Lots to be thankful for...

Despite having lots to be thankful for, I am possibly the most thankful (at least for today) for the amount of common sense I have.

I have a friend that doesn't take care of herself, pushes others away, and is about to run her health into the ground. She doesn't have the sense to go to the doctor, ask for help, or think before jumping into something head first.

I worry about her, but have come to realize that I can not help her. She needs someone to yank her up, shake her, and then give her a hug and take her to the doctor. I am not the person to do this, but she hasn't figured it out yet.

The scacrifices schools make...

It makes me sad hear about kids being treated this way...

Overfunded Public School Forced To Add Jazz Band

MANALAPAN, NJ—Benjamin Harrison Middle School faculty members regretfully announced Tuesday that, despite their best efforts to prevent it,...

A Q tip Fix

This is not giving me the options that I want exactly, but I guess they will have to do.

So, The image to the left is the before and the right is the after...

However, tonight I am noticing that there is enough wind that either one of the Q tips has fallen off or I need a third...

I wasn't home for the weekend so I don't know if the door rattled the whole time I was gone or not.


I guess I will see tonight.

Flying Furballs!!!

Ok, something very traumatic just happened to me after a verrrrry long day.

This is an Alli version of a short story about her day...

• Wake up... well kind of
• Took a very long, simi-warm shower. It probably is what I would have considered hot just a month ago, but it is somewhat frigid for this climate and therefore me as well
• Reheated some pretty fabulous hamburgers and mac and cheese I made last night for my mini dinner party/ meeting
• Panicked because I was running late, cut off my computer despite needing to respond to emails, and remembered that I was actually running 10 minutes early versus 5 late as the screen faded
  
• Went to meeting number one of the expected 4 for the day with a promise to pick up a next one with a returned PCV that is on the island working on his doctorate in something
• Near the end of the meeting I get a call from Sterling about a search and rescue that the emergency team I work with got called out on.
• I go in organize mode, slightly frenzied since someone's life is on the line... only to find out an hour or so later that we are being organized to comb an area that a boat was found earlier in the week from a "boat wreck" that has I think 7 people missing from it since SUNDAY!!!! I suspect as do many others that either A- these guys were killed immediately and dumped or B- kidnapped. One was a govt minister, another is a lawyer, and I am not sure about the others. It doesn't look good.
• After organizing people, attempting to organize boats, dive gear, etc I realized that no one had decided that they were going to eat....
• We all know that my stomach is one of my favorite guides. I send one of the girls with my debit card to the atm and she returns with 5 gatorades and 5 snickers. At this point I am the only one that seems to realize we will be gone hours. So we return to the store for peanut butter, crackers, cookies, and granola bars. The guys take my advice and get a 5 gallon jug of water for the ride.... I am on one boat, the majority of my gear ends up on the next. Oh well...
  
• We return, do the final check list, I grab the charger for the vhf radio PC provided me with, already had the gps, radio, headlamp, binoculars, and multi tool. (I could probably take on the Swiss Army with all the gear I have)
• We head out, "have coordinates", have the location we are meeting the other boats...
• We get to the location and no one is there. We head to the next location.
• No one can spot them. And fishermen said they were at a completely different location! Great.
• It is "cold" at this point and we head back towards San Pedro.
  
• We stop at the little bar at The Split on Caye Caulker. One of the guys with us had a pair of shoes made by a guy on Caye Caulker. So Scott had his final fitting and we returned with an additional pair of shoes on board. And the guy got an order from Cha Cha a friend and business partner of Sterlings. He is from NC tool
• We get back, I am carrying my dive bag, a bag of towels, the food we didn't eat, extra clothes, my life jacket, and my bike helmet. I got a few stares on the walk home
• I reheated leftovers, Ethel and I ate, I went to the bathroom and nearly scared myself. I looked like a screaming banshee! My hair had suffered from the boat ride today.
• I put on a pair of pants, put my hair down and headed out.
• Ethel cleaned up for me from dinner. YEA! Ethel!
• I arrived 30 minutes late to my meeting and 3 of the guys were there from our little rescue operation today.
• Ok, you would think that something during the rescue operation would be traumatic, but it wasn't. No, that happened on the way home.
• I am riding my bike, listening to my friend on the telephone, I KNOW! but that isn't it. So, I am riding along and I got attacked by a flying furball! This little white and orange cat came tearing out from under a car, ran into my foot, under the wheels of my bike, and I rolled him. It was pretty gross! When the cat ran into me some yuck that was liquidy got on my toe and the end of my flip flop! EWWWWW! YUCK! GROSS! I thought I had part of an eye ball stuck on me!!!! Disgusting. I looked back and I had not squished him, he was not dead, he wasn't even lying around in pain. I didn't see him at all... Then from under the car, yet again, was a little white and orange flying fur ball.
• So I stopped and checked out my toe. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an eye ball stuck there. It is still gross, but not as bad as I thought.
• So I got home, wiped my toe, and had to tell you about my flying furball.
• I just realized that I made 3 of my 4 meetings today, and that is kind of cool...
  
• And now I am exhausted! and heading to bed.

Goodnight!

Excerpt from an email to a friend...

When it comes down to it, no one wants to really hear about the hard stuff in an email. And for the most part they wouldn't understand, so it isn't worth mentioning. Even with PCVs around the world, there is competition for who had the most genuine PC experience. The competition is invalid. Every experience is genuine.

Q-tips and Winter

It occurred to me earlier that I need a new Q-tip for my door.

What could my door possibly do with a Q-tip? The one that is there is about 8 months old. Not a good enough explanation? When the wind blows, my door rattles, and a Q-tip in the jamb allows me to concentrate on other things. (Such as the work I am in the middle of doing right now...)

The wind is strong now that it is "winter" and there is a system sitting off of the coast. I realized it was "winter" a few weeks ago when the shifting of the wind caused my door to become a nearly-lethal weapon. Luckily the pets who live here were not in the line of fire.

Ok, back to work.

Really!