Thanks for Stopping by, and Farewell!

The last 2 weeks have been whirlwind at my house. It all started at the end of May, when a friend of mine, who was working as the Library Aide at the school our kids attend, called me up to let me know that she decided to resign her position effective at the end of the current school year. I spoke to her on a Saturday after I worked a 5 hour shift at the library - starting at 8:00am - and before I had to pick up one son at a birthday party to take him to another birthday party. And we had a hell of a thunderstorm that afternoon, too.


Anyways, after speaking with my friend, I decided to email the principal and let her know I would be pleased to be considered for the position. The same day I emailed the Principal, my parents came to visit because my husband and I were leaving the next day to travel to New York City to see "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart.

We flew up to NYC on the morning of June 2, and boy did we luck out. It was perfect - around 75*, sunny, just a beautiful spring day in the Big Apple. We met a friend of my husband's for lunch, then spent about an hour and a half walking around the Times Square area, seeing Broadway, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and Central Park.

We had tickets for the Daily Show that night, so around 3:00, we decided to head down to 11th (between 51st and 52nd) to get in line. The ticket confirmation recommended being in line between 3:30-4:30. I checked my cell phone when we got in line and it said 3:33. By my count, there were between 80-100 people ahead of us. As we read the fine print on the ticket confirmation, we noticed it said something like, having your confirmed tickets does not mean you get tickets into the studio...I was a little concerned, but felt pretty good about our chances getting in.

The show starts handing out studio tickets around 4:40pm. The crew hands out 240, and the 240th person in line was 6 people in front of my husband and me. Bummer! We had flown all the way up there to watch the show, but it did not appear that we would get in. But....then the crew handed out 15 additional tickets which were described to us as being for "VIPs" who show up last minute. If the VIPs showed up, they got in...if not, we would get in. We got numbers 7 and 8 in that group of 15.

Fast forward to about 6:00pm. We're still in line (yes, nearly 2 1/2 hours later), edging our way closer to the door to the studio. We eventually get in through the front door and go through the security process and metal detector. The studio crew comes out to tell us they'll take the first 16 people who have the VIP tickets, and since there are only 15 of us, we all get in for the show.

As luck would have it, since I had a small bag with me (unlike most of the people in our group who had just come from work and had briefcases and larger bags), we got through the security process first in our group. So we're waiting to go in, are directed into the studio, and told we could take whatever seats were available, which, just happened to be the VIP seats....and we end up sitting in the front row! The show itself was fantastic - the guest that night was none other than Scott McClellan and he was on for almost the entire program. I would have loved to have seen Rob Riggle or Samantha Bee, but beggars can't be choosers, I guess.

So on Tuesday, we return to Virginia, and I set up an interview with the principal for Wednesday afternoon to interview for the open library aide/media specialist position. On Wednesday, I work a 5 hour shift at the library, and quickly race home to freshen up a bit before my interview. On my way home, I heard on WAMU (the local NPR affiliate) that a tornado was spotted in Loudoun County (to our West) and the entire listening area was under a tornado watch. As I left my house at around 2:55 to head to my interview, I heard some rumbles of thunder off in the distance and thought, well, I guess we won't be having swim practice this afternoon. I got about 3/4 of a mile down the road and noticed the first traffic light was out. I slowed down and noticed a few rain drops. About 200 feet further, I think I drove through a tornado. The rain came down in sheets, trees were bending from side to side, branches started flying around me, wires were coming down. I've never been so scared...I kept thinking, just let me get to the school, just let me get to the school....

As I get to the main intersection which is about a block from the school, I notice that all the traffic lights are out and the shops have no power. I'm still thinking about my interview, though I just want to get inside the school. I get there, and not only is the power out, the kids are in their tornado drill positions, in the hallways with their heads covered. I'm not surprised, I say, since I think I just drove through part of the tornado! Anyways, the interview is cancelled (and rescheduled for the same time on Thursday), obviously, so I stay and help the front office deal with the onslaught of phone calls and nervous parents. I take my kids home, and not wanting to drive over another wire lying on the ground, decide to take them a different way. We left the school at 4:00, and got home at 5:20. It normally takes us about 10 minutes to get home.

Upon arriving in our neighborhood, we see that our street is blocked off because a neighbor's tree was struck by lighting and about 1/3 of the tree is lying cross ways across the street. Access to our driveway is blocked, although we could have gone out to the main road and made a series of left turns to get back in the other way. We park the van and walk to our house to make sure nothing fell in the yard or on the house - nothing had, but the power was out. VDOT told our neighbor that it would take 3 days minimum to get the tree off the road, but in an incredible turn of luck, a VDOT crew was stuck on the main road, detoured off into our subdivision (and the one next to us), saw the tree and decided to cut it down and get it off the road. What good fortune!!

Meanwhile, my husband calls to say that the metro is off-loading passengers at East Falls Church because a tree fell on the tracks and they can't go farther west without "single tracking" and shuttle buses are supposed to be taking passengers to the next station. He gets off and there are literally thousands of commuters waiting for the bus and the metro staff seem to be unable to handle the onslaught, so he decides to start walking to the next station (he's still got the blisters to prove it, though they're healing now) and as he's doing that, the next band of severe thunderstorms roll through.

He ends up at West Falls Church, takes the commuter bus to the parking lot by our house, gets in the car and gets home around 6:15. We our time listening to our only battery powered radio, and about 7:50pm, a tornado warning came on for Fairfax County, so we round up the kids and head to the basement. Our youngest son is pretty upset, our oldest son is taking it all in stride, my husband decides to ride out the storm on the back (covered) porch and I'm just wondering what will happen...

Anyway, I wake up at 5:30 on Thursday morning to discover we still don't have power. I take our oldest up to Safeway with me to get ice and batteries, come home, load as much as I can into coolers, and try to figure out how I am going to make myself presentable for my 5 hour shift at the library. I get the kids off to school, head to work and make the best of it. One of my neighbors walked into the library and told me our power went back on around 9:30-10:00, so I asked for (and got) permission to leave an hour early to get the food back into the fridge/freezer. I had enough time to shower, dry my hair, and I had my interview that afternoon.

Friday came and it's my last day in the library, our youngest son's last baseball game for the season, our school picnic. Your typical busy suburban family day I guess. Oh, and I should mention, it was about 3,000* with 120% humidity on Friday - the beginning of the heat wave which I think ended last night with another round of thunderstorms. Saturday and Sunday we spent out on the Shenandoah River camping and canoeing with our Cub Scout Den. It was surprisingly cool at night out by the river, a nice respite from the heat and humidity we'd been slogging through in the Virginia suburbs. The 7 mile canoe trip was pleasant and uneventful (a nice change from our canoeing trip in Michigan last summer when we tipped the canoe over about 3 miles into a 12 mile trip), though by the end, we were all ready to get out of the bright, hot sun.

On Monday morning at 7:45am, I got a call from the Fairfax County schools HR department officially offering me the part-time Library Aide/Media Specialist, which I happily accepted. I was nervous about receiving a call that early in the morning, especially since my grandmother (96 years young) was going in for a second round of surgery to remove/replace her pacemaker, which had a staph infection on the wires and was causing no end of infections and a steady dose of antibiotics, which she's been on and off since December. She came through the surgery in good shape, and is out of the hospital recovering at my parents house.

I went through the Fairfax County HR New Support Orientation yesterday, and they mentioned their policy regarding blogs, My Space, etc., and it got me thinking about my blog. While I don't think there's anything too objectionable here (honestly, who among us doesn't get a case of the "f bombs" while discussing the absolute incompetence of this administration??), the policy is to not have anything that would embarrass the school system, or be objectionable to students or parents. Plus, as the head of the Mock Election being held at the school this fall, it's probably best to keep my political opinions to myself, so, in that regard, I think I'm going to hang up my blogging shoes for now. I know that will disappoint my two loyal readers, but I'm always happy to discuss my views either lounging at the pool or around the kitchen table.

Update: This has been sitting in my edited but not posted file for a few days. School is now officially over for the year, my boys both had terrific report cards (the oldest got straight A's) and both of the boys earned citizenship awards for their classes this year. Our 4th grader earned the overall citizenship award for his class, and our 1st grader recieved (for the second year in a row) the P.E. Citizenship award for his class.

Congratulations doodles and happy 1st day of summer vacation!!! :)