College Football Kickoff tomorrow

We have waited the whole summer. We have been teased with some silly pre-season NFL games and we were thrown a few games last night. But LSU @ MSU doesn't compare with the real kickoff when the Auburn Tigers take the field again. ESPN HD at 7:45 ET. So, we have to wait all day, but other games can help fill the day. Can you feel it? Football time is back again... Let's go Auburn. Let's feel the energy again. We are unfortunately beginning to root for Florida because we have some fanatic Florida friends who will go to a bar to watch Florida play a junior high scrimmage.

You can guess what I will be doing tomorrow ... after I mow the grass. Maybe it will rain and then I can't mow the grass.

America's Privileged

America doesn't have defined royalty with kings, queens, princes, etc. But, we have celebrity royalty and the people who believe that they are privilege. No caste system exists in the U.S. but with some money and attitude some people think that they are above rules. Let's not even discuss Paris, Lindsey, and Nichole Richie. I don't have to mention their last names and you know the royalty that I am talking.

But, other Americans watch so much TV and believe that they just need to be the style to be G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S (Did you sing the song while reading the word? If not, then you missed out - it has a good beat.). Some Americans believe that they just need the neck roll, facial expressions, and the silly bumblebee-cover-up-my-face sunglasses even while inside to get whatever they want. Here are two examples from my trip this week, both within a couple of hours.

Story 1: Manchester, NH and the Northeast in general are not going to be fashion setting. They don't set the trends up there and they generally don't follow the trends. They do not care as long as the Patriots and the Red Sox do well. When teenagers try to fit with the hip Paris look they stand out. This girl was with her family in the airport eating McD's (that's trendy) looking bored and unentertained as she can be. But, she had the glasses and the look, so she was cool. The dad ignored her, but I figured out where she got it from when her mom returned. Her mom tried for the look but there are some times when skin should not be on display. Good, soft skin is good, but wrinkly, folded old-tattoo skin, I don't need to see.

Story 2: When you get on an airplane, you are bombarded with several announcements. 1 - when the boarding door is closed, you must turn the cell phone off. 2 - bags must fit in the overhead or underneath the seat in front of you. 3 - if you sit with no seat in front of you (bulkhead seat - usually first row) then all items must go in overhead. I have set up the story - can you guess the next parts? A woman with her trendy look sits down in Row 1. She puts her big bag at her seat. The flight attendant tells her that the bag has to go in the overhead. She sits there (I won't say ignoring her yet). The captain comes by a few minutes later and notices that she still has the bag there. Instead of asking, he tells he that he will put the bag up for her. The woman rolls her eyes as he puts the bag up. Privileged try didn't work. But, the story wouldn't be worth mentioning if that was it - that story is true even for us commoners. After the boarding door is closed, during the other talk where we learn how to use the overly-complicated seat belts on an airplane, her cell phone rings. At first, she doesn't react, until the flight attendants stops the broadcast to remind her that her phone must be off. Privilege attempt number 2 didn't work. Her weak response was that she thought it was off. She didn't try for a third which would have been to answer the phone (I have seen that try before but not the other day).

If I tell my wife these stories, then she tells me that I am judgmental. If she reads it here instead, maybe she will think it's funny (or true). I can hope, right? I am not judgmental. I enjoy being a sociologist while traveling. I wish I was as good with the one-liners as Dennis Miller or Bill Maher.

Watching people while traveling is fun. The having to sit and be squished into a seat and wait like herded cattle gets very old though, along with waiting for 30 minutes to pick up your bag.

Dean NWC Picture is old

I just noticed the picture of my post about Dean a few days ago. Usually, after I make a post and I am happy that it reads OK, I do not check back. Firefox is nice enough to highlight spelling mistakes so I do not worry too much.

I thought I was doing the right thing to link to the NWC site image rather than copy the picture. But, I didn't realize that the link to the picture remains the same for each advisory. I guess that approach helps their server by not maintaining all of the pictures for each advisory. I figured that the cryptic path and name of the image was computer generated for each advisory, but I guess that the link is created once per storm and makes the site easy to maintain; just pull the latest advisory from a database.

Some late night wonderment - maybe now I do a bad thing and copy the picture from NWC in the future...

Croc Crazy and Slippers

Bill Maher created a new term tonight on his show on HBO with his new rule to not wear plastic shoes. He recounts how a year ago only young children and mental patients wore shoes that you could hose down to clean.

I agree with him that people are getting too casual. In the Atlanta airport on Thursday, I saw a man getting on my flight wearing a polo shirt, shorts, ankle-length black socks, and Crocs. Which fashion faux paus was he committing? The black socks were probably worse. Please help. Sandals are not a fashion accessory and do not necessarily work with every outfit - particularly long pants. Maybe I have just turned too old-school.

I like my own Crocs. They are comfortable and easy to wear around the house. But, I am not firmly convinced about wearing them outside of our house. I have issues about thinking how old I am I guess. I do not wear slippers around the house no matter how cold it is because it reminds me of old people shuffling around.

Watching Dean

Pray for the people of Jamaica. I think that the Cayman Islands has a bit more money to weather the storm, but I think that Jamaica will be walloped if this forecast path from the NHC stays correct. This path hasn't changed much for Jamaica and Yucatan in the past 24 hours.

When you watch Dean, you know that the energy of the storm will have to go somewhere. Dean keeps pulling up the warmth of the water and with no shear to slow it down, it has to grow. You don't want it to hit your house, but you worry for the places and people where it may be going. For instance, I would like a catastrophic storm like Dean has become to hit an error with the ability to prepare and opportunity to recover. Bermuda is a good place. They have money, the building codes, and the government structure to handle a hurricane with minimal loss of life.

That thought leads me to a larger question. We Americans love Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic for vacation when we go to the areas with money. Should we take more responsibility to share our wealth (not just our tourism dollars) to improve the lives of people in the islands around us? We supposedly went into Iraq to remove a dictator that was not good to his people. What about these island countries with a barely functioning government? Our church and others in the Presbytery support a Haiti mission with St. Joseph's home for boys. Rather than grass roots, should our government which has spent $450 billion and counting, help out with a few billion?

Our Auburn Room

We painted most of the downstairs rooms last summer. This summer we didn't do quite as much after getting the carpet replaced with pecan hickory hardwood. Our son came up with the idea of painting the loft. What colors would be better than Auburn Orange and Blue? I saw the Home Depot commercials about team colors and it is as easy as advertised to get the Glidden paint in your team's approved colors. And, it looks great! Check out our slide show uploaded to Picasa. My wife did most of the work. J did a lot of the painting from 4 feet and below. J kept everyone on schedule.

My toof is gone

J's 2nd front tooth came out yesterday. Hopefully, he can stop gnawing on food from the side. He almost seems to be teething; chewing on his shirt all of the time. The new big teeth are starting to appear. He never learned to whistle very well. He will now have a shot with some adult front teeth. And, school starts in less than 2 weeks. J goes to 2nd grade and C starts preschool 4-K. How fast they grow up...

Cost of War banner

I was checking out Old Blue Bus blog from Blogs of Note and I noticed this on the side of the blog. I think that this number is important for us to remember. Besides the lives, this war is costing us (and Iraqis and others) a lot of money that could be spent on schools, roads, or housing. Instead, we pay for security over there.