But I ' m certain I ' ll have enough tissues to get the neighborhood through this year ' s cold and flu season... … View Post »

One of the channels we like to watch regularly for weather reports near the camp has been available for only a single day in the past six months or so... Anyway, we ' re thinking long and hard about switching to satellite... Do any of you have satellite service?... … View Post »

The college has a policy that I send home warning notices for students whose grades are in the "D" or "F" range -- as in HOME, where Mom and Dad get the mail... Since I count lots of things into the grade averages (punctuality, attendance, homework, participation, and the like), I know they ' re not doing as poorly as they think when they consider only their test and paper scores ... And knowing how worried they are about it tells me they ' ll probably do better once football season ends and the evenings are colder... I don ' t think I ' ll ever understand the whole extra credit thing, though... If you don ' t have time to do it right, when are you going to find time to do it over?... … View Post »

Usually, that ' s not in a good way, but I ' m actually pleased with myself today... The quartet sang this morning for a small Presbyterian church whose Pastor had to be out of town... The concert/service lasted for about an hour and fifteen minutes, followed by coffee and doughnuts in the Fellowship Hall... Not really feeling like going to Wendy ' s after all of that, BJ and I opted to just come home, and of course, we were both instantly hungry as soon as we got into our jammies for a football afternoon... I whipped up some Philly cheesesteak sandwiches for lunch, thanks to one of yesterday ' s impulse buys at the grocery store... But that ' s not even the best part!... … View Post »

I guess watches , cell phones, and other clocks around the country are set to ring their alarms at 9:00 Eastern Time tonight... That ' s when CSI: picks up on the Warrick Brown shooting on CBS during last season ' s cliffhanger... Nick now freaks out after he was locked in an underground box with a gun and a bunch of fire ants... Sara took off after falling in love with Grissom and nearly getting herself killed as a result of their relationship... Greg went from hero to goat to victim in the teen gang episodes... How many episodes will solving the case take?... … View Post »

The newspaper has been appearing every Wednesday, right on cue, and the kids are rightfully proud of the job they ' re doing... Case in point: My Newswriting and Reporting students have been learning the difference between first-day hard news stories and follow-up/feature reports... Their Friday assignment?... Write a hard news story about the first Presidential debate... It ' s been a very interesting semester so far, and I have a feeling that trend will continue... … View Post »

BJ and I spent the entire day cleaning the dogs... It started out with baths -- assembly line style works best when you ' re trying to scrub up four of them -- and since they seem genetically encoded to hate bath time, there was a lot of crawling under beds and looking in other favorite hiding spaces... Far and away the most time-consuming part was grinding down the toenails... … View Post »

I guess it ' s just another one of those things that make me say "hmmm" Did you ever wonder why, if those fancy digital wrist blood pressure monitor s are so good, doctors still use the old type that pinch and bruise your upper arm?... BJ has to monitor BP levels regularly and takes two different hypertension meds each day... (BJ has big arms, and a regular cuff just doesn ' t go around.)... The problem, though, is that I ' m not convinced the wrist model is giving us accurate readings.Unless that medicine is really working well, I fear we ' re getting bad data to pass along to the doc, with those daily readings showing normal numbers despite the "my blood pressure is up again" headaches... … View Post »

Today has been one of those "I ' m hungry for something, but I can ' t figure out what it is" days... I ' ve had chips, coffee cake, corned beef, chicken salad, pistachios, noodle soup, and scrambled eggs... I thought the homemade chocolate milkshake would do the job, but I ' m still craving something... At this rate, I ' m goning to need some Triclear for an acne attack... Either that, or some serious exercise... … View Post »