Summertime

We've had a fairly relaxing week here in the DePriest household. The weather has been beautiful, Billy's dad continues to heal well from his surgery, and I am preparing for an 8k race I have coming up on August 2.

On Tuesday Billy got to attend a presentation from the astronauts who fixed Hubble when they spoke at his work. I was hoping to go along, too, but had to go to work for a training session instead. It was a fairly slow week at work for me as my co-worker tries to get as much of her work done as she can before she moves to her new position and leaves her responsibilities to me.

I finished reading Cather's One of Ours and am relieved to find that nothing in the novel conflicts with the thesis for the paper I am working on. I will need to spend some time researching and reading secondary articles about the text before reading OoO again prior to writing the paper. I am hoping to get a solid draft done before classes start at the end of August so that I don't have too much to do during my fall semester. If all goes well, my argument will come together well and the paper will serve as my PhD application writing sample.

Friday night Billy and I went into Baltimore to watch "On the Waterfront" at an outdoor screening in Little Italy. It was a fun (and free!) evening, and right as Marlon Brando gathered his courage to return to work, it started to rain, so the timing worked out perfectly. The traffic was another story-- it took us an hour to get out of the city because we were fighting the crowd from the soccer game between Chelsea and AC Milan. Saturday we relaxed at home, enjoyed our free trial of HBO, and spent some time reading outside before going out to dinner at a local mexican restaurant. This afternoon we took Oscar to the park and he got as muddy in the lake as we would let him. He even behaved himself pretty well when we tied him up in the shade and played catch. He still hates riding in the car, though.

This week we don't have much planned until the Legg Mason Tennis Classic starts on Sunday. We got the weeklong pass, and I am looking forward to spending the week prior to my birthday celebrating with some world class tennis. According to Andy Roddick's twitter account, he is recovering from his hip injury and ready to play, so he will lead a very good field of players including Tommy Haas, Juan Martin del Potro, Lleyton Hewitt, JW Tsonga, Robin Soderling, and all the other top American players. I can't wait!

Back to Reality

Getting back into the swing of things at work this week was a bit hard. I returned to the news that one of my coworkers in the business office is moving to another department on campus, and I'm going to be taking over her responsibilities until they hire someone new. This means I have to go to payroll training next week (instead of hearing the astronauts speak at STScI, ugh). I don't think the training will include "How to complete your full time co-worker's tasks in your half time work week," but luckily I am efficient and I can't be asked to work overtime. My boss would have to do all the work if she didn't have me, so at least she is appreciative of my willingness to step in and help.

This week was also the beginning of the second session of summer courses, which means the summer is officially half over. I have been reading through Fussell's The Great War in Modern Memory at a fairly leisurely pace, but now it is time to get serious about putting together my PhD application writing sample. The first phase of this is reading Cather's One of Ours. I haven't read any fiction since turning in my papers in May, and while I think I needed a break, it was refreshing to open up the text and begin meeting the characters.

Billy added a sky cam to his weather station. The image in the bar on the right of the blog is the (almost) live image looking out across our backyard. If you click on the picture, it takes you to the website he uses to upload all of his weather data, and if you click around you can see a slideshow of the images from the past 24 hours. He also registered for his final master's class and applied for graduation. He normally takes 2 classes per semester, so he is looking forward to only having one. Come December 6, he will officially be done with his degree, and (he says) done with school forever!

Billy's dad, Chuck, had surgery on his neck Tuesday. He had to spend the night in the hospital, and although they suggested that he may need to stay an extra night, he was able to come home on Wednesday. The doctors said his follow-up x-ray looked great, and after a few days of medicated grogginess, on Friday he seemed as much back to his normal self as one can be while wearing a serious neck brace. I think he has to wear the brace for two weeks and stay home for three, so that would be a test of anyone's patience, but at least the surgery seems to have gone well. Now we are hoping that he will heal quickly and that the mobility and pain issues he was having before will be gone.

Yesterday Billy and I enjoyed our first free Saturday in a month. I spent some time catching up on my DV-R shows and cleaning up inside the house while Billy tended to his yard. Then we went into the city to check out Artscape, "America's largest free arts festival." The best way I can think to describe it is "sensory overload." It is like Portland's Saturday Market, if it was twice as big, only happened once a year, and was attended by every person in the Portland metro area. There were so many people that we couldn't really even see the artwork that people were selling in their booths; everything was so crowded. Still, I enjoyed walking around and checking out what everyone was wearing. Almost everyone there had a specific "look" they were trying to achieve with their choice of clothing/accessories/hair/footwear, and nearly every "look" I've been exposed to was represented. I wish the crowd had not been so big so I could have stayed longer and wandered through the booths. After that we went out to dinner and tried to go see a movie, but it was sold out, so we came home and relaxed.

Today we're planning on finishing up our indoor/outdoor chores and getting ready for the week ahead! Below are a few more pictures from our friends' weddings!

Commit to Fight Cancer

Lance Armstrong says:

I returned to cycling this year for one reason: to fight for the 28 million people affected by cancer worldwide.

We are making tremendous progress in this fight, but there’s still so much to be done. By next year cancer will be the #1 killer in the world and yet most of the world’s leaders lack any real plan to fight back.

During my 20-day ride in the Tour I'm calling on leaders around the world to make major commitments to fight cancer worldwide – but I can’t do it alone.

As a first step, will you join me and sign the World Cancer Declaration – a major global push to pressure the world's leaders to act now on cancer?

If you're interested in signing the World Cancer Declaration, please visit this website.

NY Wedding Tour

Billy and I have returned home from our tour of upstate New York, which began and ended with weddings of good friends. The first stop was Lake Canandaigua, near Rochester, where I was a bridesmaid for my good friend Erin. Her wedding location was beautiful, and the weather cooperated with the outdoor ceremony that overlooked the lake. (You can click on any of the pictures to see them enlarged.)

The day was a little bittersweet for me, because it marks the transition between having Erin as a part of my every day life in Maryland to having her as another friend whose life I hear about from a distance; she and Brent have moved to Syracuse so that Brent can attend graduate school there. Still, we had a fantastic time, and I managed to put these thoughts out of my mind until I said goodbye to her at the end of the night, when I finally teared up. Her wedding was like all the times we've spent together-- we had a blast. I miss her already!
The wedding was also a fun chance to catch up with some of my friends from my teaching days at Northern that I don't see too often now that I'm not teaching. Katie, Danielle, and I did our best to keep the mimosas flowing in the morning and to keep the dancing going at the reception. It was great to see the Barleys and the Weilands, and Billy and I both enjoyed getting to know Katie's new husband, John.
They had a live band that played jazz and swing music, which made dancing a lot of fun. The reception was indoors, but they had an outdoor patio and lawn, so it was a great combination. We could even see some 4th of July fireworks down around the lake after it got dark! I loved being a part of Erin and Brent's day and wish them the best in this next phase of their lives together. To see more pictures of the wedding, visit their photographer's blog; she did a fantastic job!

The following day was dominated by my insistence on watching the Wimbledon final all the way through. As we drove up to New York on Friday, I was checking the scores of the Andy/Andy match, and we arrived at the hotel just in time to find out that Roddick had advanced to the finals. I got to see enough of the match on NBC's tape delay to know Roddick was playing his best tennis, so I was excited about the Federer matchup. (To remain a Roddick fan, you have to have a short memory!)
Although the end result was heartbreaking, especially for those of us who have seen Roddick look MUCH worse and have rarely (if ever) seen him look better, I was really excited about how long Andy stayed in the match. Putting the second set tiebreaker out of his mind and holding serve for that long in the 5th are impressive feats. I am hoping that it will be a good summer for him on the hardcourts of the US Open Series, and I can't wait to see him when he comes to town for the Legg Mason. What will he do with the whole crowd behind him at the US Open? I am excited to see.

On Monday morning, we picked up Dad in Rochester and drove to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame! We spread our trip to the Hall out over the course of two days, so we got to see everything there without getting too museum-ed out. I loved seeing the artifacts that show how the game has progressed over the past 150 or so years. Some of the things were so bizarre to see in real life-- like Schilling's bloody sock, and Bond's record breaking home run ball that has an asterisk etched out of the leather, and 100 year old uniforms that looked like they would fit me. I really liked seeing the entire collection of World Series rings (they are getting much bigger and more blingy), and I could not believe that the Gold Glove trophy is really just a cheap baseball mitt, painted gold, mounted on a trophy stand. Really, Rawlings?! I also looked pretty closely at the AAGPBL uniforms from the real league and the movie-- I am determined to fashion one of these to wear as a Halloween costume at some point in my life (or, depending on the quality of the execution, for the rest of my life). It was not surprising that Dad was on a hunt for the "baseball documents" or that Billy took a picture of every Orioles item inside. Both were disappointed that George Brett's pine tar bat wasn't on display. I was ecstatic that I made it all the way through without seeing any relic from Kirk Gibson's 1988 World Series Home Run (also known as, the first time a man broke my heart).

We had arranged to be in the Village of Cooperstown for three days, which turned out to be longer than we needed. It is, indeed, a village. We visited the Soccer Hall of Fame, which is nearby, and I learned quite a bit about the history of the game in America there. I also learned that I kick a soccer ball between 40 and 45 mph. Besides that, my favorite stop was the 100 year old Otesaga Hotel, which overlooks Lake Otsego. You wouldn't think New York State would be a mai tai hotspot, but they were so good that we went back for them a second time. Billy and I also celebrated our anniversary with dinner at another restaurant that overlooked the lake. In some ways, it's hard to believe we've been married for two years, but at the same time, it feels like we've always been together!

After enjoying our time in Cooperstown with Dad, we headed back west to Buffalo for the next wedding. Before Dad left, we all went to Niagara Falls. I was unaware that you need your passport to get into Canada these days, and I was also unaware that you can't really see the falls from the American side, so that was poor planning on my part. However, you can ride the "Maid of the Mist" up the river right to the foot of both sets of falls, which was even more amazing than I expected it to be.
Above is a picture of Dad and Billy in front of the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, and below is a picture of me and Dad in front of the American Falls (Bridal Veil is on the right). When they gave us those ponchos, I thought "Well, this is kind of nerdy"... but you really need it! We would have gotten soaked without them! Dad kept his, so I have a sneaking suspicion that I will see it again sometime after I have completely forgotten that it exists.

After we dropped Dad off at the airport on Friday, we met up with Billy's college roommate, Jarrod, and his wife Jorie, to get some real Buffalo Wings (except I had chicken fingers). Then we went to the church for the rehearsal, and Jorie and I got to see Nick and Amber run through their ceremony while our husbands stared quizzically at the priest in an attempt to understand their groomsman responsibilities. In fairness, it looked like there was a lot to remember in a full Catholic mass!

The wedding day was fantastic, but I failed in my responsibility as photographer. I only got two decent pictures of the whole thing because I was busy having fun and having trouble with my camera (the open bar probably didn't help). The ceremony was nice, and the day had lots of cute personal touches. They had really fun live music at the church and during the cocktail hour, and Amber and her dad recorded both parent/child dance songs. To get them to kiss at the reception, guests had to sing a song into the microphone that included the word "love." Nick seemed really happy, and it was fun to observe Amber's family for the first time. They were really a lot of fun-- her parents were introduced to "Low" by Flo-Rida, and her mom was singing and dancing along! Billy got introduced to "Rock Me Like a Hurricane," which made me laugh pretty hard. I could tell they had put a lot of thought into everything.
I enjoyed partying like it was 2004-- in addition to Jarrod and Jorie, we got to see Kabby and Megan, who were up from South Carolina, and Hernie and Crystal, who are planning a wedding of their own. Our friend Melissa flew in either because she is such good friends with Nick, or because I needed someone to keep me entertained while Billy was busy with his groomsman duties... or maybe both! Either way, it was great to see all of them! I can't wait to see the pictures that pop up on facebook, since I didn't get any of the ceremony or the dancing, or even the bride and groom. It was a perfect day, and I hope they enjoyed it as much as all the guests did! We haven't spent a lot of time with Amber, but after seeing them at the wedding, I know she and Nick will enjoy a happy life together.

Sunday morning we woke up to make the drive back home. Thankfully, neither of us were suffering any ill effects of the night before, so we managed to make it home in 7 hours. We were happy to pick up Oscar from Camp Aunt Nancy and to find that he had behaved himself in our absence, and it was great to sleep in our own bed. Today we are both off so that we can relax and recover from our vacation before heading back to work tomorrow. All in all, it was a great trip! Thanks to Erin, Brent, Amber, and Nick for planning their weddings on back-to-back weekends so that we could make one long vacation out of it, and to Dad for flying in to take us to Cooperstown in between!