What To Title a Post When You Can't Seem To Think of Anything Witty (or Even Pseudo-Witty)

Brain...is...in...overload...right...now.

I just finished writing a discussion posting about U.S. Health Care and Medical Information for my SLIS 5365 class and I think I've managed to use up all the words in my brain. While my three paragraphs were, I'm sure, scintillating, I seem to have overloaded the ol' neural circuits. However, being the dedicated blogger I am, I thought I'd at least give you all something to read. (Really, no thanks are necessary. Just send money. Oh! I jest!)

A vacation story for your general amusement:

We drove from our cabin in Idaho to visit Yellowstone National Park the Thursday of our vacation. (Climbing on my soapbox to add: I think everyone should see Yellowstone before they die. It is a seriously beautiful place that is unique in all the world. End of soapbox rant. You may continue with your enjoyable reading.) We came in through the west entrance which meant that we passed through West Yellowstone, Montana. After our hour and a half drive, we needed to use the facilities there and maybe buy a sweet snack or two to get us through until we could eat our picnic lunch. (Did anyone else just think "pic-a-nic basket" in Yoggi Bear's voice? No? Must be just me, then.) Anyway, TLS purchased a Sunkist orange soda and drank about half of it before we entered the park. He replaced the cap to the soda bottle and we proceeded to start enjoying our Yellowstone adventure. (Question for another post: Why do generally intelligent people lose their minds when they see wildlife?)

We ended up at the Old Faithful area around lunch so we retired to the car to open our pic-a-nic basket (Gotcha this time, didn't I?!). TLS started to open his soda bottle and--in the spirit of the park--the orange liquid formed its own violent geyser and spewed all over TLS's lap, the steering wheel and the car seat. ("Oh, Avis? Sorry about the sticky stain. I hope you have a steam cleaner handy.") TLS's shorts took the brunt of the eruption so until it dried it looked as if he had suffered an orange soda bathroom mishap. Come to think of it, even after it dried, it looked as if he had suffered an orange soda bathroom mishap, but he was a good sport and we managed to have a great day anyway.

We never did figure out why it acted that way. I've never seen that happen before and I hope never to see it again.

Bullet Points Are Going To Have To Suffice

Hola, blog-reading public, such that you are! Greetings from the Land of Total Insanity.

I came back from vacation to several projects at work that hadn't miraculously finished themselves while I was gone and graduate school looming. The projects are still in process, but I am thankfully making some progress with them. D-Day for G-School arrived bright and early (8 a.m.) last Saturday morning. It was an eight hour day packed full of educational goodness and has ushered in a new era in the life of Inertia Girl. I am calling this the Era of Anxiety. I thought at one point yesterday that my head was going to explode (or as TLS so aptly described it "experience cranial detonation") due to the number and variety of things on my to-do list. Luckly, I didn't suffer the destruction of any of my body parts and I've vowed to take a few minutes each day to get away from the grind. This will include blog posting. Hooray for you guys!

Highlights from vacation and the first day of school (with full description...coming soon):

• TLS's bottle of orange soda creating its own geyser while at Yellowstone
• Description (and photo or photos) of our glider rides in front of the Tetons
• Why we believe that it must be mandatory for people to leave their brains at the park entrance to Yellowstone
• An estimate of the number of potato plants we saw in Idaho
• Description of my first class, complete with dorky name badge and new spiral notebook
• How I managed to find my new BFF*, who is in two of my classes, a discussion group and a work group with me

*BFF=Best Friend Forever

How To Know Your First Day Back At Work Is Not Going Well

...when you discover you've forgotten your keycard while on your way into the building. Oops!

But the rest of the day has been okay. I actually got a compliment from the one extremely difficult person I work with. I almost fell off my chair. It was like a post-vacation miracle! (Did you hear the angels singing?!)

I promise to have a vacation post up soon. So many stories to tell and pictures to share.

Sayonara (For a Week or So)

We are leaving in the morning for Jackson, Wyoming. I'll be out of touch until the 19th, but hopefully I will come back with many more entertaining stories and some beautiful pictures.

Later taters!!

Misshapen Homemade Pizza or the State of Texas? You Decide.

I got a hankering last weekend for some homemade pizza, so I whipped up some pizza dough likety split, grabbed some toppings and a jar of spaghetti sauce and lo...this!

While it started out generally rectangular, during the baking process it came to resemble a misshapen state of Texas outline. (Or at least that's what TLS and I thought. You be the judge.)

The actual state of Texas

P.S. Those are home grown tomato and eggplant slices as pizza toppings. Yum!

Seriously Inertia Girl, You Are One Weird Cookie.

I must preface this post with the disclaimer that I do not have any children so that anything I say herein may be complete and utter crap or alternately something that everyone with children will read and then exclaim something along the lines of, "Well...duh!" (And now I immediately have to write what you are all thinking, which is "Yes, Inertia Girl. We get it already. You.Do.Not.Have.Children. Get over yourself!") Isn't it nice to know that I apparently don't even need people to read my blog? I can have the whole experience all by myself.

When is it that children physically morph from being cute and cuddly and so adorable that you literally want to just eat them up into little adults? Seriously, is there an actual moment when this change happens? And really, there's nothing wrong with having people who look like little adults running around. It's true; we're all changing on a daily basis. We all go from newborn to infant to child to adult to the grave. (Wow! That certainly got morbid all of a sudden, didn't it?)

I guess it is a weird question to ask, but having four nephews and a niece, ranging in age from almost 15 (fifteen!) to 7, I've seen the transformation take place but never been able to put my finger on the specifics of it. Or place exactly what makes them stop looking like a child and more like an adult. (I've almost convinced myself that it has to do with the arms and legs--long and skinny and no longer pudgy.)

Unfortunately for those of you who are looking for some sense of cohesion or a point to the post, I'm afraid that I really don't have one. I just saw a picture today of someone's daughter that I hadn't seen in a while and somewhere in between this photo and the last, she went from child to little adult. It came as such a shock that I was moved to write a blog post to ponder the question.

Reading Roundup

I read Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian over the weekend. Loved it. (Of course, I must admit that I'm never adverse to stories that are somewhat off-kilter.) This is the story of twin eleven-year-old brothers, George Washington Woodhull - "Gob" and Thomas Jefferson Woodhull - "Tomo", from a small town in Ohio during the height of the Civil War. Tomo runs away to join the war only to die during battle. Gob, wracked by grief, spends the rest of his life trying to find a way to bring back Tomo and all the others who've died. Adrian brings together real people (Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, and proto-feminist Victoria Woodhull) with a cast of characters straight out of his vivid imagination. Each page is filled with the enormity of the sorrow and grief felt by the nation during the war between the states. I look forward to reading Chris Adrian's two other books.

To Do List - Part 1

Things to do before leaving on vacation (a work in progress):

1. Charge phones, iPods and camera. (Be sure and bring chargers for all!)
2. Pack the U.S. atlas
3. Decide on books to bring for plane rides
4. Prepare checklist for feeding and care of animals to give to neighbors
5. Set out of office agent for work email
6. Change outgoing work voicemail message
7. Pack the nerdy manila folder full of Important Vacation Information (including, but not limited to, rental car confirmation, directions to rental cabin and necessary phone numbers)

Countdown to vacation departure: 5 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes. But who's counting, right?!

"Are You Alright? Are You Okay? You, Call 911!"

Last Friday, I did what I hadn't done since ... oh, about 1984, which was to take a CPR class. Our office hosts them about twice a year and even though I'd always managed to find a reason not to take it, something about that invitation in my email box kept calling to me. I've found it mostly advantageous to listen to subconsious girl when she's sending me messages. I just hope that it isn't an omen that I'll have to use my newly re-found skills anytime soon. (God forbid!)

CPR has really changed since I had to be certified in my ninth grade health class way back at Crockett Junior High school. (Not the least of which is that you are no longer CPR certified, but now you are CPR qualified. Apparently, the certification tag is only for people who get paid to render aid. Who knew?) There are many more compressions than before (30 compressions to 2 breaths now versus 5 to 1 before if my memory serves me), but the one thing I remembered was the title of the post and that hasn't changed at all.

New Leaf Turning and All That Jazz

After my horrible blogging record for the month of July, I've made a promise to myself to blog more during the month of August. Of course, now that I've typed out those words, I realized that I'll be on vacation for eight days during the month (and presumably completely off the web, since we'll be staying in a rental cabin in the ginormous metropolis of Driggs, Idaho) as well as starting my grad school coursework. What can I say, people? I'll do the best I can with the resources I've got. If I can log onto a web connection during the ol' va-cay, I will. And I suspect that I'll be willing to take any excuse to take a break from the new studying routine, so it's probable that I will blog more.

In the meantime, some housekeeping...

Books I've read during The Great Blog Blackout of 2008:
The Wentworths by Katie Arnoldi (a bookclub selection) I guess my reaction to this one would have to be a resounding "meh"*. Arnoldi has crafted a satire of Southern California culture using one wealthy family as a stand-in for the entirety of a rich, vacuous, lost society. Reviewers praised its laugh out loud humor, but it must have been lost on my unsophisticated middle-American outlook. It wasn't badly written, just ultimately unsatisfying. Reading it was a little like eating a meal consisting entirely of marshmallows. It starts out great but leaves you feeling bloated and irritable.

Origin: A Novel by Diana Abu-Jaber loved it! I couldn't put this one down. It was a loaner from a friend of mine and I ripped right through it in about a day. The author said that she set out to write a "literary" mystery/suspense genre novel and I think she succeeded. What could have been another overwrought forensic whodunnit (babies have been dying from what might be muder or simply SIDS) was made fresh with the inclusion of an intriguing main character and an amazing subplot. Kept me guessing until the very end.

* Meh (according to the Urban Dictionary) - a word that conveys "indifference; to be used when one simply does not care" or "the verbal equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders".

Don't let it be said that I'm not teaching you all things!