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Like most Americans, I was briefly held captive by the Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut. We’d even swing by Krispy Kremes in Phoenix when we happened to be up there. But somewhere along the way they transformed from “mmmmmm….” to “eeeeeeeeewwww….”. Now it’s pure round goo. There are a dozen sitting at the front of the office and the smell alone is fairly disgusting.

This weekend my junior high speech coach passed away at age 91. She was a spunky old nun, in her mid-70′s at the time, and a neat influence in my life. My experience in speech helps me greatly in the meetings and analysis that are part of my life.

I can’t say I’ve given her much thought over the years, or even knew where she went after leaving our school. From reading her obituary, she did more with the 15 years at the end of her life than most people do in all their years. All that after an already full life of service and teaching.

My hat is off to anyone who dedicates their life to service. May you rest in peace, Sister Mary Ann.

Angus has a toy Bob the Builder hard hat. Tonight I walked into their room and Fred was wearing it over her face like a mask while Angus threw blocks at her head.

Today was the first day of class. As I waited for the bus this morning a nervous looking student reached for a schedule from his back pocket. I assumed it was a copy of the bus schedule, but it turns out it was a print out from Student Link, the system I maintain and largely developed. He was double checking when his first class was.

Every time I see a reference “in the wild” to Student Link it gives me a big jolt of pride. My work ethic is pretty over the top on its own, but that bumps it up another notch.

Opening of School is an interesting week of walking on eggshells, waiting for the systems to crash. I sit there with performance monitor checking how things are going. Watching the raw logfiles to make sure they’re still being written. Monitoring WebPay to see if the gateway is up. Data’s flying left and right, but I still wait for the call or email or page saying it’s all gone awry. Fortunately for the end users it goes better each and every time. Unfortunately for me it gets a little less thrilling.

Today 32,623 students used Student Link. We took in 8.5 million in payments. 1.5 of that was in electronic checks, an idea I hatched, and saved the U tens of thousands of dollars in transaction fees.

It was a good day.

My tea consumption massively spikes during the summer. For the last 2 or 3 summers, when July rolls around I feel compelled to drink a cup or two a day. In December it might be once a week, when it strikes my fancy. Pretty weird, since it’s a hundred degrees out.

In this online forum I participate in, there were a dozen or so posts about Fish. Eating it, buying it, whatever. Around the same time of the conversation I had just steeped a fresh cup of tea. The tea is very tasty and good, but has this unmistakable “fishy” taste to it. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it seems noticeable. But I can’t decide if it’s actually there or imagined because fish were fresh in my mind.

So if anyone has some Stash Ambootia Estate Darjeeling Green Organic lying around, give it a try and let me know how it goes.

“If God one day struck me blind, your beauty I’d still see.” – Adore, by Prince

In general I listen to music over lyrics, and over time the words seep into my brain. Adore has one of my favorite Prince lines in it, but the rest of the song was mostly a blur to me.

The lyric is brilliant and touching. Her physical beauty is so powerful it has burned into him, imprinted for life. Or beauty is in her words and thoughts and soul, and obvious to anyone, with sight or not. Probably both.

Either way, it was nice of Prince to write a song about my wife.

Horseradish is slowly creeping into my diet, especially on Roast Beef. Granny will be so proud. She’s still on her own with the Buttermilk think though.

Pedant and Pedantic were two of my favorite words. If I ever got really nitpicky about something, I’d sign the email “Ever the pedant”.

Then one day I looked them up. They’re still good words, they just don’t mean quite what I want them to. Bugger. So now I’m stuck with “quibbler” or “niggler”, which just don’t have the same panache.

Must. Drink. More. Water.