Seven

I've been tagged by Jeni to list seven things about me. Err, thanks, I think.

1. I procrastinate. A lot. In fact, half of the stuff I listed last December is still not done. I knocked out one of them just today (local cell phone number, a mere 3.5 years after moving). Another one (the window treatments for the not-so-new house) was completed just a few weeks ago. That is the way it works. Nothing happens for months (or years), and then all of a sudden I decide to "just do it" and have a spurt of productivity.

2. Back in 1984, during my first quarter in college, the only "A" I got was in Marching Band. Lets just say high school was way too easy for me and I had NO IDEA how to study, and not much inclination to do so because I was busy having fun. It got better as time went on.

3. When I went back to Tech in 2004 to work on a second MS degree, I didn't get any final grades less than an "A". Older + wiser + genuinely interested + good work ethic = CURVEBUSTER!

4. I lived in Massachusetts for over twelve years, but never went to a Red Sox game. Meant to. Procrastinated... At least I got to see a Celtics game in the old Boston Garden.

5. When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. Things didn't quite work out that way, but space travel isn't exactly the way I had imagined it either. The food and sanitary facilities are far superior in my current occupation.

6. I've been debt free (except mortgage) since 2003. Love it! My best advice is to not get into debt in the first place. It was hard to get out of. But doable. If you don't know how to do it, this book will show you the way.

7. I've been growing my hair out so that I can donate it to Locks of Love. I started well over a year ago, and my hair is about as long as it has ever been in my adult life. It will take another six months to a year before I have the minimum 10" ponytail that they ask for and still have enough hair left for me to not freak out.

They tell me summer's over...

I don't believe it.

The picture shows the thermometer reading in my car on Saturday evening. Granted, my car was parked in the sun at the time. Once I hit the road it cooled down to a mere 101F.

Even though it is still summer on the calender, and we are in the dog days of August having the second heat wave in as many weeks, for most of the kids around here summer is over. They went back to school this week. It happens absurdly early these days. It wasn't like this when I was a kid, which doesn't seem like so long ago - at least not to me. I feel a little sorry for today's kids. School doesn't end until near the end of June and then they get hauled back in right smack in the middle of August. Do they care? Do they know what they're missing? Or is summer break just one long spell of playing video games broken up by occasional trips to soccer camp or whatnot?

Can This Be True?

I was reading a news article about high school graduation rates. The study the article was quoting said that Georgia has a graduation rate of only 56%. The nationwide average is supposedly 70%. I'm shocked. Those numbers sound awfully low. Can it be true that little more than half of Georgia teens get a high school diploma? I wonder if they are adequately accounting for students who move out of the district or state, but continue on in school.

If I had to guess about graduation rates, I would have put the number between 80-90%. Maybe I've lived a sheltered life. I grew up in a suburban Atlanta county, not a particularly well-to-do one, and don't remember many kids dropping out of school. A couple of girls got pregnant and there were a few druggies that left or got kicked out, but most of us got through it. I find these numbers disheartening. All those kids throwing away their futures. Why?