The snow was so beautiful this weekend – this is what we woke up to on Monday morning. Edda’s day camp was cancelled, so she hunkered down with us. I’m glad we didn’t get two feet of snow like the northern cities, just enough for a day off and some beauty. Schools are open today and the snow will be gone soon enough with the warmer temperatures.
I spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about the capital campaign for our church. There is a building that really needs to be renovated – it was built in the 60s with no significant renovation since then – the hot water is not working well, the electrical panel is stuffed full with no extra room for solar panels or car charging, the bathrooms are itty-bitty with terrible wheelchair access and they are literally 15 feet away from where we serve the food, the walkways are not accessible by ADA standards. This is going to be probably a 2.5-3 million dollar project and I think I may slowly become the reluctant head of this. Which makes me nervous enough to not sleep well at night. I mean, it’s not only my money – it’s other people’s money and what if they hate it? Like what if I spend all this money and….the bathrooms are too small? Or there isn’t enough storage space? Or…it’s just ugly (I’m not a designer – I’m an engineer, so mainly I just want it to work well, I don’t want to spend money on beauty. I mean, it’s mainly beautiful because it works well. I hate things that look beautiful, but are totally crappy for their intended use). I learn from all the people around me, my parents who have done so much building construction on their own homes, my in-laws who have fundraised for institutional buildings, my husband who loves watching and learning about energy efficient building methods, my daughter who has taught me about accessibility, and my son, who has become the reluctant leader of many things.
Vince had been getting more and more involved with the Graduate Student Association (GSA) at UC Irvine- they want to have parties and get the (introverted) graduate students to get to know one another. There have been a few parties and some issues with having enough money to buy pizza (it is very difficult to attract the mysterious and often hiding species of Graduati discipulus without the display of free food) and the entire time Vince was telling us about the trial and tribulations of the GSA – he was like, I’m not going to run this, I’m not going to run this, I’m not going to run this and the last time we talked about this he said with a big sigh – I’m running it. We voted on the president and everyone else voted for me and I was the only one who voted against myself.
The other big news that we are celebrating this winter is Dani (Vince’s partner’s) acceptance into a funded Master’s program at Oregon State University in food science starting in a few weeks! I’m so happy for them, it has not been an easy year.half since graduation – the job market has been miserable for technical folks, but Dani persevered through many disappointments (along with slogging through many holiday shifts at the Pottery Barn) and this got this wonderful opportunity and we are thrilled. A side effect of this is that Vince and Dani will be living apart for a while and Vince will lose access to Dani’s car, and therefore, will not be able to grocery shop as easily. So we finally bought Vince his graduation gift which is an ebike and he got this weekend. Jeremy bought it from the ebike company, had it shipped to a bike shop where they assembled it and Vince rode there on his non-ebike and picked up this beauty and rode it home and then left his old bicycle for them to tune it up. Vince rides his bike everyday – so we are hoping this will help him grocery shop. I am a little nervous about the fast bike riding (as I alway am with Jeremy as well), but he promised me he’d wear a helmet and the bike is throttled to not go more than 20 mph per CA regulations though it can go 28 mph (yikes!). At least I’m not one of those ski jumping, skeleton zooming, half-pipe watching moms. OMG.