My lawn is also a jungle right now. (see Beth’s post) It continues to get taller and taller. I have a new mower. I got it on July 22, 2006. (Yay! My online memory archive is working!) But my mower won’t stay running. I can get it to start, but it dies unless I keep pushing the primer bubble to send fuel through. My internet searches tell me that if that much is happening, it’s not the fuel line. The consensus seems to be that I need to disassemble and clean the carburetor. Huh?
So I’m going to have to take my new stupid mower to the stupid repair shop and pay a stupid bill to get it fixed. Stupid.
In the Spring, our school invites Lutheran elementary schools in the area to come and do some track and field events. It’s 3rd grade through 6th grade normally. This year there wasn’t much interest from the 6th graders, so it was mostly just 3rd through 5th. They do softball throw, soccer ball kick, some jumping competitions, sack race, three-legged race, and various runs and relays. The athletic department organizes it. The rest of us teachers do what they tell us to help make it work.
I have always been a “place-holder”. When the kids finish races and come running across the finish line, us place-holders grab them and bring them to the “record keepers”, who write down their names, grades, and schools. I have often been responsible for catching the 4th or 5th place kid, but this year I had 1st place. Whew! It was hard to catch some of them after they crossed the finish line.
Dang it! I overslept. And I have to go to a track-and-field event at school. Area elementary schools come and have fun. Us teachers help run it.
For a long time I’ve been trying to catch Ned in the middle of flehming. Last night I finally caught him, but he has an eye booger that spoils the picture. I’ll try and catch him again. Here’s the picture anyway:
Hehe… I blocked his eye booger with a pirate patch. Too bad I couldn’t do anything about his ears. 
I send links to myself in email so I can come back to them later. I was looking through my inbox and saw this one. It’s a page that tests your knowledge of the 50 states. You type them in one at a time, and try to do it in less than ten minutes. I remember missing two states the first time I did it a long time ago. I just tried again and missed one state. (Dang you, Utah!)
Try it and see how you do. HERE is the link.
(Warning: This may take up to ten minutes – or more – of your time.)
Not wanting to give you help by posting a map of the United States, here is a map of China:
I’ve had a sliver of something under the skin on my left index finger for more than a year now. I have no memory of getting it. I’ve tried getting it out before, but it’s deep into the layer of living skin. I dig down through the dead layer, and hit skin that has live nerves. Ouch! Just recently, garden work has roughed up my hands a little, and the splinter area looked like something was happening, so I cut away the top skin with a fingernail clippers and… it was just the same.
So the sliver of whatever is still there. It still hurts to dig into it. And it’s gonna stay that way for a while.
What is this thing? A piece of wood? A metal filing? A government tracking chip?
In the picture below, it’s the dark thing at the first bend in my finger (in the middle of the picture). The scratch farther up my finger is a gardening wound.
