For SpookyRach

Rach, I think I found your long lost cousin! She graduated in nursing, with honors, apparently, judging by the gold and blue cords around her neck. The odd thing is the pink bow on top of the skeleton's head (which you can see better by clicking in the photo.) The only thing I can figure is that she must have been raised by Mindy's long lost maiden Aunt Barbie.


My own daughter was going to put "Hi, Mom" on her cap, but they stressed in Friday's rehearsal not to do that. She is a good, rule-following girl, so she did not do it. Someone else did do it, and I got a picture, but it was too blurry to use. There were several "rule breakers" in the crowd. Some of those caps must have taken a lot of work to decorate. They were entirely covered with sparkles and sequins.

I don't know if many of you are familiar with the "Boudreaux-Thibodeaux" jokes that get told, but when they announced that Sarah Boudreaux-Thibodeaux had earned her degree, the whole crowd cracked up! Poor Sarah Boudreaux-Thibodeaux graciously took a bow and went on to receive her diploma. Other than that, the graduation ceremony was a bit boring.

Here are a few corny Boudreaux-Thibodeaux jokes:

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux decided to go fishing one morning at the pond in back of Boudreaux's house. It was dark and when they reached the pond they realized they wanted to cross to the other side. But they couldn't walk around and had no boat or pirogue to cross in. Thibodeaux turned to Boudreaux and said, "Mais Boudreaux, how in the heck we gonna get across." Boudreaux said, "No problem, I'm gonna shine this here flashlight across the water and you gonna walk on the beam of light all the way across." Thibodeaux then says, "Mais, Boudreaux, you must think I'm stupid or something, cause just when I get halfway across you gonna turn off the light."

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux were taking a trip to Baton Rouge. On their way they saw a sign that said Baton Rouge Left. So Boudreaux and Thibodeaux went home.

One day Boudreaux saw Thibodeaux and asked him why he was so bruised up. Thibodeaux replied that he had been riding a bull, and his foot got stuck when he fell off. The bull kept dragging him around until the Wal-Mart manager came and unplugged it.

Boudreaux and Thibodeaux had bought their own airline. On their first flight from Lafayette to Jamaica, they ran into motor trouble. Thibodeaux came on the speaker and said, "We are going to have to make an emergency crash landing. We are over the ocean so all of you that can swim please move to the left side of the plane, and all of you that can't swim, please move to the right side. As soon as the plane hits the water I want all of the people on the left to swim for shore. All of you on the right, well, Captain Boudreaux and I would like to thank you for flying Cajun Airlines.

I Believe She's Done It!

"Really, it was a piece of cake!"

All the finals have been taken and it looks like she will be graduating May 17th with a degree in Criminal Justice, with almost enough hours for a double major in Sociology. She hopes to work for Probation and Parole. Statistics class almost did her in. She's a smart young woman, but she has always had a bit of a mental block about math. It took a little hard work and a teary-eyed talk with her young Chinese professor for her to make it through the class--and maybe more than a few prayers. We're glad she did.

She's been under a great deal of stress, and has not been feeling well the last few days so when an older man at the gas station told her she'd better stop talking on her cell phone or else she was going to blow herself up, she politely told him that was an urban legend. And when the old man would not let it go, she pulled up the Snopes website on her phone and walked over to the man and let him read for himself that she was in no real danger of blowing herself up. I think she might have been a little less patient with him than I would have liked, but I guess someone had to straighten the old fart out! Where she got her chutzpah, I do not know, but she certainly has it and I believe it will serve her well.

I'm very proud of her and we will be busy celebrating for a few days so I will be scarce around here.

Happy Mother's Day to All

Mother's Day lunch--fresh barbecued goat. Yumm, yumm. Want some?

Ginger Lily, from my mother's garden.

Actually, we call this flower "Sharon" because that is my friend's name who shared the bulbs with my mother.

I got a new cell phone today with a camera on it. Things are about to get interesting around here! Now I will have a camera handy almost all the time. I've been playing with the phone all day, putting goofy photos of my loved ones on it that will pop up when they call. I also downloaded one ring tone. It plays "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." I am still trying to decide whether I should have gotten myself the unlimited text option. Before now, I have only had a very basic cell phone and it suited me just fine. In fact, just last night I was saying to my youngest daughter that I did not know if I was going to like this new phone or not. I think I'm gonna like it. It's pink! I don't know what has happened with me and the color pink. I used to shy away from pink. It was just too girly-girly for me. I've always been a bit of a tom-boy, but now that I am older, I seem to be embracing my pink side (but the tom-boy in me is still rolling her eyes about it)!

Now, do you want the truth about the goat? We did not barbecue the poor fellow. We were at Academy Sporting Goods and when we came out, this pickup truck was parked next to our car. About the time I saw the cage in the bed of the truck and was wondering "what the heck?", the goat moved his head. I would have been so mad at myself if I had forgotten I now had a camera just for moments like this so I grabbed my phone and snapped the photo.

04/04/08 Sunday Morning Collage

I have neglected my journaling habit for several months now and I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing a bit in it every day. Sometimes if I have nothing in particular to write about I throw a quick collage together like this one. I scanned it and manipulated it a bit in Photoshop and now it looks totally different than the one in my journal.

BTW, the video in the previous post was filmed in Andalucia, Spain. The walkway was originally built in 1901 and "now serves as an approach to Makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Charro." I think they call the walkway El Camino del Rey. Here is a link that gives a little more of the history of the trail. Jenny, don't be booking your flight yet. People have been prohibited from using the trail for over 15 years.
http://www.bamjam.net/Spain/Chorro.html

I Feel Better Now. I Think.

I have been dealing with a killer ear infection since Saturday afternoon. Today is the first day I have been relatively pain-free. Yesterday I had to hand the phone over to my office partner to take a message for me, I could not hear out of either ear what the woman on the phone was saying. That was a bit unnerving. Hopefully by the weekend I will be back to my normal selective hearing!

This evening I came home from work and chose to lay down for just a minute. My husband came home a little later and last I saw of him, he was sitting in his blue chair in the bedroom. Somewhere between then and "nowish", I feel deeply asleep. I was dreaming crazy "Alice in Wonderlandish" dreams (wish I could remember it, I could use the material!). At 7:45, I woke up, looked anxiously at the clock and jumped out of bed, declaring to my "dressed for work" husband, "IT"S SEVEN FORTY-FIVE!!"

His droll and husbandly response? "I know." I then asked him in an accusing voice (since I have to be to work at 8:00), "Why'd you let me sleep so long? And slowly my dulled mind came to life as I realized the evening of my my present day had not yet passed. And boy, was I going to be messed up at bedtime.

And then? In that totally discombobulated condition, I stumbled to the den to read emails and watch this crazy video. I was totally awake by the time I walked that walk, let me tell you. In fact, to be totally crass about it all, if you will excuse me, I think I may need to go check my britches!

Close Only Counts in Hand Grenades & Horse Shoes

I don’t think I will be offered the job I interviewed for the Monday before last. I thought Francois (not his real name) said he was going to make a decision by the end of the week and I had not heard anything so I left a message for him on Monday and Tuesday to follow up. He had specifically said that he would get back with everyone so as not to leave anyone hanging and when someone says something like this I expect them to do it. However I must have misunderstood because when he returned my call on Wednesday he said that he was in the process of doing background checks on the first candidate and he usually did not tell any applicants what was going on until everything was finalized. But since I seemed so interested he wanted to let me know that I am third in a line of twelve applicants, hence my belief that I will not be offered the job. I imagine the position will go to number one or number two, unless he discovers that one of them was an axe murderer and the other was charged with income tax invasion or something equally serious! Nevertheless, I got practice in dealing with a formal interview and built my confidence level up a bit.

So, what was the job, you ask? Well, it was officially titled administrative coordinator 2 in our civil service language. The work would have been carried out in the History Department of our local university. The head of the department is a thirty-something PhD guy who is originally from France and has the accent to prove it. It involved a lot of varied responsibilities, including keeping several young professors in line as well as a couple of student workers and keeping track of the department budget and various and sundry other responsibilities, essentially running the History Department, in the words of Francois. I think I would have enjoyed doing most of that and I would have been a good fit for most of the duties involved. However, the pay was at the low end of the salary listed and worse, it was less than I am making now. If I had been offered the job, I would have lobbied for a small raise before I took the position.

There is another opening that I will apply for and we will see how that goes. I am looking at the civil service jobs because they do have insurance benefits and retirement, neither of which my current job offers. The real reason I am looking for another job is that is has become crystal clear to me that my ethics and the ethics of the people I am working for do not align and will never align. It has to do with taxes. I have seen and heard too much that I believe is flat out wrong and I don’t want to stay. It’s not my place to discuss their business on my blog so that is about all I have to say about that.

In the meantime I will be patient and take my time looking. I will not take the first thing I am offered and I will trust that the right job is out there for me, one that I will enjoy and will pay what I need to make--one that will be a good fit for me (Can you tell I have already had a serious talk with myself about this?).

Nervous Yammering

I have a job interview Monday at 11:30. I have to think of my excuse for why I am leaving work for a few hours Monday morning. I will run home and get dolled up (we wear company polo shirts and jeans where I presently work), go for the interview, run back home and get "undolled" and then head back to work.

I've kind of let my appearance (and my wardrobe) go in the last few years, so I had to put together an outfit, got a haircut, and put one of those temporary colors in my hair to color the gray (I've only done that once or twice before--I don't have that much gray!). To my surprise, the color lightened my dark hairs along with coloring the grays and now I have a reddish glow to my hair, which is what the box said the color would do. Actually the box said: use this color for "radiant color that will set you aglow". I don't know about glowing, but I was practically delirious laughing at my almost red-headed self as I was drying my hair!

Hubby was the one who said "maybe you should get some of that stuff and color your gray hair". He never tells me what to do, but in the past when I have colored my hair he has not been too thrilled with me doing so. So when he put the idea in my head, I jumped on it.

I had a weigh-in at Curves and I have lost 3 little pounds and a half inch in a couple of places and have lowered the amount of fat in my body. How they know I have lowered the fat, I do not know, but I will take all the positive news I can get. I am slowly making better food choices.