ReformationUnderway

I had the opportunity to take my family up to central Ohio on Saturday. My daughter had her first “away” gymnastics meet. Her competition was scheduled for Sunday morning early, so we didn’t really have a reason to rush on the way up. This was the first full meet I was able to attend, as her first meet took place in Nashville the same weekend we were hosting NCCT’08, and my responsibilities there kept me away from her meet. I obviously couldn’t miss this one, so the whole family made the journey. We saw a good amount of snow along the roadsides on the way up Saturday, along with some ice coating the trees in northern Kentucky, although the roads were trouble-free. On the way back Sunday afternoon, there had been more snowfall, and we drove through some moderate snow for most of our time in Ohio and the first hour or so of Kentucky, but thankfully managed to get out of the snow before the temperatures got cold enough to cause any real problems.

It’s amazing what six-year-olds will do without fear. She went out three times in front of the crowd (I would guess there were about 80-100 parents and other competitors there while she was performing her routines) and the judges and was seemingly unaffected by the eyes that were trained on her. Individually, she finished a very respectable 4th in her age group. (I think there were about 12 in her age group...) And her team finished 2nd overall, so they were able to bring a trophy back to the gym where they train.

The only other thing I had to do while in Ohio was try something that one of my co-workers has been pushing as the best thing ever, so we made a trip to Bob Evans for lunch, and I ordered some corn meal mush. If you’ve not heard of corn meal mush, I’ll do my best to explain it. Think of corn bread that wasn’t allowed to rise (though I’m not sure that mush is baked as a loaf), and then sliced less than a 1/4 inch thick and deep fried. Then it’s served with maple syrup. While it is good, I’m afraid that it was overhyped like everything else from Ohio is by this particular co-worker.

Bottom-line, I’m not sure who decided that mid-February was the perfect time to host a gymnastics meet in central Ohio, as the weather can certainly be dicey, but that’s where we found ourselves.