karina jean

friday I met linda and matt and we all drove up to albany for the 3D birthday spectacular. Dad’s bday is 7/11, daniel’s is 7/16, and dan aaron’s is 8/29 but because usually people are wrapping up the summer then we have a preemptive celebration all at once.

Sat. we went to a Union Picnic at the Great Escape, it only cost $12 to get in, and we had picnic lunch and free soda all over the park! Amazing. it would have been reasonable at twice the price, really. We had a GREAT time, daniel didn’t puke on any rides either, and apparently LOVES rides. he turned 6 and we thought he would be too short to ride things, but apparently he’s roughly 50 inches tall could get on anything he wanted to. He only wanted to ride with Matt (his best friend in the world) though, so that was safe, at least.

sweet linda from texas had a good time too, yay! I love adopting/being adopted by people who love family time.

I took a lot of pictures of the condor, because it’s so cool looking with lights and molded plastic. it’s not the funnest ride, but it looks awesome.

on the ride home daniel totally crashed out.

he had a melt-down when we got home, he was TOO TIRED to go to bed, and cried and cried and cried. But all in all, he had a GREAT time at the park, and esp. at splashwater kingdom. And ESPECIALLY playing with Matt, who as I mentioned, he LOVES.

he was so tired he didn’t wake me up until 8AM the next morning (phew!)

Sunday we went to see sarah’s new house (beautiful! not too small!) and went swimming in her lake. then home for yummy birthday lunch (as displayed by matt and daniel)

and birthday party

we figured out the daniels during dinner, it goes like this:

Daniel Claudius – my great grampa, and can you get much more eastern tennesee appalachia then Claudius?
DC Jr (on birth certificate, so we all assume it is also Daniel Claudius) – my grampa
Daniel Eugene – my dad
Daniel Aaron – my bro
Daniel James – my nephew.

dan aaron got 3(!) pairs of size 15 flip flops, so if there’s a shortage it’s b/c they’re all at his house. Plus, mom came over so the party was absolutely complete! yay!

everyone had a great time, and ryan is cuter than ever

drove off at 4:30 after I was plied with a box of my dad’s old cameras (like, some OLD cameras, I may inventory later in the week), a cast iron dutch oven from my great grampa’s chicken farm, and fresh mint from maggie’s window box. yum. more mojitos at my house! we got linda home around 8:30 and matt dropped me off by 9:15 – not late at all, considering we stopped a couple of times off the mountain (including once to cuz. john’s folk’s house to pick up a microwave) and went to nj via queens via nj. note to self: trips to and from queens are fastest on sunday evening, apparently.

What a great weekend. I’m super tired, but had a wonderful time. There are more photos here and here (courtesy linda)

in case it comes up, NJ regs clearly specify that swine food is NOT a solid waste:

N.J.A.C. 7:26G-5.4 Swine food
Pursuant to the Solid Waste Management Act, the definition of solid waste shall not include solid animal or vegetable wastes collected by swine producers, licensed by the State Department of Agriculture, who collect, prepare and feed such wastes to swine on their own farms.

Friday evening I went into the city to wish Jenn C. a happy birthday. I also went out playing foosball, and managed to lose my voice.

so sat., I slept as much as possible. I still couldn’t talk. it was terrible! sat. night we went to matt’s folks to drop off a beach umbrella and I started to feel sicker and sicker. so we went home, and I missed Gabulon’s bday party. sad.

At least that night I got 11 hours of sleep. after that, I went to matt’s to use his internets to do some HAZWOPER site supervisor training, and got home around 10. I checked my throat again (still no voice in there!) and went to bed.

Not having a voice is boring. and SILLY. I’ve gotten a call already from a client, and I felt pretty funny whispering to her. I can’t really whisper, besides — it’s worse on my vocal chords than forcing a voice, or so I’ve heard. So I’m trying to be quiet. yuck.

The events today in London have shaken me up. On the one hand, it’s very surreal: here in the office there isn’t a lot of concern for it. I don’t think anyone has mentioned it to me at all. But I have a lot of friends (internet and otherwise) who are incredibly concerned, and are focused on the news. The discrepency really throws me. Yesterday I was thinking about the olympics bid, and how worthy london was to have won because they really really wanted it, they were really really excited. If NYC had won there wouldn’t be the excitement, joy, unity. There would be people upset about the inconvenience, and general apathy. And now that London has suffered terrible terrorist bombings I am concerned about our reaction. We didn’t offer much of a reaction to Madrid in their time of awful either. So while I’m worrying about London, I’m also worrying about America.

And God, but I remember the terrible waiting period after September 11th in New York City, when we weren’t sure if there was another shoe to drop and if it would. I remember waiting to find out who, of those I know, were spared, and the slow scramble to locate my tourist step-sister. I remember the loud silence in the streets as people wondered what to do with themselves, how they could get home, and later, how they could help. And for all of the horrors that NYC experienced that day, we didn’t have the mass injuries and amputations to deal with and to remind us of what happened. My heart goes out to those who are waiting and coping in London.

sherwin williams is having a paint sale this weekend so I’m going to stock up on their no-VOC harmony paint in order to paint my apartment.

And I’m only buying green colors.

I want to replicate my old green color for my bedroom

and I really want to paint my hall a nice real green color to contrast with my blue walls:

The color I like is called “VEGAN” which cracks me up, and is the most top most chip on the left side.

here’s a better view, straight from the sherwin williams website:

so all this green, and on top of that, have I mentioned what color my bathroom is?

GREEN.

I had a great weekend, full of visitors and debauchery and weddings and hot weather.

and today I’m trying to consolidate my student loans so as to get a superduper low interest rate. Apparently, I owe 25K. Thanks CMU! I forgot it was THAT high, I guess I was hung up on 18K for some non-reason. I have to get my Dept. of Education Pin number from home before I can do any of this financial finaglry, and it’s impossible to contact anyone by phone because EVERYONE IN AMERICA is trying to refinance their loans before 6/30, at which time interest rates will go up a whopping 1.9%.

it’s a little disorienting to realize I’ll be back to paying a wholelotta cash out each month for 10 years.
I don’t rembember having to pay this much the last time around, and I thought I had comparable loans after Cooper!
Or maybe it was 1/2 as much, which would make more sense. Plus, through the brilliance of CU for some reason my last year loans had to be taken out through another lender – something about high default rates, I think – and I was paying 2 loans at the same time. Which really did work out well in the whole greater “paying off loans” scheme of things. Hrm.

I secretly love budgeting, but I secretly hate it too. It can be fun to figure out how much money you have and to square away everything neatly, and to even use a spreadsheet to figure it all out easily. But then you reach a point where it’s not fun anymore because you realize you have more bills and expenses than you thought you did. I had conveniently forgotten about this student loan thing, and I’m not looking forward to updating my spreadsheet. But I will, because sometimes even updating a painful financial spreadsheet is a welcome break from trying to figure out why an invoice doesn’t match the project reconsiliation spreadsheet. You know.

I showed a very good friend and thoughtful person the pictures from father’s day, and she said my family looked like we were full of life. I thought about this for a while, and replied that something my family really has going for it is a focus on living in the present. It’s true, what with the health problems and various financial debts to be paid off and the difficulty in planning activities when you’ve got (at latest count) ten households that need to be coordinated in order to spend portions of holidays together, well, somehow that has translated into relishing the time together we do have, and a general flying by the seat of our pants. sure, we make plans, but it ends up often being a vague coming together when we can instead of a regularly scheduled event to which people are expected to attend. We are flexible with each other, generous, and try to make things work for everyone. And we all show up. Even though there are groups of people who traditionally are expected to have animosity towards each other (aka, divorce in various forms) there really isn’t, and we all manage to work it out in the end.

my friend said “what a difference that must make in a family (let alone in a single person)” and she’s right. I’ve never thought about it before, but we’re doing quite well for a family of ‘broken homes.’ aw, my heartful family.

I had a really good time in albany this weekend for father’s day. I arrived sat. evening and played games with sarah, kevin, and dan aaron (after making collage cards with daniel and eating dinner and having some sweet ryan time).

the next day we had a super time with breakfast and gifts and then all cruised down to the baseball game, starring the unintiminable daniel james!

I absolutely enjoyed seeing the sarah+kevin+ryan family

enjoyed seeing daddy, and even though I’m tall, he’s still a whole foot taller and we had a hard time catching the top of his head:

we did see some disturbing things that day.

but dan aaron

and mom and I

shook it off went to lkens for milkshakes and cheesey fries.

thank you, jimmy hoffa, for making wonderful day at the ball park possible.