phones, cars, birthdays, and hearts

so, the big news this week that is unrelated to the state of the union address is that pennsylvania is coming closer and closer to banning cell phones while driving. i don't know if this is happening on other states, but texting while driving seems to be the real newsmaker here. there have been a string of phone-and-text related car accidents here that prompted the efforts. i remember when cell phone use while driving was a big story in des moines (i remember, of course, because i made the cover of the whatever section was reporting it that week). i don't know if it was because texting wasn't that big of a deal, but it seemed like the discussion was kind of limited to talking on your phone while driving - and kind of skewed in the direction of "things women do while driving other than drive," but that's a different post. however, it seems like that vision may be a bit incorrect as well. apparently moving from iowa to missouri to pennsylvania meant moving among three states that were all kind of behind in the cell-phone-use legislature. and maybe still are. in any case, i think this is what my mom is talking about when she says that you can only control yourself, but you should always be on the lookout for "the other guy."

i am determined that i will schedule more families to come in for my dissertation study this weekend. we had one family drop out of the longitudinal study altogether (not ultimately surprising, as they didn't participate in the last 2 phases) and another family move to colorado. so. . . that's not helpful. but this thing has got, got, GOT to get going. jeremy said the trick is to call on the weekends when families are actually home. so, i will be going into the lab to do that tomorrow. keep your fingers crossed.

otherwise the only plans for the coming days are lacey's birthday party on saturday (her birthday's on monday for those of you who are suddenly wondering) and getting a lot of work done. march and april are apparently going to be the months of ridiculousness this year, with the ISIS conference in baltimore, some talks for different groups on campus, and my grant due on april 8th. yuck. please don't be shocked if those months contain a steep decline in blogging.

oh, and i have to show off my mail from this week. i got this heartwarming gift from gabriel at my door on tuesday. it is so wonderful and i love it so much. i didn't even know that he knew how to make stuff like this!! very cool, anyway.