In theory there are two and a half weeks left of this semester, but in reality most of the big end of semester projects are due too soon.   Though I still think going to school is easier than working at a job I didn’t love (and in fact I told that to my group last night as we were moving our sticky notes around for the endless upteenth time during our seventeenth and eighteenth hours of working on our affinity model) I am getting fatigued.  I can’t sleep for trying to keep a list in my head of all that still needs to be done.  This morning I’ve been awake since 3 and I have come to the conclusion it’s better to just get up and get something done.  So I am printing out articles still to be read, thinking about that final reference assignment that requires me to spend too much time at the graduate reading room, planning what I’ll say this afternoon at our affinity walkthrough, and realizing deep in my heart, after attending the peer review yesterday, that my long paper for 504 which was 2/3 roughed in needs to be totally reshaped.  Oh, and there is that little 501 paper, twenty pages long, that has yet to be thought about.  And the multiple data entries still required of me for my digital library class. And I think there’s a paper due there as well.  So, if I start now and don’t sleep for the next 10 days I think I should be on top of things.

Good news from yesterday was a meeting I had with management at the Ann Arbor District Library, about 5 blocks from campus.  I am going to be doing a field experience project for them next semester.  I’ll be researching what library systems around the country are doing to provide library services for the home bound.  This is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to do in the future, so it’s a great opportunity for me to test the water and to do something that really matters for a library.  Of course it also adds ten hours of work a week to my school load, but I think I can handle it. 

Right now I am more excited about the new semester, new classes, new professors, new topics, and the great unknown than I am about finishing up the projects that are midway completed, not started at all, or possibly not even thought of yet that are due in the next two weeks

The neat thing about being a student vs. being an employee is that this stuff ENDS sometime and you get to start fresh!  At work if I were working on some project that had grown stale and unappealing I couldn’t hope that it would end one way or another in two weeks.  It had to get done, and worse than that, it probably MATTERED how well it was done!  In the world of academia there seem to be ends to our responsibilities and endless possibilities for projects of the future.  Its not real world but its more fun!

It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow.  I haven’t been to class at all this week, though that’s not as bad as it sounds, since there were no classes scheduled today.  I did miss my classes on Monday and Tuesday though, as my husband was in the hospital.  We went into emergency on Saturday afternoon, only an hour before the BIG GAME (UM/Ohio St), so rather than spending a nice Saturday afternoon watching a game and eating steak from the grill, we listened to bits and pieces of it from the attending nurses.  And not eating steak.  Turns out they admitted him for observation, and then they wouldn’t give him back to me until Tuesday!

By Tuesday I was too sick to pick him up, probably the flu.  So we sent his brother to get him from the hospital.  The brother dropped him off at our front door and declined an invitation to come into the germ invested house.  That’s just as well as I was not up to entertaining.

I was supposed to fly to Atlanta today, but I wasn’t feeling well enough last night, so we changed the ticket and I leave tomorrow morning early enough to make it to my brother’s house for dinner at noon in Alabama.  I should get to bed, but I’ve been thinking about things to be thankful for.

We spent a good part of yesterday watching the tribute to Bo being held at The Big House (UM stadium).  I am thankful that I am past the kind of intense grief for my father that I saw on BO’s youngest son’s face.  It hurt to watch him speak, so I started doing laundry and only watched parts of his talk as I walked through the living room.

I am thankful I am not working, and I’m thankful I’m in school, and I’m thankful I have a spouse and family members that support me in that decision.

I’m thankful I can kid around on the phone with my brother who is trying to make Mom’s pumpkin cake alone down in Alabama tonight, when I was supposed to be there to make it for him.  He may become a baker yet!  I am thankful that my sister and her husband will pick me up at the Atlanta airport at 7:30 in the morning and drive me the two hours to the house of feasting.  Even if I have to sit in the back seat with their dog.  I am thankful my other brother and his wife are having Thanksgiving this year, a place for us all to be together.
I am thankful for the memories of family Thanksgivings in years past.  And for Mom’s receipes.  And her voice in my ear.  I think she’s laughing with us at Paul’s attempts to replicate her cake.  This year, for the first time in two years, we can laugh too.  And for that I’m incredibly thankful.

I’m thankful for tradition that holds us together.  And I’m thankful for the new experiences we will have as we learn to redefine the holiday season based on our new reality.

Most of all I’m thankful to all the people that have held out their arms and their hearts to us as we clawed our way back up to the sunshine, especially those that stuck it out for two years when it seemed like we would never see lightness in anything ever again.

Sometimes it hasn’t seemed true, but we are truly blessed.  And I am thankful.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my Dad lately. Maybe because a truck safety nonprofit has asked me to consider becoming a board member. Maybe because it’s almost Thanksgiving which reminds me of the last time I saw him two years ago. Maybe because its all so unsettled even now.

What stories can I tell you about Dad? There are so many. The biggest thing about him is that he knew about everything. You know when you’re little and you think your Dad knows everything? Well, our Dad did! He read all sorts of books and magazines and was interested in learning everything there was to know about wherever he was and whomever he was with. He traveled all over the world and never met anyone he didn’t like and admire. He was interested in different cultures, and art, and music (even though he had a tin ear). He loved science and engineering. He loved to explore; to faraway places, or to the end of the stream down the way. He wanted to understand everything and he never stopped learning.

Whenever any of us were in a quandary about something, unsure what to do, or how to fix something, or where to go next, we’d call Dad. I remember years ago my brother called me about something he was doing on his house. I didn’t really follow what the issue was, and he finally said he thought he’d just call Dad. I wondered aloud why we always called Dad for everything, and my brother said, “because he knows everything!” And I said, “what are we going to do when we can’t call Dad anymore?” There was a long silence. It was inconceivable that there would be such a time. That time happened December 23, 2004, when a tired trucker made a simple error in judgement.

Now it’s not just Dad’s family that is lost. He worked in his community and in his church. He had friends all the way back to high school, college and his days in the Army that he kept in touch with even though he had moved and lived in several places around the country. He worked at the community food bank, and on a regional Presbyterian board that recruited ministers for rural churches. He was his own church’s handyman and fixed whatever was broken for friends, neighbors, the church and his family. Everyone is lost because a tired trucker made a simple error in judgement.

You know when you are reading a good book, or watching a great movie? You want to know how it turns out. I feel like I didn’t get a chance to see how Dad turned out. I didn’t get to see him grow old. I didn’t get to give back to him all the care and support he’d given me all my years. He was seventy-five years old, but he wasn’t anywhere near old yet. He wasn’t anywhere near done yet. He was still vibrant, and interested, and interesting, and supportive. He was still our family center. Without him we are struggling to redefine our family. There is no trunk to our family tree anymore, just the branches. We aren’t sure who we are without him. But we know we are who we are BECAUSE of him. The world has changed because a tired trucker made a simple error in judgement.

For the majority of his years he worked in industry. A lot of the time he was in charge of facilities, and that included the safety of the people that worked or visited his manufacturing plants. Manufacturing plants are inherently dangerous places and he made it his job to make them as safe as they could be. If he saw something out of line, something that could make the area unsafe, he’d get angry. There were no excuses. There was no letting down guard, or letting something go that wasn’t good enough. It had to be the best, everyone was expected to perform their best. He wouldn’t stop till a problem was solved. If it had been one of us hit from behind by a tired trucker that cold dark December morning, he wouldn’t have rested until he made a difference. Well, we’re trying to make a difference. For him. Because it wasn’t just a simple error in judgement by a tired trucker.

His name was William H. Badger. But all his friends called him Bill. That meant that everyone called him Bill, because he was a friend to everyone. If you tell his story, call him Bill, because he would have been a friend to you, a helper if you needed one, someone full of information and ideas, and above all full of stories. Stories that would make you laugh and help you understand the world. Stories that we’ll remember and pass on so that more people will know the story of Bill Badger. His story didn’t end with an error in judgement by a tired trucker.