It’s Sunday evening, and I’m back at my August home-away-from-home here in northeastern MD quickly making a trip to celebrate the kid’s birthday a few days early. Colleen went all-out putting together a Harry Potter-themed party, with floating candles hanging from the ceiling, turning the front door into Platform 9¾ picking out wands, sorting into […]

As I write this, I’ve spent a few hours studying for the first “Celebration of Knowledge” (I swear, I wanna hurt the person at the Department training organization who came up with that particular euphemism) scheduled for tomorrow morning, and am hitting consistent 100% scores on the practice tests that some kind soul put up […]

Another week, another pile o’ drama. Par for the course. Work has been ridiculously stressful, the weather’s been awful, kids have been extra twitchy lately, and the tension is bouncing back and forth amongst everyone in the tiny Parker household (including the cats who deign to stay) and everyone is on edge. Yay. I did […]

It’s not even over, and it’s already been the week from hell. I’m not even going to get into the work bits, because I don’t want to get ridiculously angry again. The weather’s been a mess and I haven’t managed to get *any* biking in this week at all, and also, Lady Sif is still […]

This week, I tell you… While the family dancers didn’t have a bad showing overall at the US Open this past weekend, I somehow ended up picking up a bug from all the kids wandering around; started with the headaches and sinus congestion, went through some serious lower GI issues (I shat away seven pounds […]

Twenty years ago, we got up in front of some people and said some words. In the time since (and actually, for quite a while before; it took us a while to get to the whole official business, but that’s okay), we’ve put up with each other’s insecurities and quirks, supported each other through tough […]

It was a very, very busy weekend, as you might have imagined. Friday was four hours or so of feis set-up and arranging, and ended up getting bitten by some show choir risers (the bruise on my forearm is *almost* faded now, though); the things I do for my family, I tell you. Saturday was […]

It has been a week (well, technically, I guess every week is a week, but whatever). Besides the musical adventure I talked about yesterday, I haven’t actually done a hell of a lot beyond work, bike, and sleep, which is kinda what I do most of the time. Work has been the usual frustrations, with […]

As you might surmise, this is not my age. It is the number of miles I rode today on the Virginia Capital Trail. My goal all summer has been to work up to riding, essentially, from Richmond to Williamsburg on the trail. Originally, that idea was the entire 52 mile length. On my 20 pound […]

second Civil War aside, I had a very low-key 4th of July, other than a long, barely populated drive out to Amherst and back, dropping the eldest off with a couple of her professors and a cadre of her fellow students who will, quite likely by the time many of you read this, be on […]