I'm glad to hear that MK is feeling more himself.

Mac's uncle is awesome.

I'm betting Jilli would get married all over again if it involved one of these wedding cakes:

[link]

Devi just sneezed in my face. Does that give me the trifecta of illness?

Back from the wedding we went to up North. We took the motorcycle up and had great weather the whole way.

The Bride is J's cousin and a neo-hippie who we are very close to. The ceremony was a lovely mix of old and new school. It was outside an old barn, with 200 of us sitting in the afternoon sun and looking at a backdrop of gorgeous hills. There were lots of attendants--like eight of each. The coolest thing about them was that the bridesmaids in their silk dresses led in the couple's two flower-bedecked dogs. The groomsmen wore matching suits but they were also all in checkered Vans. The ceremony was performed by an old friend of the Bride, a tiny black-haired woman named Shy, a gay architect who wore black leather. The bride doesn't like cake, so instead there was a huge selection of amazing pie. 10 kinds of pie!

The only downside to the whole thing was that once the sun went down it got incredibly cold outside where we were eating. I was wearing velvet pants and three jackets and was still freezing. People were taking turns huddling under the three heaters in the barn, looking like well-dressed vagrants around a flaming trash can. Aside from the bone-chilling cold (which will make for great stories later on, of course), it was a GREAT wedding.

Now after a lovely motorcycle trip home down the 101, we are very happy to be home and snug and warm.

know what is hard? being 7 and having to stop PS2 play on the FIRST DAY you have it to do HOMEWORK! I r a mean mommy.

Happy birthday to Calli! And I think someone else! Burrell!

msbelle, that does sound incredibly hard! I would not be able to do it and I am not 7! But good for you, because perhaps when mac grows up he will have the self control I lack!

I have been off for a week working ontheatre, and I dread going in tomorrow and looking at my email. I stopped checking it Wednesday, because there were so many things to answer. My Big!Boss, when she fired my boss, put us in the terrible position of having no one to back me up. Literally no one knows what I do, so to try and leave for a week is horrible. I am not sure how to even train someone, because most of the hard/confusing stuff I do is actually on a case by case/phone call by phone call basis, and I actually figure out the answers from a) having worked at 3 different schools within the university and b) google. So when someone calls me with questions about a student visa, my substitute tells them to wait next week until I come back, while I know it is no where near my job, and refer them to the correct office. I so do not want to call back all these people who have been waiting a week for me to tell them I am not the right person!

Remember that wacky new version of the video for "Take On Me" with the different lyrics? The same people have struck again: Head Over Heels: Literal Video Version (The Tears for Fears song, not the Go-Go's song.)

Happy birthday Calli and Burrell!

And happy to hear more good news for MK. May it continue to increase.

Sophia, it might be helpful for you to write up an outline of what your job actually covers as well as a few of the bigger questions that come into you on a regular basis. Then have the answers or steps to go through to find the answers. Like:

- Student needs a visa: Refer to X office at xxx-xxxx. - Something completely random: If the question is not covered above, I do the following: 1) call XX person to see if they know the answer or who to send the person to 2) go to google.com and look up the question 3) explain that this office does not handle the situation and re-direct them to a general # for the university.

That is a good idea, msbelle. I will have to remember to do it in my downtime-- it was not a great idea to take a vacation on one of my busier weeks, in the busiest month of the year, but I asked for it off before my boss was let go, and normally she could cover me (although she never learned how to register someone or take a credit card, which I found easy to teach to my substitute as they are very concrete!) Part of the problem is that the main university number often directs calls to me when they don't know what to do because I answer them (they know me from my last job, I think)! So I get a lot of weird calls!

Also, I am so happy to hear Mr. Kitty is feeling a bit better. One of the cats that was almost in the show (they were cut at the last minute because they were scared of the live band and kept hiding under the audience) was named Loki, and I thought of you, sara. you all will also be glad to know that the cats (which we did not used) did all have families already, and were just on loan!