I will try not to apologize whenever my workload keeps me from updating my blog, so take this as a blanket apology for the entire school year. Last weekend I spent Saturday at Heath Village Family Day–which was inundated with 21 crazy Sabellas!–and this week I have been giving the tests to my classes and grading them. I have had no time for such non-school items as updating my blog or working on either VoP or the Tibet book. But so far I am enjoying being at school, and I hope it stays that way all year.

I do try to go to the YMCA once a week, and also to use the Nordik Track another day. Today Jean and I took a walk after I got home from school as well. It is even more important that we keep in shape now than it was when we got married 25 years ago, and I think we have actually gotten more faithful over the years. Jean is the most faithful, going to the YMCA 3 times every week, but her attitude encourages me as well. I also do my nightly abdomen/back exercises and pushups at least 5 nights per week, so I am glad about that.

After the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast recently, it is hard to believe that another Category Five hurricane Rita is headed for the coast of Texas this Friday. It seems unreal that suddenly the past few years we have had a major increase in the number and level of hurricanes in the Atlantic. Apparently this is the result of two hundred years of post-Industrial Revolution waste products causing global warming, and remember when our federal government announced a few years ago that global warming fears were overrated and not really a problem? If Rita is as deadly as Katrina was, both the suffering and the cost will be huge and may have a serious ripple effect to our country’s economy which is already over-stressed due to the war in Iraq and Bush’s tax cuts for his rich cronies which have created a huge federal deficit.