In which we take a breath.

Tonight, Peter and I are on our own. We are batching it. (Baching? Whatever. We are living as bachelors do!) This involves making ourselves pizza not eaten by the others in our family, pizza with pesto *and* blue cheese *and* kalamata olives. It is really, really salty, which is what we like, and we are alone.

Why is that, again? Because Grace is on her first overnight, for a birthday party of one of her classmates, and Mike is somewhere between here and Chicago. So my baby, who seriously just yesterday was an actual infant, being baptized (there was reminiscing this morning with a fellow UC Divinity School Person, of whom I can now count three in Nebraska) and now she's old enough to be totally cool with being left at the house of a classmate for an overnight. I am breathing, but slowly and meditatively and with great care.

At work, one of my students responded to the news that the Rapture is 19th Century fiction and not biblical at all (which, really, you might want to check on that before formulating your whole relationship to God based on it, maybe) by sending this - wildly inflammatory email to the whole student body. And to my department, which remember is me and two other people, if you count the campus pastor. Which we do. So it wasn't an great big state secret whom he might be venting at in said inflammatory email, which reflected a tenuous grasp of the English language among other things. Faculty response has mostly been sympathetic to me and kindly towards the student (the word "immature" has come up, and "ignorant" and the like), but one of our admins was really furious with him and offended and went on a little forwarding spree to us (me, and the two guys in my department) to make sure we knew he was getting an angry/irritated response from his fellow students, the recipents of said spam. It has become a Thing, and I am tired of it already.

Peter and I are making raspberry mocha muffins tomorrow. Come by!

Rabid fox news!

Not even Fox News! But fox news. I find this disturbing, and hilarious, and altogether odd, so I must share:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-ODD-Fox-Attack.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Cute happy election Peter

Our hand-lettered election sign

We liveblog the election...

Because you know you wanted to hear our thoughts! We are ecstatic, frankly. Grace is cheering and whooping at every new Obama call - Ohio was a big moment. The shots of Grant Park are a bit hit here. Every little bit of the electoral map is a new moment of excitement. Peter has actually prayed for the, um, demise of John McCain, and while we don't endorse that theologically problematic impulse, we can kind of understand the misunderstanding that underlies it.

One election ago, Peter was a baby. Two elections ago, I was pregnant with Grace. It is a strange way to measure time.

Election Day

Gracie and I voted this morning at her school - our polling place opens at 8:00, and it's here school, and school starts at 8:40, so I took her with me at 7:30 and we waited in line so I could vote before work. It felt big, and historic, and exciting. Fellow voters directed us to the proper line (two precincts vote there) and we directed our neighbor into our line when he arrived, and the mood was cheerful and calm. Grace was glad to be there, excited for election day, and keen on having a bagel and hot cocoa for breakfast while we waited.

I voted, it went smoothly, we walked around waiting for school to start, we had lots of discussion about the League of Women Voters guide I'd brought... it is an exciting and hopeful day and we'll spend the evening glued to the various screens in our house looking at election returns.