Spring

Haven't updated in a long time, so here goes...

After a hellish late winter full of crappy weather, far too much work, unending travel (some of which was good, but much of which was a part of the "far too much work"), and a rash of generally bad things happening, it would seem that Spring is here.

Briefly--

In February I learned that my friend Brian (who I became good friends with at Skidmore early freshman year), who has been in the Army Reserves for 10+ years, is being deployed to Afghanistan. As of this writing, he may be there. I'm not sure. Last I heard he was doing pre-deployment exercises in the Carolinas somewhere. Well, he and his then-fiance, Grainne, had been planning to marry in the Fall. With the news of his deployment, they moved up their wedding to Valentine's Day. Ezra and I found all of this out around February 1. We shuffled our schedules and made it down for the wedding--it was a very busy time for both of us work-wise, but I wasn't going to miss Brian's wedding, or my chance to see him before he is gone for a year or more. It was good to see him. He seemed like the Brian I remember--happy and being himself. I also saw Adam, who I hadn't seen since graduating from Skidmore. He seemed to be doing pretty well--in some ways, the same old Adam.

In March I headed up to Montreal for the International Studies Association conference. My prep for that conference was very extensive and stressful. Montreal was kind of fun. More than anything, it was a relief to get the conference over with.

Last month I went to the Midwest Political Science conference in Chicago. That was a good trip because I was able to explore Chicago a little, which I'd never really done before, and I also got to see a lot of friends who live there. Ezra joined me for several days, too. Cliff's (friend of Ezra's from Wabash) bachelor party was that weekend, so some folks were in town for that and Ez got to go to the party and see them. We had sushi with Doug and Tara in their pre-weddedness, and that was a really good time. Then we saw Steve and Stephanie and Tim for some tapas delights. I was WIPED out when we saw them though. I got a little bit sick on the trip, unfortunately. I guess I was just trying to do too much. It was a long trip because I tacked on campus visits to DePaul and the University of Illinois-Chicago. I was very ready to come home!

The following weekend, we headed down to State College for Doug and Tara's wedding. That was really fun. Ezra was a groomsman and wore the full kilt ensemble. We joined them for the rehearsal dinner, and it was good to see Doug, his family, and the cast of friendly characters thus assembled. It's always good to see John. I still can't get over Doug's brothers--especially Glen. He's twice the size he was when I last saw him, and he seemed like a very good guy. At the wedding we also saw a bunch of people from my high school days that I hadn't seen in maybe 12 years... Deb Matthews (who is married to Che Hale and living in the Baltimore area), Jila Bakker (married and living in Houston, working as a patent agent), Adam Rey, Kevin Fox, etc. It was weird, but good to see them. I took a lot of pictures and I think some of them came out well (see our photos on this site to have a look).

Then the following weekend (last weekend) we were in State College again for my cousin Matt's wedding. It was good to see everyone, and they seemed very happy. I only wish it hadn't all gone by so quickly. I have some pictures from their wedding that I need to get developed, though not quite so many as I have from Doug and Tara's.

Now I am looking forward to this weekend, when we'll be home and can do home stuff for the first time in basically a month. Hooray!!!

And it's spring and lots of flowers have popped. I've been getting up a little earlier every day and going jogging in our neighborhood. It's really nice and is totally improving my outlook.

It's also baseball season now... Ez and I went to our first game at Fenway a week ago. We snuck off to a Cubs game in Chicago when we were there, so technically that was our first game of the season.

Posted by TerriWise at May 6, 2004 09:25 AM