Catch Up...

It seems I need to play catch up. Oh how I have neglected thee; my beautiful blog. What has been happening you ask? Well, I have been playing the role of single parent to Chili, Sigma and Secant. With Lauren in Chicago (or Tampa), I am left to raise the critters on my own during the week. Also, I have renewed my commitment to Six Feet Under. I had previously been stuck in Season 4 due to the boredom it was causing me. It did get significantly better toward the end of that season, and Season 5 is infinitely better. The World Cup is also taking up some of my time. However, I am actually a little bored with some of the games. Maybe after watching a season of Longhorn football, I can no longer watch any sport doesn't include illiterate athletes with criminal records. Who knows.

What of the Chili update you ask? No fear. Here it is. She is now about 10 weeks old. Less than a week after getting those baby gates, she somehow managed to get over the top of them. They do manage to corral her to the main floor of the house. This is good since she also can go up and down stairs with ease at this point. She walked downstairs the other day and before I could turn around from transfering laundry to the dryer, she had eaten about 3 huge mouthfuls of the cats' chow. Last Friday she went to the vet for another shot and check up. The results were as follows:

• Weight: 14.6 pounds
• Stool Sample: Normal
• Heartworm Pill: To be given July 1

She also walked with Lauren and I to the pet store so we could buy some sort of "stop-your-dog-from-bleeding-when-you-f*ck-up-cutting-her-nails" powder. During this trip she also came away a couple new toys (a big furry mouse that she picked out and a plush orange and white soccer ball that Lauren and I picked out for her), and some more rawhide bones. The next purchase needs to be a toybox so that our living room doesn't look like ground-zero anymore. The best Chili news of the past couple weeks (at least for Lauren and me) is that she managed to sleep all night. This happened just last night, so I am hoping that this is a continuing trend and not a one-time deal.

What else have I been filling my time with aside from old TV and sports? Not much...some reading (I'll get to that in the next paragraph or so), teaching (I can't believe how fast we cover material in the summer), and more than a few naps. The two big events in the last couple weeks have been Josh's Bachelor Party and the MN Advocates for Human Rights dinner with Laura (AKA the do-gooder lawyers dinner). All I will say about the bachelor party is that it involved (1) camping in the rain in an RV that looked (and smelled) a lot like a frat house, (2) a tubing trip down the Apple River in what felt like 30 degree weather, and (3) strippers that looked like they were about 40 years old.

Now on to the dinner that I had with Laura to try and raise funds for this do-gooder organization. The dinner itself was pretty weak considering it was a catered event for the glitterati of Minneapolis. The menu consisted of:

• Baby greens, cranberries and walnuts that could be swathed in the patron's choice of a bleu cheese or vinaigrette dressing served in a "i'm on a diet...let me put my own dressing on the salad" silver-ish teapot looking container
  
• A variety of buns placed a priori on the table by the catering crew. I had a herb encrusted bun, but there were a few different types to choose from. This was accompanied by another dish that was full of small orb shaped butter nuggets. It looked like a rabbit had crapped butter into this dish (the butter orbs were the same size and consistency as bunny dung)
  
• The main dish was a piece of chicken swabbed with marinara sauce and mozarella cheese served on a bed of rice and black olives. It also came with a vegetable medley that was color coordinated with autumn foilage (Carrots - orange, Squash - yellow, and Zuchini - green). Serving vegetables with those colors alongside an already red covered piece of meat made them look like amateurs. It looked like a California brushfire broke out on my plate. I have three words for them: Presentation, presentation, presentation.
  
• Finally, the final course was either a Lemon Mousse accomanied by a shard of strawberry, or a more traditional Chocolate Mousse layered on a chocolate cake type substance and garnished with a chocolate leaf. These were also pre-placed by the catering crew...one in front of each place on the table and were alternated so that one place had lemon and the next chocolate, etc. I found it funny that at our table, these were shuffled about so that all (and I mean every single one) of the women had a chocolate mousse, leaving the men with the lemon ones.

The program, which consisted of giving some folks a human rights award, was hosted by Garrison Keillor. He was one of the better parts of the evening for most people in the crowd. The people who won awards were also allowed to speak. At one point during those speeches I reminded myself that they had won their award for their work in human rights...not for speaking. These speeches were often made more intolerable by the sporadic applause offered by the primarily affluent caucasian audience and was made even worse whenever one of the speakers used a snappy trite catch-phrase that would appeal to their bleeding heart captive (and by captive I mean mostly bored) audience. This whole thing would have been horrible except for the fact that I got to hang out with Laura.

Enough about the dinner. I have managed to find a little time for reading. I am currently working on The Cat's Pajamas: Stories by Ray Bradbury. This is a collection of newer short stories from Bradbury. Some of them are great, like the one about a group of senators that lose the United States during a night of gambling at a casino. I have also been reading some scholarly papers about Value-Added Growth Models used in school accountability. Before I end this post I leave you with a few great links.

• The Church Sign Generator: This was used to create the graphics for this post.
  
• End of the World: This is a funny flash animation.
  
• The Evolution of Dance: This is a great video of a guy dancing his way through many of the dance crazes from the 1950's to present.