So- we had a brilliant weekend around here.
My conference in Tennessee went well. Its the regional demography conference... and reminded me how awesome research and being an academic is. One of my academic idols was there- came to the session I was in. If you dont consider me, it was largely a gathering of authors from IE's mortality reading list. I still get nervous as hell in front of a crowd. I turned into Klutzo McKlutzerson when I stood up for my presentation. They had set up the laptop and projector on a table about five feet away from the podium. Which forced me to stand in front of the screen sort of... so I get up there and am like, "Let me just set this up the way it should be"- thinking I would move the laptop and stand by the podium... turns out the cord wasnt long enough and I stepped on the power cord and practically tripped myself onto the table. And it pretty much went downhill from there. It's weird because I definitely felt more comfortable last year... this year I was definitely rocking that "I'm nervous and my mouth is dry" voice- which I totally hate.
In any case, I got some good feedback, which was the point.
On the way back, I stopped off in Athens for lunch with RLSM who I was roommates with in college. She has a boy who is about 2 and a new baby. We got the chance to catch up and it was a lot of fun. After I left Athens, I took the back way down to Cleveland, which I have never done. Despite living in Cleveland for almost 4 years, I had no idea that there was so much farm land in the surrounding area. With windows down and good music on the ipod, it was a nice drive.
I caught some of the Lee women's soccer game. They are a completely different team from hte one I played on all those years ago. Its amazing... they play with such purpose, such speed and pace. And they all seemed to be those tough girls you can't take the ball from. You know, in reality, there is one of those on any team... a girl who can hang onto the ball despite the fact that you're hacking her... well, this team had 10 girls on the pitch like that. Deadly on fast breaks and set pieces. They were fun to watch.
I got home early on Sunday and Nico was glad to see me. He's into actual hugging now. Like before, he'd just sort of put is hands on your shoulders and his head on your neck... now its actual hugging. And he was very smiley. It was awesome!! I also had some great mail when I came home, including a pumpkin shirt for Nico from Nicody and EmmeMax. Turns out Dave put it on my desk not realizing there was a pen without a cap on it (who leaves an uncapped pen laying about?) So Nico had red ink on the neck of his shirt before he even had a chance to wear it. Not to be swayed, we put the shirt on him anyways and went out for some fun. Some of the ink came off on his neck and now it looks like he burned the hell out of himself with a curling iron or something. Hopefully his school wont call DCF.
We had a great lunch at Rays (love that place) and hit up the pumpkin patch. I was hoping to get some good pictures of us as a family (since I have so few). Nico wasn't so much a fan... sure he thought the pumpkins were cool... for about 5 minutes. After that, he spent most of his time tearing everything up and trying to get away. We got some little pumpkins to decorate with stickers and a big guy to carve. Which we did last night and by we, I mean me... because Nico wasn't pulling his weight (per usual) and the smell of pumpkins is not on Dave's list of great smells. Nico is a little scared of the jack o lattern's face- which is weird because I purposely tried not to make a scary face.
Will try to post video and pics later... or not. Tryouts start today and I see me getting my a$$ kicked for the next week :(
All for now.
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