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I used wordle.net to create a word cloud of my blog.  It lets you put a URL in for analysis, and I was hoping it would be a word cloud of my WHOLE blog (all year and half of it), but no, it’s just a word cloud of the last ten entries (what’s visible now on the site).  Still, it’s kind of cool.  What it does, is take the most frequently occurring words and they appear larger, the less frequent, smaller.

Check out the two largest words: think and work.  Go figure.  But, I’m in my Cincinnati home tonight, so I’m going to take a bit of a break from both of those things and go eat some Doritos.

This morning, Dan drove me to Dayton, where I had to do a presentation for ODE.  I was nervous, but I felt pretty calm and it went very well.  I may be beating this stage fright thing after all.  While I was working, Dan was figuring out my computer problems.  He managed to clone my hard drive and then replace my hard drive with the clone, so as of right now, my computer is working beautifully (knock on wood).  I was able to get a paper done and read some articles for class, and I feel much better.

Tonight, we are at Dan’s parents so Dan can work on his joysticks.  We made our own pizzas for dinner and they turned out pretty good.  Now, I’m tired and dragging, which is why this blog post isn’t so great.  My apologies.

Yesterday afternoon, Dan and I headed down to Cincinnati for his “surprise” 30th birthday party. I say “surprise” because he knew something was going on, just not what exactly. Joyce and I had been planning a secret party at an arcade full of classic arcade games like Streetfighter and Ms. Pacman! We rented a room in the back that had two TVs that you could also hook console games up to. Ben and Matt snuck down to help us set up games. Joyce made all the food and I bargained with the owners to stay open 30 minutes later so that we could get the UFC fight on one of the TVs in the back room. Oh, and my friend Molly even made this awesome cake shaped like an arcade stick!

Streetfighter cake!

Everyone showed up around 8 and Pete brought Dan at 8:30. Dan was surprised (or so he says) and we all had a good time running around playing games, eating pizza and cake, and watching the UFC fight.  Here’s a not unfamiliar scene from the evening.

Dan and Ben on Streetfighter II and Jeff on Ms. Pacman

There are lots more pictures of our friends and family having fun if you click on the “piictures” tab.  Happy 30th birthday to my distinguished husband who just so happens to still love video games!  I love you honey!

Tonight, we went out to dinner for Joyce’s Birthday.  Then, we came home for some ice cream cake and conversation.  Here we all are:

Dinner at Bravo's

Happy Birthday, Joyce!

Today was another good day for some sitting around.  Though, Ray, Joyce and I made a quick trip to Trader’s World.  If you’ve never been to Trader’s World, it’s sort of like a flea market on steroids.  It’s inside and outside, with row after row of shops fully of crazy knick knacks, knives, vacuum cleaners, cell phone covers and junk… lots of junk.  Uncle Ray found the vacuum bags he was looking for though, so that was a relief.  Here’s one aisle of the madness.

Oh my

I forgot to mention the classy decorations.

I ran a few errands today and I also, you know, ran ran, but most of the day I spent trying to crochet this darn blanket.  I spent so much time staring at one spot that my eyes and my neck started hurting.  I made some good progress though, and ran out of yarn, so I need to go get a few more skeins.

Tonight, Jess, Jeff and the kids came over for dinner, and Katie was very interested in my crocheting indeed.  She was sort of dancing around me asking how big the blanket was going to be, when I would be finished, and who exactly this blanket was for.  “It could be for a doll,” she said.  “Yes, it could,” I said.  “Do you have any dolls?”  she wanted to know.  “Well, I do, but they’re all in boxes somewhere.”  “Oh… I have some American Girl dolls.  Do you think you’re going to keep that blanket or give it away?”  “Well, I don’t know,” I said.  “It’s going to take me awhile to finish it, so I guess I have some time to think about it.”  “I think it would be just the right size for my American Girl dolls.”  She smiled.  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I smiled back.

Since the blanket is going to take some time and she was so interested, I decided to show her how to make a simple chain.  Joyce just so happened to have some yarn and a hook and I showed Katie just the way my mom showed me.  Hold the yarn in place, drape it over the hook, and slip the loop over.  She caught on pretty quickly and ended up making a chain that was taller than she was.  She told Diego (the cat) that she was either going to make a toy for him or a necklace for herself.

Here we are, working away.  The youngest old ladies on the block.

Oh, and that's a medal around Katie's neck from soccer practice. I was jealous.

Today, we sort of sat around the house all morning, eating and talking about going to a Reds game.  The game didn’t work out, but we decided to go to dinner at LaRosa’s, a delicious Cincinnati area pizza place.  Then, we went to the new Cincinnati outlets to look around (Ray loves outlet shopping).  And to end the night, we went to get ice cream at Graeter’s, another Cincinnati institution.  If only we would have had Skyline chili for lunch, the trifecta would have been complete.

You know how when you get your winter coat out for the first time, and occasionally, just occasionally, you find money in the pocket?  Sweet serendipity.  Well, the other day, I cleaned out my closet and in a purse I haven’t used in awhile I found a Target card and a Starbucks card that my mom gave me last Christmas!  Nice.  So, today, Joyce and I were killing time before we went to pick up Uncle Ray at the airport and I blew my gift card at Target on a mandolin for my fancy cooking.  And I didn’t feel guilty at all.

Then, we went to get Ray and came home and had some dinner.  Now, we are sitting around being lump lumps while Uncle Ray goes through his popsicle sequence… orange, grape, cherry.  He’s very meticulous.

Grape!

Last night, we drove to Dan’s parents house in Cincinnati.  Dan wanted to spend a few nights with his Dad working on his Angelone Arcade project.

I got up this morning and had a nice 5 mile run around the neighborhood.  The weather is unusually mild right now, so it was a good run.  Then, I hung out with Katie and Cole, who had spent the night last night too.  Katie read me a story (she’s doing really well) and I read Cole part of a story (he was more interested in talking about the pictures than the actual story).  I also braided Katie’s hair.  Then, we had some lunch and Jess and Jeff came to hang out for a bit.

When they left, I spent the afternoon writing letters to the editors of various educational technology journals.  The professor I’m working on my article with thinks it’s a good idea to send query letters.  This is because when you submit an article to a journal, it can take as much as 6 months for them to get back to you and you are only allowed to submit to one journal at a time (ridiculous).  So, if you write to the editor and explain your idea, they can give you a “Sure, pass it on” or a “I don’t think it will work for this journal.”  It’s actually helpful to get the nos because then you don’t need to send them and wait for nothing.  It’s a good idea, but it took some time.  I’m excited to hear back, but of course, the editor could also just ignore my query.  Hmm.  We’ll see.

For dinner, Joyce made a yummy ravioli lasagna and then we went to The Cone for some ice cream.  It was a good day.

First, I have to tell you that yoga was awesome today.  I worked up a sweat and learned a new and really hard move called warrior 3.  My legs were shaking!  It was great!  After yoga, I finished a bunch of grading, which was great because I am currently in Cincinnati, propped up in Pete and Joyce’s guest bedroom and will be heading to their “camp” in Indiana tomorrow or the next day.  “Camp” means no internet, so no work can be done, but don’t worry all ten fans of mine, I can blog from my phone!

So, today, as I’m furiously grading and preparing for my afternoon class, I suddenly see smoke arising from the corner of my computer.  I pick it up to try to see where it’s coming from and I see a spark in the bend of the powercord.  It turns out that the powercord had some of the wire exposed and it had started getting really hot and melting the casing.  Then, is started to spark and smoke.  This was not good because my computer was about to run out of batteries.  So, I left it home from class, even though I kinda need it in class and Dan took it and the cord to the mac store.  They were big jerks and wouldn’t help because we accidentally made our stupid “genius bar” appointment for Friday (well, it felt like Friday, lady!).  All we needed to do was swap out the cord and my warranty expires on the 7th, so that’s not cool.  So anyway, Dan came home with the broken cord and we headed to Cincinnati.  Luckily, Pete and Joyce have a macbook and I can use their cord for the weekend. I really need to get a new laptop anyway.  It’s going on 3 now, which in computer years is about 99.  They have really nice-looking new titanium ones…