Rainbows and Unicorns

Aug. 11, 2012
Minus the unicorns. We were driving home from Alachua and were treated to this partial rainbow :)

Living in California did tend to spoil me on rainbows. We saw them often--complete rainbows, and even double rainbows which I didn't think were a real thing until I saw one. Illinois was lucky to get the single version :)

Sneaky Snake Goes Dancin', Wigglin' and a-Hissin'

Aug. 10, 2012
I love the fact that our neighborhood is forested and the view from our living room is beautiful, but sometimes the creepy-crawlies give me the wiggins, as Buffy would say.

I glanced up this night and saw not only frogs, not only a gecko, but also a snake looking to cash in on the insect buffet.

The two frogs are easy to see. The gecko is up at the top to the left of the top frog. The snake is over there all the way on the left. There's a reflection of the corner of our bookcase that's sticking straight out. Under that is the rounded head of the snake curving out onto the glass, lit up. His body went up the track of the glass door and onto the bricks on the outside wall. I'm glad none of them decided to try to bust inside.

Here's Tom T. Hall singing the song from my title--remember him? :)

I'll Level With You

Aug. 9, 2012
The ground where Seth parks his car is getting soft from all the rain, so Mike and he worked on making it a bit more stable. Here they are leveling the dirt.

NJROTC

Aug. 8, 2012
The last day of College App Boot Camp, I was leaving after hearing the recruiter for UF speak. The Jr. Naval ROTC kids were out in the blistering heat, doing their own Boot Camp--significantly tougher!

Another Primary (Secondary? Tertiary?)

Aug. 7, 2012
Early voting at the library was up and running and I got tired of Mike not having time to go, so I stopped in while on other errands. There were more volunteers than voters, but there's a week of early voting so who knows how many turned out over the course of the week.

College App Boot Camp

Aug. 6, 2012
Eastside H.S. ran a 3-day program to help students prepare for college applications. Mostly this involved going over how to submit a good essay, but sometimes the advice was contradictory. For example, the first speaker said don't talk about how someone inspired you--they are not applying for college, you are. You can talk about what you did as a result of their inspiration. Then the second speaker said a good essay topic was "someone who inspires you". Sigh. Parents were invited to hear the two speakers--one on Monday and one on Wednesday. EHS was working on the AC in the auditorium on Monday, so we were all in the media center.

Seth decided to write about his experience in lobbying for an advanced Physics class. I can't believe EHS is making it so difficult for a group of kids that want to take extra-hard Physics, and a teacher who is willing to teach extra-hard Physics--all of whom are willing to show up an hour early for school so they can take the class in 0 period, mind you.

I'm writing this the weekend before school starts, and the whole thing is still up in the air. As near as we can tell it is the whim of the principal. He has tentatively ok'ed it, but can pull the rug out from under it. Seth, 19 other kids, and the teacher are going to show at 7:30 Monday morning to see if they are allowed to have a Physics C class.

Local Hero

Aug. 5, 2012
So it ended up being Andy Murray beating Roger Federer for the gold medal. Good for him, and good for Britain. He gets the English to cheer for a Scotsman :) . I'm glad Andy got to win a championship on his "home field" at least once.