A change would do you good . . .

. . . as my friend Sheryl Crow likes to say. So I got a big haircut and it has, as a matter of fact, done me good. I feel like a new woman.

Before:

And after:

Here are my four 10-inch pontytails (mailed off to Locks of Love) -- and also Simone's foot.

I was curious about how much all that hair weighed (I felt tons lighter), so I put it on my little kitchen scale:

6 ounces!

This was my third donation to Locks of Love, which means that I've now grown and cut off nearly 3 feet of hair (donations have been 10-12 inches each). Weird, huh? That's a lot of hair.

Illini Basketball

Melissa and I were thrilled to go to our first University of Illinois men's basketball game this week. The game was Wednesday night against Penn State. We had awesome seats on the first row behind the pep band. (The above photo is a random image from the Internet - not our actual view of the basketball court.) We were expecting a really good game since both teams were nationally ranked. The Illini had been playing very well at home and were ranked second in the Big Ten Conference.

As luck would have it, the game turned out to be one of the Illini's worst ever! The final score was 38-33 (or close to it). Penn State won, and both teams had abysmal shooting percentages. During the last couple of minutes of the game, the refs made a few "bad" calls, and the crowd erupted into boos and curses. The word that comes to mind is pandemonium. But we still had fun!

Happy V-Day

I hope all of you reading this had a lovely V-day yesterday! Mike and I had a great V-week. On Wednesday evening we got to give a presentation to the young women at our church about healthy relationships and marriages. It was a lot of fun to prepare together -- recalling how we met, what we used to do together when we were dating and engaged, and then reliving our wedding day through the (literally) hundreds of photos we have. We had a good time with the girls, talking about what makes family relationships and friendships most rewarding. One of the girls decorated these cupcakes for us with our names on them:


(After I took the picture, Michael ate all three of these cupcakes in a matter of about 5 minutes.)

Yesterday we had a hot date and exchanged small V-day gifts. This was part of Michael's gift to me:

He's so thoughtful. A few weeks ago I said something silly about needing "all the chapstick in the world" in order to have a stick in every necessary place (in all my bags, pockets, drawers, etc.). So I got this sweet "I HEART U" Valentine.

For our hot date, we had a yummy dinner at Milo's, went out dancing, and then saw Coraline (in 3-D) with some friends. Very fun.

Work-related news: I'm working on a project right now to test the usability and usefulness of library video tutorials at University of Illinois, and it's keeping me really busy. I usually work about 20 hours/week (plus classes and homework), but last week I worked almost 30. The usability testing is going well so far, and I'm learning a lot about what students think about our online instruction materials. I'll be reporting the results of this study at ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) next month in Seattle.

Weather-related news: we had a few days this month of abnormally high temperatures (highs near 70), but now winter is back. Simone uses our desk lamp as a heat lamp to get through the winter months. :)