ECLIPSE!

Did you see the lunar eclipse this morning? It was eerie and beautiful and blood-red and spooky and a whole lot of other adjectives that won't come to mind before a third cup of coffee.

I risked Texas-sized mosquitoes, dog "patties," and May Bee's ankle-destroying craters (she's a digger) to see the moon, but she was spectacular and SO worth it!

P.S. There's another lizard (gecko?) in our house. This morning, a disembodied pinkie finger ran down the hall! (No wonder I didn't mind standing in the yard and then the street at 5:30 in the morning...the scary stuff is INSIDE the house.)

P.P.S. Keep me lifted up in prayer, please. Tonight, our Ladies' Bible Class starts the book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey, and it couldn't come at a better time!

Ultra hip.

Librarians.

That's right. Librarians. (You'll need a New York Times account to read this article...or two seconds to sign up for a free account.)

Have I ever mentioned how much I adore my job?


*On a personal note: If you are the praying kind, please keep me in your prayers. (Prayer=248.3, if you're into the Dewey Decimal System...)

Wordy Wednesday

August has been BUSY and really interesting. Not only did I do three days of staff development, but I also helped the Tech Support Center set up and check the district's computers. Our computer techs work really hard, and now the teachers who worked side-by-side with them have a new appreciation for just HOW hard! Oh, and we worked in many, many rooms/wings/buildings without air conditioning.

Without air conditioning, y'all. In Texas. In August. (Did I mention that I have a new respect for our computer tech team?)

Here are a few memories of the past week:

Server issues and cables. (Lots and lots of tangled network cables, printer cords, keyboard and mouse cords, power cords, computer phone cables, power strips, extension cords...it's a wonder I haven't dreamed about a massive tangle of cords that won't come undone!)

Gum under desks. (Crickets, too!)

Sometimes with wrappers...in every color of the rainbow...

Here's a computer lab we built...without network cables. Without DESKS, even!

"Old Age and Treachery"

This sign in one of the district's gyms cracked me up. (I worked for years with the coach who wrote it...and he's a BIG guy...so y'all feel free to point out his terrible grammar, but I'm keepin' my big mouth shut!)

In front of Woodson Early Head Start. (We worked on computers all over the district this week...offices, elementary schools, high schools, you name it!)

Elementary schools are more fun, though. Madison doesn't have any statues like this...

This giant statue reminded me of Tanzy, our city zoo's elephant who died a couple of days ago at the age of 49. Now that Tanzy is has gone to that Great Veldt in the Sky, they're going to permanently move her exhibit mate, Tanya, to another zoo. Going to the zoo just won't be the same...

Story at http://tinyurl.com/3ylqgj .

UPDATE: Oh, I forgot to tell you--the four days of hard work at Tech Support were actually FUN! You could order onion rings to go with your Harlow's burger, knowing you would work them off/sweat them off later that afternoon. (And going to Mr. Gatti's with GROWNUPS was certainly a new experience!)

Dog Days Parade!

If you missed ArtWalk in downtown Abilene tonight, you missed out!

Weather Report

Damon Lane, the Weather Hunk at KTXS, just announced that today was the hottest day of 2007 here in Abilene.

Because it hit 95.

95, people! This has been the BEST SUMMER EVER here in Abilene; meanwhile Karen is up in Virginia and North Carolina, where they're sticky and swimming in humidity and OVER 100 degrees!! (In fact, it's still 102 in Charlotte at 6:18 p.m., Eastern Time.)

Getting ready to take Miss May Bee to the "Dog Days of Summer" pet parade at ArtWalk,
me

Wordless Wednesday

Toss "that feller" in jail "by his gills."

I passed this convenience store every day on my Highway 29 commute to the Greensboro Historical Museum back in 1996 and 1997. I'll be sure to stop there next time to buy something, in hopes of seeing Alisha, the Spunkiest Tar Heel in North Carolina.

You will not be able to quit watching this video..."popo," "three packs of Newports," "I'm gonna' git that little feller," "polka dot blankie," "locked up by his gills," and "towed to the POlice."

All favorites.

:-)

SALUTE to you, Alisha! Here's hoping you have a wonderful life.

This kiss, this kiss.

from http://www.fototime.com/AAA9BD1B7EE6D6D/orig.jpg
Well, the decades-old mystery of the V-J Day kiss has finally been solved! Lois Gibson, the forensic artist credited by the Guinness World Records folks for having helped police identify more criminal suspects than any other person in history, has determined that 80 year-old Glen McDuffie is the sailor in the famous Eisenstadt photograph.

And he's a TEXAN, like we couldn't have guessed. (Okay, a Tar Heel-turned-Texan, but that's okay, too.)

Read more here. Search for video clip at ABC's Good Morning, America. (Mr. McDuffie just fell in love with Diane Sawyer. He adored her, and it was so sweet...)

Exercise update: Walked/ran a little over 2 miles with the dogs this morning, one at a time, of course. Also, May Bee went down all of the 4 slides in the park...and the scariest, twistiest one TWICE (once forwards and once backwards when she changed her mind too late). One walker stopped dead in her tracks when she saw us coming out of the tunnel slide and told me she sure wished she'd brought her camcorder!

The green-eyed monster...

Trying to keep my jealousy at bay today...since BOTH of my siblings got to hear Dad's sermon this morning! That's right--Mom and Dad are having another summer Church Homecoming as two of their chicks are spending a weekend back in the nest.

Email it to me, Dad! (It won't be the same as hearing your sermon while sitting in the same pew with a sainted mother, sweet sister, and handsome brother, but it's better than nothing.)

Love,

the lone baby bird in Texas

I love my job.

AISD librarians spent all day today and yesterday in the basement of the Ad Building, working on lessons and aligning databases. Sounds awful, right? I LOVED it.

Ask me to show you the 1st person quizzes in eLibrary. Or Charles Babbage's brain in a *photos only* search. Or the Encyclopedia Britannica video clip of an anglerfish eating lunch.

You will wish you were a librarian...and you CAN be!

Copycricket

Hey, you know how I took pictures Monday while at cricket-infested Jury Duty? How I snapped pics of the critters and put them on the Internet?

Take a look at the COVER STORY from Tuesday's Abilene Reporter-News newspaper!
http://www.reporternews.com/news/2007/jul/31/chirp-chirp-chirp/


Mr. Erdrich's photo:

Hate to whine "They copied me!," but...well...they did! (Mr. Erdrich's picture was way cooler, though, and Mr. Bethel's story was better researched.) He spanked me in writing style and "interestingness," too. Come to think of it, the only thing mine had that his lacked was the "Margaret & Her Brown bra" chuckle...

Cricket Duty

What is it about our county courthouse? Is it infested with insects all year?

The last time I had Jury Duty, it was roaches, but today we were treated to crickets. Thanks to all the weird and abundant rain recently, we’re enjoying a Bumper Cricket Crop. (It’s all over the newscasts & newspaper…how they’re EVERYWHERE in Abilene! And they seem to have made the courthouse Cricket HQ…)

SIDE NOTE: Oh, and to my Yankee friends (that’s YOU, Melanie!), I don’t mean those little brown field crickets that are smaller than your thumb…I’m talkin’ BIG, black, MEATY bugs that cast a shadow. When they fly into you, it packs a wallop! When you step on them, there’s a powerful, audible crunch as the exoskeleton explodes…and then actual…well, mass. Volume. Gristle. It’s not like stomping on an itsy-bitsy spider and wondering if you got it or not…

This happens in West Texas every once in a while. Once back in the ‘Eighties, thousands…maybe millions…of crickets “beached” themselves in a sheltered corner of the Margaret and Herman Brown Library at Abilene Christian University. (Youthful scamps will, on occasion, pull some of the metal letters out of the bricks to make it the “Margaret and Her Brown bra” building.)

Anyway, the pylon of cricket corpses (well, *some* were still kicking) was perhaps 20 feet high as they tried to reach the lighting near the roof. Sure wish I had a picture…mere words can not describe the black, undulating WALL OF CRICKET LEGS you would pass on your way to class. Shudder. (That year, one rascal put a big sign on the boys’ dorm: “ACU: Abilene CRICKET University!”)

Today, there were crickets in all phases of life…hopping, writhing, deceased, half-crickets, bits of cricket…all over the courthouse. Not just in doorways or corners, either…

...but under our chairs... in the bathroom stalls...

...in the Snack Bar, everywhere. (One LUNGED at me when we were dismissed for a break; Falisha would have come out of her sandals!)

Jury duty was boring and uneventful this morning; after about an hour, 40 of us were picked for 104th Circuit Court tomorrow. (I’ll be the one in BOOTS.) And since it was so dull, I’ll post below the story of the last time I tried to be a Good Citizen.

***

March 3, 2003

Well, I may have gotten an unintentional "Section Eight" on jury duty today.

I got there about 15 minutes early, and there were already over 150 people there. (The taped message jurors were instructed to call over the weekend said to appear "Monday as summoned"; many people thought the poorly-recorded woman's voice said to "appear Monday AT SEVEN." By 8:30 a.m., those folks were hopping mad!)

Anyway, I picked a seat in the far, back corner so I could spread out with my school stuff. Besides all my Sugar Buster snacks and water, I had 2 books plus a professional magazine in a hard, protective cover that librarians route to each other; I needed to spread out so I could write down titles & ISBN numbers of the titles I wanted.

Well, after about 15 minutes-- just as the room was full and it was nearly time to start--a ROACH crawled over the top of my magazine!!! I gasped, flung the magazine against the wall, and did several large leaps down the congested aisle. HUNDREDS of faces turned to look at me. Embarrassed, some gibberish came out of my mouth that sounded something like "BUG!! There was a bug. ROACHES!! There's roaches over there."

Some people just shook their heads at the Crazy Lady and turned back around. The ones who continued to stare saw that I was not completely insane--a GIANT roach that looked like an oversized golden raisin with legs & antennae crawled up the wall behind my chair and into a crack near the ceiling.

Oh, and the man who came to my "rescue" would not kill it because, as he announced not once, but *twice*, to the curious onlookers, "Roaches are an important part of our ecological balance." (Yeah. Who's crazy now?)

So anyway, a few minutes later, a lady sat down in the roach chair I'd just vacated. I thought it was only fair to tell her about the roach and its wall crack refuge not far from her head. She laughed and said that if the court clerks had hidden surveillance cameras on the jury pool, I'd be dismissed without being assigned.

Sure enough, after the room was thinned with a round of juror disqualifications, then exemptions, and then pleas to the judge to waive duty, the deputy called 3 sets of 40 people, and then two groups of sixteen,and then the court clerk told the 20 of us left standing in the back that we were dismissed. As we picked our way through the seated, chosen people, there was some distinct grumbling about how we were the lucky ones. My sister said that everyone probably thought I did the little Crazy Display on purpose to get out of my civic duty. ("Sure...she's crazy, all right...crazy like a fox.")

Insanely yours,
Kristy

UPDATE: Day Two of jury duty was a bust. Packed Mere Christianity (on a friend's borrowed iPod) and Shackleton's Stowaway in hardcover...but talked to a friend for more than an hour instead. (We stood in the courthouse hallway for about 45 minutes before we joined our fellow jurors on the floor.) After nearly an hour and a half of waiting, the judge came out and dismissed us all because the case was postponed...which is probably just as well because my body is ACHING after yesterday's exercise frenzy--a 4:30 BodyPump class, a 5:30 Advanced Step & Abs class, and then a mile and a half walk with May Bee, a friend, and her greyhound, Tommy!

A little sore and looking forward to curling up with a good book in the air conditioning this afternoon,
Kristy

Little presents

I prayed myself to sleep last night, wrestling with inner conflicts and asking God for guidance and wisdom and patience and faith. As I prayed, a distracting light kept shining in my eyes. Finally getting up and peering through the blinds, I was amazed by the beauty of the moon through the pecan branches outside my bedroom window...a lovely reminder that He is in control and on watch and more majestic and powerful than any other king and that I should go get some sleep. (And I did!)

And then, this morning as I was cleaning ("cleaning" to me means trying to part with things because of Chronic Packrat Tendencies), I came upon another lesson He had planned for me, courtesy of my precious niece. Last month, Sporty Niece (photo above) accidentally left her Sunday School artwork in my car, a door hanger where she had written a Bible verse--Phillipians 4:19, "God will supply my needs." Inside, she had written her WANTS on one card...

and her NEEDS on the other...

What a great reminder that His children will be okay, no matter what happens. As long as we have our Needs card filled, everything else is just "desserts and a puppy."

(Please remind me of this as often as needed!!) :-)

Goodbye, Harry. (No spoilers.)

Just finished the seventh and final Harry Potter book...sniffle...it's hard saying goodbye to this series!!

Walked/ran 4.5 miles this morning (1.5 with May Bee and 3 with Misha). Listened to the C.S. Lewis audiobook Mere Christianity on a friend's iPod on the last two 1.5 mile laps.

Off to work on the Deathly Hallows quiz...more sniffling...I remain,
mad4books

Y'all wish me luck...

This morning at 10:30 will be the first time I've ever taken a dog to the vet by myself. (I'm allergic to cats and dogs...including our own...so Mike has always done it solo or with me in a separate car so I could dash out if I got sick.) Today's Sneeze Fest while trying to hold May Bee (the naughtier of the two dogs!) while she gets two shots should be hysterical...

No, wait. It's a shot and a nasal spray. (Pertussis and bordatella? Bordatella? Am I making up a word there? The appointment card is out in the car so I have no idea. And hold on...pertussis? Am I thinking of BETHANY now? Do dogs even get the "dip-tet" series that gave us so much laughter in Raising Arizona?)

Oh, well. No matter what they do to May Bee (who tinkles copiously when she gets nervous), this will be an exciting morning. I'm skipping 4:30 aerobics because I don't want to ruin my hair & makeup & NICE smell (fresh out of the shower with Beauticontrol perfume on!) before the last Ladies' Bible Class on Daniel at 8:00. Good reason to spend this rainy day curled up with Harry Potter!

Oh, and if last night's YouTube debacle/debate didn't convince you to give up the news during the upcoming election, then at least watch the FUNNY news on YouTubesday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36WgNX_--hI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY9KqbT56dQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIr8SUKsn6k

...and Karen’s personal favorite…she and the kids have watched it HUNDREDS of times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4ML5ymlCFA

UPDATES: Okay, the spelling is "Bordetella," dogs apparently do NOT get pertussis vaccine because her appointment card said "Leptospirosis," AND they gave her another rabies vaccination while we there, too! She weighs 55.2 pounds and while she did not tinkle, she did wriggle and squirm and put up quite a fight (there was dog hair everywhere, including IN MY MOUTH, by the time they were finished)!

After the weigh-in, the vet and his assistant were surprised to walk in the exam room and see my 55.2 pound dog in my lap like Mrs. Pumphrey's Pekinese Tricki Woo...May Bee was a mite nervous. :-)