We've Caught ... Something

Everyone here is sick - blah. That's one of the fun things about kids -- once one gets sick, you ALL get sick. And so it is here. It's not horrible, but it's not fun. We're all feeling pretty tired, congested, and the kids are irritable -- short naps are not a good thing. Because we have just one humidifier (really, does anyone have two?), we put the kids in the same bedroom tonight so they could share it. This is a first, and it could be an interesting night. So far, we're two hours in and no major problems.

I Gave

When I was younger, I was always struck by how my mom gave blood regularly. I don't know how or why she started to do this, but I recall her doing this often. Recently, I noticed in the local paper a need for blood donation, and it hit me that I have no real reason for not donating blood. Really, it was just laziness and apathy. So I started a new trend today and stopped into my local blood donation center and gave. It was simple. Aside from filling out a small form and waiting a few moments for a nurse, the actual giving of blood took a bit more than five minutes -- ten tops. Later in the afternoon I felt a bit tired, but nothing worse than that.

I Guess it's Time

We decided to branch out and add a 2nd cell-phone line to our plan, so I stopped in the local cell-phone store and inquired about doing so. I learned we could do that, get a free phone, and we were due a free phone upgrade (it had been 55 months since we got our original phone). Now, we're not the most cell-phone dependent people, but, a free new phone is a free new phone. The clerk informed me that he had never seen anyone go so long without upgrading .... good to know.

That's our old phone on the right and the sleek new one on the left. Wowee!

Soooo Long ..... again.

Why it continually happens with this blog, I'll never know. The peaks and valleys of writing here cause me to think about ending the writing, but I always come back ... eventually. And, I am writing here again. It's cold today, just hovering above zero, and I spent much of my day driving, back and forth up to Bloomington. The snow blew across the road, causing the road to disappear at times, but it was never much worse than thick fog, until I got up to Bloomington - the roads were far worse there. But the new tires I got for the car really made me feel more comfortable in the bad conditions. And, I made it back home, so all is well. But that's the problem with taking classes up at ISU -- the spring semester. The weather is never bad in the fall, but in the spring, there are always a few nights when the roads get ugly, or the weather just makes me nervous, continually, about driving up and down I-55. This me thinking about when I was younger, 18 or so, and my friend Mike Alfini and I drove into Chicago to go record shopping, at stores like The Dummyroom, and Reckless Records, in terrible weather. There must have been at least three inches of snow on the roads, but we went anyways -- invincible. I can see the icy water puddles that gathered at the curbs, and the piles of snow that piled up in the curbs. But I have no clue what records I bought. None at all, and I am 99% sure I don't even own them any longer. But we made it downtown and back, safely, just as I did today.