Hey--I'm back

[ginnyinWI]

You guys have been busy between Sunday and today--I've got a ton of posts to read! (but it will be fun, I'm sure)

Lots going on this week, between Rove and Roberts. All I had was radio while away, but I got the gist of it. Heard about Roberts in the car driving home last night.

While in Minnesota I noticed a LOT of Kerry/Edwards stickers on cars! So my car blended right in :). Also saw stickers like "Save a Tree, Remove a Bush" and stuff like that. Fun! And gas is about 20 cents cheaper in MN than WI :(!

[globalvillage]

1. Welcome back, ginny.

:hi:

[jillan]

2. Minnesota is suppose to be one of the most liberal states :)

Hope you had fun.

[whometense]

3. Hey Ginny!

Welcome back. I guess she found an apartment, huh? Did you have a good time?

I've been real quiet today - don't know what to say about Roberts - what is there to say, really? He's gonna suck - but anyone the shrub appoints will. His lack of a judicial record creeps me out. As does his bland, happy face.

[TayTay]

4. Welcome back Ginny!

I hope the trip was both relaxing and refreshing.

[ginnyinWI]

5. yes, we did find one

We spent a day and a half and looked at about ten of them, and made countless calls. We were going to settle for one that we felt was too expensive, but decided to keep looking just a little longer, and just drove around looking for "For Rent" signs. We got lucky and found an even nicer one for less than we were going to have to pay. So she's happy and we're happy too (guess who is going to be paying most of the rent!).

U of M is a nice-looking campus--and in the surrounding area, in addition to the car stickers, there were still faded-out Kerry/Edwards signs in peoples' windows. It felt like home. :) Actually more like home than here in my rather red county.

Yeah we had a good, if exhausting time. I discovered that the food at Noodles and Co. is pretty good--we ate there two days in a row.

I, too, have a short attention span when it comes to Roberts. I guess it's because I see this as inevitable, like snowstorms in winter. It's more fun to watch the destruction of Rove! Cover story in Newsweek is good--I like Howard Fineman's work.

[whometense]

6. I have mixed feelings about Fineman.

He's very intelligent and a good writer, but he's prone to that snarky smartass stuff WEL and TayTay were discussing in the other thread. I used to see him on Imus (:loveya: before Morning Sedition came into my life :loveya:), and he usually made me feel like kicking in the tv.

The Rove thing seems to have jolted him into taking things more seriously in the past week or so.

Congrats on the apartment. Our nest seems to be filling up rather than emptying. It kind of makes me laugh when I think about how hard I worked to develop my other interests so as to avoid sadness when my kids moved out.

[ginnyinWI]

7. Kids come, kids go

It's been a revolving door for us, too. Now that the older two are out on the West coast, perhaps they are gone for good...they're both married, after all! But still-- the eldest was here last summer with her husband for a month...before the move West.

They say people in our kids' generation are taking a lot longer to become independent financially than we did--because it is simply so much harder. While we may have been out on our own in our early twenties, this group is taking until their late twenties. I tell my kids not to feel bad, because they are all in the same boat in these economic times. And I tell my brothers not to beat up on their kids for not being out on their own as early as they were.

[whometense]

8. That's very true.

Our oldest, at 26, seems to be pretty close to financial independence, though we still help him out some. The biggest hurdle is health insurance (:mad:)

It doesn't bother me at all. If our daughter can (and is happy to) live at home during grad school, it's fine with me. I like having her around. And it would be seriously dumb to pay Boston rent when her school is one 20-minute bus ride from our house.