Bill Roper's Journal

Gretchen spent most of the day driving a long loop to the Loop and back to pick up K after her trip to Ball State for orientation. Like, five hours, which is absurd. She was a bit late getting to the Loop bus station, but the bus was a bit late too, so it sort of averaged out. Meanwhile, it seems like all of the other drivers on the road were intent upon "interesting" maneuvers. But everyone is home safe now.

I spent time looping at work too. Happily, I was able to sort out one problem and characterize another so that someone more familiar with that particular area of the code can do the further sorting that is required.

And then on Monday, I hope to be able to code in a straight line again. :)

It was Awards Night over at Maine West for the entire school. K had been informed that she had won an award and I explained that she really needed to RSVP and show up. And she got one of a number of scholarship awards that went to folks from the Fine Arts department, which was great.

Now K had figured that a friend of hers was going to get the academic award from the Fine Arts department, which wouldn't have been a surprise from the amount of work the friend has done in music and drama. But as I carefully read the program, I realized that the Fine Arts department was giving three *separate* awards.

And K's friend won the award for Music.

K won the award for Speech, Drama, and Broadcasting.

I am very proud. :)

And it's good that we went...

The annual drama department awards were today. K was voted Most Dedicated by the folks in her drama classes and won the Top Thespian award for her four years of work in the program. I was so proud to hear her fellow students chanting her name.

The drama teacher had wonderful things to say about her turn as student director on the winter musical, noting that she was fixing problems before he even had a chance to become aware of them.

I'm glad that she was a drama kid.

It was actually a party, but it was a meetup with K and a number of her friends from the drama department at our house this afternoon. The living room was beaten into submission and the teen activity took place there. Ruby so badly wanted to play with the visitors, but enough of them were allergic that she was exiled to the back yard. When I finished work, I went out to throw the ball for her for a bit, which made her much happier. Not as happy as she would have been getting attention from all the visitors, but...

I then defied my normal practice (having tripped over it by accident) and spent the evening watching the Blues vs. Jets hockey game. The Blues chased the Jets' goalie for the third Blues home game in a row, won game six, and have forced game seven back in Winnipeg. Each team has won its home games so far, so I'm going to have to hope that the pattern breaks.

I have a great many things that I need to do this weekend (*cough* laundry *cough* at a minimum), but none of them are on a tight schedule. I have hopes. :)

I saw this coming.

Actually, I saw it coming after seeing the fine Cubs vs. Dodgers game on Wednesday down at Wrigley Field. I was planning to go to the Cubs vs. Phillies night game today. And then I realized that I was going to see K's show at Maine West on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

This is too much entertainment.

So I listed the Cubs tickets and stayed home today, which was one of my better choices. :)

Some cleaning was done, which was good. More cleaning will follow soon.

And I finished setting some lyrics that Gretchen had asked me to look at to a tune. (Because tunes are free, right? :) )

Tomorrow, it's back to work. So rest was good...

I went back over to Maine West to see K's next to last stage show there. The show went well. There was a moment of low pitched feedback when they turned on a mic at one point, but the sound crew managed to quell it without too much problem.

K's off to the after-party now. I picked up a pizza from Malnati's on the way home (because I ordered it from my cellphone when the show ended) and Gretchen and I had a nice dinner while watching the season finale of "The Floor".

And now we'll wait up for K. :)

Today was the Maine West show for all the kids in the video production classes to show off their best work. It was fun to see what they had been up to. :)

The kids had a wonderful time in New York, but are happy to be home and about to sleep in their own beds. Ruby the Dog and Sunshine the Cat seem happy to see them back as well. :)

The kids were delivered to Terminal 1 at O'Hare this morning at about 3:50 AM, which is an absurd hour of the morning, but which was good, because it meant that they would be going out on the first United flight of the day to Newark.

If only their luggage had gone with them. I don't know how United managed to mess this up, but the luggage ended up going out on the next flight, which meant that they got to spend several fascinating hours in the baggage claim at Newark. I will, at some point, be interested in hearing the only slightly censored comments from the chaperones about this.

But they are there and I am presuming that fun is being had, because they have been mostly too busy to text us. Given the amount of sleep they got last night, I am assuming that they are *very* sound asleep now.

So we texted them "Good night!" :)

I was a bit light on sleep when I set out for Thing on Friday. I then compounded this by getting *way* too little sleep over the weekend in favor of conversation and being up in time for breakfast. As a result, by the time I got home, I was absolutely exhausted.

Unfortunately, there were various things going on that delayed my getting to bed. This was compounded by having to set an alarm for 6:30 AM so that I could get up and get an appointment at the DMV so that Julie could get a state ID to use when flying for the Band/Choir trip to New York on Thursday morning. But I obtained the appointment for the ID and then the kindly clerk agreed that she could go ahead and run a Real ID submission for her since we had all of the correct documentation in hand.

So Julie has a brand-new temporary ID, with a brand-new Real ID due to arrive in the next few weeks.

I am pleased.

The kids have to be delivered to the airport at 4 AM on Thursday morning to catch their flight to New York. This is my job, which I am not entirely looking forward to.

But when I get home, I am going back to bed. :)