It is past my bedtime and I haven't had time to post, but I'm taking a minute to write a little bit. Andy had class tonight and I met with our builder to go over our final site plan for the new house. It was pretty interesting and we worked out a good plan that Andy and I will be very happy with. When Andy came home he was talking about how anxious he was to get started on the house. I realized that while I also am very ready to get started, I feel a lot more patient than before now that I know thinga are moving in the right direction. I just feel peace in knowing that we will get the house done. I hope that patience stays with me through the duration.

Andy did this once before- about seven years ago when we first moved here he kneeled wrong on his knee and it punctured the little sac in his kneecap or something strange like that and his knee swelled up huge. Well, he did it again today. He says it doesn't even hurt, but his knee is the freaking knobbiest knee I have ever seen- it looks like a baseball on top of his knee. It is swollen to high hell as you can see here. Ick!

I was reading a post on Melanie's blog tonight about how her oldest daughter might have juvenile diabetes, and something struck me. Since I have been blogging, I have seen and shared so many experiences with with so many of you. I saw Mary get married, Stacey get accepted to Grad school, Heather move to Texas and get a new pet bird, Nicole have a new baby, Patrice get divorced and start a new relationship, Kim lose weight and gain a dog, Valerie get a new job and party hard, Glitter have a new niece and possibly find true love, Zube have a much anticipated baby, Anne expecting, RG lose her Grandma and still succeed in life, Dawn get her dream job, Laurie publish a book and lose a cat, Rob get a new telescope, Melanie's son diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, Poppy go through trying times at home and get quiet on the internet, Ellen decide to adopt and then decide to place it on hold, Kristy lose her Dad and get a new job, new boyfriend and a new lease on life, Carol-anne get a new job, Mike get a new car, Fyrchk start dating a co-worker and go private on her blog, HDW go through more crazy things than any ten people should, Steph go through a major move, Stacy discover that she was suffering from Celiac disease after years of wondering, Nicole turn girly and get a pet hamster, and Beth's basement flood.

In the time I have been blogging, I have adopted four dogs, had my oldest dog die at over eighteen years old, adopted a cockatoo, bought 1.69 acres in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, acquired 7.59 acres here in Florida and spent a year and eight months getting permitted to build a house on it, had a dog diagnosed with diabetes, returned to flight with Space Shuttle launches, and experienced many other life events. Isn't it crazy the way we share our lives with each other now online? I know my life is much enhanced from knowing all of you that I have met through this blog. I hope yours is better for knowing me as well.

Have you ever seen that episode of the Simpsons with the screamapillar? I always loved that one. The screamapillar was a big orange caterpillar that screamed all the time even while sleeping.

On the Simpsons, the screamapillar was an endangered species that was described in the care manual given to Lisa Simpson as being sexually attracted to fire. Hehe. This afternoon I stepped out to bring in the trashcan and the mail and was startled to see a real live screamapillar on the side of the house. Okay, not really, the thing is actually pretty quiet, but the resemblance is amazing, though mine is lacking the antennae. Notice that the big black eyes are not really eyes, but are just markings on its back, and they are even shiny to look like eyes. The little black "mouth" is actually where the critter's tiny head starts. Funky.

Ramona is such a little goof ball. She loves to sit in the dog door with the flap of it resting on her back, looking out into the backyard. These pictures show the view of her from inside the house when she is doing so. She'll hang out like that for a good long time, enjoying the air conditioning (and letting a lot of it out) while poised and ready to run if something interesting should catche her attention in the back yard. Andy loves to sneak up on her and grab her when she is sitting like this which is funny, because she goes running off, but she always comes back to sit in the doorway again. Such a strange little dog!

There is a lady that is in dog training classes with me on Saturdays, when I take Annabel, that also has a poodle. She was in the puppy class I took Ramona to as well, when her dog was a puppy. I remember being a bit wary of her after meeting her for the first time and she told me how she had had a standard poodle for a few weeks but that she gave it away and got the samll dog she had then in class. She told me how she had tried to adopt a dog from the poodle rescue I work with but that they had never come through for her. I pretty much could understand exactly why, after talking to her and hearing about her practice of "returning" dogs that didn't work out.

This morning she asked me if I had a phone number for someone at the poodle rescue and I asked if she wanted to adopt a poodle. She was actually looking for someone to watch the poodle she had bought when she went on vacation. I told her that the poodle rescue was not really in the business of sitting for poodles and how most of the volunteers had as many dogs as they could handle. Any extra space for other dogs would be taken up by foster dogs in order to save their lives, so these people could not watch her poodle while she was on vacation. She went on to say how the rescue was the most non-communicative group of people ever and talked about how she spent a lot of time filling out an application initially (before she bought her dog) only to not hear from anyone. I asked her if she had requested a very young dog, and of course she said yes. She had wanted a puppy, and the rescue does not generally place young dogs with older people as so many of the dogs that come in to the rescue are dogs that have elderly owners that can no longer take care of them. The rescue does not want to put the poor dogs through being rehomed again when their adopted owners can no longer take care of them. This lady is in her upper sixties, and when you think about the fact that a small poodle may live for twenty years, what do you think is going to happen to that dog? There is a high probability that the poodle rescue will have to take in the dog she has now at some point.

I guess some people just don't get it. This lady is surely one of them. The puppy she bought and took through pupppy school is nearly ruined, because she will not stand up to her, lets her get away with anything, and the puppy pushes the limits. It is kind of sad because I have seen the progression from the beginning. From the very first class she brought the dog to, she has gotten worse and worse due to her owner not being strong enough to tell her "no." Now the owner has problems with the dog biting her when she doesn't get her way and I fully believe it is because she screwed up in the early days of training. I think I would probably bite her too!

I don't often write about things in the news on this blog- I guess I figure that we are all bombarded with it already. But today there was so much in the news about a couple of things that I think most humans would find to be heinous crimes. There was, of course, the news about Michael Vick and his upcoming guilty plea for dogfighting and torturing and brutally killing dogs. And then there was the sentencing of John Evander Couey, the man who kidnapped and repeatedly raped a little girl here in Florida, then killed her by double bagging her in garbage bags and burying her alive.

These are very different crimes. The similarity I see in them is that there was no motive for these activities other than for the "thrill" of it. There is some sort of disconnect or defect in both of these men to allow them to do these kinds of things; there has to be. These are the scariest kinds of criminals to me, because they just have nothing to stop them, no conscience, no nothing. My tendency is to think that there is no way people like this can be rehabilitated. These were not crimes of passion, or a slip in judgement. These men knew what they were doing would get them in trouble, but while most people cannot even imagine committing such horrendous acts, they did commit them and managed to live with themselves afterward.

So my question is, do you think people who have committed crimes such as these under these circumstances can be rehabilitated?

Andy started back in school tonight after a long hiatus. He is taking a math class, and I hope he does well. I also do not envy him at all as I hate math classes. But Andy is a little bit of a glutton for punishment as he willingly signed up for this math class; I don't know that I would do such a thing to myself.

It is weird not having him here in the evening, even though it was only a short time ago that I was home by myself every evening when he was working second shift. I guess it is easy to get into a routine.

I don't have too much else to write about just now- I am working some things, but they are still tentative right now. Stay tuned for more interesting news- hopefully I can deliver on that.

I am normally quite focused, but in certain things, I get wrapped up completely and all of a sudden I don't know where the hours have gone.

For example, I could be doing a couple of easy chores on a Sunday morning, as simple as feeding the birds and dogs. When I finish, I notice something on the counter that needs to be wiped up, like some juice from the fruit I cut up for the birds. I grab a paper towel to wipe it up and it is the last paper towel on the roll. I walk into the laundry/utility room to grab another roll of paper towels. I get the paper towels and notice the garbage in there is full and needs to be taken out. I take the garbage out and come back in and go to put a new trash bag in the can and see a beach towel folded sitting on the dryer. I take the towel outside to the cabinet on the back porch to put it away, and I see that the back porch needs sweeping. I sweep the back porch and realize that the pool deck needs to be hosed off. I spray down the pool deck and then decide I should clean the back porch while I have the hose out. I spray off the back porch and then decide the back of the house is pretty dirty too, so I spray it as well. Then I figure the plants on the back porch need watering.

Can you see where I am leading with this? I could keep going on, but I think you get the point. The hours just evaporate and pretty soon I am worn out from running around cleaning. Do you have this problem or am I just a major scatterbrained cleaning freak?

Brightstargazer asked how Virgil the tortoise was doing lately and reminded me that there haven't been any updates on him lately. Here are some pictures of the my beautiful tort. He has grown a bunch, his shell colors have become much more defined, and he and is thriving. He absolutely loves his habitat and regularly goes up and down the "stairs" for a change of scenery.

Virgil is actually pretty amazing with the amount of food that he can consume; it seems like he can eat his weight in veggies every day. I love to watch him walk around- he reminds me of a little tank. He is one of the easier pets we have to take care of even though he does require a certain amount of attention. He is so nice and quiet, unlike the restof our pets. I clean all the old leaves and poo out of his enclosure twice a day and give him new greens to eat. Every couple of days I have to thoroughly scrub out his water and food "dishes" and replace them. I spritz his dirt substrate with clean water every morning to moisten it so it simulates the dew that would occur normally. And we soak him at least weekly for about half an hour in a warmish bath which he really likes.

Tortoises are just too easy to take care of for the most part. At least compared to parrots and dogs :)

Our building permit with its attached approved waiver is creating ripples throughout the county offices. Our builder was there today getting things moving again and told us how he wished we could have witnessed the spectacle. It seems that a waiver such as ours has never been granted before in ths county so the county employees were very confused by it. He thought it was a riot to see them scrunch up their faces when they looked at our memo from the clerk of county commissioners detailing the decision.

The builder is still putting together estimates on clearing and dirt for us, and soon we will have our final estimate and can move forward with closing on our construction loan. Things are going pretty well, though we don't have much of a hand in the part occurring right now. We're just waiting for things to come together right now, which is a familiar posture for us. The fun parts lie just ahead!

The time had come for us. After five years of DSL and all the problems we had with it, we decided it was time for a change and switched to cable internet. We got DSL back in 2002 and were fine until they bumped up our speed in 2004. At that point, though we didn't realize it at the time, the increased speeds were too much to be handled for the distance we are from the origination point. Of course it took three years of problems and us calling for them to finally send someone out, and once the problem was identified, it wasn't like they offered any solution. They just said we weren't qualified for that fast of service and had us bumped back down. This pissed me off, because we had been paying an inflated rate for crummy service that shut down all the time for three years and they offered us basically nothing. Lame.

So today we took the plunge to go for cable internet. Of course, it couldn't be easy- it took a long time for the installer to get everything going, and even after that we had to mess with it for several hours to get our wireless connection working again. The most entertaining part of the whole ordeal, was that the installer guy that came to the house farted loudly right in front of me. And he was like "oops, I'm not supposed to do that in the customer's house." I was thinking, "Oh my God, that guy did not just shit himself right in front of me," but he did. Ew.

When I talked to Melanie on the phone last week, she said that I have such a nice camera- that I should take more pictures. So I am trying to take more time for photography. Here's a cute one of baby Ramona. She looks so sweet and innocent here, but in truth she's a bit of a terror. I love her to pieces!

I just had a dream that Charley, the eclectus parrot, got out of his cage, flew around and landed on top of the kitchen cabinets. In the dream, I held my hand up to him and said "step up" like I usually do when I want to pick him up. He said, "No, we aren't going to do it that way any more. If you want me to step up, you are going to need a treat." In the dream I was a little surprised, but not completely shocked, and went on to ask him what type of treat he would like. Does this mean I have been spending too much time pumping hot dog pieces into dogs in training classes?

This humble little blog has been undergoing some necessary updates yet again today. If you tried to post a comment and had any issues, please try again as I think the bugs are mostly worked out now. I know my blog was asking for registration information earlier but it is not required and you are free to post comments just as before.

Thank you for your understanding of this inconvenience :)

I was out shopping on Sunday and as I walked around a rack of clothes, I nearly ran into a tiny girl of about three years old. She started, "oh, I am sorry," and moved out of the way. It made me smile and I assured her that she was not in the way. I told her guardian- who looked to be her grandmother- that was standing right nearby how impressed I was at her courteousness. Her grandma said how they had tried very hard to instill that in her. Still, even though many parents strive to have their children be very poilte, it seems that at such a young age, many kids do not have enough self awareness to have any concept of their affect on other people.

To illustrate this, when I had foot surgery a few years ago and experienced a lot of complications and excruciating pain, I became afraid of little kids being around me. I would pick my injured foot up off the ground and tuck it under me, because of the way little kids have of stepping on or running right over people's feet.

It seems so many children are allowed to run wild out in public- not yours, Mel!- and do whatever they want, so it was nice to see such a tiny young lady that had enough self awareness to realize the effect she had on others and be so courteous about it. I tell you, it was pretty damn cute. After I walked away I heard her grandma tell her how good she had been and that she was going to get a reward. How sweet!

Okay, not really- not to work itself. Over the past, I dunno, maybe six to eight weeks I have been noticing an interesting phenomenon. When I sit in my shop at my desk at work in the morning, I start coughing and feel a little drippyness at the back of my throat. I will hack and hack, but then if i leave the building to work on a job, it goes away. If I come back, the cough comes back. All up until the afternoon or so, when it it seems to subside. I never get these coughing fits when I am not at work, so I have to think there is something to this. I moved the cabinets away from the walls to look for mold, but I didn't find anything; it was clean. The other resident in my shop has noticed a similar effect, he gets a scratchy throat in that room as well.

I am not sure what it could be, but all indcations point to the a/c ducting. We had a new a/c unit put in just a few months ago and maybe some moisture got into the ducting? I don't know what else it could possibly be. As for why it gets better during the course of the day, I have a couple of theories for that. One is that I take my allergy medicine first thing in the morning and it takes a few hours to kick in, another is that the room is shut up all night, so there is little circulation making it bad in the morning, but then during the day the door is open and shut repeatedly causing more exchange of air. We are finally having someone come out to monitor the air quality to figure out what the heck is going on, if anything. Perhaps I am just allergic to work?

Several weeks ago, Poppy mentioned something on her blog about her kitty's feet smelling like Dipsy Doodles, and I thought it was funny, because I had always thought my dogs' feet smelled like corn chips, but I thought it was just me. I looked it up and it turns out that dogs foot sweat is well known for smelling like corn chips and the term used to describe them that I absolutely love is "Frito Feet." Cats have the same kind of thing going on, the sweat from the glands between their toes has a toasty, corny smell, or so I have read. I have never sniffed cat paws because I am allergic to cats. Some people say their animals' feet smell more like popcorn, some like Fritos or other corn chips, and I have even heard of some saying they smell like corn dogs, but there is always that "corn" component. There are differences between individual dogs, too. My little Ramona has completely delicious smelling Frito tootsies, but Michaela's don't smell much at all. Denny's are nice and corny, but Cody licks his all the time, probbaly keeping all of the Frito smell for himself, the little booger. And fat Lou and Annabel each have paws only faintly scented with Frito.

Some people may think it is completely insane to sniff their dogs' feet, but they are missing out. It is one of many wonderful things about dogs. I also love the "baloney breath" of very young puppies. I think maybe this means I am a little bit crazy, but it also explains why I am so damn popular with dogs.

Okay, so if you haven't done it already, you've got to sniff your dog or cat's feet and report in the comments what they smell like. If you don't have a dog or cat, just run out and grab the nearest one you can find, just to check, okay? Kidding. I have found that right after a bath their feet won't smell much like Frito, because they are too clean, so they need to be a little bit dirty to get the full Frito-y effect.

You may have seen it on the news; last night at approximately 6:36 pm was the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour. This was the first launch of Endeavour since 2002, and also was a bit historic as it caried Barbara Morgan, who was Christa McAuliffe's backup for the "Teacher in Space" program back in the eighties. Barbara actually came to the area I work in sometime last year with one of the other crewmembers from this mission and talked to a few of us for a bit. She's got a very interesting history with thhe astronaut program.

You may remember this post from January where I wrote about an OMS pod we had just finished working on. Last night's launch carried that pod into space for the first time in over five years. Normally it doesn't take so long after we finish working on one for it to go up. but this launch was much delayed due to hail damage to the external tank early this spring, so it sat around for some extra time.

I am just happy that it was a safe launch. It is hard not to hold your breath and worry as space travel is still inherently very risky. We were at dog training class during the event, but everyone stepped outside to see Endeavour off. I hope thhat I can always appreciate watching such a thing. Even in this county where there are regular rocket launches, I feel lucky to get to see a little bit of history each time. I can really watch with a sense of pride now as I have put so much into the processing of this orbiter. Let us hope for a safe, successful mission all around.

Okay, now for the details of this morning's County Commission meeting. I am so happy that we are getting to build our house, but Lord, this morning was excruciating.

The meeting started at 9:00. There is always the usual crap at the begininng, the handing out of awards and recognition and whatnot. It is unreal how much time was wasted with piddly little crap, people thanking other people with long drawn out speeches talking about the same thing over and over. This part is rough, but to be expected, as this kind of thing occurs at every meeting, pretty much. Today, time was of the essence for us as we had our whole team there at our expense and some of our team had to leave at a certain time. So the more things dragged out, the worse it was for us.

The part of the meeting that was right before us on the agenda was the public comments section. The speakers were to get three minutes each, and there were a handful of them or so. The second speaker that was there under the public comments was not there with a public comment- she had missed the deadline for the agenda and brought a personal issue before the board under the public comments section which they then went on to belabor for over half an hour, even though they stated that she should have followed due process. I found it rather irritating that she took up so much time as she stated she was a developer and was there on a zoning issue- there had been a mistake by the zoning office and she was trying to get the fee waived for her to get a variance. She stated that she couldn't pay it, and they went round and round. We were starting to get antsy as time was ticking by and it got later and later. There was an executive session scheduled for 11:30 and we needed to get in and be heard before that or we would not be heard until the afternoon at which point we would lose our subject matter experts due to other commitments. Anyway, I felt very little sympathy for this girl. Here she was a developer and she couldn't pay a measly $600 fee? Shoot, it probably cost us more than $600 just in fees to pay the team we had there at the meeting on standby for the half hour of our time she wasted. We had to pay $1700 to the county just to have our piece heard today and paid $500 the last time we were heard, not to mention the six grand in legal fees, but since she was about to cry and they felt sorry for her we had to sit and wait while she whined about a $600 fee. I would have liked to stand up and tell her "Here's $600, now get out of here!" Ridiculous. I really think they need to rearrange these meetings to where the public comments come last. Especially since the next three commenters were little old ladies that had nothing better to do than come to the meeting and bitch about the way things are handled in the county. Two of them are ladies that come to every commission meeting and speak basically the same piece at each one. I guess they don't have anything else in their lives, so they come and be heard.

Anyway, through some miracle we eventually got to our turn and our whole team went down to the podium to set up. Our attorney was ready for an argument and it never came. The commissioner from our district quickly made a motion to approve our administrative waiver and it was seconded and passed by all. It was over before it even began, but since we won, we didn't care. Andy thought it was a bit of a let down that we didn't even get to hear our attorney's pitch, but I didn't care. I know the commissioners were briefed by the county attorney and he must have done a good job because they were ready to go along with us from the beginning. It was just surprising that none of them had anything to say about it because they all seem to like to hear themselves speak so much. My personal feeling is that they didn't want our attorney's pitch to be part of the public record, so it was better for them if they just approved it and the public would never reaslly know what the issue was. That way they wouldn't come off looking bad for denying us previously. Who cares? It's over!!!!!! We are building a house!

At last the drama is over. At this morning's County Commission meeting we were granted a waiver to allow us to build our dream house after many months of waiting. Thank God! It was all over so quickly! I will write more about exactly what went down later on; for now I am just letting it sink in.

Only about one more hour until the start of the County Commission meeting that could change my life for the better or possibly the worse. We are going to be leaving in about twenty minutes for the meeting- I'll be back with the conclusion this afternoon! Please send your prayers if you are the praying kind.

Tomorrow is a huge day for us. We will be attending the regular meeting of our County Commission and have an item on the agenda to be heard. This is our final attempt at getting a waiver in order to build our dream house.

Some of you are familiar with the story, which has now been dragged out over a year and seven months. We have gone before the Commission once before and failed, but this time we have an attorney on our side and are trying something different- something that has only been brought before the Commission one or two times before by anyone, ever. We will have their full attention this time, after they so quickly dismissed our case the last time.

There are more details over at my Tortoise Hollow blog if you want to catch up with what has been going on. It is exhausting to think about and I can't believe it has been this long since it all started. I hope to be able to post happy news tomorrow. It should be all over by noon or so at the latest, but I don't know when I'll get a chance to post. I'll let you know as soon as possible.

You will probably not notice the changes, but there are some things going on behind the scenes of this blog. I am trying out Movable Type 4 which is still in beta mode, so there may be some issues. Still, it looks much better and there are lots more features; hopefully some of them can help me with my little spam problem. The interface on my side of things is very nice and blogging will be much easier for me now, so bear with me if you find any problems. And please let me know if you do find any bugs in my blog.

I wish I had something interesting to report, but sadly I do not. it has been a normal regular weekend of no consequence, but that is fine with me. I went to dog training class with Annabel on Saturday and she won both of the two contests that were held. There was a fastest sit contest, and since Anna is used to sitting to get a treat with all of the competition of our other poodles, she is pretty good at it. I just raise my hand and she sits with no words. So there were eleven dogs in the group and each time the slowest dog to sit was eliminated. Annabel won that one easily. Then, towards the end of class we did another fastest sit contest, but this time we were walking with the dogs on leash when the sit command came. Some dogs have a much harder time interpreting the command when they are already moving. Not Anna; she was awesome. She won again. I swear having poodles to train is like cheating, though. They are so smart that we hardly have to work with them at all. They pick up everything so quickly. There is a huge Great Dane in the class named Elvis that still does not sit reliably. I guess he knows no one can make him sit.

The rest of the weekend was also spent doting on our animals. Andy had to work overtime this morning, so I spent many hours doing a very thorough cleaning of the bird cages. I soaked all of the perches and toys, sprayed off and scrubbed the grates, and wiped down all of the cage bars. It doesn't sound like much, but to really clean the two bird cages well takes about four hours. It is no small task.

After the cages were clean, I cleaned the birds. Charley took a nice bath on his bathtub perch, but Holly still wants nothing to do with it. I struggled with her for nearly half an hour before I could get her into the tub and let the water from the shower head spray fall down on her like rain. She is very suspicious of everything and refused to get in the tub. She was so very dusty though, as cockatoos are known to be, that I just had to get her clean. I had her watch Cjarley bathe first, hoping that it would entice her, but she didn't seem to care. Finally I managed to trick her and get her into the bottom of the tub, and then she climbed up on the bath perch where I was able to rinse her down well. Hopefully next time she won't be so apprehensive and will just go on the bath perch and save me some time. She is doing better every day, so I expect that she will improve with bathing as well.

Andy got home around 12:30 and after we had lunch he set about cleaning Virgil the tortoise's habitat for me. He scooped out all of the old dirt, hosed the whole enclosure out and mixed up new "turtle dirt" for him. Turtle dirt is a mix of topsoil and playsand, about 60% topsoil to 40% playsand. We even have a bucket of it labeled "turtle dirt." I think that has to be one of the most fun things to say ever. Try saying "turtle dirt" three times in a row and you'll see what I mean. Either that or I am just crazy, which is entirely possible.

So anyway, we didn't do that much this weekend. We did grocery shop for the week, and we went to the Mega Bird Store for some interesting bulk food mixes to supplement the birds' diets. I got my hair trimmed and colored and we swam a little late this afternoon. Oh, and I plucked the hair out of the dogs' ears- fascinating, huh? I think that this means that we are officially boring. But I would rather be boring than most of the alternatives, I think. What about you? Did you have an exciting weekend?

Lately I have been involved in lots of meetings and things with different groups trying to hash things out. It has forced me to think about the concept of teamwork and how people work together. Team dynamics are interesting when you really examine them. While I can work on a team, I am not a very good team player, but it isn't because I disagree with everyone. I have the habit of being the one to take the reins on everything and I end up doing all of the work. While I don't mind doing everything, it really is not a team accomplishment when everyone just gives their blessing to what I have done. I think I work that way mostly because I don't trust anyone else to do things right - or even do them at all in some cases.

In school whenever I had to work on a group project, I would always ask for my part of the project and would execute it, but I never really collaborated with the rest of the team. That was back when I was very shy and reserved. Those days are over and now in a meeting I will not only speak my mind but will end up taking over the meeting in most cases. The surprising thing is that I don't meet much resistance. I have found that if a person feels strongly about something, has done the research to the point where people believe they are well educated on the subject, and are willing to do the work, others will generally welcome it and drop back into the shadows. In most cases it seems that people don't want to do the work, so if I do it, they are so thrilled that they don't have to that they just go along with whatever I say. So it as it turns out, here is little old me writing major policy for the entire center. A little initiative is all it takes, and I love it because I get to be creative and feel like I am making a difference.

So my concept of teamwork is changing, somewhat. I used to think of it more as a group of people contributing roughly evenly, but lately it seems that there is a vast difference in the amount of effort put forth by members of teams. Some are content to sit back while others are the doers and accomplish the work. Of course every team is not that way, but many of the ones I have experienced are. How do you feel about teams collaborating? Are you able to participate in group activities on certain projects and do you feel that the team members each contribute equally to the group or is it mostly the work of one person or a couple of people with only small contributions from the rest?

It sucks, because I really don't have too much time to blog lately, that I have to spend the vast majority of the time I do have dealing with spam comments that have overrun my blog to the point of nearly shutting it down- exceeding its disk space. I had to stop tonight and purge over thirteen thousand spam comments from my junk comment folder as it will not get rid of them by itself even though Movable Type is supposed to per the settings I have selected. It is not working right, unfortunately. To me it is really sad that I cannot get through a day without being spammed to high hell. Such an abuse of a fantastic resource as the internet, that will serve to ruin it in short order, but oh well. Sucks.