(no subject)

Last Wednesday, evalerie visited for a couple of hours. It had been many months since we saw each other last. I enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with her.

Friday, odosgirl came to visit. I hadn't seen her in over a year, and in the interim, she's split up with her husband (though they're still living together for financial and childcare reasons) and gone back to school. We went to Panera for lunch. It's not my favorite place to eat because I've only found one thing on the menu that I enjoy, but it was a good place for us to sit and talk. The time went by quickly. We talked mostly about her dissertation and her novel writing.

Saturday was a long day. The Science Olympiad started at 8:00 a.m. I had to be there about 8:30 because the first Estimania event, the one for Cordelia, started at 8:50. Cordelia was reluctant to do it, but she now says she had fun. The second grader went at 9:50. The awards ceremony for the second and third graders started at noon and ran about an hour and a half. Our fourth grade team went in at 2:10. There was some stress around that because I'd told the kids 2:40, and one of the kids wasn't there when it was time to go in. Fortunately, she arrived in time to compete.

Cordelia is thrilled. She earned a fourth place medal in What Went By (learning about endangered and extinct animals). She's now saying that she wants to do Science Olympiad again next year. We'll see. She's had weeks of saying never again.

I needed to stay all afternoon, but Delia had a soccer game, so she and Scott left after the morning awards ceremony. It was a long day. I'd packed a notebook and my e-reader, but it was so noisy and chaotic that I couldn't do anything. I ended up sending that stuff home with Scott.

I did take an Ativan in the morning. I don't think I could have faced the crowds otherwise. I was also stressed out, worrying about how the kids would do in the event. I was pretty sure that none of the teams would place (and I was right). Scott and I hadn't prepared them well enough. I'm not sure they would have enjoyed being pushed as hard as we would have needed to push, but I do wish I'd been better organized.

The afternoon was less crowded than the morning. Our school had a lot fewer kids competing, and several of them didn't stay for the awards ceremony. I got involved with talking with some other parents about better ways to organize for next year. Our school has no continuity in events and starts recruiting quite late. Other schools have a much stronger system in place for recruiting and for supporting coaches. We're going to try archiving the materials each coach came up with so that next year's coaches don't start from zero. I need to spend some time writing up the problem sets Scott and I used. It's not much, but it's something.

Scott and Delia showed up during the evening awards ceremony which started at five. We stayed long enough to know that our fourth grade team didn't place (they give medals to the top five teams). When we left, we wanted to find a place to go out for dinner, but every place we tried had a long wait, and I wasn't up to that. I finally suggested pizza because it was simple. Delia and I picked up bubble tea while Scott placed the order for pizza. We picked up the pizza on the way home, got there and discovered that they'd made an error in our order-- the pizza for me and Delia had sauce on it. Scott managed to get that remedied, but it was late by then.

Of course, not long after I suggested pizza, I realized that what I really wanted was a salad. We ended up going out to Big Boy at 8:00 so that I could get one. I had the soup and salad bar while Scott and Delia split a hot fudge ice cream cake. Delia was rather put out to be told that I couldn't share my salad with her.

Sunday, I did laundry. Scott put up the coat rack his father made for the wall near the front door. We have some displaced stuff due to shifting around to accommodate that. Delia had a friend over for a couple of hours. Then Scott took Delia to the county rec center for swimming. That expedition didn't go as well as hoped because Scott forgot to pack his suit.

(no subject)

I've made only minimal progress on the Finishathon story. The biggest problem is that I don't have any idea of the direction I'm going. I need to just write and see what happens. I want to get it done as quickly as possible because there's another challenge I want to sign up for that's due about a week after the Finishathon ends. It's a Weiss Kreuz challenge, and I really want to do it. I just can't commit to it unless I've got a good handle on the Finishathon story. I've got until May 6th to sign up for the Weiss Kreuz challenge, so I've got a little time to write.

The Weiss Kreuz challenge is a reverse fest. Everybody signs up saying what they're willing to write and/or draw. Those profiles are posted under pseudonyms. Participants browse the profiles and pick three to put in requests for. The moderator will fiddle with things so that each person gets one prompt to write/draw and each person gets one prompt filled. (I've no idea what happens if nobody prompts for a particular profile. It seems quite possible that that could happen.) I know I'll have an awful time coming up with prompts, but the chance to write Weiss attracts me. If you're interested in signing up, you can find the sign up post here. The informational post is one post back in the community.