Day: July 9, 2024

Holiday Weekend

Not a bad Independence Day weekend at all.

S’s sister who lives in Denver and her family came to stay with us from Wednesday through Sunday. We had a couple cornhole tournaments (L beat her cousin in one, and she and I beat the cousin and his dad in the other).The kids went and played mini-golf in the midst of a downpour. We hit a hibachi place one night. And other assorted nonsense.

Our big family gathering was scheduled for our house on the Fourth, but as the forecast showed rain all day, we did a last-minute switcheroo and reserved some lanes at a bowling alley for Thursday at lunchtime. Somehow one of the eight-year-olds had the best score out of the 18 bowlers. The kids then played laser tag and spent some time in the arcade. That evening we went to one of S’s other sister’s homes for food and hanging out. A couple small showers pushed through, but once they passed the temperature dropped and the humidity disappeared and it felt more like early October than July 4.

Our re-scheduled pool party went off Saturday without too many issues. It was warm and breezy and just about perfect. After a couple cool nights, the pool water checked in at 85 degrees, which had to be the coolest it has ever been for our family gathering on July 4. Or July 6, I guess.

And now we’re less than a month from C and L going back to school. Summer flies.

Driver’s Ed

L officially started her in-car driving lessons last week. She’s knocked out three of her six required sessions. Or rather, will have knocked out three by the time you read this. Her third lesson is Tuesday morning. She seems to be doing pretty good. We haven’t had much time to practice because of basketball, family stuff, etc. but I had her drive to the lesson last Friday and she did just fine.

College Visit

C and I visited IU Monday, her first, official campus visit. It was pretty much the same routine that I went through with M two years ago. C seemed to enjoy it but wasn’t blown away or anything. IU is where she wants to go, her grades and test scores seem to line up with what they are looking for. That all makes it pretty easy, fingers crossed.

I don’t know that we’ll make any more official visits this summer. She wants to spend some time with M at UC this fall. M will start leading tours on campus then, so C can get both the official and personal perspectives. She might also visit a friend who will be a freshman at Ball State once classes start. Then we’ll see if she wants to squeeze in any official tours before it’s time to start sending off applications.

Right now she says she wants to study forensic psychology. She is interested in CSI-type stuff, and working for the FBI is one of her goals. Or just deal with patients individually. Plenty of time to dial it in.

We had lunch at the always tasty Village Deli. While we ate C asked me which was bigger, Bloomington or Lawrence. I guessed they were pretty similar, but a check of Wikipedia showed that Lawrence is roughly 15,000 people bigger! That surprised me. It also surprised me that Lawrence has grown nearly 50% since I was in school. Damn!

One interesting aspect of our visit was there are a group of pro-Palestine demonstrators who are camped out on the IU campus. This is kind of a big deal because there was a rather violent encounter between the protesters and campus/state police in April. I’m not going to get into that too much, but it was pretty clear that the authorities WAY overstepped their mandate that day.[1] However, a lot of people in Indiana didn’t care because the Palestinian cause isn’t really a hot issue in this state. And most Hoosiers figured the protesters were dirty, commie, hippies and deserved whatever they got.

Anyway, our information session included a disclaimer that IU supported the right of people to assemble peacefully and express their beliefs. We were encouraged not to engage with the demonstrators during our tour, but were free to go back and talk to them on our own if we wanted to.

There were two groups of demonstrators who parked themselves in an area where each tour group had to pass. They peacefully, but loudly, stated their cause as we passed, which was basically that IU programs have helped develop weapons used by the Israelis in Gaza and IU has investments in Israel they want the university to back out of. A few politely offered us pamphlets.

Another highlight of the day was that the iHeart Radio AT40 station extended its holiday week marathon of year-end countdowns into this week. So we drove down listening to the middle of the Top 100 songs of 1984, and drove home listening to a nearly corresponding section of the 1985 countdown. Not sure if it’s a coincidence or not, but C napped most of the way down and back. I sure enjoyed the music, though!