The Week in Review

An article by Don Quixote    No Comments

Sometimes random little bits happen to me during the week that are important, but not necessarily something to blog home about. Yet in the grand scheme of things they are snippets that I’d like to recall. As an exercise for myself, here’s my random week in review.

Sunday – We enjoyed (and by enjoyed I mean Michelle cried and I cringed) the last Lions game of the season. Its interesting what a void that will leave in the afternoons now. It’s an interesting psychology for me though to watch a person cheer week in and week out for a team that has moments of greatness, yet without hesitation will self-destruct without missing a beat. Michelle is, and will always be a Lions fan. She doesn’t know when it happened, but it did, and so there you go. I had a similar discussion with Mark in St. Louis (as he is a HUGE Chicago fan). What makes a person a fan of a certain team? The area they grow up in, the inherited likes of a parent, or just random circumstance like colors or logo? When we were growing up, TV sports wasn’t something that we engaged in. Dad didn’t have a favorite team (unless you count NASCAR, but that was always just to watch the crashes).

I was never really exposed to football until I went to college and joined a fantasy football league. In which case I just studied numbers and randomly picked up players who I had never heard of based on figures. I went to the Super Bowl that year, I’m probably the only guy in FF history who traded Steve Young for Scott Mitchell, but there you have it. I think Timm (with two m’s) was the victor by a slim margin. But it was during that time I learned to like players instead of teams (which drove Michelle nuts for years as I would root both for and against her Lions). Ah well, another year in the can. So back to that void thing, I think both Jon and Bobby have talked us into a semi-regular Wii Bowling League / Wii Night. So if you too are interesting in joining the Wii movement at La Mancha (or are rather just looking for a chance to hang out with some folks), let me know.

Speaking of the Wii, after football we had our 2nd annual New Years Eve party (that we ported over to a New Years Eve-Eve party) and that you already know about.

Monday – Without a little bit of soreness, Michelle and I enjoyed a quiet New Years Eve, watched a movie or two, made steaks for dinner (avoided setting off the smoke alarm as I brought the oil for searing the meat to the smoking point, but didn’t turn it down after that), and enjoyed a great bottle (or was it 2?) of Saint Gabriel’s Riesling Spatlese (2005). Certainly one of my top two favorite wines. Lots of laughter and good conversation as we brought in the new year.

Tuesday – The weathered turned worse again, but I drove out to Grabill to pick up the boys and they spent the day and evening Wii’ing. I finished the Terry Brooks book that I was reading, “The Elves of Cintra“.

Wednesday – The boys picked right up where they left off, on the Wii. There was a short break as we headed out to have lunch with Michelle (who had to return back to work). We stopped by Best Buy to pick up a Wii traveling bag in the event we want to take the show on the road.

While I sat in the parking lot getting ready to leave I noticed a police car start to slow down a pull up along side the strip mall (between Best Buy and Value City) with a second car right on its bumper. Knowing that something was afoot, I started to scan around to see what might be happening (I’m not quite an ambulance chaser, but pretty close. I’m also a rubber necker and I find accidents interesting – just ask Amber, I made her take pictures of an accident we saw happen in Las Vegas. I know, I’m seriously messed up). I noticed a jittery man fumbling for with his wallet while walking past. My heart sank. I could tell that this man was disturbed in some fashion and things weren’t going to go well. As the first two officers walked up to them, one hand extended up to indicate they wanted him to slow down, the other near their guns, I watched the man in the oversized red coat (still playing with his wallet in his hands) become more agitated. Several other officers showed up and surrounded the man trying to get him to stand still, and the more chaos they brought to the man in the red coat, the more I could feel his anxiety grow.

As I drove away, I lost sight of the man as he was swallowed by a sea of navy blue and I teared up. I cannot imagine what it is like to live in a world that doesn’t make sense to you (maybe I do and that’s why I felt so heart broken). To have things not make sense and no matter how hard you try, and to have the people around behaving in ways that defy your logic structure. I keep imagining the man repeating that he just wanted to go home, to escape the insanity of world foreign and strange to the comfort of a space where things did make sense to him, and perhaps the people around him understood. A society is measured not by the great works that is has created, the things that will last for 1000s of years after their passing, but by the way they treat the weak and helpless among them.

Eric came over in the afternoon and while the boys (yep you guessed it) took turns playing on the Wii, we did some filming for the EDU 205 class Mélaine and I teach (mostly Mélaine). We did some Mac tip swapping, compared our eclectic music collections and I discussed movies. It was good time.

That night I ruined hamburgers. Yeah, I know, I’m a little shocked myself, but while they had a good taste, and things looked like they’d turn out okay, the burgers lost structural integrity during the cooking process due to my, “if a little is good, a lot is better” philosophy in life. I added a little too much worcestershire sauce to the mix, and that was all she wrote. Michelle banned me from cooking burgers for at least 6 months.

Thursday – Back to the grind stone. I took the boys to school and made my way back to the university. I enjoy my job. I enjoy the people that I work with, and I enjoy the sense of accomplishment I get from helping others, solving problems, and thinking of new ways to do old things. I finished reading, “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell and passed it along to Mark along with an Audible.com copy of the text. I started that book this summer, but I put it aside for awhile as I struggled with some of what he was saying. Nathan convinced me to keep going so I picked it back up and made it my “car book”. My car book is the book that I keep in the car and read while I am waiting for Michelle to come out from work for lunch, so I get maybe 10 to 15 minutes a day to read it, so it took me a bit to finish it. I’m glad I pressed though.

I got to snap some photos of the Help Desk guys and Ed, so it was a nice way to come back to work.

Thursday night we enjoyed the debut of Celebrity Apprentice. What can I say, I LOVE Gene Simmons. After that we watched the Iowa returns on CNN. Since I really have no say in who will turn out to be the primary candidates, I haven’t really been following two closely, but based solely on speeches after the results, this is my two cents worth. Hillary Clinton was the *WORST* public speaker of them all. The woman only talked about herself and how it was a foregone conclusion that she was going to be the candidate for president. She made my skin crawl. Bill looked doped up. John Edwards was excited, but still nothing to get excited about what he had to say. Mike Huckabee surprised me. 1st or 2nd best public speaker of the night. I know nothing about it him, but his message was universal, had substance and wasn’t all about him. Barack Obama really impressed me. I think he was the best public speaker, but his message wasn’t as substantive as Huckabee’s. So it was kinda fun to get excited about the 2008 presidential race.

Friday – Another day at the factory. Some days at work I accomplish a lot. Things work the way they are suppose to, and life is good. Sometimes things don’t work out quite so well. This was one of those mornings. I spent several hours with Russ trying to integrate our campus portal system with our iTunes site with no success. I don’t know a whole lot about the programatic side of JICS or compiling binary files on a windows box, so I’m not a whole lot of help. Russ was a little out of his league as well, so it was the blind leading the blinder. For the team being, I wussed out and just scripted a static log in that will pass a general public role to iTunes U and called it good. Ugh, not the way I wanted to go.

Every year (and I know how my team mates love to hear my JG stories), I remind my co-workers of the discounted calendars Joel and I used to get every year from our manager wrapped in newspaper that Santa must have forgotten to leave when they were full priced. This year I broke down and decided that to make our team smile I would go pick some up so I drug Jon along to Barnes & Noble and went desk calendar shopping. I found a few that I thought would bring some smiles and headed back to the office. I debated on if I should wrap them, but Jon was like, “heck no, just open them and set them up on their desks.” So I did. Now I realize that I open myself up to ruining the surprise by blogging about it on Saturday, but since I’m not a regular blogger (though I have done better the past two weeks), they don’t check it very often (if ever), so I’m good.

The boys showed up in the evening, and I made them take a break for the Wii. Instead, after dinner we all watched, “The Wild” (with Eddie Izzard as the voice of the Koala Bear) and laughed ourselves silly.

Saturday – Well… here I am. I got up early to keep the boys from making too much noise when they wake up (we have a standing agreement that we won’t make noise in the living room until 9:30 so Michelle can enjoy one morning of sleeping in), so I blogged, and Jace is watching me, asking all sorts of fun questions and providing running commentary (that kid cracks me up).

So that’s it. That was my week.