How are you guys doing? Everything is going pretty well here. I really enjoyed the visit from Debbie. We had a really good time, did a lot of resting and went to a few small parties. On Sunday we went to the Hard Rock Cafe to celebrate her birthday. The food was good although the Nachos were huge and made eating the rest of our food a little more of a challenge. She left early on Monday, of course making me get up a few hours early. Kidding of course, her visit was well worth it.
The schools judicial department sent me a letter saying that they are not going to follow up on the violations that they sent out to 220 kids. That is a relief because in my opinion it is a little early to start out on disciplinary probation. I didn’t really think that they were going to charge everyone with it, and this seems like a more reasonable course of action.
As for the lump on my head that was mentioned in one of my dads blog entries… yes the genes have made themselves comfortable inside of me…. I hit my head hard on a door frame. The lesson of this story is that I am not allowed to wear flip flops. I was getting up to go to the bathroom at two in the morning, when next thing I know my sandal gets stuck on the floor and down I go. And down I go hard. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that but my roommate tells me that i was not making all that much sense for a while and he was about to get some help before i came back out of it. I feel a lot better although my head is still a little sore.
I am looking forward to seeing parents weekend, something i never really thought i would be able to say. Glad that you guys decided to come. And there are a few things that I need. I need a belt, the chair, shampoo, conditioner, axe deodorant (spray and stick), toothpaste and im sure i will think of a few more things before you come. When is that you will be arriving and when do you leave again?
Also, mom, did you deposit the money this morning because I put a check into my account. And i am no longer using the card. Thanks a ton
On one of our earliest canoeing trips together, Adam and I beached ourselves on a rocky ledge in the middle of the Moose River. What to do? Adam narrates his generous version of the story.
As I was leaving Starbucks this morning, who should I see coming towards me but The Once Proud Dominator, Dominic. We both said “Hi!”, and then I looked down at his right hand. It was swathed in an Ace bandage, and his pinkie finger was strapped to a metal flange. “What did they do to you?”, I asked in surprise. He started to tell me the gory details, but I reminded him that I had seen him eating with chopsticks the previous Thursday. He said, “I was in a lot of pain, and it wasn’t any better, so I decided to go in and have it looked at.”
He lifted up his hand and showed me. The Ace bandage covers a cast which tilts his wrist at an odd angle. “But I’m glad I did,” he went on, “It doesn’t hurt any more. They found a break up high on the side of my hand.” So I said, “But I guess you can’t play racquetball for a while.” He responded, “Just two weeks. Your wrist was laid up a lot longer, wasn’t it. Six weeks?”Â
I was a little shocked at his happy-go-lucky, Aussie insouciance. “But you can’t use a computer very easily now, can you. (That’s his main job, programming.) “No problem.” He held up his hand, tilted in its funny way, and wiggled his fingers.” And to prove it, he opened the door to Starbucks with his splinted hand and went in, saying, “See you.”
As I was leaving Starbucks this morning, who should I see coming towards me but The Once Proud Dominator, Dominic. We both said “Hi!”, and then I looked down at his right hand. It was swathed in an Ace bandage, and his pinkie finger was strapped to a metal flange. “What did they do to you?”, I asked in surprise. He started to tell me the gory details, but I reminded him that I had seen him eating with chopsticks the previous Thursday. He said, “I was in a lot of pain, and it wasn’t any better, so I decided to go in and have it looked at.”
He lifted up his hand and showed me. The Ace bandage covers a cast which tilts his wrist at an odd angle. “But I’m glad I did,” he went on, “It doesn’t hurt any more. They found a break up high on the side of my hand.” So I said, “But I guess you can’t play racquetball for a while.” He responded, “Just two weeks. Your wrist was laid up a lot longer, wasn’t it. Six weeks?”Â
I was a little shocked at his happy-go-lucky, Aussie insouciance. “But you can’t use a computer very easily now, can you. (That’s his main job, programming.) “No problem.” He held up his hand, tilted in its funny way, and wiggled his fingers.” And to prove it, he opened the door to Starbucks with his splinted hand and went in, saying, “See you.”
Making good choices is an important part of your job as a college student. On Friday, September 22, 2006 you did not make a good choice by entering a fraternity house that was accepting money for alcohol being served on its premises. It is a violation of state law and University policy to use, consume, possess, sell or purchase alcohol when you are under the age of twenty-one.
In addition, your personal safety was at risk by being in a building that was not equipped to handle 220 people. The fire safety equipment was not working and there were not enough exits to allow everyone to leave safely in the event of an emergency.
As an administrator I am concerned most about your safety. It scares me to think what might have happened that evening if a fire had erupted in that house. I want to see every student succeed at Temple University and become leaders and positive role models.
I have decided not to proceed with disciplinary action against you. I feel that we have a great opportunity to educate students as a result of this incident and am confident that you will make better choices in the future. Please review the University Alcohol Policy as well as the Student Code of Conduct. Both of these can be found on the policies webpage at http://policies.temple.edu.
If you would like more information on healthy choices and alternatives to drinking please contact the Campus Alcohol and Substance Awareness program through Tuttleman Counseling Services. They can be reached via phone at (215) 204-7276. In addition there are a variety of late night programs that are offered each week as alternatives to drinking. Please check the website for the Office of Student Activities at www.temple.edu/sac for a complete schedule of these activities.
I hope that you have learned from this experience and will make better choices in the future. Please contact me if you would like to receive additional information about this matter or about alcohol-free programming. I can be reached via e-mail at @temple.edu or via phone at (215) 204-8531.
Last spring, my application was accepted to go on a study abroad trip to Oaxaca Mexico for the winter term this year (January through mid-March). I would live with a family, take three classes in Latin American Civilisations (fulfilling a graduation requirement for civilisations studies), take a Spanish class, live with a Mexican family, do a bit of traveling, and maybe take some cultural (cooking, weaving, dancing) classes available at the language school in the city.
As you may or may not know, there has been a spot of civil unrest in Oaxaca. Continue
You sometimes see nail guns used as weapons in movies, but it’s a preposterous proposition because the safety, the gizmo which has to be pulled back for the nail to fire, requires great force to retract. If you want to play Mel Gibson in Mad Max with my framing (as in nailing the studs that make up the frame of a house) gun, which uses good, lethal-sized nails, you must use the claw end of a hammer to retract the safety. Which is good because it keeps your fingers away from those projectiles as they go whizzing after pigeons. I mainly fire nails into the air to watch the bright steel tumble and glint against the blue sky.
However (I am a however guy) , I have a smaller finish nail gun, which is operated by a battery and gas cartridges, and I can pull that safety back with my left thumb and forefinger. The nails I commonly use are two inches long and about a thick as the center of a toothpick.
This day I’ve finished my eight hours of hard labor, and as a salute to quitting time, I aim my gun not quite straight up, pull the safety back and fire. I’m sure that nail tumbled into the wild blue, but I doubt it reflected the sun’s light. I can’t say for sure because I was bent over, knees on the ground, holding my left hand in my right as if I were back in Cincinnati praying for my juvenile-deliquent soul at St.Catherines. When the scream of pain passed I peered down at my thumb, at the two small drops of blood on either side.
As most everyone who reads this blog knows, I tell two types of stories which might be broadly classified as 1. Death, and 2. Why I don’t deserve opposable thumbs. I’m leading off with another how-can-I-still-be-alive tale because I did the death thing last week with that dog story.
Every Sunday I make a week’s worth of breakfast drink for Diane. I pile a combination of fruit, bran, soy milk, orange juice and maybe a cup or two of whatever Odwalla’s on sale into a blender and create a home-fashioned smoothie. Some weeks it tastes better than others, it just depends on how “healthful†I make it. Too much bran, too many seedy blueberries and too much flax seed and you have something that slides down like lumpy mashed potatoes.
Because our blender is broken, I’ve been using Flo’s antique. It’s a spiffy metal and glass machine, and you can imagine smartly turned-out, red-dressed Betty Crocker using it to whip up a milk shake, or Flo preparing her patented raw egg, egg nogs to fortify her daughters brains for those midday exams. What you can’t imagine is any kind of updated electrical safety design.
This past Sunday I’ve got my concoction so tightly packed into the glass container that the blades are barely turning. Until, that is, I lift off the lid and instantly turn myself and the kitchen into a mad scientist’s experiment gone awry.
Flustered and frantic about the mess, I remove the jar and plunk the still-gleaming chrome base covered in red glop into the kitchen sink and begin spraying off the sides. It’s all working quite well until I realize I’ve failed to unplug the thing. I hesitate a moment fearing electrocution. I think about unplugging it, but then I decide instead to touch the thing. I wish I hadn’t done that.
It’s been two years since Tricia and I had visited my parents in Albuquerque, and nobody’s getting any younger. Though the timing was tough — squeezed in between our yearly Maine camping trip and a pilgrimage tour Tricia is leading to Chartres (she’s there now) — we picked the first full week of October both for Albuquerque’s world famous Balloon Fiesta, and my father’s birthday. Our first fall visit, we think.
The bottle of great wine I brought was stolen out of our suitcase (more on that perhaps, if American ever answers my email), and the weather ruined not only our personal balloon flight (twice) but much of the Fiesta itself, yet we still had a great visit, refamiliarized ourselves with the food, art galleries, and smells of the southwest, and gave my father a memorable 77th.
Steve Jobs spoke about the iPod, which the market analysts claim is losing its coolness compared to the emerging players: “That’s like saying you don’t want to kiss your lover’s lips because everyone has lips.â€
