Odds and Ends

First, on my part time job I work with a lot of kids, mostly college students. Some really great kids. I have run into this before, but it still sticks with me. I overheard the guys talking, and heard a new kid went to the same high school as my kids. I told him my kids also went there, and gave my last name. The kid starts to laugh. I knew immediately it was Kyle he knew. I said that Kyle was somewhat wild, he said, 'yes he was...' as he walked away still laughing. It's likely I'll never know the half of it, nor would I want to.

Kyle got a job! We really hope it will last, but as painful as it is for him to get ready, we wonder. He stresses SO much about the littlest things. He washes dishes and busses tables at a restaurant, but he has to be PERFECT before he leaves the house. He ends up 'freaking out' and running out at the last second because he couldn't find the deodorant, or the Q-tips, or... I feel for him, I really do. This is his life. It's been like this since he's been a little kid. Every day for school Karen put up with this. Every day. I couldn't handle it, we butted heads. But Karen understood him, what he was going through, and had the strength and patience to bring him through it. Kyle works with his younger brother who is a very hard worker and very responsible. We hope that with his brother's good example Kyle will make this job last.

Next, after much aggravation, a step was taken I had hoped never to take. The use of those awful spam busting letters for comments. You know the ones, 'Type the characters you see in the picture above'. Yuck. I mean no offense to those that use them, I have just hit the spam threshold you all have likely hit long ago.

The news spread quickly today. We live in a fairly large town for our part of the country, but even in a community this size things can happen to bring the city together. A few months ago a junior high school girl disappeared. Vanished after being seen getting off a school bus in her neighborhood. This event brought our community together as we watched the news daily, saw flyers being posted and distributed, and so forth. Well today, outside a town close to ours, a dog brought back what was thought to be a human foot. The entire region held it's collective breath, all thinking it was the missing girl. The word came back: A bear paw. Not to trivialize the plight of the missing girl, but a bear paw? That's perhaps more weird than finding a human foot. We live in an area where there probably haven't been bears for hundreds of years, if even then. When Lewis and Clark came through our area, they didn't report bears. How did a bear paw get there? If it was a hunter, it's a LONG ways until you find any bear hunting from here. And if you shot a bear, you would bone it out and remove the hide before you came home. So you wouldn't dispose of a bear skeleton around here. Thats just plain weird.

Lastly, the web site is coming along. I spent a week on message board forums, trying to find one that integrated with my site. I found one that was perfect, but way too basic, and very few features. I found one that was great, but the integration with the site was way too buggy and problematic. I finally gave up and went with the industry standard for forums, but is not integrated at all with the main site. I still do not have really any content to speak of yet. I have my 2 blogs in a feed, and one news service in a feed. I will be looking for more blog feeds shortly, and if you're interested in having your blog included in a feed on the new site I'll post instructions on how to do this shortly. If you want a 'sneak peak' it's at http://livingbipolar.com. I'm not happy yet with the design, and there is still a lot of 'default' or junk content, but I have an 'outline' to build on now. The forum is usable, and I'm looking for ideas on categories you'd like to see. I don't want too many categories, but want enough to keep things organized.

Thanks for all your comments recently. I don't always get to immediately respond, but I read them all and appreciate the thoughts and input.