Senator Obama at IUS and more

The morning after losing to Senator Clinton in Pennsylvania and speaking in Evansville, Senator Obama spoke at the Indiana University Southeast campus, where Chelsea Clinton spoke several weeks ago and which Stephanie and Vincent visited for an open house for prospective students several weeks ago (see "Another disappointment"). IUS is just half a mile from the school where Stephanie first taught in New Albany. This afternoon Jeffersonville, a neighboring Southern Indiana where I get my hair cut and where I volunteered for Baron Hill's Congressional campaign, shut down a street so that Senator Obama could shoot a TV commercial there. In other news, should have kept my mouth shut at a meeting with a top Presbyterian Center manager, with whom I've been friendly before. Instead, I argued against a contract he's essentially already made with a rival demographic services provider, and ended up going off on another project, something we should have done long before (something he asked about), but something it's not clear I have time to do (creating an information sheet about various free demographics services on the Web). I'm afraid I unnecessarily created animosity where there was friendship before. I mentioned at our church board meeting that I was undergoing some job transition - in this case, applying for an internal transfer, not losing my job like a few other church members. More mundanely, my office took the administrative assistants who work with us out to lunch for Administrative Professionals appreciation day (today), to the same place we went for a recently retired AA's retirement lunch a couple of months ago. Vincent conducted the second interview with the WW2 interview, built much of his mousetrap-powered car for his science class (including using flag stands we got for the mission event this Sunday for wheels - after drilling through them and hammering in screws). And Stephanie and Vincent went to the orientation meeting for the Denmark trip. Don't joke about blowing up planes, do your laundry and cook once a week if possible (?!), get your money using an ATM card, and bring gifts like peanut butter (they can't get it there) and hip hop CDs (like the double CD "History of Rap" collection that we created, Stephanie suggested), the trip advisor (and probably Vincent's favorite teacher - same teacher he decided with him not to go to the Kentucky United Nations Assembly - see "Difficult week"). The trip seems more like a real possibility now. I also got to talk with my sister, whose son suffered somewhat mysterious breathing difficulties this past weekend in the midst of a very busy weekend for them. My sister is preparing for some improvisational dance performances. Over the weekend, they called 911 and had a squad car take my nephew to the hospital when I couldn't breath. The oxygen in the squad car seemed to improve his condition a lot. My sister chalked it up to her stress and his asthma and allergies but it's a little unclear, which is a tad worrisome.