Well for me and my boss that is. We are playing defense (with co-counsel) on a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by two women against a very well respected ecumenical organization which does nothing but good (and I must add which runs my favorite thrift store in the county where almost all the clothes in my closet come from ) apparently these two women were *close your eyes if you are sensitive* HUGGED WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION! I know the sheer horror of it is an assault to the senses, I know you are all just traumatized by hearing it. Yes I am biased and I am giving you my side of the story, (but that is the only side you see cause that is what they testified to at deposition?) In any event, boss and I are going to be in trial for more than likely the next seven days (the plaintiffs have 20 witnesses who, as far as we are aware from deposition testimony are going to say that they saw nothing), so if I am not here much for the next week or so you know where I am, in court, wearing a suit (damn I hate that I have to get all my suits out of the upstairs closet) and panty hose and high heels. Let us hope that the jury see through this "quick way to make some money" scheme and find for our organization. I guess I picked the wrong week to quit smoking

My husband sent me to Youtube to check out a video of a marching band show that he thought I should watch. Which of course I did. As a result on the right side of the screen came up alot of other links to marching band videos that I clicked on just out of interest. You have to understand that I thought (for some naive reason) that the dance routines I saw in "Drum Line" were in fact fictional, and that such suggestive and (to be honest) obscene dance routines would not be allowed on any college campus. I clicked on this link

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2T6LMq--7MU&mode=related&search=

To say that I was gobsmacked would be an understatement. The only difference between these girls and the ones dancing at the club near the airport is at least the girls in the club near the airport get dollar bills stuffed in their panties on a regular basis and can put their kids through college with the proceeds. These girls are giving it away for free, to a football stadium full of people. What on earth are they thinking? I cannot imagine how a college president can sit in his guilded cage and watch this and think ""damn, I love it how my girls representing the school are displaying such a fantastic show of complete and utter slutdome, they couldn't get more obvious if they all had tatoos on their forehead saying "I am going to ram my crotch in your face so often you will be unable to contain yourself" I am delighted to send a message to the world that all the females attending my college obviously have their IQ between their legs and want nothing more than sex with the nearest male that walks by" it is good to be me"" Like I said I thought the dance routines in Drum Line were over the top, little did I know that compared to what is going on in real life, they look like a kindergarten ballet class. I wonder what the incidents of rape are at these colleges? Just curious. "Well look at the way she was dancing, she asked for it" What on earth is the world coming to.

I don't know about you but I have noticed of late that the English language is now an endangered species. The rise of blogs (such as this) as well as message boards etc., has resulted in a large number of people who either in haste or in ignorance post quite atrocious examples of the written word. I do not consider myself to be a wordsmith by any manner of means, for that I would defer to my employer, an ardent student of the English language, and a strident advocate of its use, the arguments he and I get into about the use of a comma can be quite heated, who else would care? In the last year our local daily newspaper the Jacksonville Daily News posted the following headline "100s OF WORKERS TO LOOSE JOBS" it was all I could do not to rip the newspaper into teeny tiny little shards of nothingness and throw them into the wind to be carried to places unknown where perhaps the headline would have made a modicum of sense. To begin with, while I know you have space limitations 100s? 100s is not right, use a smaller font and say "hundreds." While I think I could have forgiven that transgression when I read along further and saw "to loose jobs" it was all I could do not to howl at the moon. You have to understand that this is not the first (and probably not the last) time that a newspaper has used the word "loose" as opposed to "lose" and in each instance it has driven me mad. I believe the last one that I read recently was "hundreds (at least they got that right) loose their health insurance." I am gritting my teeth and virtually drooling with anger as I type this. LOSE means to LOSE something, it means something is LOST! LOOSE, means something is LOOSE, ie, I have LOST so much weight my belt is LOOSE! The other regular transgression that is just certain to set me off into a tantrum of absolute grammatical rage is the classic Insure/Ensure. I have tried, lord knows I have tried, to impress on people that one "ensures" that something does or does not happen, but one "insures" against it happening. I have received official correspondence after official correspondence (namely bills and statements and such) with the following statement written in bold on the bottom of the bill "to insure proper credit please write the following account number on your check" It is all I can do to stop myself ripping the bill apart with my teeth to be honest. Can we all agree on this, we "ensure" that something will or will not happen, in other words "to ensure proper credit" we "insure" against something happening in other words "I am going to insure my car" please people, follow this simple rule and you will probably save my sanity, but I am not counting on it. I know you know that I spell checked this entry, the computer did not recognize the word "wordsmith" how telling is that?

PS) I would like to thank Elizabeth for her addition to the list, while it does not drive me to distraction the way the other two do, it drives her to distraction so it begs to be included, when someone says "I pacifically told him" as opposed to "specifically" Elizabeth says her usual retort is "no you did not large ocean tell him anything" which I think is cool.

I was staking out my pond today. Not least because I have tadpoles in there so I was checking them out, making sure I hadn't lost too many in the recent heavy rains. As I sat there contemplating life, the universe and tadpoles, this little guy landed in front of me on the concrete, I attempted to take a shot of him, but he flew away and landed here



I did not notice when I was taking the shots but he only has three and a half wings, his fourth wing is just a little stub. Surprisingly he has no problems getting about, he flew just as any other dragonfly I have seen flies, in fact he moved quite a bit and after flying off my foot he landed on my big toe.



PS) I would apologize for the dirty feet, but you know, we had been doing yard work all morning and flip flops + yard work = dirty feet, and I am not one of those "run in the house every 15 minutes to clean ones feet type of person" you know. So I have dirty feet, sue me :) PS) The dragonfly didn't seem to mind at all. :)

I have had a long standing love affair with hibiscus, it stems from my visits to the Caribbean when I was a teenager, I just loved the blooms and would constantly wander around with one tucked behind my ear and wanted to grow them from then on. Of course here in NC we have two types the "hardy" hibiscus (also called mallow) which have huge blooms the size of dinner plates, then there are the non-hardy types, smaller more delicate blooms more reminiscent of the caribbean blooms. I have both types (of course seeing as they were both on the dead plant section at Lowes). Here is the "non hardy" taken with a back board and not the best conditions.



Here is the hardy version, as you can see the flower is almost five times the size of the non-hardy version, but it is spectacular.



Are they not beautiful, I defy anyone to look at them and not drool.