my dad was a zipper head

hi faithful blog readers,

i'm in houston right now waiting for my flight to college station to board. the trip to and from iowa were both buck wild crazy, but the good news is that my dad is doing really well. he had a rough day on friday. felt sick to his stomach and threw up a few times. but since then he's had a better appetite and all that good stuff. when i got to des moines on thursday they moved him from icu to a regular room, which he was very happy about. someone made the mistake of telling him that he'd get to move out of there before there was a room ready which pissed my dad right off. so he was happier after the move and really glad to see all of his kids i think. my brother and his wife and their two year old son came up from st. louis and i think it was good medicine for my dad to see luke. :) (and it was good medicine for all of us i think.)

it wasn't easy to say good-bye to everyone yesterday. but the good thing is that dad will probably get to go home on wednesday. they removed the staples from his head on saturday and he's just doing really well given the circumstances.

it was nice to be back at home and out of texas with all the chaos of the storm. that's a whole other blog entry though. i didn't like to be home under those circumstances, but i really needed to see the family and friends. and the weather in iowa was very autumnal which i also love. i miss fall so much. especially when i return to texas and it's predicted to be 112 with the heat index today. why did i leave? :)

anyway, that's the update. everyone's doing well. thanks for all your thoughts and prayers and help and stuff. i appreciate it more than i can express probably. and big props to tim smith who took me to houston on wednesday night and then had to drive back to college station that night. it took him 5.5 hours. i owe him so much beer it's not even funny. thanks tim smith!!

have you ever been so exhausted that you literally can't see straight?

i have. in fact, i was like that today. where i had to put forth a lot of effort to make my eyes function. the thing is this has been a long week and it's only tuesday. lots going on with school and teaching and work. and yesterday i found out my dad is in the hospital. he had an aneurysm in his brain and luckily they caught it quickly. he had surgery last night and they clamped the artery that's been causing the problem. the surgery was pretty invasive in terms of my dad's skull having to be removed in one place. the good thing is that he's in great spirits. before the surgery he was saying he was happy that this happened because now he has proof that he has a brain. (classic ron parks line.) he also told my mom today that he wanted her to make him a cardboard bill for the bandage on his head. i guess he's missing wearing his usual trucker style hat. (and not the von duch trucker hat...the real ones. he has one that says: "wisconsin: land of cowpies and beer farts" or something like that). so, fortunately dad is doing really well under the circumstances. mom had a tough time yesterday but is also doing much better now that dad seems to be okay now. i'm looking forward to spending time with the family this weekend. (thanks to all my awesome friends for support me with talks or beer or cheese fries or laughs...ya'll rock!)

so, i have to read for a while and then get some sleep. busy days coming up as well!

coffee break

so, i'm pretty much exhausted today. long, tiring weekend that was also pretty fun. i had a great time at the game, even when i almost passed out from the heat. we certainly btho SMU which is cool, but what we should have done so i'm not sure we should overreact from excitement there. nonetheless, it was quite a game! also spent time with friends eating meals and drinking beer which is not a bad thing. and i read some stuff that will be very helpful for the prelim exams which are now 48 days away. i over-estimated on the 10 weeks i think. scary bath!

i feel like there's kind of a lot going on right now. teaching, classes, job searching, studying...it's been hard to find time to play with people and even harder to find time to work out which sucks. i find myself longing for the day when all i'll have going on is a job, but i wonder if even then as an academic i'll really have more time. i hope i will. my new goal is to ride my bike for 30 minutes every day. i'm sure i can find that amount of time and every little bit helps, so i'm going to try. if only i had my own elliptical machine and somewhere to put it.

before i start rambling more and this gets too long, i want to share a link to a story in the school paper, the batt for you locals, that made me smile and appreciate aggieland a bit: good ags "gig 'em, green wave" made me smile.

WHAM!...literally

i went to visit mike this past weekend in albuquerque. his birthday was on saturday which was a great excuse to get out of town. it's a little scary that i already needed a break after only two weeks of school...but i did. we had a lot of fun to say the least. hung out with some of mike's buddies on thursday night and ate yummy grilled food. on friday we slept in and ran a lot of errands, including finding new glasses for mike which are way awesome! we also went to dinner at pappadeux with mike's friend kurt. kurt introduced me to an awesome band called the postal service. they kick ass. check them out right now. do it. okay, wait until you're done reading this.

saturday was mike's birthday. he's officially on the 30 side of 20. we celebrated by hanging out on the roof of his house (it's flat adobe style) and watched college football and drank beer. (and i got a sunburn with crazy tan lines.) that evening we went out to dinner at an awesome place called charma river and then went to get a few drinks at a bar that also had karaoke. we all sang a few songs and had a good, low-key time. towards the end of the night a guy started singing "wake me up before you go go" which we were obviously very excited about. he was doing a good job too until he got into a fist fight with some people. it was crazy. we were waiting for the chorus and instead so a wad of people throwing punches. needless to say, he didn't finish the song. i found it hilarious that a fight broke out during one of the happiest songs ever. so those shenannigans inspired the subject line. :)

sunday was another relaxing day. mike made some fan-freakin'-tastic eggplant parmesean. holy damn it was good. that kid can cook like a mo-fo! i foolishly forgot to steal some left-overs before i left this morning.

anyway..good weekend. this week is probably going to be a busy one. at least i got to rest up before it all start. thanks mike. :)

10 weeks

hi friends- i'm going to switch gears a bit. in the next few days i should have a date set for preliminary exams. it's a formidable hurdle but one that i'm constantly assured i can get over. and the anticipation of the relief that i will feel once it's over with is a huge motivation. it will be freakin' AWESOME to get to enjoy the holidays without concern about big scary exam. i have an idea of what the format will be and now that it's becoming a known entity i'm feeling less anxious about it. so much less anxious in fact that i realized last night that i hadn't taken my heart/anxiety drugs for 3 days and wasn't having any problems. (don't worry...i got the prescription refilled so i'm back on track!)

i'm heading to NM this weekend to visit the birthday boy...i mean birthday man this weekend and to take a bit of a break. w00t!

have a good weekend!

you need power to run the coke machine..

i was eating dinner with a friend on friday night and the restaurant we were at blew a fuse. obviously, the power was out for a bit which didn't stop some patrons from trying to use the coke machine. it was one of those moments when you totally take for granted how much we rely on electricity for day-to-day stuff. then i was talking to another friend on sunday and he brought up something important. the people affected on the gulf coast by katrina who were not able to leave before the devastation didn't have power. doy..we knew that. but i don't think we've really thought about it. we were able to see the relief efforts and to some degree the scale of the disaster. people in new orleans and in other areas affected didn't have cnn. what they did have was destruction and death without a clear path out of it. i can only speculate that not knowing what was going on and what was going to happen and if help was on the way would only add to the despair they were already experiencing. they might not have known about the rescue copters and were worried about not being seen by them since people were stuck in places underwater, so they were shooting in the air to get the attention of the heros doing rescues. it wasn't about anger or shooting the hand that is attempting to help you. it might have been about being seen by copters flying constantly overhead but not stopping yet for them. with the lack of organization in the relief efforts in some areas and a mass of people without information, it should be no wonder that the victims would feel desperate.

just a few more things, because i'm not sure anyone is reading this. one...if your only assett was your home, would it be easy for you to leave it? if you had no television, wouldn't be hard to know the full extent of the storm? does it piss off anyone else that it seems like a better job was done evacuating animals and pets than was done for our fellow citizens? (sorry...just saw a stupid story on cnn). is anyone else frustrated that the federal government cut spending for FEMA and for the levee before this happened? okay...so much venting. here are a few really interesting articles to ponder. this is a good time to unite while thinking critically about what happened and what the next steps are.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0903-20.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0904-29.htm

a time for compassion

hi friends-

i've been thinking so much about the disaster in new orleans and around the gulf coast lately. the images on the news are hard to even comprehend. and that's what has stuck with me. there's a lot of talk and judgement going on of the people affected by this horrible crisis. and while i certainly don't and can't condone shooting at rescue workers, i've also realized that i am fortunate that i don't know what the victims of this are really facing. i'm lucky that i live in an area of the country that was not affected by this. i'm blessed that i have food and water and a home and i don't have to see dead bodies floating in water or grapple with the notion that i have lost everything that i own, i have lost members of my family, and that i've lost hope of being rescued. this is a time for compassion for those who's situation is beyond what most of us have ever experienced. maybe that's what makes it hard to understand why people would be so angry or loot or whatever. i don't defend the fact that people are breaking the law, but i recognize that i, in the comfort of my air conditioned office typing this on a decent computer with my iced coffee drink, have no way of truly understand what the victims are going through.

my friend wes found a really good article on fark summing up some of the aftermath. check out his sept. 1st post. http://thirteenthgeneration.blogspot.com/ actually, wes has a lot of good information on his site but that article was especially good. it makes the point that now is the time for us to come together. to help those less fortunate. to practice compassion. to cherish humanity. i think after things have calmed down a bit and people are once again safe, it will be time to ask some tough questions about the poverty in this country. people are already asking those questions and it's time we really pay attention.