Sorry about that. Just haven't had the time and/or inclination to write of late. Or at least to write here. So, here's the summary version of what's been going on of late:

- Mom and Dad are still in Japan. The weather has not been great up at Takeyama, and they have been toying with the idea of going back to Ageo a little early. They are returning to the states on the 30th or so.

- We have an agreement of sale on a two-bedroom condo in Longport, NJ. A place opened up in the "other" Longport condo building - the Ocean Plaza. It's a little further up the beach from the Seaview where we are renting this summer, but it is a much nicer building. We know several people who own there now. We also decided that a two-bedroom would make sense since we can have guests come to stay for a weekend, and hopefully Gary's kids will want to spend time down there eventually. We settle at the end of August.

- The Trollops came to visit for a wild weekend! Laurie and Sarah flew out from the west coast and Steph drove down from Ithaca. It was - as usual - exhaustingly fun. I hope to post a full review - complete with incriminating photos - as soon as I get some down time.

- Gary has started his new job at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. So far, it has been a real treat in comparison to his former position, although the combination of the bureaucracy of a university and the bureaucracy of a hospital is - understandably - mind-boggling. But - whoever is on call over night then gets the following day off. When someone works the weekend call shift - Saturday and Sunday - they get Monday off. That person then works the Thursday night shift so they will get a three-day weekend. Gary was on call this past weekend, so after his Thursday night shift, we will head down to the shore on Friday morning. Yea!

So that's the update. No guarantees of when I'll post, but then again, there never have been.

Weird, disturbing headlines in the news today. In no particular order:

Father of 9/11 hijacker praises London attack. Just a lovely interview of Mohamed Atta's father where he says how wonderful the London bombings were and how he wanted the CNN crew to pay $5,000 for an additional interview so that he could fund another attach. CNN quickly backtracks and states that their policy is not to pay for interviews. Uh-huh.

London mayor: West's 'double standards' fueled terror. Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, lightly condemns suicide bombings but quickly becomes an apologist and ties everything back to Palestine. Jerk.

Ugandan official: Virgins to get free college. A Ugandan member of parliament has pledged to reward girls for their chastity by paying their university fees if they are virgins when they leave school. I guess that this is a response to the ever increasing AIDS epidemic, but on a day when the headlines are making me look twice, this one made me shake my head again.

And from the "Let's Not Take Responsibility For Our Own Actions Department", a British teachers' organization has suggested that we remove the word "fail" from our vocabularies:

LONDON (Reuters) - The word "fail" should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase "deferred success" to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of teachers has proposed.

Members of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) argue that telling pupils they have failed can put them off learning for life.

A spokesman for the group said it wanted to avoid labeling children. "We recognize that children do not necessarily achieve success first time," he said.

"But I recognize that we can't just strike a word from the dictionary," he said.

The PAT said it would debate the proposal at a conference next week.

So that's my new excuse for not posting: I have "deferred successed" to write for the past three weeks. I feel better now, since thinking that I had "failed" to write might have put me off posting ever again.

[No labeling for me.]

Quote du jour:

"A man may fail many times but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else."

-- J. Paul Getty (1892 - 1976) US oil man

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