Quote of the Day

"I Just need enough to tide me over until I need a little more."

--Bill Hoest

The Bad Stuff About Cancun

Okay, after I read yesterday's post, I realized that it made Cancun sound like a paradise. And it was. In many ways. But there were also things about our vacation which were less than ideal. So that you won't get jealous of our week long vacation in paradise, I thought I'd write today's post about what was wrong with Cancun:

1. It was hot. Really hot. Someone told me that I shouldn't worry about going to Mexico in July, that it really wasn't that much hotter there than here, that it was the sun I needed to worry about, not the heat. That person was a liar. It was VERY hot in Mexico. You know what it feels like when it's 90 degrees out and you've had your car in the sun for an hour? That's what it felt like every day in Cancun. And you know what it's like on a the hottest August day in the United States Midwest? That's what it was like at NIGHT in Cancun. Just sitting in a lounge chair by the pool was exhausting.
2. You can't drink the water. I knew this going in, but I guess what I didn't realize was what an inconvenience this would be. And maybe we were too paranoid, but I really started to worry when I spoke with the guy from the travel agency who was driving us to our hotel. I'd always assumed that Mexicans who were used to the water could drink it, just not foreigners. But when he warned me about the water, I said, "But you drink it, right?" He shook his head vigorously and said, "Oh, no, no, no." And it wasn't just the way he said it. It was the look on his face. He looked like I'd offered him a poop sandwich! So we avoided the water like the PLAGUE. We didn't drink it. We didn't brush our teeth with it. We didn't eat uncooked vegetables that had been washed in it. We didn't drink a soft drink if it had ice in it. We just stayed the heck away from it! And the funny thing is that at home I don't drink plain water very often. Usually I drink coffee or soda, and I only drink water when I work out. But amazingly, when potable water wasn't available, it was all I wanted.
3. There's a lot of security in airports! This doesn't really have anything to do with Cancun, but with foreign travel in general. We had to stand in a LOT of lines travelling both to and from Mexico. And there was a lot of paperwork to fill out, too. Worse, the paperwork prepared by the Mexican government was in--of all things--Spanish! What were these people thinking? Don't they know that we Americans don't take the time to learn a language before visiting the country! How was I supposed to know what those legal forms were saying? When I got to the customs counter the agent there asked--in very broken English--"Did you understand form?" I wasn't sure what he said at first and so he repeated, "Any part of form not make sense?" I looked at him and said, "Oh yes. Thank you! All of it!" (In fairness, I then laughed and told him I was kidding--I actually only had trouble understanding one word: "muestros." I guess my two semesters of Spanish in college paid off.)*

Those were the main negatives regarding Cancun. Now today I don't want to leave you with the opposite wrong impression that our vacation was miserable and that we came home unhappy. We had a good time and are grateful to have had the chance to go. I just wanted to present the opposite side of the coin, the things that we DIDN'T take pictures of (We actually DID take a photo of me with a stack of immigration forms to fill out, but...).

And with that, I will conclude my posts about Cancun. I'm getting tired of writing about it, and you're probably getting tired of reading about it (If you're still reading this, that is). I don't want this blog to be the 21st century equivalent of the guy with the 200 frame slide show of his vacation.

*Oh, and by the way, it turns out "muestros" are "samples," as in free samples that business people would carry with them into a country and give away. Doesn't look at all like its English equivalent, so no wonder I couldn't figure it out.

Back from Cancun

We are back from Cancun. I posted some photos to the family photo album, which you can access my clicking the link to the right or by clicking this link:

http://bsweasy.home.insightbb.com/2008july/

And now, summer vacation is officially over for me. Tomorrow morning at 7 AM I start back to work full time five days a week. Honestly, after a week of doing nothing, I'm looking forward to getting back into the groove.

Cancun!

Hello, everyone. I have to say that I didn't think I could do it--I have gone from Tuesday at noon until what is after 8 o'clock on Saturday without being on the Internet. It's been a trying experience. I actually only got on the Internet now because I wanted to--as Eric Clapton said--ease my worried mind that things hadn't fallen apart at work. And then, guess what? The entire state network is unavailable. I don't know if that means that it actually is unavailable or if it isn't available in Mexico. In any event, I can't ease my worried mind. So instead, I thought I'd create an update on here because I paid $4 for 30 minutes of time.

Here's what I have gotten so far from my trip to Cancun: Apparently a lot of people in Mexico speak Spanish! I know! Who knew? It's been a real trial for us. I've also learned to speak very broken English because it's easier for people with limited English skills to understand. So "Excuse me, but could you tell me where I need to go to get to the Internet cafe that is mentioned in the welcome manual?" becomes "Hello. I need to use computer. Where do I go?" So if this entry seems a little choppy, that's why.

Quickly (because I only have a few minutes) here is what we've done in Cancun

Tuesday: We didn't get here until late. We had time to travel to the hotel and eat at the restaurant. I was thrown by the very high prices, until I realized that the American dollar sign and the Mexican peso sign are the same symbol. So when I thought our meal was 600 DOLLARS, I was relieved to find it was only 600 pesos, or a little less than 60 dollars (still a lot for the lousy food we got).

Wednesday: We hung around the hotel, swam in the pool, and went to the beach

Thursday: We went to a water park and swam with dolphins. I'll talk more about this in a later entry, but it was very cool being kissed by a dolphin, shaking hands with one, and getting pushed across 50 feet of water by a pair of dolphins pushing my feet with their snouts.

Friday: We went to an amusement park called Xcaret and swam in an underground river, saw Mayan ruins, and saw an outdoor show about Mayan culture. Again, I'll talk more when I have more time.

Saturday: Today we again just hung around the place. We plan to do the same tomorrow and then come home Monday. We've had a good time. The only real downside has been the fact that we are very near the disco center where there are literally a dozen discotheques, and they play music until 3 or 4 in the morning. After the first night we moved to the opposite side of the hotel, but it's still loud.

Anyway, I will post more later. I just wanted you all to know that we are alive!

Ugh

Well, the conVENTion is over, and I thought today would be a day of rest.

Wrong.

I'm at work right now. A major electrical storm hit Erlanger last night, and it screwed up the school district's network. I came in at 7:30 this morning to fix the problem.

Heck of a way to start a vacation.

On the other hand, I'm glad I was still available to come and fix it. And the fact that I'm making this post means that I fixed the problem.

Still, not how I wanted to start my day.

End of the ConVENTion

The ConVENTion is over!*

Today was the big day, the tour of the museum. This afternoon from 12:00 until 4:00 438 people visited Vent Haven Museum (A.K.A. "our home"). It's always stressful and tiring, but it's always fun, too. As I told a conventioneer today, it's always good to see the museum through the eyes of people who don't live here. No matter how wonderful I think the museum is (and despite what I may have written previously about the museum and/or may write in the future, I really do think it's a fascinating place) it is easy to take it for granted when you live here and see it every day. The convention is a chance to see others caught up in the sense of wonder, and it inspires me each year.

I always feel bad for the first timers, especially in the years (like this year) when Lisa doesn't do an historical presentation about Vent Haven. It's so easy to be overwhelmed by the collection, and if you don't know a lot about the history of ventriloquism you don't really know what to look for at the museum. Many of the "red dotters" (The first time conventioneers have red dots on their name tags so that they can be identified easily) are either attending with someone who's been before or by Saturday they've made friends with a veteran, but I can usually tell when some first timers walk in that they have no idea what's going on, no idea what to look for, and they're just suffering from sensory overload, which the museum can do for you.

Today I really enjoyed watching the people watch the dummies. I took a number of photos with my cell phone of people just looking at the collection, with the idea that I would post them on this blog. Then it occurred to me later that the museum's new, restrictive photo policy bans the publication of museum photos on blogs like this! Drat it! Undone by a policy I am tasked with helping enforce! Truth to tell, I could probably post pictures here and no one would say anything to me, but I think it would be a pretty poor example.

So instead of posting any photos of the museum tour today I thought I'd post the photo below. It was taken this evening as the girls and I skipped out on the Saturday evening ventriloquist show and went to the pool instead. The girls wanted to go because they wanted to cool off after spending four hours sitting in the driveway selling bottled water. I wanted to go because I wanted to try out our new digital camera, which came with a plastic case that encloses the camera and allows a user to take photos underwater. Pretty nifty, huh?


*Well, technically the convention is over. We still have the advisers' cookout tomorrow, but that's a more relaxed affair.

Midnight Tour

Tomorrow is the big day. 450 or so ventriloquists will travel the short distance from the Drawbridge Inn to the driveway of my home.

The work is (mostly) over. The yard is mowed. The flower beds are mulched and (after the mowing) remulched. The pavement has been swept. The house has been cleaned from top to bottom. Well, I didn't clean the attic and I didn't clean the basement, so "top to bottom" is a misnomer. Let's say the house has been cleaned from "a little south of the middle to a little north of the middle." In any event, it's more than anyone will see.

Tonight--any minute now, in fact--will be the 2nd annual Midnight Tour. This was Jeff Dunham's idea from last year (At least, I think it was HIS idea. I remember there were about 5 of us in a huddle trying to figure out how to raise cash for the museum. I THINK he came up with the idea). Jeff auctions off to the highest bidder (a waste of words. Who else would you acution off to? The 4th from the highest bidder? The bidder with the pinkest shirt?) a midnight tour of the museum and Jeff's the guide. It's really just a chance for people to get to hang out with Jeff for a while and to hear about the museum from someone who is pretty intimately knowledgeable about it. Jeff has been an adviser for years, and in the early days, when he was just starting out, he used to save the cost of a hotel room when he was in town and stay over at the museum. He's been coming to the conVENTion since he was a teenager, and he knows a lot about the collection. In the eight years we've been here he's even repaired a number of the figures. So he has lots to share about the museum. This year, from what Lisa told me, the auction raised $1,800. Six people put in $300 each, so there's a crowd coming over.

I may or may not go out to see them. I'm pretty tired. And the girls are asleep in their rooms. They're going to wake up tomorrow and want breakfast, and they won't care whether or not I went to bed at 11:30 or stayed up until the wee hours of the morning.

This is our 9th convention at Vent Haven, and I've never gone this long without going to the Drawbridge Inn. Even the first year I went to the Advisers Meeting on Friday, but this year I've been doing child patrol all week. And I really don't mind it. I like the ventriloquists. They're an all right group of people. But I really haven't missed being over there.

I think I might be drifting off, so my body seems to be deciding for me about whether to join the midnight tour. Maybe if I get up from this computer and walk around I'll get a renewed sense of energy. I'll try that and let you know later what happened.

Parrotheads

Well, I finally finished doing the spiffing of the museum grounds Wednesday afternoon about 1:00, and since I hadn't spent much time with the girls in the last week due to my 14 hour day work schedule, I decided that the rest of the day yesterday and today I would spend time with them. So yesterday Natalie and I (Meredith was still out of town at her Granny and Granddaddy's) went to Newport on the Levee and went through the Newport Aquarium and walked on the Purple People Bridge and had a scoop of ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery. Today she and I went to pick up Meredith, and then we all came home to Vent Haven.

Lisa is hard at work being the face of the museum. This afternoon she gave a tour of the museum to America's Got Talent winner Terry Fator and tonight she is at Fator's show. The girls and I, though, decided that--rather than watch Fator perform--we'd rather go to Coney Island to swim.

This SEEMED like a great idea. Until we got about 2 miles from the exit. All around Cincinnati's interstates are these big electronic signs that sometimes give traffic information but most often entertain drivers with groaningly bad seat belt puns (things like "Lucky for us, there are plenty of seat belts to GO AROUND"). Today, though, the sign said, "Concert--next two exits."

Oh great, I thought. There's a concert at Riverbend tonight. Riverbend is an outdoor concert hall that shares the parking lot with Coney Island. If I'd known there was a concert tonight, I told myself--but then I tried to calm myself down a little. It's not that big a deal, I told myself. We shouldn't have any real trouble. We've been to Coney Island before when there have been concerts at Riverbend. As long as the concert isn't...

..."Jimmy Buffet tickets for sale" was the first sign (literally) that this wasn't going to go the way I wanted. Scalpers were standing along the interstate selling tickets (and leis and Hawaiian shirts). Great, I thought. It's Buffet night.

Now, if you're not familiar with Cincinnati culture, you may not understand the import of this statement. To most of the world, Jimmy Buffet is a has been recording artist who had modest success in the 1970's with pleasant but forgettable songs like "Margaritaville" and "Fins" and "Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude." Most of his songs had a Caribbean flare to them and included subjects such as alcohol, sex, and the beach.

To Cincinnati, though, Jimmy Buffet is a figure one notch below Jesus in importance. His concerts every year aren't just concerts--they're events! Thousands of people show up for his concert, most wearing grass skirts and the aforementioned leis and Hawaiian shirts. Most people show up drunk, and the rest leave that way. It's a Bacchanalian experience.

And here we were, a 40 year old father with his tweener daughters, stuck in the middle of it. We saw everything but the inside of the concert. We saw the many boats anchored in the river beside the concert hall (You can't see from the boats but you can hear fine). We saw the news choppers whizzing by overhead. We saw the drunken "Parrotheads" and their Hawaiian shirts and limos and general rowdiness. We could even hear the music (Buffet began the night with a cover of the song "Hot! Hot! Hot!"). All for free.

It really wasn't that bad, though. I got to have a conversation with the girls on the way home. It went something like this.

Natalie: So Dad, you said this man sings songs about alcohol, right?
Me: Yeah.
Natalie: So, is he singing about how alcohol is bad?
Me: No, not really. He sings about how much fun it is to drink alcohol.
Natalie: But that's bad, isn't it?
Me: Uh, drinking a lot of alcohol is bad, but it seems like fun at the time, so a lot of people do it a lot, and he sings about that feeling of fun. He also sings about the beach a lot. It's what most of his songs are about.
Natalie: But you said most of his songs were about alcohol.
Me: Alcohol AND the beach.
Natalie: They go together.
Me: They do to him.
Natalie: And to everyone cheering right now? (The band was in between songs.)
Me: Yes.

It went on and on like that.

It was a teaching experience.

ConVENTion! Article

Vent Haven Museum and conVENTion was featured in the Louisville Courier-Journal this morning. The article on the website is even better: It includes a video of Vent Haven advisor Tom Ladshaw "fake" interviewing Lisa about the museum (Tom actually knows more about ventriloquism and the museum than Lisa). I think they thought of it as a sort of tongue-in-cheek interview. In fact, if you know them and you watch the video, you can hear how they're both not taking it too seriously and both on the verge of laughing.

Check it out here: http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080715/FEATURES/807150316/1010

Meanwhile, I'm taking a break from mulching. Time to get back to it.

Yard Work

I just finished with a 14 hour day of weeding and mulching flower beds. That after spending 15 hours two days ago painting. And yesterday I spent four hours cleaning off rooftops and mowing and weeding. It must be conVENTion time!

And it is! So today was mulching day. I didn't have one of my expected helpers (Meredith is spending the week in Frankfort with Mom and Dad), but Natalie has been here to help me out. In the photo on the right she's posing on top of the mulch pile. You can't tell from the photo, but the mulch pile is about four feet high. It's a mound, I guess you'd call it. A mulch mound.

Natalie helped out for about 5 hours total, which is quite a bit for a little gal. I was proud of how hard she worked and how much effort she put in. Tonight after dinner she read to me for almost an hour while I kept working. I still have probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the mulch left sitting out on the driveway. The job usually takes a day, but weeding has been extra hard this year, so it's been slow going.

One positive, though: As we removed old mulch from the 18 flower beds on the museum grounds we tossed the old mulch into the well, so that it's filled up again...for another year.

As I said, Meredith is with her grandparents, and I miss her very much. I know Mom and Dad read my blog most days, so hopefully, Meredith, you'll read this, too, tomorrow, and you'll hear me say this to you: I love you, very much. I miss you, very, very much. And I am so very, very, very proud of you. I can't wait to see you again, and your mom just said she "thinks your awesome" and "needs you to come home."

By the way, last week Meredith had band camp every night, and the camp culminated with a band concert. Here's a photo of Meredith playing her clarinet during the concert.



Oh, and by the way, yesterday the girls and I went to Frankfort for the Bryan Family Reunion. I'll write about that and post pictures later. For now I'm fairly exhausted and going to bed.

New Realization

I didn't post anything yesterday because I spent all day--literally--painting. I started at 9 AM and finished at about 9:45 PM. I basically painted the last step of the porch in the dark. I got up this morning and saw that I had missed a couple of spots, which lead me to a new realization: Light is essential for proper painting.

Quote of the Day

I'm going to get mushy on this one...

Two nights ago Lisa and I watched the movie Dan in Real Life starring Steven Carrell. I thought the movie was "just okay," worth watching once. A definite chick flick, not at all on par with better films of the genre, like Steel Magnolias (which would be in my Top 20 films of all time) or When Harry Met Sally or even Love Story. But it was sweet and sincere and occasionally true.

That's beside the point, though. Yesterday, as I am wont to do the day after I've watched a movie, I went to Rotten Tomatoes to see what others had to say about the movie (Most people, I guess, like to look BEFORE seeing the movie, but I prefer to go into the movie uninformed and then compare my opinions with the movie critics to see if I agree). I ended up on Roger Ebert's web site. In his review he said something that really struck me. He describes when the romantic leads meet for the first time and he says the following:

They begin one of those conversations that threatens to continue for a lifetime.

I read that and I thought, That's how I feel about Lisa. I told her so last night. In many ways, I feel like we're STILL talking about the things we talked about on our first date, that we've been continuing that conversation about God and the meaning of life and happiness and all those kinds of things for nigh on 16 years now, and that we've just taken a break from that conversation from time to time to sleep, go to work, marry, have children, and so on.

It's not always an easy conversation. There are times when it's gotten pretty dark. But it's always a REWARDING conversation, and I'm glad to be having it. I count myself one of the luckiest and wealthiest people in the world because of it.

More on Patriotism

I'm off work today and it's six days until the Vent Haven ConVENTion, so you would assume that Lisa is out in one of the museum buildings cleaning and straightening and spiffing and getting the museum ready for next week.

But you'd be wrong.

Lisa is serving her first day of jury duty today. And as she rolled out of bed at 6:30 this morning to get ready for her day, I thought some more about the post I made back on July 4th when I stated that I really didn't "get" patriotism. And I thought to myself this morning, THIS is patriotism. Taking time out from your busy schedule to serve on a jury and fulfill your civic duty--that's patriotism. Taking the time to learn about political issues and candidates and then going to the voting booth and actually voting--that's patriotism. Donating money or--even more so--donating time to the candidate of your choice--that's patriotism. Paying your fair share of taxes so that the government can provide the necessary services to its people--that's patriotism.

Even though it was my day off, I got out of bed at 6:30 with Lisa, and I went downstairs to work out. I have an elliptical exerciser that I spend 45 minutes on twice a week, and I pass the time by watching TV shows that I've recorded on my DVD recorder's hard drive. This morning I was watching an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Typically Star Trek episodes don't get me thinking too much about patriotism. After all, the United States doesn't even exist in the world of Star Trek. But the episode I was watching today was about three crew members who had crash landed and thought they were going to die. One of the crew members was a mother, and she worried that her daughter back on board the main ship would be alone. Another crew member, though, said that he wasn't worried. He hadn't seen his daughter in four years, but he knew there were people around her who loved her and who were raising her well in his absence.

And I started thinking: This is just a stupid T.V. show, but there are soldiers--both male and female--in Iraq and Afghanistan who are having REAL conversations like that all of the time, soldiers who have left their children behind and who have to trust that there are people at home who are taking care of their children. And at home there are tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people who ARE taking care of those children, making sacrifices for the sake of those children and their parents who are risking their lives every day for policies (whether justified or not) that our nation has made.

That's patriotism!

It is all of those things. It's not flying a flag in front of your house or tearing up when The Star Spangled Banner is played or putting a "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker on your car.

And Barack Obama is right: True patriotism is not wearing a flag pin either.

Failure

This afternoon I have been working in preparation for what is a big event for me--migrating our computer system from one school year to the next. The term coined for this is "rolling over" our district database, and it's a time-consuming process. I just finished one of the steps that I have to do before the rollover, and that is marking in the database all of the students in the district who have been retained (They have to be marked so that they don't automatically move up to the next grade when the rollover happens).

I don't want to get into details about numbers, but there are more retained students than you might think, especially in the middle school and high school. And as I mark student after student as retained, I feel my spirit sinking. All of these names. Behind all of these names are people who failed. More importantly, behind all of these names are people who WERE failed by the school district. What could we have done differently? When the student is selected our student information database shows--in addition to more information about each student than you could ever want--the photo of that student taken on "Picture Day" at the beginning of the year. And I look at each of those photos, of students smiling into a camera, and I imagine the stories behind the failures. Which students have no parents at home to encourage them to work hard? Which are suffering from alcoholism or drug dependency or some other addictive issue that is slowly destroying them? Which students have parents going through a divorce?

It's just a list of names on my desk, but my heart breaks when I think about the individuals represented by the list. And it's at times like this that I think, "What am I doing here behind this desk? Why did I ever leave the classroom? I could have SAVED these kids."

But I know that's nonsense. Sure, I have former students (and I'm not guessing about this. I could tell you the exact student I'm thinking of for each example) who are doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, city councilmen. But I know my influence on each of them was slight. And besides, I also have former students (and again I'm not supposing but thinking of specific students) who are drug dealers, strippers, armed robbers, and child molesters. Again, I know my ability to have altered the trajectory of their lives is minuscule, blown out of proportion by silly movies like STAND AND DELIVER and TO SIR, WITH LOVE and DEAD POET'S SOCIETY.

But it still haunts me that my district graduates about 120 seniors every year while there are about 160 freshmen. What happened to those 40 students who disappeared in the three years in between? It's a question that matters not just to those 40 students, but to all of us.

Airborne!

It's all about OPTIONS, CHOICES, and CONSEQUENCES...

As I mentioned about a week ago, I work out every morning, and every third day my work out is that I go jogging. Since I take Saturdays off from working out, that basically means that--unless my routine changes for some reason--I pretty much end up going jogging on the same two days of the week. Lately those 2 days have been Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings.

I have the OPTION of jogging on some other day, maybe Monday and Thursday mornings, but no, I CHOOSE Tuesday and Friday mornings. As such, I have to suffer the CONSEQUENCES.

And the main consequence--at least the main negative consequence--is that Tuesdays and Fridays are the days in which the southwestern streets of my town have their garbage picked up. There are no street lights on Pleasant Ridge, a street about a mile in length that I jog down. And since Tuesdays and Fridays are the days I choose to go jogging, I find myself not only jogging, but dodging in the dark piles of garbage as well.

Many people do the polite thing in regards to garbage, which is to place their garbage cans and garbage bags in the grassy area between the street and the sidewalk, but a large number of people put their cans right in the middle of the sidewalk. And on a darkened street, this turns my exercise time from a pleasant jog into an American Gladiator-like obstacle course.

I counted this morning as I was jogging and I get about a second and a half of time from the moment I see the garbage can in the pitch black and the moment in which I physically encounter the garbage. A second and a half to weigh my OPTIONS, consider the CONSEQUENCES, and make a CHOICE about what to do.

So what? you might think to yourself. How many possible options could there be? Ahh, but that's where you're wrong. There are a multitude of OPTIONS. I could stay on the sidewalk and try to get around the trash. I could step out into the person's yard to get around the offending refuse. I could jump into the street and go around that way.

All have their risks. Jumping into the street could get me hit by a car if it's coming down the road with its headlights off. I could slip on wet grass if I step in someone's yard, and truth be told, I just don't like the idea of stepping in someone's grass. I feel like I'm invading their property (funny how I have no qualms about running across their sidewalk, though). Trying to go around the garbage and stay on the sidewalk is usually the safest bet, but I run the risk there of being so preoccupied with the garbage can that I forget that there is a low hanging branch from the tree on the other side of the sidewalk and end up whacking myself good in the head (or, as was the case this morning, I might be so preoccupied with going around garbage cans that I forget to look out for raccoons and end up almost stepping on one. But believe it or not, that's not the focus of my story today!). And when deciding which OPTION to CHOOSE, I need to be cognizant that if at all possible I don't want to break my running rhythm, because if I do it's hard to get back "into the zone."

And this brings us to this past Friday. I'm jogging along at a good clip, listening to music and just enjoying myself, when I realize that right in front of me someone has put out--not shiny, easy to see cans of garbage, like civilized people do--but a number of off-white kitchen-sized bags of garbage stacked on top of each other. Because the bags were off-white and the sidewalk was off-white, I didn't see these bags until I was right on top of them. And because the bags weren't lined up neatly on one side of the sidewalk but instead extended across the entire sidewalk and even into the grass on both sides, I couldn't get around them and stay on the sidewalk. And because the impediment was so wide I couldn't jump into the grass or the street to avoid them without seriously slowing down (Now bear in mind that my brain is processing all of this in about a second and a half). So instead of doing any of those OPTIONS, I CHOSE what was behind Door Number Four: I leaped over the bags like a 110 meter hurdler...

So.

So the problem with leaping into the air like that is that it seriously curtails all of your future OPTIONS. So when my head passed over the bags of garbage and I could see that there was additional trash on the other side of the bags, my OPTIONS were very few. I could either go crashing into the cardboard boxes (which might have been empty or might have had discarded bricks in them for all I knew) or I could try some gymnastic move in middair, hoping to avoid a painful collision. Again, I had just a split second to decide, but I threw my arms to the right and my legs to the left and--somehow--came down in the grassy area between the sidewalk and street. This was great except the grass was a bit dew-covered and my left leg came out from under me and slid out into the street. I sort of did the splits. Lucky for me I didn't strain anything. I picked myself up and continued my jog, and had no further incidents, neither Friday nor today (unless you count the raccoon today, but again, that's a story for another day).

So, why am I CHOOSING to go jogging on Tuesdays and Fridays. Because--despite what I've written here--I LIKE jogging in the dark. I work on Tuesdays and Fridays, and so I go out jogging at 5:00 AM. I like that at 5 A.M. I rarely meet anyone on the sidewalks, and I like that there's not a lot of traffic to have to deal with. I sort of feel like these are my own personal sidewalks and that I own the whole town.

If I CHOSE to go jogging some other three day interval one of those days would be a day that I don't work in the summer, and I'd invariably sleep in and have to go jogging later in the day, when there was more traffic, and when I'd pass people jogging and either a) have to say hello to them, which always seems weird to me when I pass them out of breath and in a run or b) suffer the pain of rejection when the people coming the opposite way DON'T say hello to me.

Sad as it is, I CHOOSE possible serious injury over having to actually interact with people.

The Job That Never Ends

Lisa has created some mottoes for Vent Haven Museum, little sarcastic mottoes that she can say when she's frustrated by some aspect of the job. One of those mottoes is "Vent Haven--No Job Gets Done Once." Some jobs SEEM like they ought to be a do it once kind of job, but they just keep coming back again and again.


The one I'm specifically talking about today first began in October of 2004. That's when, after the Vent Haven Museum 2004 season had ended, we tore down the well that was in the yard between Buildings One and Two. The well was falling apart and needed to be torn down. We knew that, but what we didn't know was what would await us when the well was knocked down. We worried a little about that. We even tried sticking our video camera with night vision into one of the holes in the well so that we could see down into the well to see how deep it was or to see if there was any water in it, but it was so dark that the camera didn't pick up anything but blackness (Actually, greenness, since that's what color everything looks with the night vision on). Our biggest fear, I guess, was that there would be a foot of water in the bottom of the well or something like that.



Well, there wasn't a foot of water, but there WAS a big problem. Let me repeat that--a BIG problem. The problem was that the well was bigger--err, deeper, I mean--than we were expecting. I'm really no good with measuring things, so I couldn't even begin to guess how deep the hole was. The photo to the right should give you an idea, though. It's a photo standing over the hole looking down into it. We took that photo just after the well was knocked down to try to give others some idea of the size of the hole. Here's the thing to key in on. At what I would call twelve o'clock you can see a gray object with lines running horizontally across it. That's a 30 gallon trash can! It was at least 20 feet down to the bottom of the well, if not further. The contractor who knocked down the well filled in the hole, but from what I could tell they made no effort to fill in the sides of the hole as the well sort of bulged out underneath the opening on all sides, so that the opening only shows about 40% of the total size of the well. The contractor didn't push the fill dirt into that area--they just dumped fill dirt until the hole was filled and called it a day.

Since they hadn't pushed the fill dirt to expand out into the other 60% of the well, I knew there was going to be trouble. Lisa initially said, "Let's plant grass where the well was."

I told her, "Uh, that might not be such a good idea. That thing's going to keep sinking."

"Oh yeah?" she asked. "For how long do you think?"

"Forever," I said. So instead of planting grass, we tried to make the well look like a flower bed. You can see what the well looks like now by looking at this photo from the Vent Haven ConVENTion website. The Flower-Bed-Formerly-Known-As-Well can be seen in the lower left hand photo. It's the area in front of the building with the pink flowers in it.

I'm not sure it's going to sink forever anymore, but I can say that it's still sinking. During the winter of 04-05, as I expected, the well sank quite a bit more, maybe six feet. That spring we ordered a load of rocks and threw them into the well. Before we tossed them in I got down into the well and pushed a whole bunch of the dirt further down and into the sides, hoping to stave off another big drop that upcoming winter. It didn't help. The winter of 05-06 the well sank again, not quite as far, but still several feet. Again in the spring I jumped into the well (every time I do that I have this mostly unfounded fear that the whole thing is going to collapse and I'm going to fall twenty feet into the well) and pushed the dirt and rocks down into the sides of the well. I then threw into the well just about anything I could find, including an entire set of encyclopedias and a number of other books.

Don't look at me that way--they're biodegradable!

Anyway, I'm telling you this whole story because this morning I got back down into the well and pushed the dirt around some more. The encyclopedias, by the way, have pretty much disintegrated, but the rocks were still there, and I had to push them around again. The bad news is that once I had finished the well was about four feet deep again. The good news is that I really feel that I filled in the outer edges of the well really well this time. I don't think it will sink as much next year. Maybe in a year or two we WILL be able to plant grass there.

Quote of the Day

Here's a testament to how my kids feel about my cooking. This is an actual quote I heard come out of my mouth while my kids were choking down our dinner tonight (stuffed green peppers with butternut squash and fresh strawberries):

ME: Oh, come on. You gotta admit--I've made WAY worse meals than this!

The sad part is my kids enthusiastically agreed.

Independence Day

Can I tell you a secret?

I've never really understood patriotism.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-American. I'm not a basher of the good ole U.S.A. I don't assume that all of the world's problems have been caused by the United States, or that we're the most immoral country that's ever lived. I didn't cheer on September 11, 2001.

And you don't have to tell me: I know that America has some crowning achievements:

• We were the first modern democratic republic.
• Our involvement in World War II prevented the Axis powers from taking over all of Western Europe.
• After World War II we recognized that Asia and Europe had been financially devastated by the war and extended our financial strength and resources to rebuild these areas.
• We stood up as a world leader in the formation of the United Nations.
• We donate money and resources every year to nations in need.
• Our resolve and strength helped defeat the tyrannical powers of the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, we've had our share of bad times, too:

• We allowed slavery to a) happen at all and b) continue long after most other nation's had realized the evil of it and made it illegal.
• We consume more natural resources per person than any other nation in the world. No one else even comes close.
• We've started at least two wars that we had no business starting (The Spanish American War and the Iraq War).
• Let's be honest and call our victories over the many Native American groups what they really are, what they'd be called if they happened today: genocide.

And besides, when I say that I don't "get" patriotism, I'm not just talking about American patriots anyway. I'm talking about patriots in all countries. I just don't get why people should be so proud of being a citizen of this country or that. It was simple luck of the draw that the person were born there instead of being born somewhere else.

So. So what? So when I attend Board of Education meetings I stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, but I find its words a little hollow. I don't have a problem with most of them. After all, I am--as the first line would have me state--allied with the republic of the United States of America. And I'm not a crazy separatist--I do see the U.S. as "one nation." I'm not so sure we're "under God" any more than any other nation, but the Civil War did pretty much settle the "indivisible" part. Try to divide yourself from us and we'll come after you...with canons and bayonets and stuff.

I guess it's the "liberty and justice for all" part that strikes me as a bit off. Tell that to the hundreds or thousands of innocent black men in jails. Or to the impoverished Americans without jobs and health care, without a good education and without even the wisdom to understand the need for it. Maybe we should reword the Pledge of Allegiance to say that liberty and justice for all are goals we have as a nation. I'd buy that. I honestly believe that.

But today...I don't honestly care that much about today. Maybe I take this nation for granted, which is what patriotic people say about people like me. If I lived in some other country they'd throw me in jail for writing something like this. Which may or may not be true. Still, I can't be anything other than what I am, and what I am is a person who doesn't much feel a need to fly a flag in front of my house, or celebrate the existence of my country by discharging in the street weak but colorful explosives. Instead, I'll do what I'm doing right now, which is working, just like it's any other day. Because that's all it is to me.

You Racist White People!

I am very excited today to find out that I may not be white (and neither, it may turn out, are you!)...

David Palmore, who is a principal at one of the elementary schools in our district, is also one of the foremost experts on Appalachian literature (which may be, I think, similar to saying that you're one of the foremost experts on the history of ventriloquism--you're probably not facing a lot of competition! But I digress.). He is also on the Board of Directors of the Jesse Stuart Foundation, a non-profit in charge of maintaining the history of Kentucky writer Jesse Stuart and promoting other Appalachian writers as well. The foundation also has its own printing press and releases several Appalachian books each year (a number of which have been edited by Mr. Palmore).

Mr. Palmore was in the Board of Education offices today sharing--for what reason I never could fathom--a book published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation. The book chronicled the appearance and importance of the Melungeon race in fiction.

"The what?" you might be asking. That's right, the Melungeon race. It seems there is a race--which has been legally recognized by the United States, by the way--that hails from the Appalachian area. A Melungeon is of mixed race, mostly European, African, and Native American. A typical Melungeon appears Caucasian but has darker than average skin, hair, and eyes, and is typically a Baptist. This means that Sweasy's could qualify! Think about it! 1) My father's family is from Kentucky, and they moved around a lot, so they could have come from Appalachia at one time. 2) Also, before marrying my mother my father was Baptist. 3) I have brown eyes and brown hair, which could be considered dark. And when I work at it I can get a pretty impressive tan (though I try hard not to get one at all anymore). 4) And the rest of my family and I have several genetic features that are typical of Native American ancestry (most notably prominent tori). I could be a Melungeon!

And that's great news for me. As I said before, Melungeon is recognized by the U.S. government as a distinct race. This means that from now on I can in good conscience check the "Other" box on forms that ask for race. It also means that my daughters, when they get old enough for such things to matter, can apply for minority scholarships. And I also can suddenly feel much better about my education, my job, and my social standing. After all, I can be proud that I have overcome all of the bigotry and prejudices that my race has had to put up with for generations!

And most importantly, I can rant and rave about the white man and all of the problems he's caused in the world. Without lifting a finger I've earned the right to some righteous indignation!

And that's made my day.

Erased

In my life as an employee, I have worked in 7 locations:

1) Sweasy's Grocery, on Steele Street in Frankfort (until I turned 18)
2) The Frankfort Wal-Mart, at its original location where the Big K department store used to be (3 years)
3) The Frankfort Wal-Mart when it moved to its second location where Kohl's department store is now--at least, it was Kohl's last time I checked (1 year)
4) Lloyd High School, room 5 (1 year)
5) Lloyd High School, room 47 (13 years)
6) Lloyd High School library (2 years)
7) Erlanger-Elsmere Board of Education building (2 years)

I was thinking about this list as I drove in to work this morning. Here's what I realized:

1) Sweasy's Grocery burned to the ground in 1986. The lot sat empty for years. There is a house now where the store used to be.

2) The Frankfort Wal-Mart moved from its original location to its second location in 1989. The original building, last time I checked, was either a farm supply store or an office building. I forget which.

3) The Frankfort Wal-Mart moved from its second location sometime in the 1990's to its present location right off the interstate. The second location, as I mentioned above, is now a Kohl's department store.

4) The Erlanger-Elsmere Schools is in the process of building a new Lloyd High School. We're a small district, so we can't afford a 40 million dollar building all at once, so we're building it in 10 million dollar chunks. The first new wing was completed in April of this year, and beginning in May and continuing through this month, the construction company is tearing down the original front wing of the building to make way for the second wing. Room 5, which I taught in for one year (and Lisa taught in for 5 years) was torn down in May (In fact, I drove by the empty field where this classroom used to be as I came in to work today and that's what made me think of this).

5&6) Within the next six years or so the new Lloyd High School will be completely finished, and my classroom of 13 years--room 47--and the library will be torn down at that point. Of course, the one that's really going to bother me is when room 47 at Lloyd gets torn down. That was my classroom for 13 of the 14 years I taught, and there are a lot of memories there. When I walk by that classroom to this day I still peek inside to see what's going on, what's changed, what's still the same. I'll be sad when it's torn down.

And when that does happen, that will mean that the office I'm in right now is the only place I've ever worked that will still exist basically as it was when I worked there. That seems really strange for me. I guess it just points out to me the temporary nature of life. I mean, after all, if all of the places I worked can be erased and forgotten just like that, then one day I can be erased and forgotten, too!