Idling

Here I am again and thanks for stopping by.

First things first, I was tagged by Janet (who has a wonderful blog and you should go there, by the way) to come up with 6 things I'm proud of. I will do this Janet, but it's gonna take some thinkin'. My therapist would love this. At our first session she assigned me homework--3 of my weaknesses and 3 of my strengths. Guess which one was easier for me. But I will post it soon.

Now onto the catching up. We've been pretty busy around here. Whew! Yep, busy, busy, busy. For example, it takes so much time out of my day to have to flip channels on a TV without a guide. I've never been much of a flipper; I just go to the channel I want or I pull up the guide on the TV and look through it rather than flipping. But flip I do, and I can never remember which channels are where. Oh sure, I could write them down somewhere, but it's such a nice little procrastination tool that I think I'll keep flipping around.

I've been taking Al into work so that I can have the car and taking Cosette to one of the city parks in the mornings. She loves running around in the grass and among the trees, hunting squirrels. She's going to pull my arm out of its socket one of these days.

I have a new phone. Yep, we caved and got iPhones. Wow is it cool! I mean, super-duper even I feel like a techie cool. Plus I downloaded a Mahjong game for free, which probably wasn't a great idea because it's a better procrastination tool than flipping channels. There is so much it can do that I had to take a class at the store to learn more about it. The best thing? The sound is so clear when I'm talking to others and my battery lasts long enough that I can have a conversation without saying "My battery is running low, so if I stop talking you'll know what happened." And that's just the phone part, which I don't use that often because you know how I hate talking on the phone. It's amazing to be in the car (as a passenger) and be able to pull up the internet to find an address then plot it on the Maps, choosing to show traffic (red line means there's a back up) because like I said before, traffic is a huge issue here.



My brain hasn't caught up with it all yet. It's also the first time I've had a camera on my phone, and that's pretty cool. Here are a couple of pictures of Cosette on the beach.

Cosette and a crab. This one she didn't eat.


I love this photo. It's dusk and there's a storm on the Eastern Islands. We didn't get anything, but we could see the storm across the bay.


I also caved and bought an iron skillet. I couldn't stand it any more. The "nonstick" stuff in the other pans was peeling off into our food. Ew. This little 10-inch pan does everything I need it to do. I'm making beans and cornbread for the weekend! Mmmmmm cornbread.

On the tourist front, we got the most amazing opportunity. We toured a submarine! How cool is that? Let me tell you, very cool. I wish I could show you pictures, but I don't think it's a good idea. We could only take photos in certain areas, so to play it safe, I'll just tell you about it. As you would imagine, it was very close quarters, with lots of narrow steps/ladder configurations. The crew members works 12 hours, then have 2 days off. Anyone can do any job, even the Commander can step in and do any job if there's a problem. Except one--the medic. There's only 1 (on a crew of around 140 for this sub) and he isn't a doctor. He has some medical training, and he handles all the medical issues that come up, from a cold to an appendectomy. If that was my job, I'd spend all my time in that little room praying "Please don't let anyone get sick. Please don't let anyone get sick." At one point the guy giving us the tour told us that we were so many feet under water on that level. I could have gone all day without hearing that. I had done pretty well with ignoring that little necessity in taking part in this tour. But it was really amazing and I have a renewed appreciation for what they do.

Let's see. Oh, I've continued reading the cozies. A friend of mine sent me Mary Kruger's knitting mysteries for good beach reading. I just finished Dyed in the Wool and will read the next one, but I think I'll stop there. The mysteries are pretty good and well plotted out, but her writing drives me crazy. It's very repetitive, stilted and her dialogue is horrible. I think she was trying to capture "real life" dialogue, but that never works because "real life" is repetitive and boring. But I do enjoy the whole knitting theme; it makes me want to put down the book and knit.

Lastly, who needs a Cosette update? I know, I so rarely talk about her. We had a horrible yet quick storm a few days ago. There was booming thunder, crackling lightening, and flash flooding, all while we were at the mall. I was concerned about Cosette because she gets really anxious during storms like that, so I was happy when we got back to the condo. We had to search for her; she had found a little hidey hole in the space between the couch and the wall.



Poor baby. But she was fine, so I was relieved that she at least found a place to go. I don't know why she didn't go into her kennel. She likes to sleep in there, but she walked right past it to sit between the wall and the couch. Hm.

Anyway, here are a few more pictures for ya.

Boy, that pizza sure does look good.


Just because the dishes are in the dishwasher doesn't mean they're off limits.


Sunrise



One last thing, just something to think about. I may post something serious about this some time, but right now I'm still just thinking about it. The NY Times ran an article, "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading" (you may have to register to read it). There's quite the hub bub about if reading forums, blogs, fan fiction, and other internet stuff is a good substitute for reading books for kids. I won't go into all of it right now, but I will quote the 16 year old who spends hours and hours on fan fiction:

Nadia said she wanted to major in English at college and someday hopes to be published. She does not see a problem with reading few books. “No one’s ever said you should read more books to get into college,” she said.

OK, let me be the first to say, "You should read more books to get into college."

Later y'all.