Right place at the right time

We recently went to Florida for my son's spring break. It was time for a vacation and there is nothing that relieves stress more than screaming at the top of your lungs on a roller coaster. I mean there are many times I've felt like doing that, but nowhere else is it considered acceptable. Try that in Wal-Mart some time and see what happens. Anyway, while we were there we got to see an awesome sight. There was a space shuttle launch. I have been to Florida on numerous occasions and never had it coincide with this event. What makes it even more significant is the fact that there are very few of these left to take place. We knew the launch was around 7:30. We were at Universal's theme parks which closed at 7. We then made our way to the roof of the parking garage and waited. It was well worth the wait. Even though it was a good hour's drive away, we had no trouble seeing it and enjoying it. We ran into some other people there for the same thing. One couple we were talking to was from Canada and they said that the top of this parking garage was where they were told to go for the best view. And to think my Steve thought of that all on his own. I knew there was a reason I married him.

This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. For us, it was a once in a lifetime memory. We got to see it, enjoy it, photograph it and we didn't even have to sit in the three and a half hour traffic back from coast where it launched from. (Deep satisfied sigh...)

Staff Development gone awry.

Now I know there are a lot of cute pictures out there from our staff development in November. I have a post of one of them on this blog and there are more on my fellow CMRLSers' blogs. I just wanted to take a moment and share one of my favorite pictures from the day. Now I have not been able to identify who or what this is exactly. Perhaps you could help me. I have some theories. Whenever a lot of us women get together, health problems usually come up, so perhaps this was an attempt at a close up of someone's melanoma. There is also the possibility that it is some part of the decorations. Maybe a broken branch. An ant in a ten gallon cowboy hat and all we can see is the hat. It doesn't appear to be anything obscene. I'm positive about that since we have not added an open bar to the catering at our staff development yet. (Notice I said yet because I add that to the bottom of my suggestion sheet every year.) Maybe it is a black-eyed pea from lunch although I don't think that was on the menu that day. It could just be a scab, but don't ask me how I got a picture of that. All I know is that these accidental shots are usually a lot more fun than the planned ones. Let's see what you guys can come up with. Don't let me down!

This is a stick up!

Well, times are getting hard everywhere. Sometimes it makes people do things that they wouldn't normally do. It also makes them resort to extreme measures. Well, here we caught on film a normally mild mannered librarian holding up the library board members of her system. Apparently, she was unhappy with her pay/work ratio. She was demanding a raise, which in this economy is just unheard of, so you can already tell she wasn't in her right mind. Rumor has it that she has been watching a lot of westerns and reading books in the suspense genre that focus on crime. Another thing going through the grapvine is that she forgot to take her medicine. We don't know if any of these things are true, but we are happy to report that the employees of her system received a 4% pay raise. We can't say if it is from her efforts or not. We suspect it is from the hard work of the bodacious director of their system, but don't tell her that. That may be what puts her over the edge. We wouldn't want to be responsible for any more incidents of violence.

My new bag phone

Well, how many of you even remember what a bag phone is to get the joke? (Steve came up with that by the way.) Anyway, it has been a hard month for me and electronics. I am learning the rules on mixing motorcycles and mobile devices. Obviously, Sony doesn't make as tough of a product as Apple although I don't know how the iphone would withstand an impact at 50mph. I would be willing to do the testing for them though. I do know now what happens to a Walkman phone when you put it in your pocket and ride your bike though. I can't say that it is knowledge I wanted to have, but it is a lesson I won't soon forget. I am now using Steve's old flip phone that doesn't have bluetooth or cool rings or anything. It is humbling. Especially when I was subbing at the high school this week and even though I was hiding the phone in my pocket one of the kids loudly says "Miss, where's your slider? 'Cause that ain't your slider in your pocket!" It was fun to have a phone that impressed teenagers. I've never had one of those. I'm hoping that with a little super glue and duct tape Steve will be able to have it as good as new. If not, I may have to resort to ebay because I would have to sub four days to buy it new since I'm not due for an upgrade. Sucks to be me!

WHAT!?!

I was heading into Wal-Mart today with my eco-friendly shopping bags and my shopping list. All of a sudden there it was in front of me. A used Q-tip. Now I have seen many things left in parking lots and probably left a few things myself, so I don't know why this bothered me so much. I found it so disturbing that I had to turn around and walk back to take a picture of it. (Trust me that got some looks.) I've seen many nauseating sights from dirty diapers to used condoms, but my brain could compute their purpose for being there even if I didn't really want to contemplate it. But who needs a Q-tip in a Wal-Mart parking lot and then just throws it on the ground? And it wasn't even the brand with the biodegradeable center. It was one of the cheap ones with the plastic center. It will be here in our Wal-Mart lot for years after the cotton ends have rotted away. So now I'm back to how it got there. Was someone trying to take care of some last minute personal hygiene? Trust me when I say that with some of the people I have run into at Wal-Mart or at work for that matter, it wasn't their ears I wish they had spent more time on. The other possibility is that it fell out of their car. So that leaves me to think about the condition of the car that is so filthy that when you open the doors dirty cotton swabs fall out. And why would they be in the car in the first place? I've ate, put on make-up, nursed a baby even scrapbooked (not all while driving of course) in a car, but I have NEVER cleaned my ears. There are many things I have grabbed at the last minute out the door on my way somewhere to do in the car, but I can honestly tell you that a Q-tip never entered my mind. So I guess for now the mystery of the parking lot cotton swab remains. I doubt the real story is nearly as interesting as all the possibilities I could come up with, but sometimes it's good to let your imagination run free rather than focus on the sorry state of the society that shows so little respect for one another.

I learned something today!

(This is the commercial break of my blog if you need to go to the bathroom or get a snack.) I learned today that Apple makes a very good product. Those little ipods are tough customers. The pictures show you what happens to an ipod that hits the asphalt from a motorcycle going about 50 mph. Four of us were heading to Meridian and I had my ipod clipped on my front pocket as I do on every trip of any distance at all. Well, today I moved my arm to check something and my hand bumped my ipod and knocked it right off my pocket. My first thought was "Oooh, I really wanted one of those new little nanos anyway." Then I thought I hope it didn't hit Greg or Dad's bike (which Greg was riding directly behind me). My mirror showed me that they were fine and then I saw the car behind him. I then thought, "I bet that car ran right over it and I can't afford a new ipod right now." There were a few "choice" words that passed through my mind and about a quarter mile from the mishap I found a place to turn around and see if I could find it. I returned to the scene of the accident and Greg had my back of course. I saw the ipod on the side of the road and then found another place to turn around, so I could go back and check it. I pulled over and picked it up. I plugged the earphones back in and it literally picked up right where it had paused because the earphones had been unplugged. I couldn't believe it. Now it does look at little worse for the wear and I did lose my plastic holder with the clip on it, but it works fine still. It just earned a little road rash. Doesn't look like I'll be shopping for a new nano yet, but you better believe when I'm ready to, I'll be looking at Apple products.

Here is one that I also thought about using, but I like the one I used for my profile better. Steve prefers this one. Probably because you can see more of the bike.