Tilt-A-Whirl

Do you remember the Tilt-A-Whirl? It was one of my favorite rides as a kid. I loved the anticipation as you leaned heavily on those riding with you, trying to make your car move, and then, suddenly, you were spinning out of control.

My life has been like a Tilt-A-Whirl lately.

I mentioned earlier this year that the General Assembly hit the ground running and let me tell you, they sure kept up the pace. I haven't written much that wasn't work related in the past few months, unless you count a few scribbles here and there when a meeting got really boring and I felt I could tune out for a bit.

I've worked a ton of overtime lately. The first 2 weeks of June, most days I was in the office by 8 - 8:30 and didn't leave until midnight or later. When you add in an hour commute each way and working on weekends as well, it makes for very long, mentally draining, days. Rob hasn't really seen me much, and he's probably pretty tired of eating canned chili for dinner.

There has been a little fun thrown in here and there. My sister, Julie, got married in May and Rob and I spent a week in California for the event. We flew into San Diego the weekend before the wedding and visited his first ship the USS Midway and also saw a friend I hadn't seen since our wedding 11 years ago. On our way North, we also saw Rob's cousin he hadn't seen in almost 20 years and an old friend from the Navy that he hadn't seen in just as long.

We spent a couple of days in the San Francisco area helping Julie & Phil with last minute wedding preparations, and then drove to Healdsburg, CA, in wine country, for the wedding. It was a great trip and a wonderful wedding. Julie & Phil are great together and I've never seen Julie as happy as she is now.

Last weekend Logan and his wife, Michelle, came in from El Paso. Logan is in the Army and will be deploying in July or August so it was good to get a chance to see him before he leaves. Carey & her boyfriend, Nick, my parents, Rob's parent, and my brother and his family were all here over part of the weekend, so it was good to see everyone.

I do wish it hadn't come at the end of crazy time at work, so I could have planned a little more, but Logan didn't have a choice about when he could take his leave. Fortunately, I have understanding coworkers who were able to cover some things for me so I avoided having to work on Saturday, since that was the day they chose to wrap things up temporarily (more on that later).

I'm also very grateful for my mother who came over the Saturday before, the one day I had off in 2 weeks, to help me clean the house. Truth be told, she did most of the cleaning while I dusted and did general picking up and straightening of clutter. Logan and Michelle left Wednesday morning to drive back to El Paso (and got there safely last night) so all is quiet in the Sitze dome again.

No rest for the weary however, since I'm on the redistricting team at work. They have temporarily adjourned the regular session, but they will be back in July to do redistricting and some elections law issues. I spent most of this past week trying to get my desk cleared of all the "regular" session stuff and get my brain wrapped around all the case law related to redistricting, since this is an area of law that is new to me.

There was a round of public hearings Thursday that was 6 hours long, and there will be 2 more rounds in July of equal length. I have to attend each of those. There is also a lot of behind the scenes work to be done, so although I hope to have a little respite from the crazy hours over the next couple of weeks, I know there are more crazy hour days coming.

I may not write here as much as I'd like anytime soon, but I hope to write at least more frequently than I have so far.