A Moving Experience

An amazing video followed by a thought-provoking quote, something to ponder as we welcome the New Year....

"Night is drawing nigh. How long the road is. But, for all the time the journey has already taken, how you have needed every second of it." --Dag Hammarskjold

Remembering Christmas

If I have your address, you probably received this card in the mail by now (if you'd like to receice a card next year, send me your snail mail address and I will put you on my list). The photo is a little different. I played in Photoshop a bit and I really like the results, even though the changes I made were quite subtle and very simple.

A very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you...

Christmas-that magic blanket
that wraps itself about us,
that something so intangible
that it is like a fragrance.
It may weave a spell of nostalgia.

Christmas may be a day of feasting,
or of prayer, but always it will be
a day of remembrance--
a day in which we think of everything
we have ever loved.
--Augusta E. Rundell

Winter Wonderland Fascimile

(and Beware the Long Arm of the Law)

Here are a few photos of the teency amount of snow we received last week. I was awake at 3 a.m. and went outside to watch the white stuff falling from the sky.

Pitiful, ain't it?

If you look closely, you can see my footprint in the right corner of this shot. Want to know what shoes I was wearing? I had on a pair of flip-flops! My feet were freezing!

This is the stump of one of the cedar trees taken out by Hurricane Rita.

Now, about the long arm of the law. My daughter was in Sam's and she saw two older women looking like they were about to engage in a throw-down, or at least a shouting match. It seems one of them thought the other one had cut in line at the check-out. I asked what they looked like and she said they looked like they came straight from her grandmother's Sunday School class. I don't think anyone's "witness" was tarnished, as all they did was shake their finger (their pointer finger) at each other! Daughter did not feel the need to intervene in this altercation (if you remember, she recently graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice, and now she feels obligated to uphold the law everywhere she goes!).

But when she was driving home, at a particularly busy intersection, she saw two grown men with their windows down, yelling at each other and pointing (that) finger (not their pointer finger) at each other. There was a lot of traffic and so she pulled out her badge she has to get into court and discreetly covered the edges so the men did not know it was just paper and then proceeded to act as though she was calling someone on her cell phone to make a report. It did not take long for the men to roll up their windows and not another harsh word was said.

And then my mother had the story to tell about how two older women in WalMart got into in the food place and one was picking up a chair when a man intervened and saved the day (the police came later and took them both away). All of this leads us to wonder, what is it with senior citizens and their tempers these days? Lawsie.

Also, in another reference to the long arm of the law, we saw my son's first juvenile probation officer this weekend. She remembered him and us and seemed glad to hear that he was doing well. Sometimes I wonder if they get tired of hearing mostly bad news about their young clients. We were fortunate to always have good experiences with any of the authorities we had to deal with during that time.

Oh yeah, I put a "follow this blog" thing on my sidebar. If you want to do it, all you do it click and then it does something and your little icon is there. I am not sure what the point of the thing is, but I thought I'd try it out and see what happens. Blogger is making it so easy to add a bunch of junk to your sidebar these days!

Snow! Tomorrow!

My oldest heard it on the radio. My husband saw it in the newspaper. Snow, coming our way! Both of them sometimes tend to make things sound more sure than they are so I wanted to read the article for myself. Bottom line--possible flurries. IMO, the word "flurries" does not even deserve to be spoken in the same sentence as the word "snow". When spoken together, as in "snow flurries tomorrow" all people hear around here is the word "snow". Then excitement abounds, along with stories of how we behaved the last time it snowed (and stuck to the ground), which was somewhere around 1992, if my memory serves me right. At the present moment, it is raining and cold.

It is finals week at work and yesterday and today, I proctored a couple of finals. One of them was a Psyc 101 class, where one of the students taking the final was a big tall basketball player. You know what I love about some of the male student athletes I have seen so far on the job? When they have to take a test, or ask you for special permission to get in a class that is already filled (and they forgot on the way over from their advisor's office what it was they were supposed to ask for), if you watch real closely, you can almost see the wheels turning in their brains! (Oh that is a shameful observation! But notice that I did not say all male student athletes are that way!)

I also enjoy interacting with the international students. I think it must take great courage to come so far to school, and in some cases, barely knowing the language. I am amazed at how they can still manage to make good grades in spite of English not being their first language. Today, while proctoring the exam, I had to try and explain to an Oriental student what the word "depict" meant. That was a tough one to be asked to explain, given the cirumstances. Poor thing, I gave an example and asked if that helped and she said "yes" but I don't know if she really understood, or was just being polite. I helped her with a registration problem at the beginning of the semester and now when we see each other out on campus, we always speak to each other. She probably gets a lot of impatient stares tossed her way so I do try to go out of my way to be kind to her and others like her.

And finally, a comment or two to Tab Calhoun, formerly known as Simple Blog writer: When I signed on to do this post, I saw I had a comment from you that needed to be moderated. I think I needed to "approve" it because it was a comment on an older post. Anyway, you said:

"Soda is the devil's juice. Whatever vocabulary you use, it's bad for you and your new-new doc is right about that.

Albert, huh? I was just wondering if muses have to be women and you answered that questions."

The devil's juice, huh? I like that! I'll have to remember the description if I am ever tempted to take a swig again!

Spooky Rach mentioned her muse's name once, and it was a male name. I decided if she could have a male muse, so could I!