Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Big news here at our house. Adam got a haircut! Yes, after nearly four years, he finally decided to shorten his wavy locks. Since his hair flowed all the way down his back, it met the criteria for donation to the "Locks of Love" organization. Even though he had about a foot trimmed off, his hair is still shoulder length. It looks nice. We are having a bit of a camera crisis here, but pictures will follow soon.

Adam leaves tomorrow on a 6-week-long storm chasing trip. He will be a part of the national "Vortex 2" tornado program that gets underway on May 10th. He and four other meteorology students from U of M are meeting up with a team from Texas Tech, and will work with them during the trip. I will post more information about this next week. The Weather Channel is going to provide daily updates "from the field," so maybe we will get a glimpse of Adam on national TV. It all sounds very exciting to me!

A Night to Remember

On Saturday, we attended the wedding of one of my brother's long-time employees. Matt was hired at the pizzeria 14 years ago, and has since graduated from EMU with a teaching degree. He is employed at a local middle school, but still moonlights at the pizzeria as well. I think he works 7 days a week, so no one can ever accuse him of being lazy. He began dating his bride in high school, and they had been engaged for years. The wedding was a long time in the making, and it went off without a hitch.

The ceremony was a lovely traditional one, and the reception was a blast. The pizza employees, friends, and family are a fun bunch, and when you throw in an open bar, things can get quite lively. My niece, Janet, began the night by lamenting that she is almost 30 years old and does not even have a boyfriend, much less any plans for a wedding for herself in the foreseeable future. She proceeded to down cranberry juice & vodka, only to be matched drink-for-drink by her sister, Pattye. Except Pattye was ordering cranberry juice sans vodka. Janet and several others frolicked and flounced and sashayed on the dance floor the entire night, and I must say, they were all cute, boisterous, and very entertaining. We had a great time and stayed until they were ready to kick everyone out.

Since Norm and all of his employees were at the wedding, the pizzeria closed for only the third time in 30 years. (Not counting the time when the entire business shut down and switched over to a new building in 1997.) They closed for my wedding in 1986, Larry's wedding in 1988, and now Matt's this year. There are a lot of twenty-something nieces and nephews in the family these days, so I anticipate perhaps another closing in the not-too-distant future? Eric? Jason? Laura? Janet? (Haha, just kidding, Janet!)

What Jim Really Does at Work

Yesterday, Jacob went to work with Jim in honor of "Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day." Jacob has gone once or twice in previous years, and, as before, he had a wonderful time. Adam used to participate, too, when he was younger. Both boys draw a pretty nice picture of Jim's job.

Jacob described the day as follows: First, they ate their doughnuts that they had brought for breakfast. Then, they went to the vending machine for drinks. Next, Jim checked sports scores on the computer. They wandered around and chatted with people. Then, Jim had a conference call. After that, they walked to the Red Robin restaurant for lunch. They strolled around the neighborhood. Jacob ventured to the ice machine alone, while Jim played on his computer some more. Then they left for home.

Nice work, if you can get it! By the way, Jim did have the camera with him, but it did not cooperate, so we do not have any photos of Jacob's adventure. Maybe next year - if Jim can manage to hold on to this cushy position while doing no actual work all day long.

Colds vs. Allergies

Ever since Saturday or so, I have been very congested and have probably blown my nose at least 200 times. I also have some funky laryngitis, and am speaking in a husky voice, a la Bea Arthur. My symptoms are consistent with my typical spring allergies, and the tree pollen in our area has been listed as "very high" lately. I simply assumed that the 2009 allergy season was at long last underway.

Curiously, though, Jim has been exhibiting all of the same symptoms that I have. (With the exception of sounding like Bea Arthur - he actually sounds more like James Earl Jones.) But he has never had allergies anytime in his life. So, is Jim perhaps joining the ranks of the world's allergy sufferers in his old age? Or does he simply have a cold? And, if he has a cold, could I possibly just have a cold, too?

I usually distinguish between colds and allergies by the length of time the symptoms last. A cold will go away in about a week. Allergies can come and go for months. In addition, allergy symptoms wax and wane, even during the same day, while cold symptoms stay fairly consistent hour-to-hour. If I feel better this weekend, it could be because a cold has run it's course. Or, it might also mean that the tree pollen levels have declined. So, who really knows?

Since Adam is also experiencing some negative signs of the extreme tree pollen that is wreaking havoc in our neck of the woods, I have concluded that I most likely do just have my usual spring allergies. Either way, I look forward to my sinuses clearing up!

Week in Review

Here are some pictures taken during our busy week with the Delaware relatives. Besides gathering for Easter dinner on Sunday, we also had a crowd of 14 visit the Hands-On Museum in Ann Arbor on Tuesday. Fun! We went shopping, played Rock Band, and ate lots of pizzas, too. All in all, we had quite an eventful week, which unfortunately included having several people come down with a short-lasting stomach virus! (All are well now.) The weather this week was unusually cold and wet, and I accused my nephew of bringing the yuckiness with him from Delaware. You see, each time I visit them, there are unseasonably cool temperatures, rain, sleet, wind, etc. I suppose this was my payback. The relatives flew home yesterday, and Jacob is already missing the kids. Wish they lived closer!

The kids searched for Easter eggs in Nancy's yard. Do you like
the "baskets" we gave them to use?

Everyone loves Rock Band.

Jenna at the museum's "General Store." Do you see a retail career in her future?

Josh driving the ambulance at the museum.

Julia riding in the back of the ambulance. Deja vu, Pattye?

Memory Lane

Bev was released from the hospital yesterday, and is back at the assisted living place. She had become more and more forgetful in the hospital - not even remembering visits or conversations that occurred minutes prior. Which was particularly frustrating when conversations came in the form of telephone calls to our house during the wee hours of the morning. We hope that the familiar surroundings of her room at the assisted living place will jog Bev's memory a little bit, because it is definitely odd to hear her ask why you didn't come to see her, when you were just there an hour ago.

On Saturday, Jim and I were at the hospital when a female chaplain wandered into Bev's room to discuss Easter Sunday and hand out some puzzles & reading material. Bev either had no idea that this person in the white lab coat was affiliated with any religious establishment, or she simply did not care. Bev blurted out how much her "God damn" back was hurting, and that seemed to shock the chaplain. In fact, after Bev's first swearing tirade, the clergy-woman, with her mouth wide open, asked, "What did you just say?" Bev continued to utter profanity and the obviously offended chaplain made a hasty retreat out of the hospital room without looking back!

By the way, I hope everyone had a nice Easter. Twenty-seven of us had quite a feast at Nancy's house, including a birthday cake for 7-year-old Abey, who is in town from Delaware for the week. I will have stories and pictures of all of our adventures with the visiting Delawareans in an upcoming post.

Ignorance is Bliss

My mother-in-law, Bev, was taken to the emergency room early Monday morning when she woke up and declared that she could not breathe. The doctors in the ER determined that, besides her end-stage emphysema, her BNP level was elevated. A high BNP level sometimes indicates heart failure, but the cardiologists were hesitant to diagnose her until they performed more tests. Now, days later, an exact diagnosis has still not been made, and assessments are ongoing.

Oddly, Bev has been quite cooperative and is seemingly content since she entered the hospital. Her Alzheimer's is very prevalent, and I suspect that this is responsible for her placid behavior. She phoned me seven times on Tuesday, just so I would know where she was, and called so many others as well that we have had to delete some numbers from her cell phone's contact list. She thinks she is at a hotel and has come up with some wildly entertaining stories the past few days. Bev insists that the woman in the next bed, along with her frequently visiting husband, are sharing her hotel room, but she doesn't seem to mind too much. And, although she was shocked that she couldn't find an ashtray in the room, she has not even asked us for a cigarette. Not once. She does have a nicotine patch, but that has never before pacified her for this long. So, with 24-hour-a-day oxygen, and an unusually pleasant attitude, Bev is looking better and feeling pretty good, too. It is always fun, though, wondering what will happen next.

April Showers?

This morning we woke up to a winter wonderland. The weather service at the airport officially recorded six inches of new snow, but much has melted throughout the day. I actually like it, though, because it conceals our still-brown grass and the excessive litter that has accumulated on the roadways around here. (Yuk!) I'm sure that most of the white stuff will be gone within a day or two since the temperatures are expected to rise into the upper 40s on Wednesday.

There are a lot of "final four" basketball visitors in the Detroit area who were caught off guard by the snow. The television stations have been interviewing people who came to town without coats. Needless to say, local retailers are doing a brisk (no pun intended) business selling winter-wear to all of the wimpy southerners. That said, if any of them had bothered to look at a weather forecast, they would have seen that this snow was predicted five or six days ago. That'll teach them.

Jacob's dump truck covered in snow.

We should have built a snowman!

Fools

On Monday, the Detroit Free Press stopped their daily home delivery. Well, they did not stop completely since we will still get a newspaper on Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. But the rest of the week we are left with a strange void. We are signed up to receive an electronic edition of the paper on our computer, and I can only say that trying to navigate that has been nothing short of frustrating. Actually, I get most of my news from various internet sources, but I still miss having the Free Press around in the morning. And throughout this entire debacle - which, admittedly is only on day number three - I have discovered that what I am moping about the most is not having the comics at my fingertips! Does anyone know how LuAnn is doing? Or if Gene is going to try to bail out Mary Lou's family? And what about my horoscope? And all of my favorite columnists? Not to mention the puzzles.

The Free Press said that their decision to cut back delivery service was, naturally, an economic one. I think that most people would have paid more to continue the service. I would have. It was not very expensive to begin with. Now, after forty-some years, I will just have to get used to reading my comics online. That's progress, I suppose.