4

Winter seems to have hit.  Today calls for 8 inches of snow.  Welcome to Kalamazoo.  I've been hearing that this seems to hit some kind of "sweet spot" for how the jet stream travels, and that we just get brutal amounts of snow, even compared to Grand Rapids.  And if the rain is any indication (which it should be), then that seems probable.  So bring on the winter.  It's true, though, that seeing winter through the eyes of two small children changes your perspective.  Not that I dislike winter in general (I don't particularly like scraping off the windshield, but it's hardly worth getting upset over), but to see our boy so excited to go out in the snow was quite wonderful last year.  And this will be Lucy's first winter, which she may actually be old enough to enjoy (Tristan was really an infant during his first winter).

You spend so much of your free time at school trying to bust out homework and get as far as you can on problem sets so you can have more free time at home.  And then you turn in your homework, and until you get a new set, there's this strange conundrum of what to do with the extra time between classes and labs.  It's that day today.  And there's not likely to be another homework assignment in this class, which makes it even more strange.  A funny thing, school is...

When I get home today, Julie and the kids won't be there.  She's playing a gig in GR tonight, and her mom is watching the kids...  It's nice, and I'm glad she gets to do it, because I know how much she enjoys the chance to just jam out and do something like this.  And I'm very excited for her.  But I'm not sure what it'll be like coming home to an empty house.  I've just gotten so used to their smiling faces at home that I don't remember what this is like.  And it'll be nice to just sit and be for a while, but I already miss all three of them something fierce.  Julie, though, was so thoughtful that she even left me dinner so I wouldn't have to mess with that.  She's perfect.

Class is about to start, so that's it for now.