Long, long posting

Lord, I need a break from German. the language of my husband. And his mother. And his father. And falteringly of my elder son.

B&I are confirming their holy status in my sight. From Tuesday to Friday, they took Michael & Gregor out, spent all day outdoors with them, and kindly returned the boys at dinner time. I have consequently packed about 80% of the apartment. If I could remove the furniture, I think I would feel more positive about the degree of progress. Removing all of the photos and art from the walls certainly returned it to a semi-inhabited appearance.

While packing, I was reminded of my summer spent as an archaeologist. Grossly non-quantitative activity followed by tediously time-consuming work. After collecting everything that could possibly be categorized as "office" or "work" stuff, it was segregated into 3 piles: Elizabeth's, Peter's and Miscellaneous. This last pile consisted of things like post-its, note paper, pencils and pens. I sorted the pens by color (yup, procrastinating about the next box): red, blue, black. then pulled out all of the Sharpie permanent markers, of all colors, and then the pencils. It is a safe assumption that this apartment is inhabited by 2 scientists. There were 2 normal wooden pencils. And 14 mechanical ones. This didn't include the 2 I know are in my school bag.

Today the Tobias Clan went to Interstate Park. It straddles the St. Croix River, including both Minnesota & Wisconsin. This is the 5th day in a row of sunny weather. Good bye Lansing, Hello Sunny Minnesota. -21 F seems so much more bearable when it's sunny and -21. Yup, one day this February it was -21 F. I decided that any amount of environmental protection was more than appropriately disregarded and took my car to university.

I have a summer internship with Honeywell. The HR department was trying to reach me and failing because T-Mobile has no coverage in the sub-basement of the building housing the School of Public Health. They eventually gave up and called Peter, looking for me. I had night classes 3 days/week this semester. On a Monday Honeywell called and offered me the job, stating that they thought I was the best candidate for the position. I failed to tell the HR manager that I was not only the best candidate, I also knew I was the only one. I said "thank you, yes". Get home, Peter is already in bed, asleep. Tuesday morning, I leave early with a "thanks for taking the boys to daycare."; get home, he's asleep again. Wednesday, he's out before me. I'm hoping that the warm spon on the other side of the bed was actually left by my husband. Later that afternoon, the safety manager at his facility stopped by to say "I hear your wife is going to be working with us." Peter's reply "Really?"

I am still waiting to get my final grade for the "I Hate This Useless Course" class. It ended 5 weeks ago & none of us know just how badly we all sucked, which is the general consensus of our performance. Occupational Medicine? I'm an industrial hygienist. What do I care what the signs, symptoms, or biochemical action of pneumoconiosis? This means your lungs have gunk in them, go to a doctor. Other than that, I find myself staring at the to-date grade point average (everything is on-line) daily when I check for the missing grade. 3.8. wow. 3.8 I think if I'd bothered to study as an undergrad, I might have had a better GPA. I can't even smile in fond remembrance and think that at least college was a social whirl. No. Oh, well, grad school isn't either. Though it is infinitely more intellectually interesting, if less intellectually challenging. Come on - the basic physics of noise, radiation, temperature, vibration, and some other things just pale in comparison to 2 years of statistical thermodynamics, quantum mechanics and whatever else that class was that Kathy Hunt taught. It had lots of squiggles that vaguely resembled the squiggles in the other classes, except these were meaningless. [she could have been lecturing in Urdu for all the good it did me.]

Tomorrow is rather a blank slate, past the "go to Mass and then eat lunch" routine. It's midnight and raining, so we might drag my history-enthralled mother-in-law to the state history museum. I've never been there, so it should be interesting for me, too. Minnesota celebrated its 150th anniversary of statehood last week,and there's a major exhibit about it. Memorial Day is going to be a "Hiking und Picnic" day, with a major American Picnic. Can you believe I heard the word "gepicnickt"? Ge-picnic-t. What is the German Language coming to? It sounds like something an American would make-up when at a loss of what the Real German Word was.

Michael is completely, totally, insanely over the top about Opa & Oma being here. He has an emotional breakdown every time they leave for the night. Today they reinforced their position in his world-view when they gave him a present. He'd been eager to carry (i.e., wear) B's backpack on the daily playground tour. They bought him his own last night. That alone might have been fantastic. The least expensive turned out to be developed around the theme of "Cars", with Lightning McQueen on it. He not only wore it all day today (loaded with 2 chocolate chip cookies and a banana), he had it on at home, and it was a fight to get him to take it off at the dinner table.

Gregor has gotten over his hesitation about these 2 new people and is happy about spending time with them. He has hit the "I want to help Mama" phase. Yesterday I found him sitting in the kitchen with a cloth wiping the floor. Get 'em young; train 'em right.

While Mass is much less physically demanding that hiking all day was, I still need to get some sleep so that I don't catch up on it during Fr. Pat's lecture.

Peace to one and all.