. Sure I was home with Adam for 14 weeks, but that wasn’t a vacation either.
So now I’m entering the winter of my discontent. I’m sure I’ll be vaguely dissatisfied with everything and a little tiny bit crankier than normal until it warms up and lightens up a bit. But lately I just feel tired. Not the everything will be better with a nap tired, but more needing a vacation for the soul tired, nothing is particularly interesting tired (Except the Colbert Report).
You know that kind of tired, right? Its not depression, so don’t anyone offer helpful tips on prozac or light therapy. You could offer me 3 tickets to a warm and sunny place, or a few million dollars to retire on, or even a trip to the spa.
Oh yay! The heat just turned on! I’d turn it up manually, but we’re stuck at 68 so that fuel prices don’t drive us to the poor house. Standing over the vent is nice and toasty warm. Unfortunately I discovered that our windows could use some weather-izing. Too much heat loss! Argh!
Where was I? Oh yeah, winter crankiness. On the bright side, we’ll be in WI for almost 9 whole days. Even with the drive and going to Spooner and family obligations, it might actually be a nice, extended stay from work. Unless I’m wracked (racked?) with guilt over all the thing I ought to be doing at home. Sooooo much to doooooooooo. So little time to do it.
Furnace off, already the cold is creeping back in. I don’t think our kitchen windows are keeping the elements out, damn them.
Time to go to bed, where at least 4 layers of blankets keeps me warm.

A Fork in the Road?

So I was reading Jon’s blog which covered a topic that often vexes me when I wish I’d done something different, like finish my last semester of college back in 1996.
Then I think about all the forks in the road, and my analogy ends up looking more like a tree. These are the choices I made that led me to where I am today. Any deviation in these, I believe, point to a different path.
1)Selecting UW Madison as college of choice
2)Transferring out of Madison to Superior in ’91
3)Making last minute decision to not transfer back to Madison in ’93 (signed lease in hand, registered for classes, changed mind) (met SK in UWS dorms)
4)Dropping out of school in ’94 to spend winter in London (spent rest of ’94 trying to get back to UK — met SP which indirectly caused me to want to go back to UW-Madison to finish school) (met FH through SK)
5)Deciding to leave school in ’95 and move to Madison (SK going to school at UW, wanted out of UWS)
6)Get job at SITEL through FH. (this is where I meet Derek and Amy)
7)Decide to leave Madison in ’99 and move to DC because it seemed like a good idea, good job market, etc
8)Opt to spend airline vouchers flying back to WI for New Years instead of hanging around in DC alone. Funny aside – I desperately TRIED to work the 1999-2000 Y2K shift, but my boss kept turning down my requests for OT.
9)Insert your various version of New Years 99/2000 here.
10)Move back to Madison Feb of 2000 instead of being sensible.
And here I am. I’m pretty happy where my life is personally. Who knows, if I’d actually stayed in Madison I probably would have settled in the social sciences anyway. I might have gotten a BA in or around 1995 and worked in Madison. I might have even ended up working at SITEL because everyone else did at that point. Or I might have gone off to grad school. Or I might have done any number of things, but I don’t think that many other choices would have landed me at Derek’s Nichol Station apartment on New Years eve almost 6 years ago.
I guess it all means that even though sometimes I didn’t make the “smartest” decision, I apparently made the best decision. I just didn’t know it then.

Now if I could just finish that pesky degree….

History is Fun and Educational

So while today on Fark someone linked to graffiti found in Pompeii. Some of it is hilarious and I think accurately reflects the fact that technology comes and goes and social mores change, but people never really change at all. Even more hilarious, the Fark comments for this article. Comedy gold. I laughed til I cried.

And speaking of Fark comedy gold, this lovely website of amateur nature photography was linked. Again. the comments and photoshops were hilarious. Unless you don’t think the ORLY owl is funny. Want more pics — check out Wikipedia — they have great Owl links. Why are owls funny?
kthnxbye

Cos I'm A Copycat with nothing else to do

I read on a blog via Sara’s blog that instructed the following:

Go through your archives and find your 23rd post.
Find the 5th sentence.
Blog it.
Tag 5 other people to do it.

Here is mine, from September, and it is lame.

Scary parenting moment… At the beginning of the “My Name is Earl” pilot, the family in the car is playing The WIGGLES.

That post did remind me that we still haven’t seen the last episode of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. (thanks MOM for dislodging the IR connector to our cable box)

So I tag:
Amy, Erin, Derek, Brian, and Jon. If you’re a power blogger and 23 posts seems like you’ll get sometime in the last few months, go back to your first post and count up 30 posts.

WI gets an F in Science Education

I know that about sums up my HS science education. Really, really, crappy. My chem teacher still believed the Commies were coming and the Physics/Trig professor once wrote me up for writing Keep the X in X-mas. Even a few of the other so-called “smart” kids didn’t like to do hard work and I don’t remember ever being worked that hard in any of my classes.
I used the think the Virginia SoLs were stupid and lame, but apparently well defined education goals and a populace of educated people (in NoVa anyway) keep the standards high. Virginia scored a high A.
Sad and depressing.
See here for the website and
here for the WI report.
depressing.

More Snow Than Expected

OK, so I was wrong. I admit it. We got a whopping 1.9 inches of snow. I just loooooove NOAA. They have everything you need to know about weather all over the country.

Its pretty outside and if I had presence of mind I would have taken a picture this morning.

But I was tired. I had a late night last night for reasons that will become obvious in the near future. In the meantime, enjoy this photo of the kind of snow I’d like to see:

OMG, IT'S COMING RIGHT FOR US!!!1!!!

So the weatherman says the winter weather is a-comin’.

Whatever.

We’re supposed to get anywhere from 2-4 inches today. Ultimately, this means that after work if it is snowing the supermarkets will empty of bread and milk, lines at the pump will be long.

…for what will be ultimately a dusting of snow, if we’re “lucky.”
Of course, given the bizarro world weather we have in Virginia, if it is not 2-4 inches here, it will be a foot of snow and mass panic and the closing of the Federal, state and local governments and school children everywhere stuck inside for a week.

Virginia Weather is Making Me Crazy

As a Wisconsinite for 20 years of my life, I have certain expectations about weather in the latter part of the year, especially after living in Superior for 5 years. Those winters started early and were brutally cold. I still reminisce fondly about the gigantic Halloween blizzard of 1992. Not that I’d want to repeat being trapped in the dorms with geeks who’d seized the TV for a Dr. Who marathon for what seemed like 3 straight days. (Rule number 5 of blizzards: after you’ve panicked and stocked up on enough foodstuff essentials to last you through a nuclear winter, please remember to have sufficient movies and entertainment to keep your mind occupied. Remember: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.)
But I digress…
Up until today it has been unseasonably warm. We’ve had weather in the 60’s. The crabgrass died with the first frost, but the wild onions, grass and other weeds continued to grow. It was annoying.
I’m sure people suited to and/or living in warmer climes wonder why I find warm weather through the 1st of December annoying. After all, WINTER doesn’t really start until Dec 21st. And didn’t I just finish saying how Virginia is sooo nice because it actually follows the seasonal calendar.
Blahdee blah blah blah
In less than 3 weeks this Bloy family will be loading up the Subaru and heading to points west for the Christmas holiday. In fact, in 22 days it will be Christmas eve! I haven’t even considered shopping yet, online or otherwise. For this upper Midwesterner its hard to feel festive when you contemplate whether or not mowing the lawn one last time is a necessity.
The temperature this fine evening has dropped to a cold, wind-swept 28F, the Weather Channel program in my systray tells me there could be enough snow on Sunday to cause cancelled schools on Monday (meaning 3 flakes). Its these 30 degree temperature changes in a matter of days and weather about-faces that drive me insane. I can acclimatize to cold weather, but I usually prefer a long, gradual descent that starts in late September.
What I really hope doesn’t happen is a repeat of last year. We left Virginia at about 2pm in the afternoon. It was so warm we had to shed our coats while packing the car. Then we drove North/West for a few hours until we hit super-mega-ultra-insane blizzard of the century in Ohio. Semi trucks, SUVs and passenger cars littered the medians and ditches. (hooray AWD)
I’d like moderate seasonal temperatures and no snow fall on our drive out and back. In the intervening 9 days there can be another blizzard of the century for all I care. As long as I can get home.