The scene: A fifth grade classroom in a Metrowest suburb. The sky was clear, the temperature cold.
I still remember where I was when it happened. I still remember the excitement in the air, the thrill of being connected, even if second and third hand, to something HUGE. I went to school that day, like any other day, an eager fifth-grader at McCarthy Elementary school. But this day was not going to be ordinary.

Just before lunch, all of the fifth graders gathered in the hall in front of a tv raised up on a large cart. Our teachers hovered behind us, willing us to understand how important this was and how fiercely proud they were, on this day, to stand shoulder to shoulder and call themselves "teacher".

NASA had issued a contest of sorts to send an ordinary citizen into space; they narrowed the list to three teachers from the US.Of the 11,000 applicants, the field came down to three, one from Texas, Barbara Morgan, one from Framingham, Charlie Sposato and one from Concord, NH, Crista McAuliffe.

Sposato, or Mr. Spo as he was affectionately called, was a local high school teacher and we were extra excited that some of our older siblings could claim to know such a famous "ordinary" citizen. As for McAuliffe, her mother, Mrs. Corrigan was often our substitute teacher and was really nice, so we had some good bragging rights of our own. And coolest of all, my teacher, Miss Curley, was good friends with both Mrs. Corrigan and her daughter. Miss Curley had traveled all over the world herself and she had a "lucky" brooch that had accompanied her on many adventures. She had given it to McAuliffe to wear in space because she knew that was one place she would never be able to bring it. Miss C had proudly mentioned this brooch on several occasions and we were eager to see it upon its return from the great beyond.

5-4-3-2-1. Lift off. Every fifth grader in the hall focused on that white rocketship, thrilled at the masses of white smoke billowing around the launch pad. Then, 73 seconds into the flight, something went terribly wrong. The announcers' voices were panicked and filled with tension. Miss Curley's knees had buckled and she wilted to the ground overcome with grief. To the eleven-year-old mind, death is not grasped quickly and the tremendous tragedy was not fully realized in the minutes surrounding the explosion. But later that week, attending a packed mass at a local church, a mass dedicated to all 7 lost astronauts, but particularly for the local girl, McAuliffe. We listened to stories about her life, saw pictures of her children, not that far from our own ages, and started to understand the impact.

Later we would pause to reflect that it could've been Mr. Spo and his daughter, my friend, would've lost her father. And we realized the blow to the space industry, and personally to our teacher and our friendly and kind substitute teacher.

I got a postcard with this picture above from CNN and I wrote the date and the words, "Never forget" on the back. I don't think I ever could.

Arrrgghh

Our moron-in-chief went Kansas State University on Monday to give a speech about why he thought spying on people in the US without a warrant was okay.

This excerpt from a story in the Boston Globe terrifies me and leaves me asking, "WHO THE HELL ELECTED THIS MAN TO LEAD THIS COUNTRY???" Please, if it was you, let me know who you are and where you are, because you need a flick in the forehead.

For much of his speech and question-and-answer period, President Bush served juicy red meat in a red state where he slammed John Kerry in the 2004 election, 62 to 37 percent. He said:
''This enemy cannot beat us. They cannot defeat us militarily. There's no chance."

''In the short term, we'll stay on the offense."

''Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people."

''We're using all assets at our disposal to protect you."

In the question-and-answer period, there was a moment when Bush was caught confused about his assets in another arena. Someone asked Bush, ''Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education . . . How is that supposed to help our futures?"
There was applause from the crowd.

Bush stumbled. ''Education budget was cut? Say it again. What was cut?"

The person said, ''$12.7 billion was cut from education. And I was just wanting to know: How is that supposed to help our futures?"

Bush said, ''At the federal level?"

The person said, ''Yes."

Bush said, ''I don't think we've actually -- for higher education?"

The person said, ''Student loans."

Bush said, ''Student loans?"

The person said, ''Yes, student loans."

Bush said, ''Actually I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren't going to be cut off the program. We're just making sure . . . it functions better. In other words, we are not taking people off student loans. We are saving money in the student loan program because it's inefficient."

Bush continued, ''And secondly, . . . we're actually expanding the number of Pell grants through our budget."

Karl Rove should have told Bush that if you visit a university and offer a question-and-answer session, you might get asked about education."
Read the entire story here, if you can stomach it.

President? Am I President? Whyfore in hell didn't someone let me know? Did I mention I love freedom? Moron.

Mexican hat dance

Bryan is trying to read and I'm singing the Mexican hat dance because I was just looking at birthday e-cards and the Hoops & Yoyo characters sing a mexican birthday song, which is really just the hat dance song - woo, funny stuff. And a little bit obnoxious.

Anyway, I spent the weekend babysitting for 3 kids and I learned some stuff:
*Kids can consume an obscene amount of kraft mac & cheese - so can the babysitter when faced with a choice between a bowl of gooey orange macaroni or a bowl of candy for lunch
*Armpit farts come in ALL varieties
*"I have to go the bathroom" means NOW
*Having children means going to a lot of birthday parties (5 in 3 days between 2 of the 3 kids)
*It is way more fun to be at the park than at work
*The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aren't as dorky (and therefore cute, in my mind) as they were 15 years ago
*Bunkbeds make it difficult to throw a 6-year-old into bed
*Nothing is more beautiful than a sleeping child
*Three kids is a handful

Watching the Pats game was painful, especially as I was alone in a house with 3 sleeping children. There was no one with whom to commiserate as the dream crumbled turnover by turnover, so I paced and talked to myself (perfectly acceptable in this situation) and watched Bill's house topple. It was an exciting run and a pretty good season and it will be kind of (really, only kind of) nice not to have a vested routing interest for the Super Bowl - I can just enjoy it (unless Pittsburgh wins :)

In wedding news, Bryan has picked out the tuxes and I have an appointment with our florist on Saturday. My "non-bachelorette" party is in the works and the invitations have been started (thank you, again, Nic for the design templates). As the wedding channel has informed me, 100 days to go. Maybe we should play the Mexican hat dance for our first dance...

Is that the sun??

In honor of the 50+degree weather in January in New England, I chose to don a skirt for work today. This may sound like a simple thing, but I had to wake a few minutes early, shave both legs, find a pair of nylons with no runs, put them on, and dust off a pair of heels. The effort really paid off as colleagues commented on "how nice I looked" and "how put together I was today". Maybe I should feel a little insulted that most days I look less than put together, but since this is probably true, I just felt happy that my effort was noticed (and that my pantyhose weren't drooping, but that's unrelated).

I've been following the story of James Frey whose book Million Little Pieces was "exposed" on the Smoking Gun Web site as being less than true. The book is a memoir and recounts Frey's experiences as a drug addict and his recovery and ultimate redemption. The Smoking Gun got hold of documents that proved that Frey didn't spend 3 months in jail as he claimed in his book, but instead just a few days. And, it refutes some of the other pieces of his story. On his web site, Frey admits that he embellished and made some stuff up, but that this only comprises 5% of the content in the book. The big debate is "Does is matter that the story isn't entirely true?" It was labelled "memoir" by a publisher instead of fiction, and many will say that this is reflective of a market in which memoir/nonfiction sells much better than fiction. It was a great gamble by the publisher: Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club and the book was the #2 selling book of 2005 behind Harry Potter. So, should a memoir be as close to the truth as possible? It's funny, at work I run the library book group and our theme this school year is memoir. We have talked about this issue and it will come up again when we read one of the upcoming selections in which the author explains that she has written a memoir, but that she can't actually remember everything that happened since she kept no journal and has not been in touch with most of the "cast" of her story. Is this okay? I don't think that it is, entirely. However, the idea that a book is a personal recollection of a time period or experience offers a certain leniency not given to a nonfiction book that writes of a historical event or era. And, who's to say that every historical nonfiction book is 100% accurate in what it reports? When telling a story, humans naturally exaggerate and embellish, to make the story a little bit better - why say that 2 foot fish was a mere 24 inches, why not 30, or even 36? What harm is there is 6 inches or an extra foot? I am not entirely defending Frey, because I think that when you choose to tell your story and base it in reality and explain that it is an accurate rendering of the events as they occurred, you should be as faithful to the telling as you can be. I think that a writer of memoir or nonfiction should resist the urge to make the story a little bit better. If you have a compelling enough story, that will be enough. If your story needs lots of little fictionalized details to make it better, there's a genre for that: fiction. Anyway, that's enough rambling about this for now. It's just a really interesting topic and I will continue to follow the story to see what the fall-out is.

Some observations and comments from this past week:
Lots of people were buried last week, which is such a chilling prospect that I couldn't stop reading the coverage. I almost can't believe that in this day and age, people can be buried in a mine - seems so 19th/early 20th century. I am in awe of the people willing to go to work hundreds of feet underground just so others can benefit from the resource being mined.

Fiberglass insulation (for the house) is expensive. And pink. And it makes the air hurt. Fortunately, it's also effective and our house feels cozier already; I can't imagine how warm it will be once we're finished hanging it all.

People in the US are finally recognizing that French and Spanish aren't the only two languages that should be taught in schools. Arabic and Chinese are starting to get their due. It's reaffirming to know that all of the content about which Primary Source works to educate K-12 teachers is being recognized as important and necessary. Course, that doesn't mean that we get all of the funding that we'd like, but it's a start.

Angelina Jolie might be pregnant! Whoopee! God, who cares? I am so glad that I'm not famous because it seems like it's impossible to participate in a normal, healthy relationship and be under the disgusting and excruciating magnifying glass of the media.

I finally watched Million Dollar Baby. I say finally because it was all anyone was talking about for a while and it won so many awards last year. It was certainly a good movie and Hilary Swank is one hell of an actress, but I wasn't blown away. It was sadder than I was expecting and had more shots of Clint Eastwood's weirdly-shaped butt/hips. Bryan and I couldn't entirely get over the fact that it looked like Clint was wearing depends under those hiked-up grandpa pants he sported in every scene. Kind of a silly reason to knock a film, but it's hard to watch a movie when all you can think about is whether or not Clint has a bladder problem.

I also watched the movie The Missing - not a terrible movie, but you can save yourself 2 and a half hours(!): Angry woman's father returns to her frontier home after an absence of many years - woman's daughter is stolen by a band of outlaw Indians. Woman reconciles with father (who has been living with Indians himself for the past few decades) to search for daughter and rescue her. Lots of shots of Tommy Lee Jones' craggy face and some sappy, melodramatic moments. Aside from some beautiful shots of the American west, I wish I'd been reading or dusting or something rather than wasting time with this movie.

Vacation is hard work

Let me start by saying that getting out of bed this morning was more difficult than watching george bush say nuclear. This is due in part to the 11 glorious days of vacation I just experienced, in part to the late hour at which Bryan and I finally fell asleep after waking up yesterday at an hour that couldn't be called "morning", and in part (or mostly) to the annual "throwing-out" of my lower back. It all started when...

Mid-December: I realized that I have a lot of vacation time left and too few days to use it. Undaunted by the fact that I will have to take off more days than I will work for the rest of the year, I put in my time-off request and "work" until noonish on Thursday, the 22nd. The rest of this day is taken up by speed Scrabble with co-workers and the end-of-the-year wine and cheese celebration (I have to mention here that my Primary Source Jeopardy game was a smash hit). I then began my longest stretch of vacation since becoming gainfully employed.

Christmas: The O’Connors arrive, the tree is artfully decorated and the three-day extravaganza begins. More board games are played than JD has Salinger, more wine is drunk than Brookline has Chinese food restaurants, and more presents were opened than, well, not. I won’t actually rank my gifts, but a list of top ten moments of 2005 from my sweetie, two Brian Andreas prints, and a digital camera were among the highlights. Nieces and nephew abounded, joyfully tearing wrapping paper, and all was right in Santaland.

The post Christmas haze didn’t dissipate at all as we continued the fun with a trip to the Museum of Science, a long and fruitful trip to Home Depot, where I actually felt comfortable for the first time ever (thanks to Bryan’s dad and brother-in-law), some tasty Mexican lasagna (and more board games) (and more wine), and a jaunt to Connecticut for some amazing QT with the “girls.” By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I wouldn’t have believed my vacation could get any better.

NYC: Bryan and I headed south to the Big Apple to enjoy what we hoped would be a lively and dancerific New Year’s Eve. And, boy, we weren’t disappointed. We found a parking spot in front of the twins’ apartment building, ate more tasty Mexican food (and got some free drinks from the owner who loved that Rob and Pat were identical twins), drank our body weight in any and all kinds of liquor and beer, danced, danced some more, and crashed hard on an Aerobed where we woke up to eggs with ham!

2006: A most welcome year; the year of our nuptials (finally), and of the potential for changes in surroundings. It feels like a year fraught with possibility and adventure. I can honestly say that I have never felt happier and more stable in my entire life. I’m employed in a job I like, and within an industry that I love; I’m marrying someone I adore and respect, who can kick my ass at Scrabble but take a lickin’ in Boggle; I live in a home that I’ve been able to fix up and learn from (okay, this is a euphemism for things don’t work and I have to figure it out or risk losing my ceiling, but it’s fun in a Bob-Villa-what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger kind of way), and I have a great (albeit a tiny bit insane) family. So, hello 2006 – glad to know ya.

The aftermath: And that brings me to yesterday. A day of rest and recuperation. A day to undecorated the tree, clean up the pine needles, take stock for the upcoming year, and mentally prepare to face the morning commute again. It was during the cleaning up of the pine needles that life’s sick sense of humor give me a not-so-gentle-kick-in-the-ass reminder that time is moving forward and that I’d better be able to afford a housecleaning service soon ‘cause this body was not meant to bend over at the waist for prolonged periods of time.