Abbie's Real Life Blog

It is July and I am home again.  No, I have not yet finished my trip reports from the Out West trip earlier this month!  I did spend a lot of time writing, though, and I am not far from having those finished and uploaded.  They just take forever to write.  Much longer than you’d think, even when it’s just me and a text file on the airplane, no tweets or images or Wikipedia sojourns.  It still takes hours and hours to write.

But before I finish those and upload them, I’ll update you on everything that has happened since I got home (on Thursday night, June 10, 2010).  I did some loads of laundry, packed up again, and went to Kirksville, Missouri, for a family reunion to celebrate my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary.  We stayed at Thousand Hills State Park outside Kirksville, which is not just a town in north Missouri (sort of a convenient central location for family traveling from Chicago, Des Moines, Kansas City, and Columbia), but also a place where several of us were born or lived or attended school (at Truman State University, formerly Northeast Missouri State University).  The state park had several duplex cabins, and we took up a number of them.  They were very nice, in clean condition, and recently updated.  After my tour of a number of similar park-maintained lodgings over the recent weeks, I thought they were very nice accommodations.

The reunion was nice, though we were stopped from swimming or boating or much outside activity by a thunderstorm that lasted a good part of Saturday afternoon.  Instead, some watched World Cup soccer and others (me) took naps.  Later, several of us went bowling.  We had brunch together on Sunday morning and then we all left.  It was a nice weekend with family.  For my part, it was a great way to return home, see family and chat, but not have to be out of vacation mode yet.

I got back to work the next week, which was crazy.  My brother and sister-in-law moved to Columbia on June 15, which was the culmination of only a couple of months of planning and house-selling and house-buying.  Since I haven’t been around much in the past few weeks, it’s still a little weird that they live here now.  I haven’t lived so close to my brother since I graduated from high school.  But it will be a lot of fun.

My sister turned 30 on June 16, and we had a nice dinner for her despite my brother & sister-in-law’s moving-related chaos (though they are very organized and it was almost not at all chaotic).  We all went together to give my sister a Wii for her birthday, which thrilled her.  They generally play game consoles that are a little out-of-date so that they can get games and accessories for cheap on eBay or wherever, so this was a big new step into the territory of current gaming hardware.  And it was great timing, too, because the weather was terribly hot and humid and no one wanted to spend any time outside.  So Father’s Day at my parents’ house involved barbecue and Wii-playing, with everyone involved.

I got sick again over Father’s Day weekend, but despite fears that it was some kind of tick-borne illness, it just turned out to be a combination of a severe allergic reaction (to what?  I don’t even know) and a bad cold (more of the same illness that my family was passing around in June).

I was able to play trivia a couple of times that week, which was great.  I missed it while I was gone, but I will get to go as often as I want in July and for the rest of the year, more or less!

On Friday, June 25, I was packed up again to head to DC for the American Library Association annual conference.  I have attended it twice in the past as well as attended the ALA midwinter conference twice, but we haven’t had money for travel in the past couple of years, so this was a good surprise.  The conference was at the Washington DC convention center, and I got to stay in the very plush, known-for-high-class-political-sex-scandals Mayflower Hotel, which is four blocks from the White House.  I used to pass it on the street all the time when I lived in DC, so the thought of getting to stay there was exceedingly fun.  It was certainly a nice hotel, but I did not once get propositioned by dignitaries in the elevator.

I will relay the actual trip report from this trip AFTER I’ve finished relaying trip reports from the last trip, but this gives you the CONTEXT of both.

I’m now home, freshly arrived last night after my wonderful parents drove all the way to Kansas City merely to fetch me from the airport.  That was really nice of them and saved me waiting around for a shuttle bus and getting home late in the night.

I am now so happy to be home!  I was so ready to go places and was not ready to return to normal even after I finished the driving on the first trip, but then I spent another week out of town (well, six days) and now I am satisfied.  I am done with traveling for awhile and I can stay home for as long as I want.  When I saw Martha the dog last night, I did not have to feel guilty that I would be leaving her again in a few days.  I am home for the rest of the summer.

And I have several summer projects for myself, a weedy backyard to maintain, dog parks and swimming pools to attend, concerts and events coming up, and I’m looking forward to being around for it all.  Plus I have pictures to process.  Thousands and thousands of pictures to process.  I have plenty of stuff to do.  My life is back to normal, simple routine, and that feels just great.

Guess what?  It is July 1, and not only do I owe trip reports, but now I also need to do my Quarterly Resolutions.  I owe you a lot!

Woo-hoo! I am home!