There's So Much To Catch Up On!

First, here are my second two classes on their last day of school a few weeks ago. Please notice my absolute favorite student, Arturo, in his Manchester United jersey. He thought it would get him extra credit to wear it, but he's an "A" student anyway, so it only gave him the status of being my absolute favorite student.




They look so happy, don't they? Ahhhh. I start summer school on June 9th, so I still have another week to finish my syllabi, catch up on reading for class, and hang out with Trevor, Henry, Grandma, and anyone else I can squeeze in.

Last weekend Trevor and I went to Madison to visit Kate and Gil. We had a great time dog-parking, Rumikube-ing (it's a game Kate taught us and one I never seemed to win, but was certainly fun to play), and grilling.



Trevor and I started listening to "Live and Let Die," the second James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, which was so much fun. It was full of sharks (not my favorite thing and this was just another narrative that reinforced my unwillingness to go into any body of water other than a park district swimming pool) and excellent villains with great names. We pulled onto our street on Monday night with only an hour left to go in the story, so we finished it while eating dinner at home. The whole weekend was a success, and all of the Gil playing wore Henry down to the bone. He slept alllll day on Tuesday, only popping his head out of his crate to eat dinner and give a couple of lackluster licks.

I drove up to the Prime Outlet mall in Kenosha to meet Kate and Keenan, who drove down from Milwaukee (Kate did most of the driving...) for our biannual meet-n-shop. I got some lovely summer work clothes for me, some unmentionables for Trevor (with little motorcycles on them!), and some snapshots of the cuter-than-cute Keenan.






Now, his sister, Ella, is fabulously cute, but Keenan seems to be just as much of a doll in a boy kind of way. He slept the entire time Kate and I shopped and only woke because Kate needed to feed him. He looks just like his dad, and Ella looks just like Kate, so they've pretty much conquered the beautiful family.

Today is laundry day, and Henry decided to help me this morning. He helped me sort this pile, and wasn't at all dissuaded when the clothes started to pile up on him...




Well, there's laundry to fold and reading to be done, so more to come later!

It's a family affair!

My brother, Greg, was at his friend John Beaumont's wedding last weekend in Kansas City. Those who know Greg know his love of dancing, especially at weddings. One of the guests got some outstanding footage of Greg dancing with the groom, and because she was a fantastic person, she posted it on YouTube. I adore modern technology!



Also, the Bork parents are in Virginia on vacation. They're flying home tonight, and before they left, my mom e-mailed me a picture. It looks like the weather there is a bit warmer than the weather here, and I hope they enjoyed it! It also looks like Mom made a couple new friends...



Trevor and I hope to go to Madison to visit our friend Kate over the weekend, but only if the weather holds. We'll most likely have pictures from the weekend, regardless. Happy Memorial Day!

We are the Champions!

Yesterday, Manchester United played Chelsea in Moscow for the Champions League final, and our Manchester Red Devils won! Trevor took the day off work so we could watch the game, which kicked off at 1:45 p.m. CST. We made our way to J. Patrick's up the block after finding no room to sit and eat at two much more crowded soccer bars. But we had our leisurely lunch ($.75 potato skin special!) at J. Pat's by the time the game started. There was one Chelsea fan (who was quite vocal about his dislike for our boy Ronaldo), but we outnumbered him by two when a group including another Man U. fan showed up. Dan Segar, on vacation on the West Coast, found an Irish pub to watch the game, and ran into this super-fan:



We were astounded at the odds of him finding a guy with such fandom tattooed literally all over him. We weren't quite so lucky, but Trevor and I did the bar and the team proud in our jerseys (though the awful Chelsea fan is in the background). I thought Trevor was taking a picture of the crest, which is why I'm trying to smooth it out by scrunching the front of my jersey.



Our first goal was made by our boy Ronaldo (much to the chagrin of the Terry-jersyed fan) and started the game off with a bang. Chelsea's Frank Lampard scored one for them, which we didn't feel too bad about because his mom passed away this week and we think he deserved to score in her honor.



We held them back with our fabulous Vidic/Ferdinand/Brown/Evra defense, and while Paul Scholes was doing his own unique defending, he got an elbow (or forehead...we're not quite sure) in the face and bled Manchester Red all over the pitch.



Soon, the hateful Dider Droogba, in another show of his continued poor sportsmanship, gave our Vidic a smack across the cheek and was rewarded with a red card. We were thrilled, not only because he's a horrible drama queen and only a part-time good player, but also because his ejection put Chelsea down one man, which made our job that much easier.



The game's official 90 minutes ended with the game still 1-1, so we were given two fifteen-minute overtime periods. This still didn't do anything but cramp up both teams, and by the end of the added thirty minutes, the score hadn't changed. This meant penalty kicks, and by that time in the evening--past midnight in Moscow--it had started to rain quite heavily. It was kick for kick until Ronaldo missed his shot, by hesitating a bit too long before the kick and allowing Cech, the Chelsea goalkeeper, to block it. In the end it was down to John Terry, Chelsea's captain and a player both Trevor and I admire, but he slipped up during his kick and missed the shot.



It then went to sudden death penalty kicks, the first team to score a goal and save the shot of the other team would win. We had Nani put his into the back of the net, the young Anderson's goal, and then the goal by my jersey's namesake, Giggs. Man U. was ahead by one when Anelka came up for Chelsea, kicked, and EDWIN VAN DER SAR, our fabulous, lanky keeper, punched the ball aside and won the game! It was thrilling, to say the least.



And that was the game. We celebrated in the bar with hugs to strangers (and we got thoroughly ignored by the Chelsea fan, though everyone else was congratulating Trevor and me [though we did very little except eat lunch and drink a few pints...]), while the lads in red celebrated in the Moscow rain.





We had a fabulous time, came home and took massive naps. Although we were happy to be here in Chicago watching the game, Trevor did find out that Russian dolls painted like our players were sold at Luzhniki Stadium. It might have been worth the trip just to get one.

Well, today Trevor had to go back to work, and I've got to fix up my syllabus for MCC. I've got a couple of weeks before summer session begins, but syllabi are due Friday. We might not have as exciting news as this win for a while, so we'll relish it for a few more days. Red Devils, onward!

Holy Corn and Peas!

The other day Trevor mentioned that our blog hadn't been updated in thirteen days, and now it's been an even longer seventeen. Now, to my defense, I've been in the throes of end-of-the-semester grading, and I stupidly assigned a five-page research paper to be due on the last day of class, which was also the day my students took their final exam. An essay exam. With that being said, however, after getting all of the students' work, I did find time to hang out with Henry, read a mystery novel, hang out with Henry, apply for a full-time job at MCC (haven't heard anything yet, but cross your fingers and toes!), hang out with Henry, watch some X-files, and--oh, right--grade some papers. I turned in my final grades this afternoon out at CLC, so I'm free and clear from class until June 9th! I have a couple of syllabi that need tweaking, and I've grown sick enough of the Edens expressway to find a few full and part-time teaching positions here in the city that I'll apply for in the coming days. But other than that, I've got not much on my plate. Which means I have spring cleaning and organizing to catch up on--primarily cleaning out my student portfolio "shelf." I tell them to pick them up by the end of the following semester or I'll toss them, but it hurts my heart to throw their work in the garbage, so I keep them. But I can't do it any longer. I need more room for more important things: clothes and books. Sorry students, but this ship has sailed. Sailed to sweater island.

In the past few weeks, we've had some excitement. First, young Miss Destiny Napier Bradley got confirmed! We went to see her take her confirmation vows (oath?), and then to the house for some party-ing. Deeelicious sausages and macaroni and cheese were eaten (not the sausages for Trevor), and this photo was taken of the lovely confirmee with me and Trevor. Though Trevor is not smiling, I know he was smiling on the inside. (isn't Destiny the prettiest?? She is.)



Destiny will travel to New Orleans for a mission trip with her church group to rebuild houses and do other good works. We're really excited for her and will update you all when she returns.

Also, our Best Man, Dan Segar, is on holiday in California and Nevada with his lovely wife, Simona, and her parents, who came for the visit from Lithuania. As I understand it, the last time her parents were on an airplane, they were going to somewhere in the former Soviet Union, and it was many years ago (when the Soviet Union wasn't so "former."). Before they all flew out to San Diego to meet Simona's sister and husband, her parents stopped here in Chicago for a long weekend to spend time with them and, as a perk for us, US! They were so much fun to meet and spend time with. Friday night, we went to eat at Butterfly, a Thai and Sushi restaurant in our neighborhood. They'd never had sushi, and really enjoyed it. We all went back to our house to have a gander at the Chicago Skyline from our deck, which was lovely, as usual. We also saw them for lunch on Monday, and then were persuaded away from our Monday-night kickball game for the Cubs.







Tuesday came and I took the gang out to O'Hare (because I'm on vacation!!), which I love to do. It was nice to see them off. They should be in Las Vegas by now, and then back to San Diego (Dan wanted to catch a Padres game), then to New York for a few days where they'll see their parents off, back to Lithuania. I enjoyed dropping them off, but I got melancholy when I thought of how I used to love picking friends up from the airport, back when I could park for $3 and go meet them at their gates. I used to love doing that, but that excitement is no more. Ah, such is modern terror.

So, after our visitors-by-proxy, I buckled down and did a little grading, and Trevor went off to work. We haven't done too much since. We hung out with the Bosco and Bork gang for Mother's day. Lisa, our Maid of Honor, came with us to the party (and we snapped this AWEsome shot of Lisa that morning), and then we had a martini at the Matchbox in honor of Trevor and Lisa's moms. The day was nice, though the weather was junk.



And SPEAKING of this picture, is seems that Lisa has joined us in supporting the Manchester United Red Devils, much to the chagrin of her lovely boyfriend, Josh, who, quite unfortunately, is a Chelsea fan. Really, it's distasteful, but we'll forgive him because he's a nice fellow. We got Lisa to sport this scarf while we watched last week's game. TOMORROW is the Man Utd. v. Chelsea game in MOSCOW for the Champions League final! It's very exciting for us. So exciting, in fact, that Trevor's taken the day off and we're going to a soccer bar for lunch and to be with our fellow Red Devils to watch the game at 1:45 p.m. I have two soccer fans in my CLC comp. 2 class, and they've been e-mailing me supportive things about Man U (they're Liverpool fans. and are happy to see Chelsea eat cleat for 90 minutes).

In other brief news, I have finally ridden on Trevor's fabulous motorcycle (I have a gorgeous red helmet that already got me a compliment at Arturo's Restaurant! [I wasn't wearing it in the restaurant, I promise]), and on Friday we went with our friend Sarah and her husband Matt (and their friend Michelle--who's a former/continuing student at CLC! I liked her immediately.) to a biker party at Delilah's on Lincoln. The "Ton Up" club (apparently a group of bikers who have ridden over 100 mph. Trevor will NOT be joining.) was driving a bottle of Bushmill's whiskey down to Indianapolis as part of a bet. Apparently they got in an accident on the way there (old blind man + van + changing lanes = bad news for motorcyclists) but everyone is fine. The night of the party, a girl was selling raffle tickets for her bike trip in Europe. Of course, sucker for a raffle that I am, bought a bunch of tickets. And I won! Twice! I won a pair of ladies motorcycle gloves (which are fierce!) and a "Fastest Bike Races" DVD! It was very exciting. I also drank a glass of absinthe with Sarah, and I recovered from it all day on Saturday. God only knows what it was, but it tasted licorice-ly delicious. Also, we dog-sat for Greg and Paula again and Henry and Pepper hung out for a while. It was a double success!

Okay, I just realized that the previous news-in-brief was not brief. And it's late, so I'm going to bed. We'll have updates after tomorrow's game!

GO RED DEVILS!!

Henry and Pepper: Love at First Sniff

Henry met my brother Greg's new dog, Pepper last weekend while I was dog-sitting for Greg and Paula. The Chihuahua puppy was a bit wary of our 70-pound flying noodle, but after she sniffed him a bit, she let him chase her around the house at full speed (there was a lot of slipping around on Greg and Paula's lovely hardwood floors). Poor scared Peanut and Tequila stayed upstairs until Henry and I were out of the house.




My semester at MCC ended this week with our last class. I have papers to grade, though not too many, and had a wonderful time with these thirty or so smiling faces:




My Intro to College Writing class cajoled me into the photo, which was snapped by the interpreter, Mary, who's been signing all semester for my two deaf students. Next week I'll finish with my College of Lake County students, who've been equally lovely.

This morning, Trevor and I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to catch the Manchester United v. West Ham United game live on t.v. Our Red Devils kicked some West Ham butt and I then cooked us up a proper English breakfast. Deeeelicous.




Trevor just sped off to work on his bike, hopefully getting to the gallery before the rain starts to fall. I've got errands to run this morning (the bank, the drug store...), but it's dark enough outside for me to have a lamp on in the living room, and I'm eyeing my stack of rented X-Files Season Two dvds, wondering if this type of gloomy day might be better suited for a Mulder and Scully abduction and monster marathon than for errands. And I think I just made up my mind.

Trust no one, true believers. And keep your eyes on the skies for anything suspicious.