Highly recommended

Find a kid you can escort as an excuse, then head to your local PumpItUp.

We recently took our kids, finding the place to be total pneumatic pandemonium, a good time was had by all.

I initially intended to read a book, sit on the sidelines--but once I got bouncing, there was no turning fuddy-duddy. It's a great workout, too.

Closure

Lately, the words "the end" have been more than I can bear. "Closed" and "Good-bye" are on the list, too. For some reason I've yet to cog, I cannot easily accept closures.




I am now turning the last 50 pages of the Harry Potter saga, and each leaf turned leaves an emptiness in the pit of my stomach.


Just last Friday, I took my boys to the auction of the Prairie Rose enterprise. For those who are unfamiliar, there once was a chuckwagon supper club, complete with true cowboy/wild west sing-alongs, etc...set in the countryside, featuring the Prairie Rose Wranglers (akin to Riders in the Sky). Unfortunately the PR was yet another casualty of the over-extension of one Mr. Thomas Etheridge, who put all his money, faith, credit, etc... into what was (for a month or two) Wild West World. Now, we bought the season pass to WWW, and we talked others into it, thinking it would be good to show our support for the state's premiere and one of the nation's only western themed theme parks. Alas, it went belly up.



Attending the auction only reminded me of one of my deepest scars--my own family farm auction, circa 1981. That event was more sorrowful for me than most funerals I've attended.



The closures don't end! The Palace on the east side of Wichita, the one which played small release, debut, independent films--closed this summer. Cowley College's Southside Center is to close next semester. Half of the food court at the Hutchinson Mall is vacant. I don't know why these things stick with me, but they do, like a burr in my saddle, and they chafe.

I am already anticipating that hollow feel of the end of a semester, and it's only week 2.

Weekend's here!

I don't know if I've ever been so relieved. I do say, "Yahoo! and all that." It's only the first week of work, but it's been lengthy, at times agonizing...not the workload or the student interface or even being boxed up in an industrial grade office full of florescent lighting. The hard part has been, as I predicted, being away from my farm and family. I want to go home, sit on the porch, pick ticks off my beagle until the rest of the family wakes up for the day.

*sigh*

On a related note--this weekend I am literally going home, to southwest Kansas. We're to attend a balloon festival in Garden City. I'm even bringing my mom.

Internet Confession

Recently at an instructor's meeting I confessed (as part of an ice breaking activity) that my secret passion was for the boundless world wide web. While not openly scoffed or scorned, I could feel others' evil eyes upon me. I could almost hear them plotting to have me removed from the room.

Maybe it wasn't the best venue to make such a confession. Others were passionate about Jane Austin or tagging butterflies.

Truly, I do find the Internet to be fascinating. I never tire of it. As it has evolved over the last ten years or so, I've been drawn in further and further, to the point I now feel lost without it. The latest discovery I have made which only enables my addiction is: google bookmarks. I had favorites and bookmarks on four different PC's, plus I'd saved them as a html file from other PC's that had crashed, etc... The bookmark tool allows me to compile them all in one handy spot, right on my igoogle page. (I'm sure this is not a new invention, that there are others on the market that may even be better, but it works very well for me!) Now I have full access to all my favorite sites.

I think one reason I like the web is that it is arranged something like I think. I know we all think by association, that there are linear connections and constructs, but folks claim I have this odd way of riding several tangents at a time. This is, similarly, how I poke around the Internet. Thank goodness for Firefox (and now IE) tabs, too, for I can have two or so browsers going, with several tabs each, and flip back/forth. These explorations of the Internet are beyond surfing, which seems so much like a surface sport; they are more like riding dividing torpedoes in the deep sea. I lose all track of time, and when I do surface, I get the bends.

Back in the Saddle Again

'Tis the first day of school for the term for me. To sum up in a word: uncomfortable. I've not worn shoes regularly, and now I'm back to the full-on suit. Classes don't start for me for another hour yet, and I find myself chomping at the bit.

In the past, I would watch inspirational "teacher movies" before the term started. I would wander the school supplies aisle and revel. If possible, I would visit a grade school classroom (under the pretense of supervising a volunteer) just so I could whiff the floor wax, the plastic painting aprons, the crayons...olfactory nostalgia is potent!

I am over all that, but I remain a person who likes to mark an occasion. I like to celebrate the end of one thing, the start of another. This tendency has amplified with children, from cutting teeth to using the toilet, from outgrowing clothes to dispensing with baby-talk....This need to launch fireworks, to dance naked in a ticker-tape parade...it seems it's getting more prominent as I age. Celebrating, or at least noting, the turn of semesters and seasons is likely understandable...but having a ceremony for the end of USA network's summer season, hosting a party to mourn the last Harry Potter book...really!

It's not that events, epochs, turns of every thing are not noted in reflective writings. It's not that they go unnoticed by my wife's scrapbooking camera. Heck, I even voice my huzzahs and laments, constantly. (Ask my wife!)

It's so commonly a part of me now that even my 4yr old models it. He was hanging down his head recently, and when I asked him why, he sighed that he was getting too old for some toy. He was already cognizant of his age and of how he is on a continuum.

So, anyway, smack some champagne on my hull and let's get on with it.