Events of the day

I saw Harley Refsal today. Haven't seen him in ages. He's doing good was dropping Martin off at St. Olaf. Martin is a junior I think he said. Carl is in Chicago. He's a consierge (sp) at a Hotel. Gotta be on your toes for that. I can just imagine the questions he gets.

Olivia is starting to try to walk up stairs w/o any hand support. She made it up our stairs only leaning forward once to catch herself. Downstairs is still dicey.

I accidently locked myself out of our basement storage room. For some reason it has a keyed lock on it and I can't pick it with a coathanger. I talked with some guys at work and they suggested taking the jamb off and using a screwdriver or credit card to push the lock back in. I dunno what I'll do. I don't want this to happen again so I'll probably be changing locksets here so if I do end up
destroying the thing it won't be the end of the world. The thinking was that a previous owner maybe had guns or something along those lines. I mean, who puts a keyed lock on a door like that for no reason?

adultery

Its not what you think. Yesterday, Olivia and I were downstairs. I was playing mariocart and olivia was crawling all around on her chair on my couch and running around just being a goofball.
She'd pull the control cord and power cords and stand in front of the TV. Hard to play a game with a 20 month old pounding on the screen. Well, she decided to crawl up on the couch and I thought that she was after my controller again. So I moved a bit to my left and kept playing. She persistantly crawled nearer my head and I tilted away from her eyes on the screen. Olivia then lunged at my face and landed a big kiss right on my lips. I was shocked and promptly was passed by a few races. I set down the controller and gave her a kiss back and a big hug.

Two days ago I felt our little boy kick for the first time. That was pretty neat too.

Hawks win

well the hawkeyes won big time yesterday it was like 30-7 over wisconsin
we're off to the capital one bowl in florida probably unless something goofy comes up and the bowl picks wisconsin over us but that would be doubtful.
Ohio State upset Michigan yesterday by about 2 td's but Mich still goes to the rose because they won the tie break over iowa for conf leader.
but two big ten titles in three years is awsome. Ferentz for pres in '08.
He gets lots of bigger job offers from the pros and other colleges with more established reputations like penn state but he seems to like it at Iowa. The fans will be more forgiving to him here I'm sure. We'll pretty much be happy as clams to go to any bowl and stick around the top 25.
If he were to go to some bigger place the pressure to be in the top 8 every year and contend for the title or in the pros to every year go deep into the playoffs would be his fate(yeayea, crappy sentence)
Decorah vikes lost badly to Harlan yesterday in HS football for the 3A title game. I didn't see any of the games but they were both undefeated. good for harlan.
Olivia and I were playing pretty hard this morning. Elena is a sleepy head so the big O and I chased each other around, played downstairs on the big green bean bag and played with her stuffed animals. She's taking a nap now.

Hospital visits

does everybody go to the hospital as much as we do? at least the last few times have been good.
We saw Michelle the other day and she was helpful. ordered a few tests to watch out for problems and it was probably the best visit we've had outside of some with sue skinner.
We took Olivia to the NE clinic yesterday because she's been coughing heself into fits and puking all over the place. Doc said to give her some athesma meds for a few weeks and she should be ok.

Iowa plays Wisconsin today in a big day to determine some bowls. Iowa has one conference loss to michigan and wisconsin has lost to mich st. Mich has no conf losses. So if Iowa wins then Mich wins the conference. If mich wins today they win the conf. If wisc wins and mich loses then wisc wins conference. Iowa can play spoiler and is just playing to get a better bowl. will probably go to a new years day bowl no matter what. Unless they get blown out but its at kinnick stadium and Iowa has a 17 game home winning streak to defend.

Olivia and I have been playing a lot of Mario cart downstairs. She sits on the blue chair that AJ and Linda gave us and rocks back and forth. She takes her blanket a bottle and a magazine or book and just has the best of times. The supernintendo is kinda funky and Olivia has bumped it and it restarts so I've had some good times busted up and she once nocked it so hard that it deleted all my scores and times so I had to beat the game all over again to get to some of the levels. Oh well.

She is rocking on the horse that Robert stained for us. She loves that goofy horse and her rocking chair. Earlier today she stood in the middle of our kitchen and turned herself around for a good 10 minutes or longer. just spinning in place. goofy.

Not the best of days

We had the day off and went to mayo for an appointment for baby. We arrived and we found out that the appointment was scheduled an hour earlier than what was on our appointment card.
This was an important one and all the midwives were in a meeting and we had to reschedule for tomorrow. great.
upset we went to eat at Salad Brothers down on 2nd street downtown one of my favorite places to eat. We found parking behind it that we didn't know was there so that was nice. After we were done eating Olivia was running around and I chased her near the door when some people come in and wave at her. Whaddya know one of them was Nadine. So she took Olivia and held her while eating and Elena and I got some relief from crabcakes.
Came home had a nap, did some dishes, played some mario-cart for the first time in years. Didn't do so well.
It just seems that we can't leave those stupid appointments without being upset. They want us to come to these extra things and something always comes up. At least we're going to see Michelle again, who we were scheduled with today. Part of the problem is that we're seeing 5-6 different "experts" and they all have their own opinion and don't really listen to the other's ideas. The only thing making me not lose my mind is that they all have at least a couple years on site experience and only one had less than 20 yrs but the one with 2-3 yrs (michelle) is one of the only ones who cares. That is probably harsh, maybe I should write not calloused by years of seeing the good and the bad. Its when they bring out those stats too that bug me.
We've heard stats from 10-40% chance of recurring. Thats a pretty big range. Its just nice when the specialist comes in and admits that medical science doesn't have a clue (yet) but he's doing the best he can with the information gathered.
/rant

not much happening

just hanging out. Dad came up yesterday to pick up the window he ordered for the laundry room. He came over and we all had lunch after I got off at noon.
Went to the grocery store today and Elena picked up some minute maid soft frozen lemonades and they are awsome. We're going to have the pack finished by the end of the night I bet.
I called tech support about a graphics card problem. The 3D images are all cracked up for some reason so the games don't work. Going to get a new card for birthday/christmas I think. Frustrating though, I can't play my good games.

potty training

we're trying to potty train Olivia. Elena got her on the pot for the first time sucessfully yesterday.

I'm watching Iowa vs purdue right now. Purdue just intercepted it but Iowa is up 17-7.

Ben invited me to a magic tournie today in decorah but just not a good weekend to travel. Seems like every weekend we're either working or traveling. We need a weekend at home.
We raked a bunch of leaves today and I worked some on the basement getting that cleaned up.

Olivia wants to play now so outta here

Election day after

well, Bush won
he lost minnesota. I guess our votes didn't help enough
It seemed at work that most of my coworkers voted for bush or at least they were the most vocal because he won.
I can't believe they were worried about ohio. It was so far for bush it was just goofy.
they even held off calling florida when bush was way out front.
www.ratherbiased.com is a pretty funny site

I just can't belive that the last two elections were so close. strange days indeed.

Elections in Afghanistan went off well. Good to see I don't remember the guys name but he is pro-usa. Working on Iraq elections this january. I read in the news every day about how terrible things are in Iraq and how bad the US is. Like we're supposed to be some miracle workers to magically cure thousands of years of fighting in some clean sweep. I've read in a few places how messed up Europe was after wwII. and how US was seen crappy from European eyes. I dunno.
Chirac of france and Putin of russia and the spanish PM (can't remember his name) wrote/called bush and congratulated him and wished better relations. Putin said something about not giving into terrorists. Something he (former KGB) knows a lot about. I read that they're considering or doing kidnapping the relatives of hostage takers.
They're having lots of troubles still with Chechnia (sp). Not long ago some chechian separatists took a middle school hostage and killed 300 some people mostly children. Makes one wonder what happened to the terrorists to make them want to blow up a school.
I want to write so much more about stuff that I think I better quit.

Election

Big election tomorrow, last polls show bush up by like 3%

Olivia is getting even more solid. She's probably up around 30 lbs.
She runs around and laughs for a while. Then gets crabby for a long time. Earlier today we played where she would crawl away and I would grab her ankles and drag her back a few feet. She'd crawl forward again a few feet like she wanted to get away but then slow way down and look back at me. I'd grab her and she'd laugh and laugh. What a nut.