I am going to try my hand at blogging again.  I hope that this return will be more long lasting than my last.  We shall see.

Several things have brought me to this point.  One is a comment from Fauquet, who really is one of the dearest people on Xanga.  The fact that he is still thinking about me after all this time is amazing to me.  It also means a lot to me.

Another factor in my decision to return is the fact that I recently developed a Facebook account.  I did this at the request of my daughter-in-law who has a photography business and asked me to join facebook and become a friend of her account to help her reach a goal.  I did that, and I found Facebook to be fun.  Now, however, I am starting to find that  I miss the more in-depth exchange of ideas that occurs with blogging.  I will continue on Facebook, but I want to try this again, too.

I also just visited the Socrates Cafe site and found that I miss the discussions there.

Of course, I also miss knowing what is happening with my Xanga friends and feel a need to get reconnected.

Whatever my reasons, I am back, at least for now.  I hope this time I am successful in keeping my blog going.

Have a great day, everyone!

PS:  I have not done this for so long that I do not remember how to write the html to make links!  I wanted to link to Fauquet and Socrates Cafe.  Bummer!!!

PPS:  OK - It is ridiculous for a person who teaches online and spends endless hours at a computer every day to say that she cannot remember how to make links.  I figured it out!  Go say hi to Michel and check out the Cafe!

I never wrote my third North Shore blog from July. The pictures have
been in my photo blog for quite awhile, but I do still want to put them
up, so here's my last "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" blog.

One
of the things that we really enjoy when we go up to the North Shore is
swimming. There is a lovely beach area at the Temperance River where it
empties into Lake Superior. The water is warm, and although the beach
is pebbles instead of sand, it's a large and comfortable area. The kids
always have a good time there. Unfortunately, I did not have a camera
along when we swam there this year, but I did have it when we hiked the
falls area of the river.

These pictures are of an area upriver above the falls that bring the water down to the lake.  It's quite a climb, as you can see here.  That's Dan, Andy, and Matt helping Jake and Ryan climb.  Madison must have gone on ahead.  Betsy, Jess, and I took an easier path because we had Will.  At one year old, he has to be carried on hikes.  Did you know that other hikers look at you strangely when you are carrying a baby?

It takes a good half hour or forty-five minutes to climb above the falls, but once you are up there, the water is calm and fairly shallow in most places.  Here's Dan in the first picture and Ryan, Jake and Andy in the second walking in the river.

Here are all 4 kids getting ready to "get wet."

Will likes the water.  Everybody else waded across to the other side of the river, but even though it is shallow, it was too deep for Will to wade, so he got left behind with me.  He was a little disappointed because he likes to be with his brother and cousins, but he decided to play happily anyway.

There are some areas of shallow rapids that are fun for the bigger kids.

There are also some nice, flat rocks for those times when you need a little break or just a little sun.

Dan and Andy had to be constantly on the alert, though, because this was just below the area where the kids were swimming:

That's only the beginning of a long series of rocky and progressively steeper waterfalls that carry the river down to Lake Superior.  It's lovely to look at,  but you wouldn't want to slip over it!

That's our day at the Temperance River.  I highly recommend it if you have a chance to visit the North Shore.

It's 6:00 AM and I have been awake for 2 hours. I finally decided that it was pointless to lie in bed and I might as well get up and do something. I'm not normally very happy to be up at this hour and I don't have a lot of focus, so this blog probably will not have focus either. On the other hand, being awake now does give me time to blog, and that time is often difficult for me to find.

We took the pontoon out of the water for the season a week ago. I was very sorry to be putting it away until spring, but the last trip out on it was a very good day. Both our kids and their families went out with us for the last cruise of the summer. Our son-in-law Matt brought his wave runner and gave the kids and any adults who wanted to go rides. He also pulled the kids in our tube. It was the first time we have seen the tube in use. Andy has had it all summer.

We cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the pontoon's grill for an early supper. Jess brought fruit and Betsy brought cheese and crackers, chips, and cookies to round out the meal. Food always tastes so good when it's cooked on the grill, and I think cooking on the pontoon is especially nice.

We are storing the boat at a farm close to the marina where we have our slip, so it was not much of a job to move it there. We can't tow it with our vehicles, so Andy has to tow it for us. We think Jess is a little nervous about that, so it's good that it wasn't a long trip. It will make it easier to get it back in the water in the spring, too.

Fall quarter started for me yesterday. Not quite half my students have checked in so far. I am always a little concerned during the first week of classes because many students do not realize that they need to do the class with the other students on a schedule. It's not an independent study. Some of them always miss the first unit because they check in late, so they start out behind. That's not a good beginning. The first assignment is due tomorrow.  I am anxious to see how many get it submitted on time.

Other than subbing, my online classes, the after school program, and my GED classes (yes, I am back to my 4 jobs again), we are busy doing a thorough cleaning of our house and trying to get rid of all the things that we store but don't use.  I am a packrat and tend to keep way too much "stuff" around.  After cleaning out the homes of elderly relatives, I know that I don't want to leave a lot of worthless clutter for our kids to deal with someday.  Besides that, we may eventually want to sell this house and move closer to our kids.  Thinning things out now will make that process easier if and when we decide to do it.

I have said goodbye to a lot of things that I have had for many years.  Some of them really have no meaning for me anymore, so I wonder why I still had them.  I had scrapbooks with pressed corsages from boyfriends that I barely remember and programs from events that I had totally forgotten.  I also had a lot of things of my mom's that I don't use but have not wanted to let go.  I know that I do not need them to remember her, so I am finally going to let someone who will use them have them.  We have donated a couple of carloads of clothes and other items to the store run by our local DAC, and there will be quite a bit more before we are through.  I am also going to take some vintage jewelry to an antique store in a nearby town and see if they would like to buy it.  I will be glad to have my shelves and drawers cleared out and organized.

Well, that's my early morning ramble.  Now I had better wake Dan up.  He is going to sub in shop class today.  That's an interesting experience for a retired English teacher!

Is it really a vacation if you take your work along?  Many people do it these days, so I decided to try it, and in late August, I took my job on a cruise to Alaska with me.  Many people, including me, work online now, so it really is possible to work from almost anywhere.  I learned a lot by giving it a try.

At the beginning of the trip, we had a night in a hotel in the Twin Cities and another in Seattle.  Both hotels were chosen because they said that they had internet access.  I was not able to get online at all in the Twin Cities, and the ethernet connection in our room did not work in Seattle, although the wireless connection in the lobby worked very well.  We had had an earlier experience with the laptop not working in a hotel, so we were beginning to think that the problem was my laptop.  It turned out that the laptop was fine, but apparently there are a lot of hotels that promise internet access but don't really have it.  That is aggravating when you work online and are relying on being able to work!

This was our third cruise to Alaska, and I am glad that I did not do my work/vacation experiment on an itinerary that I was visiting for the first time.  It was also a cruise with several days at sea, and I was glad of that because it gave me work time.  I decided that I wanted to spend the time that we were in port visiting the area, so I opted to purchase computer time on the ship rather than sitting in internet cafes in port.  There are advantages and disadvantages to doing that.

Computer time on ships is very expensive.  The cheapest plan available to me was $100 for 250 minutes.  I got 30 free minutes because I am a past passenger of the cruiseline, but I still bought $300 worth of computer time.  That's a lot of money, but I knew that shipboard computer time was expensive and I thought that I might spend a lot more.

This particular ship does not have computer service in the cabins, so passengers have to go to the internet cafe onboard or to certain "hot spots" in the public areas of the ship.  The manager of the internet cafe suggested that since I was working, I might find the ship's library or meeting rooms provided a quieter environment, so I tried those areas first.  The library had no tables, so working there was difficult.  The meeting rooms had tables and wall outlets where I could plug in my laptop, but many activities took place in those rooms, so I was surrounded by jolly, and noisy, passengers.  That left the ship's main lobby or the internet cafe, which overlooked the lobby, as my remaining choices.  I opted for the internet cafe because it had a plug-in for my laptop.  The cafe received the live and usually loud music coming from the lobby, but it was still quieter than the meeting rooms.

The ship did have several computers in the internet cafe, and it was not difficult to gain access to them, but I was very happy that I had brought my own laptop.  Computer time cost the same whether I used the ship's computers or my own, but their computers were not powerful enough to run some of the functions in the program that I use in my classes.  My own computer ran most of those functions easily.  The ship's computer system is slower than mine at home, but, on my own computer, the difference was much less noticeable.  I still was not able to use my gradebook because the system was not fast enough and kept timing out and freezing.  I had that problem occasionally in other functions, but most of the time I was able use all but the gradebook function.  I warned students in advance that I might not do any grading until I got home, so it was not a problem.

I enjoy shipboard life and at first I resented being alone in the internet cafe while my family and the friends who were traveling with us were out having fun, but I did get to go to the shows and to eat the fabulous meals, so I adjusted.

Our last port was Prince Rupert, Canada.  It is a small city with an interesting history.  I know that I would have enjoyed visiting the museums there, but I decided that I needed to work because I did not want to buy more computer time on the ship and I still had things that had to be done.  I bought 3 hours of computer time in a very nice little internet cafe there for $2 - quite a change from shipboard prices!

The week after we got home was very hectic because I had all of  the grading to do from the week that I was gone, plus the grading that was due the week that I returned.  I felt a little like I was chained to my computer, but that is the price that I paid for playing!

We are going on vacation with my job again in February when we take a cruise to the Caribbean.  This will be a longer cruise and we will have fewer days at sea, so we shall see how it goes.  I think that what I have learned will help me have a good time and still be productive.

Here are a few pictures from my trip.  You can see a larger version of these pictures if you click on them.

Our first port was Juneau.  We took a bus to the area around the Mendenhall Glacier to do some hiking.  It's a beautiful area and in spite of the fact that we were near a glacier, the weather was warm and sunny.  Before we got off the bus, the driver told us that there were a lot of bears in the area.  He assured us that the bears had no interest in us.  They were there because there was a stream full of salmon nearby.  He said that if we saw a bear, we should not run, but that we should take out our cameras and take the bear's picture.  We were almost ready to return to town when this bear ambled across the path about 4 feet in front of me.  I was hurriedly backing away, and then I remembered the picture-taking advice, so here's my bear.  Even though he is brown, he is a black bear.

After we left Juneau, we spent the day cruising in the area of the Sawyer Glacier.  Our ship was very large and getting it into the area near the glacier involved navigating through some very narrow spaces.  It was fascinating to watch the very small course adjustments necessary to accomplish that.

Dan took this picture.  He found it interesting because you can see the glacier and the ice chunks in the water, but in the ship's pool in the area near the hot tub (the round red and white structure just under the yellow water slide), you can just see a swimmer's head.  It was warm enough to swim very comfortably.

Here's a closer view of the Sawyer Glacier.  Glaciers are really remarkable.

That's my first experience with making my job portable.  The good thing is that I can work just about anywhere.  The bad thing is that I can work just about anywhere!

Probably most people in the US have heard that the I35W bridge between Minneapolis and St. Paul collapsed a few days ago. It's been a major national news event for many reasons. For one thing, for a major bridge collapse during rush hour, the casualty level has been surprisingly low. I really think that was partially due to the fact that it was rush hour and traffic was only moving about 10 miles per hour. That meant that many people were able to stop their cars and those that did did not cause major pile ups behind them. It also meant that the cars that went off the bridge did not go hurtling into space at 70 miles per hour or more. You definitely do not want to hit water that fast because the impact with water is very powerful. Many people from the surrounding neighborhood heard the bridge go down and came running to help, too, pulling people out of the water and giving assistance to people still on the bridge. The rescue effort started long before actual rescue vehicles arrived. I think the number of dead is still at 5 and the number of missing is declining. The last I heard, only 25 people were remained hospitalized and only 5 of them were critical. It's a tragedy, but it could have been so much worse.

There was construction going on on the bridge deck, so 2 lanes in each direction were closed. That meant that fewer than the normal number of cars were on the bridge at the time of the collapse. Much of the bridge fell straight down and fell in stages, which meant that people and cars rode down with it instead of falling off. There are cars under the bridge and a freight train was crushed under it. I don't know if there are boats under the debris. That area of the Mississippi River is heavy with both commercial and recreational boat traffic. There are also bike and running trails along the shore. I would imagine that when workers begin to clear the debris, the casualty count will rise a little. The police and fire officials who have been coordinating the rescue/recovery operation are making a very intensive effort to locate all missing people, though, and it's surprising how fast the unaccounted number has dropped. My husband and I have been expecting the death toll to rise as the cars under water have been searched, but that has not happened. We can be very grateful for that.

Both of our kids work on the St. Paul side of the river and live on the Minneapolis side, so of course we wanted to know if they were safe as soon as we heard about the bridge collapse. Phone lines into the area were clogged with people trying to locate family and friends and it was impossible to make calls on land lines, but we were able to reach our daughter's cell phone with one of our cell phones. She had driven over the bridge shortly before it went down, but she was safe and she had been over to her brother's house and knew that they were all safe, so we were very relieved. I can't imagine the horror that families felt when they could not reach members who might have been on the bridge!

Workers will begin clearing the debris from the river in the next couple of days because they need to get the shipping channel back open. Divers continue to search for bodies, That's a gruesome task made worse by the murky waters and debris. Right now, it's hard to believe that in a relatively short time, there will be no trace of what happened.

People are now wondering about other bridges in Minnesota and around the country. There are many with poorer safety ratings than the I35W bridge had. Hopefully, bridges in need of replacement or repair can be identified and appropriate measures can be taken to prevent another situation like this one.

We live in a very small town (about 2000 people), so I thought that I knew how small towns celebrated the 4th of July. This year, we were up on the North Shore near the very small resort town of Tofte, and I learned that I did not know as much about it as I thought! We heard that there was a parade from the park to downtown Tofte in the afternoon, so we decided to go. Now, the park is less than half a mile from our cabins, and downtown Tofte is less than half a mile from there, so we knew that this was not going to be a very long parade. We talked about whether or not there would be many people there. Dan was inclined to think that there would not be because of the size of the town. I thought there might be a crowd because it is a resort area and I thought that the "summer people" would be looking for 4th of July festivities.

We went early just in case we needed to stake out a spot. It turned out that there were quite a few people there, so that was a good idea. We could easily have walked, but we drove because it was easier with the kids. We parked close to downtown, getting one of the last parking places. There were food booths set up near where we parked. We had eaten and we brought drinks with us, so we we were not interested in those booths, but there were several others selling various arts and crafts. One booth had beautiful hand knit children's sweaters, and Jess bought one as a baby gift for a friend. I bought chances on a lovely hand made quilt. Then we went back to the car to watch the parade.

That's Dan in the foreground. He was not part of the parade, but the kids on the bicycle and the 4 wheeler were. It seemed that if you had any type of vehicle and some balloons, you could be a parade unit. Notice how narrow that parade route is.

The Conservation Corps carried a homemade banner.

Some people trailered their boats and joined the parade.

Here's a whole lawnmower brigade.

Most of the parade was made up of classic cars that came down from Ontario, Canada. I thought that that was very nice of them to come since the 4th of July is not really a Canadian holiday. Dan liked this car:

I thought this one was neat. (Do people say "neat" anymore?)

There were at least 2 dozen classic cars.

The parade route was so narrow that you really could reach out and touch the parade units. It's customary here to throw candy to kids watching parades. As each unit passes, the kids run out into the street to collect the candy. In this parade, the kids got candy, but the people in the parade just handed it to them as the went past. It was easy to converse with the parade participants, so we told some of the classic car drivers that we liked their cars.

It was a nice little parade and a good example of a community coming together to celebrate.

Last week, our family made our annual trek to the North Shore of Lake Superior.  It's become a tradition that we all enjoy.  We rent cabins at the edge of the Superior  National Forest.  There is no phone, no TV, and no internet, so it's very peaceful and we all get a chance to relax and unwind.  We don't really rough it, though.  The larger of our cabins has 3 bedrooms, a large great room, a fully supplied kitchen complete with dishwasher, and 2 bathrooms.  The smaller cabin is similar but only has sleeping accommodations for 4.  Here are a couple of pictures of the great room.

We really enjoyed that window seat in the second picture.  It was a great place to curl up with a book or even to take a little nap.  Most of the time, though, we were out enjoying our "beach."  The resort is called Sugar Beach, which is something of a joke.  Here's the beach.

The beach in this area is volcanic rock.  In fact, it's some of the oldest rock in the world.  It's great for climbing around and no sand gets tracked into the cabin.  That's Dan with Will on his shoulders, Jake in the yellow, and Andy looking at something through his binoculars.

There are lots of seagulls.  They are very happy to see us come because we give them our left overs.  They will actually hover right in front of your face but I did not have any luck getting a picture of that.

That second picture is some vegetation bravely hanging onto the rock to grow.  There is not a lot of topsoil, but it's amazing what grows anyway.

We like to hike and there are lots of good trails.  This is Dan and me with Jake and Will one day when we went hiking.  Don't you wonder why we took a baby up onto those high rocks?  The second picture was also taken that day.  I like it because it shows how it can be perfectly clear and sunny where you are, but just a short distance away, there can be heavy Lake Superior fog rolling in.

In the evenings, we often have bonfires.  Here are Andy, Madison, Jess with Will, and Betsy out on the beach just before the bonfire, then Betsy taking a picture and Madison with a toasted marshmallow.

Matt likes to build rock sculptures and he is really very good at it.  Here he is building one in a little pool of water. 
The second picture is one of Matt's sculptures in the background on the far right, some of Madison's in the background, and some of Andy and Jake's in the foreground.  We left quite a little art gallery on the beach.  This is the first year that other members of the family have tried their hands at rock art.

There is a little park about half a mile from the cabins.  They have some playground equipment, but the big attraction seemed to be this jetty.  Those are big rocks.  Keep in mind that that's Dan in center of the picture and he is over 6 feet tall.

Here are Dan and I.  We have on matching sweatshirts from the Grand Portage National Monument.  Our kids tease us when we dress alike.

The kids do play in the cabin sometimes.  These pictures were taken in the bedroom loft where Dan and I slept.  The boys built a "no girls allowed" fort in a little cubbyhole storage area.  Then the girls had to retaliate by establishing a "girl zone."

I will have 2 more North Shore blogs, one showing you how a 4th of July parade is done in a very small resort community and the other about a day hiking the Temperance River.

I am proof reading a medical dictionary for Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. Actually, I am proof reading just a part of it, and a small part at that. It's been an interesting experience.

The process has two stages. In the first stage, I was provided with a stack of galley proofs and was free to rewrite, add words, and delete words. That was fun and challenging. I did not intend to add words when I started, but I found that as I progressed, I did feel the need to do that because there seemed to be some holes to fill. I also rewrote many definitions fairly extensively. As an example, I removed the word antithetical from a definition. That word is not in common usage anymore and would not be familiar to most students. Looking it up would require the use of a standard dictionary because it is not a medical term and would not be in a medical dictionary. My experience with students is that if they encounter a definition with a lot of multisyllabic words that they don't understand, they are going to write that definition down and move on without looking up the big words, especially if it requires the use of a second dictionary. That means that they do not really know the meaning of the word that they have defined and they are unable to use it correctly. I drive my students nuts asking them to define the words in definitions because I can see no point to learning a term if that term is not understood. To me, that is an exercise in futility. I spent a lot of time simplifying the definitions on my proofs. It was my contribution to better learning.

Now, in stage two, I have another set of proofs to read. This time, my task is not to rewrite. In fact, my instructions are not to rewrite unless absolutely necessary because rewriting can change page length. I am to look for certain specific types of errors in form and to check to be sure that the pronunciations for all the words are written correctly. This part of the job is not as interesting. In fact, it's rather tedious. This is a different set of pages than the one that I had before. It is easy to see that the person who had these words in round one was not interested in simplification. I can see the value in having more than one person look at a particular page set, though. It's bound to reduce the number of errors.

I mail my proofs back tomorrow. I'll be glad to be finished. I can feel the strain on my eyes from looking at the small print for hours at a time. I'm really glad that I have had this opportunity, though. I think that I have learned quite a bit from it.

Most of you have probably seen this on somebody's blog already because it's been going around Xanga.

Rules if you are tagged:

1) People who are tagged need to share seven random facts/habits about themselves on their own blog.

2 ) Include the rules

3) Choose seven people to tag and include their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment and tell them they've been tagged.

I am tagging BLB, Strawberry14, Twoberry, pinkjag, Ginie54, abbyndc, and vexations. I hope that they will participate.

Here are my Random Thoughts in the form of Saturday morning ramblings for Englishjuls who tagged me, and for everybody else, too!

I was in college in the sex, drugs, rock and roll era of the 60's. The Kent State Massacre happened while I was in college. I attended a Catholic Women's college, though, so I missed the whole 60's experience!

I sort colored candies by color and arrange them in patterns before I eat them. It disturbs me if someone takes one and breaks the pattern. My son does the same thing.

I saw my daughter's son born. That was a thrilling experience. After the birth, I went with one of the nurses to the newborn nursery for his exam. On the way, she told me that she could never watch her daughter give birth. I wonder why?

I have about 150 college students in my classes each quarter. I have never met any of them because I teach online!

I am one of the few people I know who likes the Caribbean islands better than Hawaii. I don't like every place to be just like the USA!

I have always driven a stick shift car. I can't drive an automatic. I am going to be in real trouble if they ever quit making sticks!

When I was 5 years old, I was alone with my grandmother when she fell and broke her arm. It was an open fracture and bled. Somehow, I got her up off the floor in the hallway where she fell, took her out to the couch in the living room, stopped the bleeding, bandaged the arm, then called my aunt for help. She was a large woman and walked on crutches, so getting her up was quite a trick. I have no idea how I did it! I think I became an RN at least partially because of that experience.

We have never bought toys.  In fact, that has always been my explanation for why we are able to travel on teacher's incomes.  You can afford to travel when your stereo system still has an 8 track player!  Of course, we did replace that stereo when it died about 5 years ago and now have a CD player, but we went right from 8 track to CD with no cassettes in between!  Anyway, now that Dan is retired, we decided that we wanted a toy, so we bought a pontoon.  Well, we didn't exactly buy it.  Our son Andy bought it, but we are paying for it and will be the prime users of it.

We launched it on June 8, and that was quite an adventure!  We met Andy in the Twin Cities to pick it up.  We do not have a car that can tow it, so we needed Andy's help and Andy's truck.  Here is Andy at the shop where the boat was detailed so it would be beautiful for its maiden voyage.  Andy is getting some last minute pointers from the salesman.

Then Dan and Andy were ready to go.  How did you say we pulled this thing?

Dan and Andy headed for the lake while I started over to Andy's house to pick up our daughter-in-law Jess and their boys.  We were not following behind Dan and Andy in the truck.  We followed them for a short distance the week before when they took the boat lift down to the lake, and it was very nerve-wracking.  We were better off traveling separately!

In spite of the fact that Andy had to turn back for some things that the dealer had forgotten to put into the boat (I was glad I did not see that!), we arrived at the lake within five minutes or so of each other.  Andy did a great job of backing up to the launch.

That is, it was great until we discovered that the pontoon was hung up on the trailer and was unwilling to float free in the water!  It was a very reluctant boat!  No matter what we did, it clung to one corner of the trailer for dear life!  It looked like we were going to sink Andy's car instead of launching a pontoon!

Some people in the launch area helped us, (I think they wanted to use the launch), and we finally got it in the water, parked the truck, and set out in the boat.  Here is Andy driving.  He says that's his boating hat.

When Jake stepped aboard, the first words out of his mouth were "Where's the cabin?"  Andy and Jess have a cabin cruiser on the Mississippi and Jake spends most of his time in the cabin when he is on that boat.  Dan told him that our cabin was pretty wet and he would probably prefer to stay on deck when he was with us.

We have a grill on the pontoon, so it seemed only right to use it on the maiden voyage.  We grilled hamburgers and I brought salads and brownies to finish off a supper meal.

Everybody enjoyed the ride.  Here's Dan and Will.  Will is a very cheerful baby, isn't he?

Jess tried to convince Will to sleep.  He did settle down and cuddle, but he never did really go to sleep.

I took a turn at driving the boat.  I had never been behind the wheel of a boat before, but I figured that I had to learn because we will be spending a lot of time on the pontoon.  Can you see how tense my arm is in this picture?

I don't know if you can tell, but that's a Gander Mountain shirt I am wearing.  I thought it was perfect for this occasion because the pontoon came from Gander Mountain.  Andy is the Marine Buyer there.  That's not actually his title.  I can't remember what his position is called, but he buys all the marine products for the Gander Mountain chain.  That's how we ended up with a pontoon.

Anyway, that's the maiden voyage of our new pontoon.  Except for being unable to get it off the trailer and losing the license plate from the trailer in the process, it was a very pleasant evening!