strength among weaknesses
waiting to fear emotion that
drives life but holds it still,
fluttering in the palm of a caustic hand...
ready to feel, ready to yearn
but unwilling to relinquish control.
the swirling nothingness that swallows you whole
palpitates the very veins that tie you down
beating a rhythm all their own
and you can hardly catch your breath
between knowing and not knowing
and wanting to feel it again
~ 5/27/03 ~

nothing like a blow of reality to the head to knock your senses awry. this weekend was, well, confusing, to say the least. always good to see my boy, but this weekend was a very strong indication of just how complicated things really are. hopefully the complications won't take us out of the race, but it's going to be something of a tough road. and if i use another cliche i'll have to go home early (gee, wouldn't that be terrible).

we did some fun stuff, though... i got to meet randy's daughter mattie, who is adorable and well-behaved and extremely tall for a 20-month-old. we saw the matrix reloaded (which i think i was too tired to fully appreciate) and bruce almighty (which was funny jim carrey physical comedy with a semi-religious storyline thrown in. enjoyable, though, with a few tributes to ace ventura and other carrey-isms past), went to dave 'n busters, ate out a lot... he took me up to chattanooga to see the tennessee aquarium, which was pretty cool. i'm spoiled in the way of aquariums, but this one had a cool setup to it. the center section had 5 or 6 levels of aquaria, through which you walk down one level and then are diverted to a side section... then rerouted back through the middle section and so forth. we also went to see an imax about coral reefs/underwater worldly stuff, but both of us were tired and there wasn't a lot of action so we were both drifting off a bit. i get geeky about stuff like aquariums, though, so it was a sweet gesture for him to think to take me there.

so here i am, playing catch-up all day today. we're finally wrapping up some of the messes we've been dealing with, but we're being dealt another few messes as we speak. with the change over to the new finance tracking/timesheet/etc software, we have to do a huge clean-up of the existing files so they have to transfer as little information as they can. the problem is, that translates into a ton of work for those of us who don't have the time to go through every file and add up how much has been disbursed and how much they still need and what the funding sources are, etc. *sigh* the idea is to close out as many projects as possible, but that's just not a reality for a lot of projects. most projects are not focused on our small one or two year grant periods. we usually fund a piece of a larger project, which is typically ongoing. oh well. we do what we can.

several site visits this week, and next week is preproposal review for the fall slate and software training. woo hoo! it never ends, i swear. i just need to go home and sleep. i'm trying to get an accurate measure of how much vacation time i have left, because if it's a lot i'm going to start taking three-day weekends to catch up on rest. or maybe i'll plan a week-long getaway to somewhere i haven't been before. oh, the possibilities.

congratulations to ucla softball, the ncaa 2003 champions!