Tales from the Steppes

2005-11-28

1:32 p.m.
Monday, November 28

Bleah! That pretty much sums up the Thanksgiving holiday on my front. The long holiday weekend started early for me, with a phone call from the EM saying she had thrown up at school, please come get her. So I loaded up a tote bag of work and took her home for the day. The only happy thing about this was the fact that she called me from the school's phone, not her cell phone. I was pleased that she followed the school's rules instead of using it when it was convenient for her.

The rest of the time has been spent with all of the Mongols puking for at least a 24 hour window, my having bacterial conjunctivitis, as well as some other upper respiratory infection that causes green goo to emerge from my upper orifices, and the SUs straining a muscle in his back while playing football. A totally lame holiday!

Needless to say, no work was done upon the thesis yet again. The SU and I are both at home today, as he started throwing up last night and I do not wish to share my green goo with the rest of the world. I have tried to sleep but my dreams are populated with the plans I am supposed to be working on. I have not checked my voicemail because I am afraid to - I have no answers for people that want to know where their review and approvals are. Somehow, these engineers seem to think that we never take any time off for holidays.

I am hard pressed to think of anything amusing or informative at this point (not that that stops me from writing or anything). The MM got to spend some time learning to play ice hockey. When he was not throwing up. He has been playing roller hockey most afternoons with the neighborhood kids but this was his first exposure to ice hockey. He is definitely into it and I will see if I cannot get him signed up for more. This had the nice byproduct of my having a firm reason to buy him gear that he can also use for youth combat.

One of the problems with any of the mongols, but especially the MM, and youth combat is that at the lower divisions, you are not supposed to throw a good blow. And we taught the children proper body mechanics for throwing blows properly some time ago, not ever dreaming that the SCA would want otherwise. At the lower division, you have to pull your blow, as it is a touch standard. So the blow is thrown with the arm only, not with the whole body. Sigh. I am sure that the powers that be were thinking of the children's welfare first and foremost. It may not ever have occurred to them that many of these kids have spent years watching their parents fight and might already know the difference between a good blow and a bad one. So I guess some "re-education" is in order.