Quick! Push the skeleton back in!

Walking in the front door of my house on a warm late summer evening when the front porch light is on is like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where blondy has to walk through the unlit secret passage way, her feet crunching something the whole way, until she is able to light a lamp and discover every inch of every surface is covered in very large bugs. Except at my house it's moths. Moths everywhere. They cling to every inch. And as hard as you may try to leave them on the outside, some are going to get through the door with you. Then it turns into the scene from Tommy Boy, where Tommy leaves the window open and then Richard is chasing moths around the cheap hotel room with a vacuum cleaner sucking them up. Incidentally, who's ever had a vacuum cleaner in their hotel room?

The first full week of school is almost complete and I am alredy exhausted. Not to the point where I am getting to work late yet (the year is still young), but I get home and plant myself on my bed at 6 and stay there all night long fighting sleep while cradling my computer in my lap. I fill the time by playing solitaire, checking Facebook and other blogs, playing more solitaire, hidden object games, or doing what I did last night: editing my old blog posts. I officiall reached a new level of nerdiness while cleaning up posts 51-117. Like anyone will even read them again, but for some reason I just had to do it. I've thought about having my blog posts printed - it is a good record of what I've done for the last two years, and since I've gotten out of the habit of scrapbooking anything about my life, the blog is a close replacement when you add in the fancy backgrounds and such. I would be mortified if I had printed my blog without editing it. I was surprised at all of the capitalization, sentence structure, punctuation, sentence fragment and style errors I had! I start a lot of senteneces with 'so' and 'but', which is OK sometimes if you know what you are doing, but apparently I don't. I changed posts that had now cryptic messsages to other bloggers (OK, mostly Megan) or references to my sisters' blog posts that are now long lost in

the indexes of months past. To give myself some credit, I have gotten better about writing presentably as the months and years have gone on, but I am haunted by my mumblings that were still so very much in sloppy-copy format but my finger still clicked on the "publish post" button. The SHAME! Did blogging become more about the reward of comments than the quality of content? Like Skinner's experiment with pigeons? Push the button, get a treat? And I call myself and English teacher, I who chide my students about the revising they rarely do! I was about to write a post making fun of all the people on Facebook and blogs (NONE of which are written by people I have listed on my sidebar - I promise!) who write so poorly and don't seem to notice or care, only to be humbled while looking at the skeletons in my own writing closet. What is it that they say about pointing fingers? Something about being sucked up a vacuum tube in a cheap hotel with an undisclosed number of fingers pointing back at you?

You may want to think twice before wearing the color purple any time soon.

There is a long time saying in Green Bay that the G on the Packer helmet stands for "God's Team." There is a more recent saying (among other things) in Green Bay that Brett Favre is a lousy, stinkin' traitor for signing yesterday with the mortal enemies, the Minnesota Vikings, of the Pack.
There was a tornado outside of Minneapolis today.
Lesson: Don't mess with God's Team.

Waddling Cats Make Lousy Drivers

I watched a cat waddle down the sidewalk on my way to check the mail this evening. It wasn't the graceful hip swaying saunter that most cats have - more like a drunken stumble down the yellow line. But when I got close, the cat had no problem running away, so I can only assume that the cat didn't get giddy off of sour milk from the neighbors garbage can.

This makes me think of the driving ability of the jack-a (not the neighborhood one) who hit my car in the high school parking lot last Tuesday. Both drivers side doors. And then ran away. I mean drove away. He or she couldn't see strait enough to get into the parking space, stumbled into my car, and then had no problem driving away. But since I didn't notice it until late that evening, I had left the scene of the crime, the police couldn't do anything really except make a damages claim, and I am left paying the deductible. Which is a lot when you don't have anything. And for most of the people I know on most days even when you do. But I'm lucky that's all I have to pay, since the damages are $2,479. Do you know how much cat food that it? It was probably a student (volleyball and football practice were going on and the lot was full) with either no license, no brain or natural driving ability, or no decency. OK, definitely no decency. I like to imagine myself approaching him (or her) and calling him a coward to his face in front of his peers, and then cursing him with never getting a girlfriend. EV-ER. Cuz that's like totally the biggest deal in high school. At least, I think. But I'm too tired now to think clearly. Maybe I should get behind the wheel of a car. Or at least strut my way to the mailbox and look for that cat - he might need someone to help him walk him home.

Vive La Fiesta!

As a last enthusiastic "hurrah!" of summer, I traveled to Oxnard, California to visit my brother before school starts and I am unable to go anywhere. Mark is stationed at the Ventura Co/Port Hueneme Navy Base there. This base is strictly for the Navy Seabees (Construction Battalions = CB = Seabee) so there are no ships, though it is on the coast. During my visit, he marched in the Santa Barbara Old Spanish Days Festival parade. I don't get to see my brother in action much, and unfortunately miss out on more deployments and graduations and promotions than I actually get to see. Needless to say, it was a great privilege to see Mark in his summer dress uniform and do his thing. He really does make me proud, showing a maturity and a respectful seriousness that a lot of the other guys (and gals) he works with don't have or don't understand much about in both the way they do their job and the way they treat others around them. Here are some highlights of visiting with him, the festival parade, and the Santa Barbara area (I love LOVE taking picture, so if you get bored you're just boring).


Mark asked me to straiten the medals on his uniform. He meant absolutely nothing by asking me becuase he was running late and I was sitting around. But I felt very honored to be doing it for some reason. I had to take a picture!

The honor guard on their way to the parade staging grounds

Doesn't he look swell?

Mark's girlfriend's parents - well, you can't really see her mom I guess.

This is one of the largest equestrian parades in the country. And boy, did it ever entertain! I've never seen so many horses in one place at one time before, and the beauty of these animals is unbelievable. These horses were ready to dance, and most of the Spanish groups coming through had their own mariachi bands following to which the horses would prance to the beat set by the musicians. It really was something to see!

For a few dollars you could buy a fiesta egg - a hollowed out egg shell, filled with confetti, wrapped in bright tissue paper. And then you crack them on your head. Vive la fiesta!
I watched the end of the parade from a hill above the parade starting point. There were great views of the city and the marina, and after meeting up with Mark we walked the beach, the pier, and State Street where festival revelers gathered, caping off the night with some Indian food (though just about every other restaurant downtown had Mexican place specials for the celebrations). This festival is a week long, and I wish I could have seen the dancing competitions, music exhibitions, the rodeos, the horse shows, or even the carnival. But the little time I had to be there was totally worth it.

I love parked bycicles! These were on the SB pier.