Oh Thank Heavens He's Finally Gone!

Poor Thomas!

He has been helping his nephew's family move, and he and some other friends were supposed to start early this morning to get the job finished today.

My husband does not do "waiting" very well.  He never puts things off.  He likes to start early and get things out of the way when there is something he has to do on the weekend.  Someone was supposed to meet up with Thomas at our house...between 7:30 and 8.  He got here a few minutes past 9.

I think my blood pressure has gone up just from listening to the hiss of Thomas' blood pressure rising!   I hope no one does anything else today to seriously irritate him, because when he left here he was NOT in a very good mood!  My poor hubby.  Maybe I should bake him something extra nice today?

Random thoughts

It's amazing how quickly things can become cluttered.  I spent about an hour today re-organizing and straightening my kitchen cabinets; didn't I just do that recently?

I also spent about an hour transferring contacts from my old cell phone into my new one.  My thumbs hurt!

And other than that, it's been a pretty boring day, and I can't think of anything to write about here.

Oh, Jae, I did do something just for me today.  I made a pan of homemade macaroni and cheese, and then ate a lot of it all by myself.  Guess I was needing some comfort food.  Now that kind of reminds me of a story. 

There was this man that used to work with Thomas, who, as soon as he got to the job, started trying to get something racial started there.  He was a black man who really had a problem with Thomas being married to a white woman and being able to get along with most people at work, no matter what their race.  Thomas hung around whoever he felt comfortable with, and that included whites, blacks, Mexicans,  Bosnians and Vietnamese.  Thomas just gets along with everyone, unless they don't want to be got along with, and this guy didnt' like it.  He even remonstrated with Thomas once, telling him that he shouldn't be talking to "those guys". 

Well, this guy was determined that he was going to start something.  One day during break when he and Thomas were the only black guys in the room, he started going on and on about "soul food", really loud, to Thomas.  I don't know why he picked that particular subject to try to show a connection between him and Thomas and to shut out the other guys, but that is what he was trying to do.  Thomas knew this, of course, so, being the kind of guy he is, and having this wonderful talent for adroitly putting people in their place, he asked the guy, "So tell me, just what do you consider by 'soul food'?"  The guy listed fried chicken, black-eyed peas, collard greens, corn bread, macaroni and cheese, and so on.  Thomas looked at the guy for a minute, then said, thoughtfully, "Huh!  I guess my mother-in-law has been cooking 'soul food' all her life, and didn't even know it!"  The guy shut up. 

More Julian Beever

This web site has even more on Julian Beever.  Some of these are really unbelievable: Julian Beever's pavement drawings

Check This Out

These are amazing!  Check out Virtual Street Reality , sidewalk art by Julian Beever.   He has a way of doing chalk drawings that give them a 3D effect if you look at them from the right angle.  Truly amazing!

Challenge for August

     I didn't have to think too long about what I was going to challenge myself to do this month, but I had planned on keeping it private.  Instead, I'm going take the plunge and make a confession:

I've been ::gulp:: writing a book.

What qualifications do I have to write a book?  Probably none.  I have, however, done some writing, had a little formal training and education in writing, and actually even been paid for my writing.  Of course that writing was of a journalistic nature, not fiction, but I have some stories rolling around in my head, and, darn it, I want to put them on paper; even if no one ever reads them but me!

So I've been working on this story for a while now.  I'm not going to tell what genre it is or anything else about it, for now.  I had meant to really concentrate on it during July, since I'm not working, but all of July seems to have been needed to simply get used to being at home every day.  But I'm determined to at least get something done on it during August.

To get myself back into the groove I've decided that I will write at least one page a day, even if it's crap.  At least that way I'll be in the habit and will have done something on it, and, hopefully, I'll write several pages a day.

So that's my personal challenge for this month.

                        More Later!

The 5-Lined Skink

Someone requested a picture of the blue-tailed skink.  There is a really good one at this web site.

Is it cool, yet?

I went outside early this morning to let the dogs out and to play with them for a while.  It's the only time of the day that I can handle the heat, and I've been neglecting them because of it.  They enjoyed it; of course we were all wet from the dew by the time I went back inside.  So it was a shower and a change of clothes for me.  I made sure they had fresh, cold water, which I'm sure I'll freshen later on in the day.  Apparently today is going to be even hotter than yesterday. 

There are three more counties in Kentucky starting school tomorrow.  All of them are ones in our area that miss a lot of snow days because of the kinds of roads the buses have to travel.  That's the only reason I can think of for them to be starting school so early.

Well, nothing much to say right now, so I'll be back later.