Lunar eclipse and grandparents!

I woke the family up at 6:30 am. "Kids, it's a full lunar eclipse! You have to come see it--the next one won't be for 3 more years." The forecast had said mostly cloudy, but the sky was clear. We bundled up in our winter coats and headed out to the park right behind our house until the moon was no longer hidden behind trees.

It was an impressive sight. We had several minutes of seeing the moon in full eclipse, and then the sun started to show on the edge of the moon. We stayed for about 10 more minutes before it was time to get ready for school.

I've been having a lot of stress dreams, some related to my upcoming travels (somehow I arrive at the wrong city), some completely random (getting chased by great white sharks in downtown Chicago). Now that my parents are here, I hope those stress dreams will recede. The kids are going to have SO much fun with them.

They arrived with a car packed so full they couldn't see out their rear-view mirror. They carried out hundreds of pounds of produce; several dozen quart jars of applesauce, apple cider, salsa, pasta sauce; jams and jellies; frozen berries. All from their garden, of course.

My dad brought leatherworking supplies and raw cherry wood to make more simulator supplies. My mom brought beads and wire for making 3D animals. We have tea sets and fancy cake molds and all sorts of treats stuffed in our cupboards.

I rode my bike all over town today: drop off Ivy and come back home. Realize that Ivy forgot her lunch so bike to school and back again in the morning. Bike to the county courthouse to vote, only to realize that our town no longer has any voting in the downtown area, so I had to bike out to the county fairgrounds and back to vote. Then bike to pick Ivy up from school and back.

I'm quite frustrated that our county courthouse has recently moved all of its offices out of town. We have this gorgeous courthouse right in the center of town that now has been abandoned in favor of sterile, cheap office space way out of town, completely inaccessible except by car on a busy highway.

This mentality drives me crazy! Before, all of the services done in a courthouse (property taxes, records searches, passports, etc) were accessible to the majority of the city residents on foot (if you take a 1 mile radius as a reasonable walking distance). Now, I would say that less than 0.1% of the city's residents can get to the courthouse offices on foot--there are no sidewalks, no bike paths, and it's several miles out of town. Ugh. Stupid American car culture.

And we now have the same issue--there are no longer any polling stations actually in the center of town, like there used to be. The closest one was at the county fairgrounds, which are on the outskirts of town. Again, how are people who don't have cars supposed to vote?