Decision Made

After much debate, we are heading to my sister's house in Houston around 1:00 A.M. tonight, heeding a recommended evacuation. They have put off the decision for a mandatory evacuation until tomorrow at noon. I will be surprised if they don't order everyone out, so we are going to get ahead of the game a bit. We were going to the country like we did after Rita but the forecast looks like they may get a lot more wind and rain than they did last time.

We'll be near Flutterby's sister (Bacliff, Flutterby) in the Clear Lake area if she did not have to evacuate.

And Rach, if we have to leave Houston, can I bring my daughter, and my parents and my sister and her husband and my other two kids and my aunt, and one nephew and probably his girfriend? And oh yeah, SEVEN dogs??? Thanks so much for the hospitable offer!!

I'll be back when I can.

(Edited to add: I meant to leave the link to the TV station in case any of you are interested in seeing what is going on.-- www.kplctv.com

Gustav Update

We expect to hear sometime tomorrow whether we will have a mandatory evacuation. If it is mandatory, we will evacuate. We have 72 hours after they give the announcement to leave. We will be heading to the country again, about 75 miles away from here. Man, I hope we don't have to leave. The thought of getting in that line of traffic and taking over 8 hours to travel 75 miles...well, I suppose I speak for the entire Gulf coast when I say none of us wants to do any of this again. But we will, if need be.

Oh Good Grief

The totally unnerving thing is, they don't really know anything yet so they keep putting out their computer models with very broad predictions. Hardly anything can be known until it at least gets in the Gulf. I try very hard not to waste my energy on speculating what is going to happen, but it is hard not to get caught up in the drama. Everybody is antsy it seems, and for good reason I suppose.

But still, I'm not ready to hear about it, talk about it, or even make a decision as to whether we will stay or leave.



I'm gonna walk with courage all right. I'm gonna walk myself to my hall bath with no windows in the center of my house and I'm gonna bring some blankets and food and water and a twin bed mattress to hide under. I'm just kidding. It is too early to decide. For now I will stay calm and try to avoid the incessant drama of the news and weather reports.

PS In case it is not clear, I am talking about Hurricane Gustav.

Psycho Babble

Here is a not very clear photo of some of the stuff I saved from the trash bin the first week at work. I was a bit hesitant to say much about the stuff because one of the women kept saying "they like to keep this stuff out of the hands of the general public" and that made me nervous since I am a member of the general public. But it turns out she was okay with me having the parts. They were going in the trash anyway, for heaven's sake.


Here is a hand. If you can recognize that fact, I suppose that means we have ascertained that you do indeed possess some measure of intelligence.

You can probably also recognize that the puzzle below is an apple. But the pieces do not fit together as they should. What is up with that, and what does it say about a person's intelligence when they can't make the puzzle fit properly (because obviously the puzzle is faulty and they threw that in to make people stumble)?

Here we have a tiny, ugly rubber doll. I have no idea what her presence means in the whole scheme of things. Look at her eyes! She looks slightly startled. I have no idea why. They also had little tiny forks and spoons and some buttons and thimbles in this particular kit. Oh yea, there were small blue locomotives and little cars too. I have no idea what I will do with the locomotives and the cars, but I have them if a brilliant idea comes to me.

Now this is a book, about three inches by one and a half inches. It has little pictures that you take out. If I remember right, there is one picture that does not go with the other ones and you have to choose which one does not match. I really like the little pockets and I want to do something artsy-fartsy with the little book. I only got one little book. There were two but I shared the other one with one of the professors (not only am I intelligent, but I am also kind!).

Here we have a lady. I intentionally left her ear out because the hole in her head amuses me. She looks kind of scary, doesn't she?

Here is her ear.

I will admit, the man puzzle was a bit challenging. He looks rather stern. To the right you can see the little girl puzzle. I scored several of those. I don't think I got any little boy puzzles, come to think of it. I wonder what that means. It might mean they were ugly puzzles and I just did not want them, I can't remember.

All the little puzzles are in these boxes. And the boxes were in some old briefcases with the instruction books to the test. Unfortunately, (or perhaps, fortunately) I do not have the booklets that told you how to score the tests, so I can't tell anyone how intelligent they might be.

I did get one old metal briefcase but I did not take a photo of it (too incriminating). It's pretty cool. I don't know what I am going to do with it yet but if I alter it I will show it off. And maybe some of this other stuff will eventually make into "them thangs I do" (Should I have named my Etsy store that?? Too late now!)

BTW, if you have not yet figured it out, these are all components of IQ tests, probably from the fifties or sixties. But don't worry if you had not figured that out. I can assure you, as an upstanding member of the general public, it does not reflect poorly on your intelligence, though I should also point out that I am neither licensed nor trained to discern a person's intelligence using any of these tools.

Announcement: It's a Secret

(But do tell everyone you know!)

Last September I got myself together and opened an Etsy shop. I told two people and then I got nervous and shut my mouth! Sometime during the year, I also 'fessed up to Mindy and then I clammed up again. I don't know why (well, I do know why, but I am not airing all my insecurities on my blog!).

Anyway, now I am putting the link on my sidebar and you can check it out. I've been talking to the local camera and photo developing shop for a while about this. It was finally recommended to me to try printing my "things" on metallic photo paper and I have printed a couple of them. They do look good, if I say so myself.

Hopefully inspiration will hit again and I will be able to add more as time goes on. For now, have a look, and if you know anyone who might be interested, please send them the link.

Still Happy

I want to meet the rats! I've been working now for a month and I have yet to get to go upstairs to where the rats live! School starts Monday so I imagine I will have to wait a while longer before I get up there. Thursday and Friday we dealt with students who could not get into the classes they needed or wanted because it was late registration. I suppose some of them have good reasons for registering late but as the saying goes "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." At least that is the way the saying went when I was working in the sporting goods store and people came in to order customized uniforms about two days before their first game!

It really was not bad, we got everyone situated and no one had a stroke or anything. I'm learning some of the software system as I go, and Friday I accidentally assigned one of the professors to advise herself! We were both very happy that I did it because it meant that we had figured out how to assign advisers, with one teeny tiny adjustment (put the student's name in one of the places where I had put the professor's name--nothin' to it)!

I got a small case of the giggles when two members of the basketball team came in. I was sitting at my desk looking up at them and they had to have been nearly seven feet tall. And one of them was helping the other get permitted into a class that was closed so they would not miss practice time. He had been to the office to see me earlier. They were like two scared little boys on the first day of school.

They say it will be hectic all this next week and maybe into the next one. But I am learning more about how to navigate in the software system to get the information I need and to be able to help students and professors. That feels better than having people coming in asking a thousand questions for which I have no answers!

In other news, my son celebrated two years being clean on Wednesday of last week. I am still so very thankful and proud of the progress he is making.

I want to get myself on a more regular (and interesting!) posting schedule. I'm behind on my own blog reading and commenting so if I have not been around lately it's because I have not had the time to read blogs. I hope to catch up with that tomorrow sometime.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. . .

Annie's Psychological Insight for the Day

Last week, I listened as one of the more eccentric faculty members tried to provide directions to someone on the phone for finding the CPU tower on their computer.

For over thirty minutes, the one-sided conversation I heard was an ongoing variation of this:

"Are you sitting at your desk?". . .

"All right, put your hands on your desk. Are your knees under your desk?. . .

"Now, slowly turn your knees and feet to the right. What is the first thing you hit?". . .

"No, not that! That is your power strip."

"Are you sure you are turning to the right? It's about 18 inches tall and maybe 8 inches wide. Run your hand down there."

I am not kidding, they did four or five variations of this conversation and as far as I know, the person on the phone never found her CPU tower.

I wanted to holler from my desk and tell her the CPU tower might be ON her desk rather than UNDER it, but I kept my mouth shut, which was probably a good thing.

Now, two things occur to me:

1) No matter how many times you look, you will probably never find what you are looking for if you keep looking in the same wrong direction.

2) If you have a guide while you're looking for whatever it is you are looking for, the guide's advice is only as good as her vision. If she only chooses to see in one direction, you might not find what you are looking for.

In other news, we got wind and rain from TS Edouard. I don't think he ever even made it to hurricane strength. A lot of the day care centers closed for the day and I believe the Methodists canceled a Bible Study but we at the university had to go to work (which was actually just fine by me--have I mentioned that I love my job?)

Blah, Blah, Blah

I've had some trouble deciding what I want to write about lately. Actually I have had very little inspiration and when I do get inspired I can't seem to express myself very well.

There have been some spiritual issues, and these two blog posts spoke to me a bit on the subject. The first is written by our former pastor when we lived in Houston, Sometimes (or, if for some reason you have to copy and paste the link, http://ubcsp.blogspot.com/2008/07/mrs.html). The second post is an excerpt from the book "Wide Open Spaces", written by Jim Palmer (no, not the baseball Jim Palmer!), My Year of Putting Away the Bible (or
http://www.divinenobodies.com/blog/?p=462). The book was very good. Some of you might want to check it out.

I've also been reading a book called "The Case for Religion" by Keith Ward. It is a very interesting book, but it is sometimes hard reading because the author is a scholar from Oxford and sometimes it is hard for me to follow his sentences that tend to feel "backwards" from the way they should be. As a result of reading this book, I am thinking I might see if I can audit a course in religion this semester if I can get approval in time.

In other news, my recently graduated daughter has gotten her first real job! And I can't even tell you what it is she will be doing. Well, I can tell you, but I don't yet understand it well enough to explain it! She is going to work for a non-profit agency and will be spending 20 hours a week working with CASA volunteers and another 20 hours a week assisting with forensic interviews of children. I'm very excited for her and I think she will do very well in this position.

That is about all I have today.