Marty, Guitar Hero, & the Earth Shakes

Three things really surprised me this week, all totally unrelated to each other.

1. Marty Brennaman calling Cubs fans the most obnoxious fans in the league? Marty, I have always thought you were one of the best, but come on! You have to admire the fans who sell out your stadium by travelling there to support their team on the road! Come on!

2. I played Guitar Hero for the first time this week. Fun stuff. Gift idea: I want the drummer version, whatever it is called.

3. We had a 5.2 Earthquake here in central Indiana this morning. Very odd. I awoke at 5:40 AM to feel the house shaking. At first I thought it was wind, then I realized that if that was wind, we were in trouble. Next I assumed someone in my family was shaking the bed. Then I realized what was happening. It woke all of us up except Tori. Very, very strange. I also felt an aftershock at 11:15 this morning.

This was my third earthquake. Felt one here in Indy back in the late 80s. Felt a bigger one (7.0) in Vegas during our first year there. It woke us in the middle of the night, and we could feel the wave rolling under us. Scary. I remember feeling motion sickness in my stomach from that one. We awoke thinking Tori (then still in a crib) was jumping up and down in her crib. Then we saw that she was still asleep, but the crib was still shaking.

You Took Your Kids Where?

It was more like time travel than a vacation. Or maybe it was like space travel.

We just returned from Spring Break in Vegas. Besides a couple of days when Lucas was too sick to function, we had a great time and got to see tons of people and enjoy weather in the 70s.

Last Sunday, nearly sixty people came by for a cookout at the Nybergs.

We visited with many of them and several others throughout the week at various restaurants and homes.

The kids, Rebekah, and I were also Vegas tourists this time around. We did the Shark Reef Aquarium (slightly overpriced, but very fun for the kids) and we did a sightseeing cruise on Lake Mead (very nice -- I highly recommend it; I'm sorry I never did this during my eight years living there). Tori & I also saw Horton Hears a Who, which was much better than I expected.

Our first day there, it seemed surreal . . . like we had gone back in time . . . like we had landed on another planet where we once lived. After a few days, though, it seemed like we had never left and that we were picking up right where we left off nine months ago.

Now, it's like we have families of sorts on both planets. I have an identity and a role on both planets, though they are very different in each place. We know our way around on both planets. We know the places to go, the places not to go, and how things really work in both places.

In more ways than one, I don't need a map in either place.

Now we are back on planet Indiana remembering how things work in this reality. Still so bizarre, it all is. It's like we have a life on two planets at the same time. I'm trying to figure out how these things co-exist.

I do think that the trip backto Vegas (and the fact that our first midwest winter is over) will help bring some closure and will help me embrace living here and getting on with what's next . . . even though I'm still not completely sure what that entails.