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everything old is new againNo school today, and Liv is having her 14th birthday party. It's beautiful out, thought a brisk 10 in the sun. The snow is very sparkly, isn't it?
Listening to: Feel the Benefit, 10cc Reading: 1984, Orwell Weather: 10, brilliantly sunny Liv sang the National Anthem at the basketball game at South last night. I got to hear it over my phone through Larry's cell phone. Sounded totally awesome! And that's a very hard song to sing, huge range, weird words. And harder for some of us who aren't exactly proud to be Americans every day, if you know what I mean. Read on.
I picked up an ice cream cake in Fairmont on the way home from Instifrickintute last night. Very surreal moment: I was heading north, stopped at the light getting ready to cross the curving bridge from downtown Fairmont. Sirens galore. I had noticed a small throng of people hanging out waving a gargantuan American flag on my way in toward the Dairy Queen. Why are they out in the snow and cold waving a flag? You're about to find out. So I finally see the source of the sirens, a long line of cop cars cherries flashing sirens blaring slowly coming through the intersection in the oncoming lane. Followed by a bus full of soldiers, coming home from guess where? Followed by a shitload of every firetruck in the region, sirens, lights, you get the picture. What's surreal about that? Well I was listening to an audio book at the time. I was probably 10 or 15 minutes into 1984, and George Winston was describing that his mentally preparing to write anything in the diary he just purchased with an actual ink pen was a thoughtcrime, and could be punished by death or at least 25 yrs in a work camp. You might remember that the bad news about the reduction in the chocolate ration was preceded by great news about the bloody slashing Big Brother's troops had just handed out in the latest war. Dude, I was totally committing a thoughtcrime at that very moment myself. Me and George. Perhaps my considering this blog entry was a thoughtcrime, as is your reading it.
The weather had randomly periodically sucked bad on the way home from the C-PASS meeting. I was fortunate to be a passenger, my colleague Suzanne was driving a rental car. We went through major snow squalls, interspersed with periods of brightening sky and merely wet roads, over and over. And this is the weather we saw all day out the big windows of the conference room during the meeting, which went from 10a to 3:30ish. The day started a bit early for me, and pretty sucky. Liv and I had to leave at 6:30 rather than our usual 6:45 so I could be sure to get her to school and me to Fairmont to meet Suzanne by 7:30. 6:29 and Liv is trying to decide whether the play practice today includes her or not (which would change the time she needed to be picked up from school by her dad). She also was failing her attempt to scan a document that was due to the school counselor today, an application for the Gov school for math and science, and summer thing. K, I'm not exactly mary fucking sunshine in the morning generally, certainly not by Thursday, and definitely not when we have to leave early. She's way pissing me off. But we get in the car, head to school, I bitch at her for a while.
After dropping her off, I head down 79 toward the South Fairmont exit for my connection at Hardees. I see one flare on each side of the road. Odd. 1/4 mile, I see the same thing again. Curiouser and curiouser. Third time, I'm baffled. Here comes Goshen Road exit, and cars are slowing. Stopping. We are all funneled off the exit, 79 is closed here. As we head down the exit ramp, we all gawk over at the accident up toward the overpass. Holy shit.I don't know if you can tell, but the crunched up car going the wrong way is completely burnt to a crisp. I'm thinking that person was having a significantly shittier day than I was, as was the one driving the Cintas truck, whose windows are all smashed. Somebody definitely didn't survive that accident, I'm thinking, and that was later verified to me by Larry on his cellphone from South when I got home.
Well, Liv had looked so cool on Tuesday morning that I took her picture. She turned 14 that night at midnight, so this is the last picture of her at 13. Cute, huh?
Today we celebrate her 14th, so of course there's snow. It's tradition. She's getting a very special gift from me, probably next week, more on this later.
Monday I also traveled
to the Charleston area, that time for the Access to Justice Commission creation meeting at the Supreme Court. I had to drive, but it was a gorgeious day, and I was glad to be doing it. The meeting went really well, too, and the birth of this creation is imminent. Finally! I have been working on this for 2 years, and will be so proud and glad when the commission gets created, which will hopefully happen this month. The skies were spectacular the whole way down, and I shot several pictures right through my windshield while driving the 79 speedlimit.
permalink posted by cat 7:55 AM
