Mary Learns to Ski

My body still hurts from yesterday.

Here's a clip of Mary taking her first ski lesson.



Hope it works.

We Go Skiing

One of these days, we are going to (re)join the family in attending the annual ski trip. Really.

In the meantime, we'd like to get the kids on skis so they don't have any difficulty 'fitting in' with the rest of the gang when they're out on the slopes. So it is important for us to find a place to practice.

Michigan isn't known for fantastic winter sport facilities -- at least not known to us -- but we have to use whatever is available. Luckily, there are quite a few skiing lodges within a reasonable distance of our home, and we decided to take advantage of that short distance today when our friends down the street invited us to go with them.

We had originally planned on having the boys do some tubing and the girls take the skiing lessons, but Deb decided at the last minute that she didn't really want to go; and then when we got to the lodge, the tubing area was closed due to poor snow conditions (it was too warm to maintain the powder, and everything was turning to slush, and tubes are worse than skis for sticking to soggy snow); so it was just Mary and I out on the slopes while the boys hung out in the lodge and chatted, or went outside and threw snowballs.

Mary had a wonderful time. She had a one-hour private lesson, and her father was encouraged to go somewhere else so he wouldn't interrupt the lesson with bad advice (or just distract her with his presence); so I went to the intermediate slope and tried to find my snowfeet again.

After the lesson, Mary and I practiced back on the bunny slope for a couple hours - that girl has some serious stamina! -- with a break for lunch in-between.

Then it was time to go home.

NOTE: I added a link to our Flickr website in the "Links" section. And there are new photos posted!

Merry Christmas!

Got the WiFi hooked up, so I'm cruising the net upstairs on the laptop while the boys are cruising the web with their DSes.

Updated the Flickr site in case you wanna see some of the photos of our cookie-making expedition to the neighbors' house, and the kids showing off their new PJs.

But now I gotta run to play Heroscape with Adam and James.

Later!

At Piano Lessons

My throat is still a bit scratchy, but that's OK because the church where the kids take piano lessons has WiFi. What could be more fun than to cruise the net while waiting?

Cheryl's out shopping while the rest of us wait here in the church library. I hope she remembers the cough drops!

I took a trip over to Phil Vischer's site. Haven't been there in a while. He's eagerly awaiting the release of the Veggie Tale's "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" movie. Hope that works out for him, after all he's been through since the last epic VT release. Not sure if we'll go see it. The kids have gotten so big, and we haven't watched any of the old vidoes in so long. Their tastes have moved on from Veggie Tales to Lord of the Rings.

Of course, I also visited my brother's sites. Didn't have anything to add, though. I love reading their stuff (and remembering to turn down the volume on Kel's site so my ears don't get blasted), but can't ever think of anything clever to add. Nor spiritual, like Jan. Nor educational, like Jeanne. Nor inquisitive, like Mom (like, When are you coming for a visit? or When are you going to post some new pictures?). I prefer utter lunacy, if possible.

Hmmm. For some reason, that makes me wonder what Judy's up to these days...

Spent the whole weekend sitting around the house feeling lousy and trying to get up enough energy to do something other than slogging through the 950 emails which were crying for my attention. No kidding, 950 of 'em clogging up my Inbox waiting to be reviewed. In my particular line of work, that's approximately two weeks' worth of email (around 100 per day), and unfortunately at work I'd only had time to look at them briefly before moving on to more pressing matters, hoping to find the time later to catch up.

Weekends are catch-up.

This past weekend, I only managed to slog through about three hundred or so before the NyQuil caused me to drift into a pleasant state of somnombulism, while the kids watched Harry Potter 5 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and then went outside.

The boys cleared the driveway of the powdery white stuff and ran down to the neighbors' house to play. Mary went over to another friend's house to play. Deb worked on snow-forts.

Now if I could just get rid of this nagging cough, maybe I could go out and play, too!

Hookey

I'm out sick today.

Yesterday is a blur of bad meetings and panic situations and excruciating conversations with people who have no right to be doing what they are doing. All the while, the head was pounding and the throat was getting scratchy and the body was aching and the temperature was fluctuating somewhere between Medium and Well Done. But there were too many things to do, too many "critical" meetings to attend, for me to take the day off.

Getting home last night, I skipped the dinner thing and went straight to bed, me and my precious bottle of Nyquil.

Woke up this morning and decided to bag the whole work thing. But managed to get up long enough to send out some email to the appropriate people, letting them know that my cube would be empty today. Still had some fairly important meetings, but those were handled in the technologically advanced method of phoning in for a telecon. That is to say, the meeting moderator called me up at home and I put in my two cents while trying not to cough too much.

Checked email off and on. Managed to respond to a few of them, too.

Now onto my third dose of Nyquil for the day, and still haven't had a chance to go back to bed.

Maybe after dinner. If I live that long.

Sucked Back into the Past

It's time to go back to work again -- on a Sunday! -- and this isn't even my regular work, it's more of a charity thing.

But it's doing what I used to do, Training and Support, so it's like going back in time.

There's a group of five or six guys showing up bright and early Monday morning to be trained in the use of our software, and the guy who is supposed to provide the training is not a software type. So he enlisted the aid of two of the guys who used to provide the training, one of whom is me.

But don't tell my boss. He's rather upset that I would even think of helping out this "other" project, when there is so much to do on my own project.

So I've been doing it on my "off-hours", in the evening and on the weekends, trying to get the lessons updated and customized for the new project. We (the improvised training team) spent the better part of yesterday running through the slides and making corrections and checking that everything worked on the hardware. Today we'll try to get everything polished up.

And tomorrow, I'll be doing my normal job running the Systems group, all the while worrying that the Training is going well. If it doesn't, I won't be able to help out, due to other commitments.

Isn't politics fun?

The Von Trapp Family Singers Strike Again

I'm the impulsive type, as you might've suspected, and it's gotten me into more trouble throughout my life than is possible to relate in the short amount of time left; but it will come as no surprise that my impulsive nature has once again brought us to the brink of disaster.

Musically speaking.

Way back when - a month ago? - when it was announced that there would be a Christmas Workshop at the church, I volunteered our family to take part in the entertainment portion of the day's activities. The Christmas Workshop is a time when folks gather at the church to have a bake sale, make crafts (especially for the kiddies), and visit with each other. The entertainment portion of the day's activities is comprised of random people who get up on stage and do something to entertain the folks who are standing around stuffing their faces with bake-sale goods, or simply waiting for their crafts to dry. Some people sing, some people play a song on the piano or guitar, some people sing and play a song on the piano or guitar. Hopefully the same song. In the same key.

It wasn't supposed to be a knees-knocking, nerve-wracking kind of activity. Sure, the music takes place up on the stage, but it isn't like a real performance. It's more like singing a song in a mall, with people wandering around mostly not paying attention, but without the Muzak blaring from the ceiling speakers.

We practiced, too. Starting nearly a month before the event, we selected our music, we went over the tunes, we sang, we transposed.

Then Thanksgiving came along, and more work piled up, and the evenings got busy; and as the day rapidly approached, our preparedness was not where it needed to be.

Especially mine.

But then I'm never really prepared. Too much of a perfectionist. And I never get enough practice time. And I can't remember the words, so my eyes are glued to the lyrics in front of me. Makes for bad stage presence.

The kids did wonderfully, of course. Mary played her solo piece, Deb sang Noel with me, Adam did his solo piece, and then we all sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

Of course, it all could've come out much worse. As we were going up on stage, Mary decided she didn't really want to perform. Ditto for Deborah. And since Mary was first on the program, we had to switch things around right off the bat. Until she changed her mind. Which she did. And then Deb changed her mind, and they were both back "on".

Perhaps it was due to Adam, who performed beautifully on his "Twelve Days of Christmas" (all verses). We all stood behind him as he played the piano, and we all sang, and we only occasionally got ahead of - or behind - each other. Adam's a real trooper when it comes to just Doing It. (It got us through the Boy Scouts' popcorn sales.)

I look forward to the day when we can all get up on stage and play and sing together again as a family. Now that we have three piano players, one clarinet player, and one guitarist, it should get very interesting!


After it was all over, we all breathed a sigh of relief and headed home.