TeamReedBlog.2020

 Forgive the tardiness of this report, but it's been busy around here, and I couldn't get in the right head space to write about Alison's graduation from Purdue University, with honors, mind you. Where to begin? Thank you to Amy Tokash , who, if memory serves has yet to miss a milestone moment with the redhead. Amer and I were pregnant together, so our girls have never not known the sound of our voices or known the enormity of the love we have for them. Jenna graduated from USI this year and will be a kickass nurse.  Thank you, also, to the many people who've already said they'll drop by to celebrate her in June at our house, along with her father who doesn't quite understand the definition of retirement. And thanks to family who'll travel to be with us, as well. More on that to come in June. Ali's actual graduation was last Saturday, which was also the day set aside to celebrate my niece, Rachael Weir, on her graduation from Indiana University.  None o...

It's a big month at Chez Reed. The Captain is officially retired (though he does have a consulting project and pending offers to consider) Alison turned 22 on Cinqo de Mayo She graduates from Purdue University on Friday afternoon Rachael Weir's (Jaime's daughter; Donna's granddaughter) college graduation party is Friday night We'll move Alison and her pick-up load full of anime figures and other belongings out of West Lafayette to await their next move to Orlando where she will attend grad school at the University of Central Florida. Sunday is Mother's Day Team Tokash's annual Race Day party is May 27  (if we're still invited) Lake Day with Team Vielee is May 28 (if we're still invited) Sometime before most of that, I need to get invitations out for a combo party to celebrate Jeff & Ali on June 10 in our back yard. Please consider yourself invited in the good chances I don't get to the formal invitation-making. All of the above items are good...

I feel that I am going to regret telling Cassie Lee that there is no amount of alcohol that could get me to take to a karaoke microphone. We were ending a night of excess that had begun with a pre-game drink for walking around Roanoke, Ind., before a fabulous dinner at Joseph Decuis, Indiana's Farm-to-Fork destination. A gift card to the restaurant was part of the Captain's going away gift package from his office. Roanoke is a great example of what a family with means and commitment can do to revive a small town, reinvent it and still keep a feeling of small-town charm.  Josh and Cassie have been talking up the place for years, and we finally got up there with them for an overnight.  We all ordered the famous Wagyu beef, which won the table a fancy trophy. Josh and Cassie have always ordered the beef, so we're not sure why we got it. Nor could I tell you what was so amusing about having it. But we clearly had a good time with it. It might have had something to do with the ...

 It's been a bit of a whirlwind month with lots of work and activities, with Ali home for almost a full week during her spring break. We didn't go anywhere as we've been to Orlando and Sacramento with her recently looking at potential grad schools, with a trip to Miami in the offing for the last one. But I didn't think I was too overbooked for a euchre night with Jeff's beer friends. I wasn't even drinking when I went inside Dan and Carrie Ann Harper's house to sample the mac-n-cheese I'd been promised. I took a reasonable portion, even though I could have had the whole dish it looked so good, and then spied some beautiful strawberries. I stepped over to add a couple to my plate. The next thing I knew, the mac-n-cheese was flying in one direction, the strawberries in another and I was flat on my back. I might have conked out for a bit. I really couldn't say. What I do know is it sent me right back to that time years ago along the Broad Ripple canal w...

 Seconds after hitting "Publish" on the post below, I headed for the goddamned gym. Where I spent the next 90+ minutes, working between an elliptical stepper, a stationary bike, the treadmill and the water fountain. I stretched a little bit but mostly kept watch on my tracker to hit the magic 10K steps. Wouldn't you know it, the damn thing tapped out and stopped tracking around the 6473 mark. But like that chubby Energizer Bunny, I kept going because I know exercise is my friend and because I'm still hoping to meet an endorphin one day. Afterward, still not having met an endorphin, I decided I'd earned a chicken biscuit from the Keystone Diner .  If you haven't had a chicken biscuit from the Keystone Diner, you haven't lived. I ordered it on a lark one day, hearkening back to a work trip a few years ago. The conference offered breakfast, and in Nashville, Tennessee, that means grits (yum) and chicken biscuits. I remember wondering who in the hell would hav...

Unless my friend Kelsey Taylor is there telling me it's time to call it a day, the gym is not my happy place. I go there, but it's a struggle. And my current gym doesn't even have the Kelsey factor because swimming is what I think could keep me going back, so I need a gym with a pool. Once my hair won't freeze getting back to the car, I'll be in it. It should not surprise you that swimming in the Caribbean (my inspiration) is a lot more fun than swimming anywhere in Indiana in winter. I want to be in shape. I do. I really do. But I also have an active mixologist in the house stirring up all kinds of yummy drinks. And when it's not Jeff at the bar, it's our friend, Bruce, who sends me all kinds of exotic and lovely concoctions that he dreams up or finds in ancient texts. (I don't know that they come from ancient texts, but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of mixers I've never heard of that when comingled will knock your socks off.) It's not th...

Spring had definitely sprung 27 years ago when I told Jeff Reed that I was ready to have a summer fling with him. Nothing serious. No strings. No obligations. Tuesday, we'll celebrate 25 years of marriage. So much for the fling. Or maybe it's still a thing. Whichever the case, we'll cross over the silver anniversary by re-creating our wedding feast and indulging in much better champagne than we had back then. It will be enhance by the presence of a few friends - two who were with us from the beginning and at our wedding. If we'd planned better, or the anniversary wasn't on a Tuesday, we might have re-created the whole shindig. But I'm lazy.