Some good things happening here in my world right now and some bad things. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl in dominating fashion, and I've very much enjoyed basking in the success of my favorite professional sports team (tied with the Mariners). Every night since Sunday, before I've gone to sleep, I've watched some sort of highlight or game video on YouTube from the Seahawks' championship season. Last night, I watched the final quarter of the NFC Championship Game against the Rams. There are no points scored in it, but it's a great watch nevertheless. It's basically only two series. The Rams go on a long time-consuming drive that ends inside the Seattle ten-yard line, when the "Dark Side" D gets a beautiful, fortuitous fourth-down stop. And then the Seahawks take over and effectively run out the clock, getting clutch first down after clutch first down. It's a joy to watch, even though I know what's going to happen. In fact, it's a joy largely because I know what is going to happening. That I know that this is what propels them to the Lombardi Trophy is what makes it fun. Had they lost the game or been defeated in the Super Bowl, I wouldn't be watching at all.
In other good news, the snow is finally starting to melt here. There is still a ton of it, and it's still annoying, but the streets are a little bit wider, and I can see large pockets of green on my lawn.
But there is bad news also: Our president is still a megalomaniac, who is making life worse for pretty much everybody, including many who voted for him, and his abhorrent policies concerning immigration enforcement have put us on the verge of another prolonged government shutdown. As with the first one, just a few months ago, I think the Democrats are correct on the issue but wrong on the tactics. Dems don't want to fund ICE without reforms, which I totally understand and completely cosign, so they are refusing to allow the funding for DHS to go through, since ICE is a part of DHS. The problem is that DHS has like 20 agencies under its milieu, including essential services like FEMA and TSA, and these are currently not being funded. What's more is that, as I understand it, ICE got a special carve out of funding in that Big Beautiful Bill, so it has the money to operate without restraint for the foreseeable future. So, basically, a shutdown will disrupt the good parts of DHS, while the worst part of it carries on unfettered. Maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Anyway...
It's a four day weekend for both our children. This is a bit annoying, given how much school they missed due to the snow, but at least DCPS did something for which I've been advocating for years. They scrapped some administration days and turned them into a school days. We don't have parent-teacher conferences now, but I'd rather that be the case than have to tack on a days of school the week after "graduation" (this is Lil' S2's last year in elementary school) when a lot of kids will already be at camp or on vacation. It does beg the question: Why doesn't the district build these flex days into the schedule from the get-go, instead of adding them on the fly, being that we get at least one heavy snowfall pretty much every year? I still don't know the answer to that. But I at least give DCPS a half star for making a smart adjustment.
Actually, there is some drama at Lil' S2's school right now. A contingent of teachers are unhappy with the administration--they don't feel supported and empowered--and they have rallied some parents to advocate on their behalf. There is a letter to the chancellor going around on the message boards that a bunch of parents are signing. I think S might have signed it (or is going to sign it), mainly because her friend asked her to. Personally, I'm staying out of it. In four months, we will be done with this school, and so I don't feel super invested in the matter. I also don't want to just support the teachers reflexively (I'm admittedly still bitter about their reluctance to return during Covid lockdowns, even after getting moved to the front of the line for vaccines, even after it became clear that children weren't great vectors for the disease), and I'm not sure if it really is "the teachers" or just "a few teachers." One of the parents in a group chat I'm in is also a teacher at the school, and she posted something in defense of the administration, which definitely gave me pause about the whole thing. Basically, I would want to do some research and get all the facts and opinions before signing onto anything, and that seems like entirely too much work to me considering I won't have any kids at the school by the time I'm done. As long as teachers at the school don't start striking, I'm just gonna ride this one out.
Abruptly changing topics, it was Valentine's Day yesterday, and last night was one of those increasingly rare weekend evenings in which both of our kids are home and don't have any friends over, so we decided to have family movie night and settled on the 1996 romantic comedy Jerry Maguire. And by "settled on," I mean S and I decided that that's what we wanted to watch and cajoled the boys into watching it with us. Lil' S1 lasted about 15 minutes ("I didn't even want to watch it in the first place."); Lil' S2 made it about an hour ("This is boring. There's hardly any football in it."). So, we turned it off and watched a couple episodes of Modern Family instead.
S and I are intent on finishing it, though. We both forgot how good it is. It's nearly a ten of ten on the rewatchability scale. Every character in it is almost perfectly crafted and acted. Jerry and Dorothy couldn't be more charming as the leads; the little kid Ray is just as adorable as you remember ("The human head weighs eight pounds."); Rod and his wife are super likeable and funny; Jay Mohr is great as the movie's only real villain; and Bonnie Hunt is brilliant as Dorothy's sister (real appreciated her performance this time around). We still have about 40 minutes left in the movie, and hopefully we get a quiet time to finish it tonight--preferably before 8p. If it's any later, there is a real risk of S falling asleep during it, and then it will be like that one Valentine's day, many years ago, when S was pregnant and went to bed at like 7:30, so I celebrated alone by eating a heart-sharped piece of cake, drinking sparkling cider, and binge watching Friday Night Lights. Oh well, Valentine's Day proper is already over, and it's fake holiday, anyway.
Until next time...
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