June on FB

How do you know if people are really your friends? Well, you invite them to meet up at 6:30am on the weekend and then go run at 10k for your birthday. Happy birthday to our one and only child who thinks that running is fun!

Just started a summer school class and this sentence in our first reading assignment is when I started to question my sanity: "Effective design in this model is based on appropriate normalization of database tables to maximize storage efficiency, balanced with optimization for query performance." 

Our Father's Day started with Jason Miller having breakfast in bed followed by a heart-pounding search for our youngest...who, after some heart attack-inducing minutes, was found in the front yard attempting to make friends with the feral cat that was trying to catch the birds in our tree. Cue tears from the rejected child who was then placated with watching other people play videogames on YouTube.

Happy Father's day to my love and co-parent of these confusing children. 💜

What's this? Both of my feet in the same footwear? Weird!

This might actually make a bathroom reno worth it 💜💜

So lucky to get to see a wonderful friend/cousin many times removed while in Chicago. It's been too long!

That's right, my friends, the folks at library conferences are pretty wacky. 😉

Michael Surgery...This Time It's Nasal

It was just over a year ago when Michael and I made an early morning drive up to Tacoma for a little heart ablation action. That experience was not, to put it mildly, his favorite day ever. Aside from the anesthesia fun, his leg "burped" out blood and got an extra 40 minutes in the recovery room as they convinced his body to clot at the catheter site. Michael was a champ through it all, but it was rough.

Fast forward to this spring when the ENT showed us a CT scan of his nose and pronounced his septum extremely deviated. Oh, and they have a surgery for that. At first, Michael was opposed to the idea. However, the thought that he could breathe through both sides of his nose and the subsequent benefit to his crosscountry PR times won him over. 

Once he was on board, the trick was finding a date the ENT had available and that didn't interfere (much) with Michael's numerous extracurriculars and the end of the school year festivities. We settled on the Wednesday right in between the end of the school year and the beginning of summer school. Unforunately the date still conflicts with the crosscountry pre-season training (yes, it's a thing) and he'll have to pause his weightlifting routine, but you do what you can with what you've got.

This morning found us checked in and chilling in the waiting room. One of us had eaten breakfast, the other spent a lot of time discussing food options for after the surgery. 

Intially he had big plans involving Pizza Hut. The anesthesiologist was skeptical that he'd feel that way later, but cleared him if he wanted it.

He was less interested in that option after the procedure. It was a quick one (about 30 minutes) and there are no hilarious stories about him coming out of the anesthesia, but he was feeling woozy and his throat was sore from the intubation tube.

In the end, we settled on a Blizzard with a dose of Tylenol and Vicodin for good measure. With the post-op swelling settling in, he likely won't experience the full benefits of the surgery until next week but the ENT said everything went well. 

Later I told him that he needs to have his wisdom teeth removed but we'll do that next year because I think he should only have one surgery a year.

Michael is 17

What 17yo doesn't want to run a 10k early in the morning on their birthday?? Well, probably most of them, but ours was definitely interested in early morning exercise. After the half marathon, Michael decided that a 10k is the sweet spot for racing distance. Wandering around the internet, I found a 10k that happened to be on his birthday. I JOKED that he should do it for his birthday and a few DMs later the joke turned into reality. With two brothers and three friends, Michael ran his second 10k on his 17th birthday. 

After I got everyone registered, it occurred to me to ask Michael if these were his cross-country or track friends. It turns out, no, no they weren't. And none of them had run this distance before. So kudos to them for agreeing this weekend adventure!

Having said that, it is not surprising that Michael crossed the finish line first.

Followed by Ben long legs.

And then Michael's friends with Josh "I-don't-take-my-allergy-meds-anymore" Miller coming in last from the group.

This was a small town race with a total of 35 folks running the 10k and spectacular views of Rainier along the paved trail system. The kids all seemed to have a great time and Michael's friends were still his friends afterwards. 

Michael and his friends spent the afternoon watching the latest Spider-Man movie and wrapped up the day at Nana's house. Nana was kind enough to make dinner (stuffed shells of course) and host us all for some JackBox games.

Hope it was a great day for a great kid!

California Library Association: Sacramento

Two weeks after the spring semester ended and two and a half weeks after my foot surgery, I found myself at SeaTac with a weekend of California library fun ahead of me. I had been lucky enough to score some funding from the iSchool to attend the CLA conference and present with Dr. Chow and the LTI Lab team. I was excited to see my ALASC (ALA student chapter) folks in person, but first I had to tackle steep ramp to the small plane while using my iWalk. Because...of course.

Luckily, I made it on with no mishaps and was on my way to see T and S in person!!!! We spent the evening doing presentation prep for the next morning. Based on the number of "likes" on the conference app, we were predicting we'd have about 13 attendees.

It turns out that was a horrible way to predict attendance and we had 35 people come to our session. I was thrilled that several of those people were friends from the ALASC and some of my classes, but still, it was a big group!

Photo cred: Rachel F

We split the audience into three groups and got into the tech. And we only hit two people with the drone from my table!

Photo cred: CLA Flickr

We have a great team!

The rest of my California trip was spent at sessions, the SJSU reception (below), and the exhibition hall (below, below). 

Photo cred: SJSU event photographer

Photo cred: CLA Flickr

It was an exhausting trip to take so soon after surgery, but it was a lovely experience and almost has me sold on attending CLA next year instead of WLA.

May on FB

B: I am not good at leading people. I am just good at telling them to get out of my way.

😆😂🤣😆

An example of why parenting is so bizarre:

-8yo brings home pea-size ball of grey clay from school and proceeds to play with it for days and is devastated when he loses it

-I buy 8yo package of clay with 12 different colors - he will not touch it

Watch out world! Watch out and try not to laugh (too hard) if you see me rockin' one of these next week.

ETA: While I am optimistic about using this, I will not be taking walks on the beach or hiking up mountains with it. And I may still go up and down the stairs on my butt.

Spring 2023 done. 

Did I compare Google, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter to middle school drama in my last assignment of the semester? Yes, yes I did.  But, I am DONE.

My kids refer to the years of my childhood as "the 1900s". 🤦‍♀️😆🤦‍♀️

I just want to be clear that it is incredibly rude that Ben's mom would not drive him to school this morning. Sure, she's supposed to be "non-weight bearing" on her right foot, but that doesn't mean she can't drive with her left foot! 

It finally happened!!! I FINALLY saw a bizarre ad in my FB feed!! I mean, you know this day will come, you just never know what it's like until it happens. 

Just know that what I say I say with a great deal of love and suspicion: I can only assume that one of my kids is eating AAA batteries because despite buying them in bulk I can NEVER find any. 

(we buy the rechargeable ones so they *should* keep circulating)

I was going to post before and after pictures from getting my cast off and stitches out, but after seeing my leg I decided to spare you all 😵‍💫

Memorial at Millersylvania

It may be grey and cloudy. I may be recovering from surgery. Teenagers may be very difficult to wake in the morning. But that didn't stop us from having our annual Memorial Day breakfast at Millersylvania. 

We may have been in nature. We may have been surrounded by trees and water. There may have been chocolate chip pancakes. But that didn't stop our kids from spending time staring at a screen.

And chocolate chip pancakes there were! 

And a sexy chef!

And Jason even got the highest form of praise from Michael - a high five!

And then the pink soccer ball came out and shenanigans ensued.

At one point I was taking a video of the older boys playing "keep away" with the soccer ball when Josh whacked Michael (on accident) in the groin with the ball. Brotherly love at its finest. These are the memories that will last! 

Josh is 19

Back in the day I would spend some time thinking about what to get the boys for their birthdays. For Josh, those days are (mostly) gone. Our computer/cyber security expert son wants things that I don't understand. Now he sends me a list that I share with whoever asks or he gets gift cards and is let loose on Amazon. BUT the little gremlins that run the algorithms on Amazon showed me a desk-sized wavy man and I knew they finally got something right. And by the look on his face when he opened it, I am pretty sure I am on to something.

And everything else came from a list that was mostly incomprehensible to me.

Uncle Doug was kind enough to BBQ for Josh's b-day dinner and then he and his friends played laser tag the next day. 

Welcome to your second year of adulthood, Josh!