I just went and looked at my statcounter and my once hundred hits a day dwindled some time ago to thirty and more recently down to ten intrepid souls. I guess a blog is a little like a top – it’s more interesting when spinning than when sitting inert on the kitchen floor. I’m sorry that I don’t have much energy to wind up and spin the blog. The truth is that my energy is low on all fronts. I am doing more with progressively less energy.

I was watching some of the NFL pre-game coverage and a linebacker for the Patriots was waxing philosophical about how football is not a game where anyone plays healthy, he said that every player plays nearly every game with some hidden or chronic injury. Ever one to latch onto a sports metaphor, I was thinking how apt an assessment of teaching that statement is – or of many other professions. I rarely go into teaching days with my game fully on, everything old already graded and the lesson well prepared. Ah well, twas ever thus.

Baby E is doing well. While he is still not sleeping through the night, he is most generally a very happy and content baby. We would trade a fussy sleeper for our happy insomniac any day. Yesterday we were in Illinois to watch the Packer defeat (sad) at my in-laws and Jes’ stepbrother Scot offered to trade Elliot, who he was holding, to Sue for the Zippo lighter she was holding. I thought Elliot’s being traded for a Zippo at three months of age should be documented somewhere. If this is baby book fodder, I should also note that the ever popular mirror games have fallen from the limelight and Elliot’s new favorite activity is to play super baby – where we hold him level above our heads and fly him around. He also regularly says “hi” when we say hi to him. We are not counting this as intentional speech yet – it’s more accidental as when his babble occasionally produces other words like “oh!” and “no!”.

We’ve had a political few days. Last week we went to see Madeline Albright speak at the Maryville Speaker Series. We took Beth and Vanessa with us as there were extra tickets early in the season. The speaker series normally sells out, and in fact has now sold out for this year, but occasionally they have a sluggish start and offer subscribers a few additional tickets for select events. Gary, Jes’ dad, has gifted us with a yearly subscription on the condition that we go with him and talk about the events afterward, as his Illinois coterie is not really interested – except for Sue’s (Gary’s wife) father Jack, who also went with us to see Mrs. Albright. She has a new book out of memos to the president elect – things she thinks that person will need to pay attention to as they attempt to rebuild America’s international reputation. I may have time to read it this summer, I’ll keep you posted.

On Saturday we (Kat, Brad, wife and child) tried to go see the Clintons, but we got there late (only a half hour before the event was scheduled to start) and the fire marshal had already closed the auditorium. We sat in an adjacent cafeteria for awhile where we were going to be able to see everything on a closed circuit TV, but when they announced that her plane would land in twenty minutes – making her arrival a likely two hours late – we gave up and went home.