All sorts of happy

I had a bunch of good work/teaching related news today, most of which is too complicated and big to get into right this moment.  But one of the things that made me so happy, even though it seems small, is that I got picked up on a short-term grant that is going to pay my way to a two-day teaching conference next week.  And I had just decided over the weekend that I probably couldn’t afford to go to that conference, so you can imagine how excited I was when funding came totally out of the blue like that!

This seriously makes me want to go dance in the streets!!

Gymnastics, Day 2

We got back from Battle Creek (for the U.S. Classics gymnastics meet) at about 10 p.m. yesterday.  What a day!  Had I posted anything here last night, it would have been something all exclamation pointy like:

I sat next to a former three-time Chinese gymnastics champion!!!

I was within arms reach of legendary gymnastics coach Marta Karolyi for about 30 seconds!!!  She smiled at me!

I walked right by Jaycie Phelps from the 1996 gold medal team!!!

AND, I saw TWO gymnastics meets!!!

Now, in the light of the morning, I might use fewer exclamation points.  But I might not.  *grins*

It was enormously fun and wonderful to be there, in person, for a fairly big gymnastics meet and to see a bunch of gymnasts who could be at next year’s Olympics, and even a bunch who will not be old enough next year but who will almost certainly be contenders for the 2012 Olympics in London!  This was definitely a huge highlight of my year.

A bunch of our top senior athletes (who will be eligible for the Olympics next year) only competed some events, not all, so that made way for some new faces to win the all-around.  All of these athletes will head to the U.S. Nationals in San Jose in mid-August (that meet will be on NBC on August 18th and 19th), and then six of the very best will head to Germany for the World Championships in early September.  So, there is much more gymnastics to enjoy seeing on TV and reading about in the coming weeks!

Gymnastics, Day 1

My Mom drove me all the way to Battle Creek today to go watch the elite gymnasts practice for tomorrow’s competition at the U.S. Classics.  It was so exciting to see these girls who I mostly have only seen on TV before (I had seen one compete in person at the NCAA regionals in April), and I was even excited to see their coaches, who I’ve also seen on TV not only coaching these athletes but coaching some Olympians before them!  It was very cool.  And I’m sure that some of these athletes will be at next year’s Olympics.

I posted my report about the practices on the gymnastics discussion board I participate on, and I’ll do the same tomorrow after the competitions.  It’s fun to be the reporter this time, rather than the one eagerly waiting for any nibble of information from people attending the meets!

Babies on the Mind

I had a dream last night that I had a six day old baby in my apartment, and she was apparently mine and I called her Mia.  I wondered who the father was and concluded it must have been Luke from Gilmore Girls!  Well sure, that makes sense…?  *laughs*  I had a Pack N Play for her to sleep in but had no other baby supplies.  I spent a good part of the dream wondering who would take care of her when I was working, especially since my work schedule is very non-family friendly.  To my surprise, the baby was six days old and I hadn’t taken her picture (yeah right, like that would happen!) and hadn’t let anyone know about her.  So as I was waking up, I was about to come to my computer and send out an e-mail about this baby even though I didn’t know her vital stats and would have a hard time explaining how her father was a fictional TV character.

*falls over laughing*

Postcard from Michigan

My Mom and I ate a picnic lunch along this canal twice when we were on our trip last week.  It is a gorgeous setting!

Thoughts on the Bus

One of my favorite things about riding the bus to/from work is that I can just let my mind go wherever it wants, and I don’t have to worry about traffic or stop signs or anything myself.  Sometimes I get so lost in my imagination that I almost forget to pull the ringer to get off the bus, but except for one time, I’ve always remembered.

This morning, on my way to work — on this dreary Michigan summer morning — I was thinking about what you would nickname a child who was named Ludwig (ala Beethoven).  The only “good” (if you can call it that…) nickname I could come up with was Wiggy.

Those amazing years

I saw a great interview yesterday with Kathrine Switzer, who was the first woman to run in the Boston Marathon.  Though there was no rule expressly forbidding women, there had never been a female runner and one of the race officials tried to knock her (very literally) out of the race about two miles into it because she was destroying the integrity of their fine race.  Her boyfriend basically tackled the official and she kept running, and she finished the race.  This was in July 1967.

When I think about things like that, like how women didn’t run marathons, or that until the early 70s, women couldn’t be ordained as pastors in the Lutheran church, I am amazed at how recently all of that was true and how quickly all of it changed.  I was born in the mid-70s, and I had no clue until two years ago that there was ever a time when women actually couldn’t be Lutheran pastors!  It just seems so absurd to me.  But it was only 40s years ago that things were very different, that women and people of different races faced almost insurmountable obstacles in many of their activities and dreams.  I don’t know where I would have fallen if my growing up years included all those obstacles — would I have been a front-runner in changing things or someone who accepted the way things were?  I don’t know.  But I think it must have been amazing to live through those few years when it seems as though absolutely everything was changing in fundamentally huge ways.

Reunion, Part 2

My high school class had their 16 year reunion/picnic today (or maybe it was the second part of our 15 year reunion — we did have two 10 year reunions…).  There wasn’t a big turnout but it was fun to see those who came, and everyone except me was there with kids, so I got to grin and play peekaboo and push kids on swings.  I was relieved to hear one of my classmates say that she tried to swing the other day and got really dizzy — the same thing happened to me!  We are getting old.

I marveled again at my persistence in going to these things, even though I rarely see anyone who I ever knew well.  But, we do all share some history and knew the same folks, had the same teachers, grew up with the same influences and bad hair styles.  And as I have found my work life to be relatively isolating (particularly compared to being a student), I think I crave those connections even more now.

An Ode to Film

I’m not really going to write an ode to film (though if anyone could and would, it would be me!).  I just came back from my favorite pro photo developing place, which has taken good care of my film and photos for all of my adult life.  And the news from them is that they are no longer developing film at all.  *whimpers*

They will send out one’s film to a place that will develop it and put it on a CD, and then my place will make the prints from the CD for me if I want them to.  I reluctantly agreed to that, but honestly, if I wanted prints from digital media, I would have shot digital in the first place.  So, I told them that this is breaking my heart!  I’m sure there’s still someplace around that will print from film/negatives but it’s getting harder to buy film and now to develop it, which is just frustrating for those of us who still prefer the higher quality of prints from film over the greater convenience of digital.

*sighs*

33 Relatives Later

Hey!  I’m back from vacation.  We saw 33 relatives, which was pretty amazing given that there wasn’t an event or reunion involved in the trip — we just went from house to house visiting as many people as we could.  We saw some of my cousins and one aunt, some of my Mom’s cousins and her aunt and uncle, and various kids and spouses of cousins.  We held two of our three new family babies (they were so precious!), and we visited with my Mom’s last surviving uncle who will be 89 this year and who says he hardly works anymore even though he made 6000 bails of hay from his daughter’s farm this year.  (Six thousand!  Can you imagine?!)  So, it was a four generation visiting kind of trip, and we enjoyed great weather and had a lot of fun.

I’m catching up on reading blogs (it will probably take a week to catch up) and checking on e-mail and library holds.  I am also trying to remember the cable TV station line-up here, as I have the motel’s cable line-up imbedded in my memory now.  If anyone needs to know, channel 50 is Nick at Night in northern Michigan.  *giggles*