walls

This is a view of the front of the high school I attended, before the wrecking ball took the last of it down. What a magnificent building it was in its day! Portsmouth High School. All the schools in Portsmouth were rebuilt, as if the new infrastructure would attract new business and revitalize the area. Certainly, having new schools can’t hurt, but business hasn’t come and crime is no better in that area of southern Ohio.


I finished my paper last night. It was a miserable piece of work. My heart was not into it at all. The carrot on the stick seems to be a bit rotten lately. The appeal is gone. Maybe I’m so burnt out I can’t see anything good anymore. Maybe it was that shitty team paper we did. That was horrible work and our grade reflected it. I hate being part of horrible work. Maybe more than everything else, the carrot is closer and it doesn’t look as good as it did when it was far away.

I liked school when I was a kid. My teachers were nice to me - even mean teachers were nice to me. My favorite teachers (and professors) were those who told stories. I don’t have any stories to tell..er…maybe that’s not true. The truth is I don’t like to talk about me. I guess I would have stories to tell if I talked about me…which is what they did. Hmmm….I’ll have to think about that.

plantin' and ramblin'

I am rambling tonight. Writing a paper that should be easy, but I’m still planning and researching it. It’s good work. So, it’s about Procter & Gamble, my guesses as to how their SCM project with Walmart was planned, executed, and what lessons were learned from implementation. The professor’s last bullet point troubles me… I think it implies planned reorganization.

Anyway, weird things have been happening lately. Maybe it’s just too weird to put here.

Lightening bugs were out tonight. Those made me happy. 

It was a lovely day today. Like 80 degrees, partly cloudy, light breeze, and sweet honeysuckle in the air all day. I took a break around noon - Someone and me went to the driving range. We always get the party bucket, bunch ‘o balls to say the least. Our routine is for me to dump about a third of them in my favorite spot and Someone takes the rest to the far end of the range. So I hit 80 or 90 balls, and use all my clubs. If I had to play golf with only one club..I would choose a 6-iron. Why? Because I’d rather have a 5 and a 7, those are really my favorites.

OK…enough golf. We also ran down to a little roadside place and bought some plants. We got tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and some flowers. I better quit blogging and go to bed. I have lots of work to do so I can make time to plant stuff.

daydreaming

My kids have been reminding me all week that the world is supposed to end today. After three weeks of gloom and rain, the sun is finally shining here. The world could never end on a day like today.


I ran some errands on my lunch break today. I was sitting at a red light (the kind that stays red for half your lifetime) and watched a hawk flying. I love hawks – their feathers are beautiful and I like how they screech. Anyway, on such a perfect day like today, I thought to myself how nice it would be if I were a hawk and didn’t have to go to work anymore. It was a great daydream until I noticed the decals on the back window of the pickup truck in front of me. There were silhouettes of ducks, turkeys, and grouse with a message saying “If it flies, it dies.” Obviously a hunter owns that truck. I think hawks are protected in Kentucky…but that pretty much ruined my daydream.



Sandy Spears' lovely photo of a hawk in her garden



Rain is falling

My sweet daughter, Emily, is now is Wisconsin for the National Science Olympiad , representing the most beautiful of the 50 states (in my humble opinion), Kentucky, and her school. They rode 14+ hours today and fortunately they were given a charter bus. I don’t want to imagine that ride on a crowded school bus. In a few weeks, Erin will make a similar trip to another city in Wisconsin for the International Future Problem Solving competition. She will be representing our Kentucky and her school.


Rain and more rain here. April showers bring May flowers, what do May showers bring? June bugs?

Check out my beautiful rhododendrons.

Blackberry

So this is Friday. No big papers due this weekend…I can breathe a little…only five more posts to write by Monday. Dissertation work needs me.


Some heavy work-stuff happened this week. I walked the lake a few times to decompress and figured out what the sweet smell was. Wild cherries? Nope. Locust trees? No. Try blackberries. All in bloom now and the most delightful scent.

Blackberry

The little lake is dreadfully muddy after our recent monsoon.  We got 5”-7.5” inches of rain measured around our little tri-state area in just under two hours.  Flash floods were incredible and all the city’s sewers backed up.  Several blocks were under 5 feet of water.   On my walk today, I admired the blackberries and chanced to find a turtle like the one in my yard a week ago.  Also, in the edge of the dammed side, a big old pond turtle was swimming along the surface.            

Derby Day, 2011

This weekend, the writing prompt is “two organizations that collaborate within or across industries.” I selected Wal-Mart and Proctor & Gamble because there are plenty of mentions of them in the literature. The reading has been interesting so far. The most striking thing I’ve learned is that RFID technology is still immature, not internationally standardized, and potentially unstable. It can handle pallet-level granularity but the real benefits of the technology lie in perfecting item-level granularity. The technology just doesn’t support item-level with an acceptable degree of reliability. I thought it was ready for prime-time, incorrectly so.


Someone has been watching documentaries on the National Geographic Channel about 9/11 horrors. I walked into the room and got hooked with him. It makes me sad every time I see the loss of lives and destruction.

The family took me out to dinner today for Mother’s Day. We went today because tomorrow the restaurants around here will be jammed. I have no time to stand around waiting for a table. We went late afternoon for an early dinner. The first choice restaurant was a zoo, we drove on past. The second choice was not so crowded. We got seated right away and it was very nice to have dinner with Someone and two of my sweet daughters.

Easter, 2011

Today was the hundred-and-something'th running of the Kentucky Derby.  I picked Nehro to win, but he placed.  No matter, the Kentucky Derby is something I hope to see in person some day.  We plan to the take the girls to Keeneland in October.  I love the race track and smell of horses.   

Lettuce learn to be better farmers

The lettuce…I didn’t thin it as I should have and now look at it!!  The one on the right has done so much better than the one on the left.  The only difference is that I had two separate packets of seeds.  Same brand and variety bought at the same time – but look at the difference.  Hmmm..that company might just have some quality issues.  No matter, I’m pleased as pinecones to have lovely lettuce growing.  I miss having time for my yard. 

I worked hard all day today, didn’t submit my work until maybe 20 minutes ago (‘bout 2:15AM).  A couple of times I strolled outside just to get some of the fine, spring air.  It was cool today, low 70’s, and  very clear, brilliant sunshine.  A day like today makes me want that hill-land/farmland/lake/river/large creek property not too far from here *sigh*…*BIGGER SIGH***** I’ve planted an orchard many times over in my imagination.          

But look here what surprised me today - a lily-of-the-valley.  Delightful and sad at the same time.  I think of Chewy everytime I see a lily-of-the-valley.  I planted 80-some of them in a bed.  Chewy was in her digging stage, dug them all up and ate a good lot of them.  I found a few in the yard, replanted them, and fenced the bed.  Chewy got them again and I gave up on them.  But today, this in all its glory!

    

Tomorrow is another day.  My team assignment is done (hopefully, other than filling in whatever needs doing with the final version.  So tomorrow, my goal is to write four posts and submit two tomorrow (oops..today) and two on Monday.  I better get to bed...wake-up time is fast approaching.