Bill Roper's Journal

Julie has officially finished high school. I am impressed.

Today was my last day of work before Christmas break. This made it a bad day to break anything, so I wrote a little utility method that should be useful for several projects that we're working on. Since nothing is using it yet, it could be checked in harmlessly. :) I'm not traveling, so I have promised to show up if anything that I changed recently *does* decide to die horribly in the lead up to Christmas.

Now, I just need to finish my Christmas shopping...

Today was the big Dimensions concert over at Maine West with the combined band, orchestra, and choirs putting together a complex musical performance. With Julie graduating at the semester, this was the last music event at the school that she'll be participating in, so I wanted to make sure to see it. (Gretchen's bad knees kept her at home.)

It was fun. The kids did a great job and it was a good way to go out.

And listening to live music is good for me. :)

Well, that was a trip.

We managed to get everything (including the Dodeka cart) to fit into the back of the Edge without blocking any of the windows, so I took that as a major success. We headed out at 6:15 AM, which was close enough to my intended window of departure that we managed to miss all of the congestion on the way out of town. With one stop to grab breakfast at a McDonald's and one to buy gas, we made it to Muncie in 4:15, which was *excellent* time. We got there early enough to be able to stop at a Bob Evans in town and have lunch.

Then it was off to load in. We got there a little bit early. The nice policeman who was directing traffic was explaining to us how there was a waiting list for luggage carts and I interrupted him and told him that we'd brought our own cart. He looked very pleased. Because of some good planning between K and Gretchen, almost everything K brought was packed into four giant rectangular bags that stacked neatly on the cart. I dropped the ottoman, the duffel bag, and the arm pillow onto the top of this and left K to carry the monitor and her backpack separately. I parked the car across the street in the garage, came back, and we rolled directly in and to the kids' room.

The Midkiffs were running a little late, which turned out to combine nicely with our a little early. This gave us time to use my big rubber mallet to knock the bed apart so that we could move it to the height that K wanted. Then we pulled out the bedding and made the bed. We also moved all of the furniture in the room to the "place where it belongs". More unpacking followed. By the time Phil and Max arrived with the Midkiff wagon, we were pretty much done and putting the giant rectangular bags away.

Jen was waiting downstairs for a luggage cart and I suggested that they could expedite the process by borrowing our now empty cart. Off they went and a bit later, we had three Midkiffs and a metric ton of additional stuff. :) More unpacking followed. I practiced staying out of the way and assembling bits for K's desk.

After everything was assembled, we headed over to the food service a couple of buildings over and had some additional lunch (for us; first lunch for Midkiffs). Then I abandoned the party as they headed for the tech store to grab computers, because I had a longer drive home.

Traffic was a bit congested in a few places, but I still made the return trip in 4:30. Yay, me!

Meanwhile, Julie had a successful first day of her senior year in high school.

And Ruby and Calvin continue to try to figure out how to get along. Progress is being made. *Slow* progress...

Anyway, I am very tired and am going to head toward bed.

I am going to miss K coming in to chat every evening. :)

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. :)