Possibly the most disjointed post yet...

So was driving to work today -- after rush hour cause I rode my horse first before it got wickedly hot, and traffic was stopped. It's not usually stopped at that time of day so ok there's a prob up ahead somewhere. And sure enough after 45mins of sitting in stop and go and rocking out to the ipod (I'm sure the other drivers around me were amused *g* but hey if I'm going to be stuck in traffic I figure I may as well enjoy it) we get to the point where we realize that we're stopped because everybody's looking at the OTHER side of the road. Gotta admit that makes me a little bitter. But then I realized just how long it'd been since we'd seen an oncoming car... Sure enough -- the cops are standing in the middle of the highway and ALL the lanes are closed... As we got closer they were starting to let one lane through. Wished as I drove along for the next several miles there was some way to let others know that this was not going to be a *short* wait and perhaps another route would be a good idea! Cause man, the ones joining the end of the line would have no idea how far they'd have to go before getting through -- and from the looks of things it was going to be a while before the rest of the lanes opened! hahaha and at that time of the day no traffic reports. But I guess you have to assume if you hit wicked traffic during a no-traffic-report time that it means something's more than a little nqr...

Ok well I feel obligated somehow to address the death of Michael Jackson so may as well get that out of the way. Mostly, I was thoroughly offended at the media continually referring to "covering the death of . . ." Seriously, can we have *some* consideration people? First of all, it's not an ongoing event so the tense is way wrong and second of all what are they thinking? He died, tragically young, this is news. Announce it as such. But the "ongoing coverage"??? No. If you want to recap his life, celebrate his accomplishments, any of that -- fine, by all means. Just "covering the death of" struck me as so wrong. I was also somewhat amused by those agencies who clearly felt they should be reporting it but had enough standards not to report something till they were absolute certain, who were announcing "network X is reporting that this has happened." The other thing that seemed a little excessive was signing on to Amazon a few hours later to already see first thing: "Michael Jackson, 1958-2009 Michael Jackson has died at the age of 50. One of the world's most recognizable entertainers, Jackson is best known for Thriller. His incalculable musical legacy lives on. Discover the great works of Michael Jackson!" and of course a link to all the products they'd like you to buy. And yes I know most sellers will be turning his death into a marketing opportunity, and I'm not sure whether it was that fact or the sheer speed by which it was accomplished that set my teeth on edge; probably a combination of both. Could we as a society, please show a little class? Would it really be so hard? Ok stepping off pedestal now.

So I sign into my email this morn to see a message apparently from my bank. Now I'm not new here; I know fully well this is spam so I go to delete it automatically, but there was something in the title that made me question that move and as there were no attachments to it I opened it in preview mode to see... Sure enough "Dear valued customer . . ." blah blah blah but what caught my eye was "Because email is unencrypted, and therefore unsecure, it is our policy not to send, or ask our customers to send, information by email. . . " and went on to say if there were any questions to call them. So I'm thinking well that's odd -- where's the scam? Go back to read the rest a little more closely and it turned out it was actually legit. hahaha it was essentially a message telling me that something I had requested (but they're not going to say *what* through email) had been done. But it was by far the most veiled "mission accomplished" email I've ever read. To the point that I have to wonder why it was sent in the first place since I'm sure more often than not these get filed as spam instantly.

Was eating lunch outside today and at a table near me was a woman, a few years older than I, writing away in her journal. Would pause and look around every once in a while and then go back to writing. N I think of the hundreds of times I've done just that and it occurs to me I almost never see other people doing it. And of course I couldn't help but wonder *what* she was writing. Which led me to thinking what I'd be writing if I'd been alone and had my book w/ me. hahaha classic.

Do you suppose it's a bad thing when the barn-owner comes up to you and says "your horse can stand on two legs for an awfully long time." hahaha I took that to mean her hock strength is finally getting there :) It's all about being optimistic.

So my last two lessons both students had lightbulb moments, and then my horse was an absolute superstar today. Which means I'm pretty high on all this at the moment. If I were of the "end on a good note" philosophy this would be an ideal time to find a new career. (un?)Fortunately I'm more of the "one more time, prove it wasn't a fluke" philosophy which means tonight's lessons and tomorrow's XC school could prove to be interesting... And in a last-second decision prompted by the OHTA email, Miss Sienna (show name: "Si Senorita" - and yes I had to look up how to spell that) is going to her first full HT next Sat. Still only PE so I'm not at all convinced that counts, but it should be entertaining none-the-less. First E HT will be Grandview if the world is good.

One of the guys at work came across this: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/engineering-student-builds-real-transforming-robot-car -- now clearly someone had too much time, but discounting that it's kinda impressive :)