Have you ever been on the news or in the newspaper? I actually have been quoted about five or six times, a few when interviewed about the Delaware Shakespeare Festival back in the day, but a couple times about really odd stories that I know nothing about.

Take the other morning, walking to the Metro there was a camera crew set up on my path. They stopped Selena and I and asked if we had any trouble with the wind and rain last night. I told them we didn’t encounter and rain but I did notice it was windy when I walked the dog first thing this morning.

They asked me to describe the wind, and I was at a loss. I just told them I was surprised that there was a lot of wind out there. Selena mocked me as we left them for calling the wind “surprising”, I insisted, that I gave them nothing of value, there is no way they would use my soundbite.

Eight hours later, I received this Google Alert:

The story is no longer on their site, and that’s a relief, because I sound like a buffoon, but I guess I can’t blame the ABC News. I did that myself by calling the wind surprising, and they just ran with it.

My brother Jeff and his fiance' Katie

This blog is typically all about Selena and I, but I wanted to take a minute to express how excited I am for my brother Jeff, who over the holidays finally popped the question to his long-time girlfriend, Katie.

Now making it about me again.

I don’t know that Jeff and Katie know how often I get asked “When are they going to get married?”, and for the longest time I’ve been able to point out an event or goal in the future that they are focusing on first, such as:

• They want to wait until Katie graduates from school / finds a job / finds a different job
• They didn’t want to pull focus from Selena and my engagement / wedding / announcing of the baby
• They want to get settled into their new careers/ new house
• They want to wait until after Ben comes back form NZ / Katie comes back from LA / hell freezes over.

And then right when I was starting to run out of milestones to prioritize on their behalf first, Jeff goes ahead and asks Katie to marry him.

We couldn’t be happier for their engagement and to have Katie officially become a member of the family.

I’ve had a long history with The Time Traveler’s Wife. I first saw it for a ridiculously cheap price in a used book store at the peak of it’s popularity, but didn’t pick it up and I regretted it. Shortly thereafter, my mother-in-law let me have the copy she was going to donate. After sitting on my shelf for a few months, someone asked to borrow it, and it was never seen again. Following that, a good friend told me it was one of her favorite books of all time, and that I had to read it, peaking my interest again. I started perusing used bookstores for it again and added it to my amazon wishlist. At this point, I refused to buy it, believing that if karma brought it to me on this many occasions, it was bound to cycle back. And I was determined to read it not so much out of actual interest, but because it was so elusive to me.

And karma pulled through. I was thrilled when my future sister-in-law, Katie, lent me her copy. I started reading it as soon as I got it since I didn’t know when I would get the chance to again. Then one day, the book went missing again. Unbeknownst to me, Katie had contacted Greg and told him that she had forgotten there was a scene in the book that I might be sensitive to during my pregnancy. Instead of warning me, Greg took the book and hid it. Little did he know, this actually caused me more distress. I was almost positive of where I had left it last, and when it wasn’t there, I was frustrated with my forgetfulness. On my way to work one day, I asked Greg if he would mind going back to grab it from where I was convinced I left it. He grabbed a different book and said, “You must mean this one. The Time Traveler’s Wife wasn’t there.” A few days later, I said to Greg, “I just don’t understand, the last time I had it, I was going to read it in the bathtub. Did I take it to the doctor’s office with me after that? Maybe I’ll call them next week and see if they found it.” He merely said, “Well, I don’t know, hon.” Yet another time I brought it up in passing, Greg said, “Oh, but were you actually reading that though?” There were even a few instances when the movie preview came on TV, and Greg said, “Didn’t you want to see that?”

On Friday, I had spent a sleepless night thinking about all sorts of things and unable to get comfortable. When Greg found me on the couch the next morning, I brought the book up as one of the silly things I thought about when I couldn’t sleep. He said, “Oh yeah. It’s in the basement,” as if I should have known it had been there the whole time. After a little more questioning, the rest of the story was revealed, and Greg felt worse that instead of shielding me from sensitive subject matter, he had turned me into a crazy lady for about a week.

Skiers on the ski trip (Jeff at center)

My brother Jeff went skiing this year on our annual pilgrimage to the Poconos. It may not sound blog-worthy, but this is the first time he’s strapped on a pair of skis since 1992 when on a high school class ski trip he was ridiculed by the jackass instructor. Jeff finished the lessons, returned the skis and (despite coordinating a ski trip to Shawnee annually for 10 years now), never returned to the slopes… until this year.

I

Sid Meier's Civilization

never got into Farmville, Mafia Wars or just about any Facebook games. The only two I’ve really taken to playing casually are Scramble or Scrabble, but I am expected that all to change this June when Civilization comes the Facebook.

Civ II is my favorite game ever ever.

I spent the better part of the summer of 1997 playing that game each night into the wee hours. One night I played so long I was exhausted when I rolled into my internship. Seeing me looking not so good, they told me I should go home and feel better. I did just that, sort of.: I went right home and hopped back on the computer and played an extra six hours of Civilization, and it did make me feel better.