It’s been a while since I’ve done a reality recap — hell, it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to watch TV — but having been catching up on the DVR, I’ve also been itching to write a bit. So here I go.

I love America’s Best Dance Crew. I LOVE it. The ep I just watched wasn’t the best — all the crews had props, and most of them didn’t really do much with it. The ones who really got my attention were, of course, the two bottom crews: Supreme Soul and Super CR3W. As the judges mentioned, I think they were two of the best groups; they were certainly the most enjoyable tonight. What I really love about this show, though, is how the judges get into it. Although I didn’t like that they singled out the Boogie Bots as a group that should be at the bottom, I do like how adamantly the three of them spoke out in favor of the two groups that they had to choose between; I also like how they repeatedly assured the groups how good they actually are. I’d bet just about anything that at least one of those three will be working with at least some of those dancers at some point in the future.

One other thing that constantly surprises me is, despite the obvious competition between the groups, how much they seem to connect with each other. As they stood on the stage awaiting the decision, they seemed to be genuinely concerned about the other crew. And when Supreme Soul was declared as the losing group, the Super CR3W dancers seemed to be truly upset even though they were also obviously relieved.

I dunno; there’s just something about it all that seems refreshingly innocent and unrehearsed in a way that some of the other reality shows don’t.

Three posts in one day - a record. You saw the post about the Flickr photos; I was also able to get an album about the George/Deirdre wedding created in Facebook. That one’s only 60 photos as opposed to the whole shebang, so if you’re interested but want only the specially selected ones, that’s where to go.

I also managed to read through all my emails that came in while I was away. Since it took the entire afternoon, I wasn’t really able to deal with any of them; my key thing was to get rid of everything that didn’t need my attention. Tomorrow is the day to begin digging in.

On a sad note, one of the first emails I did see today was one bringing the very unwelcome news that one of our faculty members passed away on Saturday. He is someone who has meant a great deal to me from the moment I stepped foot in his class (one of my first in grad school) nearly twelve years ago. My feelings run quite deep and are not to be posted here, but in an attempt not to lose track of this tribute, I do want to post a link that David Dwiggins came across:

http://hoofcare.blogspot.com/2008/08/lost-farrier-allen-smith.html

It was written by someone from his other life - in addition to being a professor at GSLIS, Allen was a horseshoer for many, many years - but it is not surprising to me that he made the same impression in that world as he did in mine. He will be deeply missed.

Rehearsal - July 10, 2008

Originally uploaded by jendoyle2007

It only took me about three hours, but I finally finished uploading all the photos from the George & Deirdre wedding weekend into Flickr. I still want to make an album in Facebook and, potentially, burn some CDs for George and family so that they can own whatever they’d like. Not, of course, that I’m Annie Liebowitz or anything, but I know firsthand how hard it is to get family shots so I figure if they like them, great.

I’m also taking advantage of this opportunity to test out the link between Flickr and my blog. If it works, we’re in a whole new world!

Jen

As per usual, last night didn’t go as planned. We hit major traffic on the way home — that Sunday night construction is brutal! — so we didn’t get home until after 2:30. It’s really hard for me to get right to sleep when we get home, so I ended up lying down with Lucy and reading for a while. (As did she. It did not make for a good morning.) As a result, I’m beyond tired today; it’s taking all I have not to just go upstairs and go to bed. Taking a power nap, though, is definitely not a good idea because I’ll probably sleep until dinner time.

So, the plan at the moment — since I happily am still officially off today, I will be easing into things with baby steps. Like, for example, forcing myself to turn on the computer when that’s the last thing I want to do. If that means doing a bit of blogging and uploading more pictures (as you may have noticed, I wasn’t able to get much done yesterday thanks to my laptop not picking up a reliable connection), well that’s what it means. Maybe after a bit of that, I’ll be ready to open up email.

Stay tuned…

July was truly one of those ‘If it’s Tuesday…’ months. Beginning with the Fourth of July weekend, we were literally on the road for all but six or seven days. In fact, I am sitting here in Red Bank, NJ, on Linda’s very comfy couch, taking advantage of a few moments of relative quiet to do a bit of posting and, hopefully, get to work on uploading all these photos.

Rather than continue along with the backlog, as I’ve been doing, I think I’ll begin working my way backwards. I haven’t had the chance to download any of the pictures from the last two weeks (which, I have to be honest, number quite high), but I do want to get George and Deirdre’s wedding pics up soon, and it seems that’s as good as any place to start.

At the moment, photos are the most prominent thing, so although there were some memorable quotes that I will hopefully eventually share, I’m going to be spending some time at Flickr. I’ll post again when I have the pics up there and on Facebook.

I have very little time to post as I should have left this adorable little library that I’m sitting in at least half an hour ago (Lucy and Will might not mind an extra 30 minutes at “Wendy’s Cow House,” but Wendy might be going a bit over the edge) PLUS there’s a huge room of used books that I want to browse quickly before I leave.

Since it has come to my attention, however, that there are actually people reading this blog (woo-hoo!), I did want to let you all know that I’ve come down off the ledge a bit since my last post. Not entirely, as those who happened to be privy to my rant at the Lobster Shanty (or Pound or Claw, whatever place it actually was) know firsthand. Enough, though, that I wanted to give a shout-out and say that I’m feeling a bit more relaxed than I did two weeks ago, despite another 10 days of email piling up. Out of the 600 that came in over the last week, though, only 200 need to be dealt with (yay!) and only about 10 of those were urgent. They did take most of the last four hours, but done they are. Now I’m off to used books, Wendy’s Cow House, Saratoga, and then Aitana and Cathy and Jeff! Maybe I’ll even be able to post again sometime this week. Until then…

After not being able to check email since Sunday night, I finally logged on this afternoon around 5. Big mistake. I was, of course, over capacity. As I cleared out emails others arrived, each seemingly more urgent than the one before. And, of course, some of those emails were indicating that I now have meetings scheduled tomorrow at 9, at 10, at 11 AND 11:30, at 12:30, and at 2. Note, all of these are likely to run longer than an hour and therefore completely overlap. Also note, there isn’t actually time to breathe in there, much less eat, think, or do other necessary things to be even somewhat prepared for said meetings. Among those necessary things would be staying on top of email in order not to let it fill up again, but that will be a physical impossibility. And, of course, by the time I reach 3:30 and the end of the meetings, there will no doubt be other urgent things that must be dealt with which will preclude my being able to handle any of the less-than-urgent matters before they actually become so.

I would ordinarily try to deal with the excess at night, but that isn’t possible tomorrow as I have plans. Which, by the way, I would like to enjoy doing but am afraid I will just be overly stressed. With Thursday being equally booked up meeting-wise, I literally have about two hours on Thursday night to do regular maintenance things like, say, wash the now moldy dishes in the sink or put away laundry. Forget actually mentally or physically preparing for another two weeks (or maybe not, plans are still up in the air) away. Oh right, or actually, like, eating or having civil conversation.

I really tried to tell myself that I could just enjoy the way this summer is working out. Actually take advantage of some weeks away and, God forbid, relax.

O.k. I’m just trying to breathe right now. My heart is racing too much to even consider going to bed right now. Maybe I’ll try and clean out all of those ridiculously large PSF emails so that I can at least not worry about the inbox constantly filling.

I’m sitting here in the Courtyard Marriott on an interlude from George’s wedding activities. It’s quite odd to be in a hotel on the Cape rather than at Grandma’s House or The Retreat. Not, however, bad.

Lucy and Will were quite funny on the way here, Will saying that he liked hotels because that’s where they brought you the food and you could eat it on the bed. (”To the tune of $100 for bad pancakes,” Kelley of course added.) Lucy took no time in getting to the work of scoping out the room service menu which, in this case, is actually quite slim since it is only Domino’s pizza from 11 a.m. through, well, I’m not sure since Lucy has appropriated the detailed list. For most people (like, again, Kelley) this would be an awful transpiring of events. For Lucy, however, who has inherited my odd love for Domino’s pizza, it is the cherry on top. Thus the note I awoke to this morning:

Dear Mom,

I know it is still morning, but for dinner I want a small crunchy thin crust cheese pizza and side of chicken “kickers.” [quotations hers]

Lucy

In the words of David Letterman: I’m not making this stuff up.

Alas, for dinner we are being treated to a barbeque (how the heck do you spell that??? My spell check is saying it’s wrong, but I can’t think of what else it would be) at the compound and therefore will have to forego our Domino’s room service. Now, as much as I am a fan of Domino’s, I’m a fan of big family bbq’s even more.

I’m not entirely positive that Lucy is feeling the same way, but I’m thinking at the moment she is. The thing about being with George’s family is that there are a billion (or maybe a billion and two) kids around at any given time. In addition to the Churchill kids (six of them, between George, Elly, and Jon and their respective partners [and ex-partners, I suppose]), there are various cousins and, in this iteration, the children of all the wedding party. Actually tonight, there are probably even more coming in since it’s wedding guests as well. Last night, while the adults were at the rehearsal dinner, Betsy hired a coordinator plus four camp counselors to run childcare for the 25 kids. Lucy and Will were in heaven.

Most of the kids went their separate ways today, although we were lucky enough to spend the majority of the day with Daron, Ted, Leo (Ted and Elly’s 5-yr-old) and Julian (George’s 5 yr-old). Part of that was spent hanging out on the semi-private beach, part of it sailing to and from Egg Island with George W. (Refer to title of this blog.)

Will, for as much as he really doesn’t like venturing out into the water (the red seaweed paralyzed him — not literally, of course, although you would wonder if you saw him frozen in place this afternoon), absolutely LOVES being out on boats. And it’s pretty hard to tear Lucy away from the beach, although getting her onto the sailboat wasn’t exactly hard. Before we went out to the sailboat, George W. took all the kids puttering around in the Zodiac (or, according to Will’s not entirely accurate memory of the description in the car ride down, the “maniac”) for a while, leaving Daron, Jon, Kelley and I to just hang out on the beach. And this is why it’s really hard to return to real life after vacations.

One of the other really nice things was that I felt very little guilt leaving at around 4 to come back to the hotel and walk on the treadmill, shower, check email, and write this post. The kids probably haven’t even noticed I’m not there, and although Kelley has, it may only be because he needs me to bring Will a short-sleeved shirt when I return for the BBQ. (And I don’t even feel too much guilt there because there are so many 5-yr-old boys around that there’s no chance there won’t be an extra shirt lying around if it turns out it’s really desperately needed.)

That said, I am pushing it, so I really should go. Perhaps I will be able to get back on later tonight and write about what life is like for the other half. No, I’m not talking about those lucky enough to spend their days leisurely beach-going and sailing. I’m talking instead about that class of folks that I don’t think much about when it comes to the lives they have to lead: husbands.

Until later…

While cleaning up Lucy’s bag of papers from her desk at school, I came across her poetry notebook and must share. (Full disclosure: spelling has been corrected):

MY FAMILY

I have a mom. I have a dad.
A little brother, too. My mom is
nice. My dad is nice, too. My little
brother is annoying. He’s lovable, too.
He’s cute. He has a thousand cars.
Maybe a thousand and two. My mom
and dad are very good cooks. I
am good, too.

And from her writing notebook:

11/29/07

Dear Grandma,

Thank you for comforting me when my brother
got to watch two TV shows in a row. You gave
me a hug and comfort me. You made my
expression change from mad and sad to happy.

Love, Lucy

I did it. I sent in the email about the job. I have no idea if I’ll even get a response much less anything more than that, and I’m obviously still quite torn. But, well, it’s in…