Various

News from New Orleans: Jerry, Cori, and Molly are getting settled in. J&C are both working as temps while they look for career positions. And Marty is doing pretty well. He is still having memory problems--he doesn't remember Gary's name, for instance--and Judy says he sleeps a lot, but Chuck and Eric were happy to find him alert and chipper when they visited there a week or two ago.

There's a new foal on the way at Hope for Horses! The foster parents of Honey, a rescued mare, bred her in violation of their contract with HFH, so she's back at the main barn now, with the baby due soon. MJ wants to spend some nights in the barn on foal watch. I sure hope she gets to watch the birth this time!

With the hype for Harry Potter 7 building, Chloe has been digging back into her mile-high stack of HP books. She decided it would be fun to do some of the assignments the Hogwarts kids get in the books, so she's been spending quite a lot of time writing essays on cool stuff like moonstones, self-fertilizing bushes, Neptune, and kneazles. Her essays are quite good, plus it's been fun to watch her discovering all those school tricks for essays, such as WRITING LARGER TO FILL THE REQUIRED PAGES.

After two weeks with overtime, Frank has had a quiet week workwise, with even the weekly Friday meeting dedicated to a going-away party for one of the editors. So, we've been having a little at-home vacation. We're having a lot of fun with our Netflix subscription these days--each member of the family has his/her own queue now, which keeps all of us watching the mail for movies--and we have more library books out than we can possibly read before they're due.

Speaking of, I want to recommend "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom" to all my female readers (and interested males, too, of course). Dr. Christiane Northrup shares patients' stories and a lot of medical advice that combines the best of medical science with sensible tenets of spiritual/psychological healing. My favorite part about it is that she begins with the assumption that our bodies are naturally healthy and will remain so, instead of the assumption that we're going to fall apart as we get older. (Did you know that the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico believed that the best runners were people in their sixties, and that researchers who tested the members of the tribe found that the 60-somethings did indeed have the best lung capacity, cardiovascular fitness, and endurance? It illustrates how much our attitudes toward health and aging can affect us!)

Both girls are signed up for next summer's Not Back to School Camp. They are very excited, especially MJ.
MJ has a new haircut! She had about a foot of hair cut off. Cute, huh?