Useless Blogging

Today was notification day for the reduction in force.
I got tapped.

More to come, believe it.

My birthday was yesterday. I was in Pittsburgh (as you may know). My wife and kids called, but so too did my best friend Ian. This made me feel good, but also crappy, since I’m a horrible failure at acknowledging birthdays of others.

And now I find that Emma and I received birthday props over at Ian’s food blog. Too awesome.

This past week-ish has seen a lot of activity for me.

Last weekend the family went up to Huntingdon for a JC-DC Alumni Club return to campus. Julie and the girls went on a tour of campus with me, and we ate lunch in Baker… first time in around ten years for me (since I was gone junior year and off-campus senior year). Emma fell in love with the fact that she was able to have pasta and fruit loops for lunch, as much as she wanted, with as much ice cream and cookies as well. I was reminded that that even though the quality wasn’t always the best ever, Baker life was good life.

I went back to campus in the evening for a musical, followed by a reception afterwards. I went solo for that, which was a good thing, as the production — while not strictly family UNfriendly, would have left me with no small amount of awkward explaining to do. The reception was a nice chance to mingle: I got a chance to talk with President Kepple about the future of the college as well as to present students about thier Juniata journeys. Good times.

Monday was a gigantic college fair downtown. The JC counselor actually offered me an out; the fair had a morning session that was very slow, and she wasn’t expecting a lot of action in the evening from the chatter she was overheard. I went anyway and had a great time: lots of good students, lots of cards filled out, lots of energy. College fairs are always a blast.

Thursday found me in Savage, MD, at Ram’s Head, for a JC-DC Happy Hour. A byproduct of being forced into the office was making my participation in that event possible. I saw number of JC grads that I had either never seen before or hadn’t seen in a long time, and four folks that I had seen just the weekend before.

Saturday was another JC connection day, as the first official planning meeting of the Baltimore-based Juniata Alumni Club took place down in Fells Point. After two hours we got a lot of good ideas, as well as one event on the new year’s calendar and two more in the works (if you’re free on the evening of Jan 26th and can make it to Goucher College, let me know). That meeting was followed immediately by a solo drive up to Pittsburgh, where I went to cast party and then crashed on Julz’s couch so that I could catch the Sunday matinée of (and final performance of) Desdemona. Good times that.

I drive back home afterward and got to see the kids before bed, and then played on the Wii with Julie for a bit. Happy birthday to me.

I’m both loving and distressed by how energized I am after all of this. Stuff like this doesn’t pay as well as my present job.

Ashley Tisdale is what I imagine Christina Aguilera would have been like has she stayed Genie-In-A-Bottle-ish.

Julz’s entry (and a direct link to the news: Feminist vision of “Othello”).

via the Language Log
(moved behind the cut) (more…)

Just because you’re not in your right mind
Doesn’t mean you’re wrong