Southern Summers

Every summer I'm amazed at how slowly time seems to roll by...but then I look around, and another week - or two - have gone. Summer is the time of year that used to mean laziness, free time. The past few years it's meant either a.) time to take some extra classes or b.) time to work more to make some extra cash to pay for the classes in the fall. As a result, my lazy days of sitting in the warm sun by a pool seem to have disappeared. I haven't even made it to the pool in the past month, and it's definately been hot enough. Although I have to admit, the weather doesn't seem to be nearly as hot as it used to be. We haven't even hit 100 degreess for the past few years! My poor yankee of a husband almost dies when it hits 95...I wonder how he'll feel when the temperature soars like that again...but until then....I need a mint julip. Or at least a pina colada.

Hurricanes, Underwater Basket Weaving and More

Finally! done with another class...now I can try and enjoy what's left of my summer. Just two short months and I'll be back to trekking down to Tuscaloosa again a couple of times a week. And just as I'm ready to go out and celebrate, The Great God of Meterology and Freaky Weather Conditions has decided that I need to be stuck indoors as Dennis takes over the minds of everyone in the state. Somehow I'm supposed to go to work and get payroll done Monday morning....if I can make it through 40 mile an hour winds and possibly no power. Some things I've found on the web today: There apparently is a college program devoted to underwater basket weaving - they have a whole slew of classes on it, and one even requires scuba certification! A long time ago, after ingesting many drugs and staring intently into a waving candle flame (ok I made that up, but it's the only explanation I can think of) , a group in California thought that Led Zepplin should meet Gilligan's Island. The result? Stairway to Gilligan.

So much news in the past day.....London Olympic Games, Tropical Storm Cindy (well, that's news if you live in Alabama), Bush and the G8 (I'd be glad to have him out of the news, but sometimes my choices don't count...)

And then there's SUV The Musical.

Ok, maybe it's not stop-the-presses news. And maybe a lot of people already know about it. And it won't end world hunger, or anything so noble as that. But I had to laugh just reading about it.

Made it through the 4th celebrations; only a slight tendency for my head to try and fall off of my shoulders this morning. The margarita effects were not helped by the fact that I had an hour and a half meeting on web development this morning with less than a cup of coffee for fuel. Why they decided to put me on this committee...I'll never understand that one. I have absolutely NO web experience.... but I've got my own pages to rewrite......we have less than a month to get this thing rolling...Talk about a crash course...maybe I should ask about installing a coffee-maker on my desk. And a cot in the breakroom.

When I decided to be a stepmother I knew that there would be moments.All kinds of moments; and there have been many of them - mostly good, thank the gods. My mom told me that if I had to jump into the middle of child-rearing, than jumping in when the child is 13 was probably one of the hardest ages I could pick. Boy, oh boy... We have my stepson this weekend. When we picked him up from his mom, they had a surprise! We also get to have two additional teenage boys in the house tonight. Yep, they planned a sleep-over - they talked it over with all the mom's - and got everyone's permission but ours. After laying down a couple of laws (The four poster solid cherry bed was NOT made for you to jump on!!), I've made them cookies, given them soda (caffeine and sugar free, of course - if they had any more energy, we wouldn't need power plants in the Southeast anymore), chased them around outside with a hose (the neighbors weren't too crazy about that activity) and now my husband is doing his fatherly duty by taking them to the pool. He said he's going to wear them out. I think we all know who will wear out first. I read a short story by D.H. Lawrence this morning - The Fox . I've loved his poetry, read some of his novels and a couple of his short stories. This was little more.... disturbing, though. For some reason, his characters always disturb me a little, they get under my skin and drive me crazy with the way they constantly do things that seem the complete opposite of what he wants us to believe of their personalities. Reading his stories exhausts me, because I'm always mentally urging the characters to act more like themselves (or my perception of them) and do the opposite of what I know they are going to do. Kind of like raising a teenager, huh?

Heard a great story last night on NPR on med school students and the cadavers they worked on. I was surprised by a lot of things in this story, but most of all by how attached the students get to their subjects. Over the course of ten weeks, the students learn all of their body's secrets - and see first hand how they lived and died. One student talked about how hard his subject had fought cancer, and how that affected his view of death. Even more surprising is the memorial service that the school holds every year in honor of the people who donated their bodies, and the families that come back year after year to participate. Kind of heavy listening for the car ride home after a full day of work, but still intriguing.

I've been an organ donor since I got my first Driver's License, and it's something that I feel very strongly about. I have friends that won't consider it because of their religious views, and a husband convinced that his body won't be fit for any type of research by the time he's done with it. But there is more than one option. If your organs aren't fit to be used again, give your whole body to a medical school and let the students practice on your body. If you think that God needs your body to be all in one place so he can raise you up again - well, He's supposed to have done more impressive things than re-assmeble a couple of body parts. And what about people who have been burned up in fires, or.......ok, enough about religion.

Donate your Organs.

Or your whole body.

Just do something.

I'm in the middle of the third week on my new job. So far, so good. I haven't broken any laws, and they haven't pissed me off. Yet. Of course, considering I technically work for the government now, I'm sure it's only a matter of time. So as I'm [cough] working on a bibliography today, I (as usual) kept running into information that had nothing whatsoever to do with the subject at hand (Which might be good, because this bibliography is going to put the professor to sleep - nevermind the students). This, however, will not make it onto my list of facts about military leadership: In ancient Rome, it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.