Outside my window:

It is cloudy and in the low 70s. My lawn needs to be mowed and my wonderful lawn guy Eric is not coming until next weekend. Yes friends it is March and I need to mow weekly.

I am thinking:

Even though I just whined about my yard I am so very happy to be out of the Michigan winters.

I am thankful for:

That I am able to grow and expand even when it feels like I can't go on another step, somehow I am able to go on and as a result I change and become better.

From the kitchen:

This weekend I am going to smoke a rack of ribs for the first time ever. Barbeque is sort of a religion here in Texas and I am generally not a devotee. My plan is to rub em down with some rub bought from my favorite rib joint, Cattle Drive, and then sloooowwww cook em. I am serving the ribs with home made coleslaw, corn on the cob, ranch black beans, and some sort of delicious cobbler or boy bait for dessert. To drink some good cold beer, wine and iced tea for those non booze hounds in my guests.

I am wearing:

The usual, scrubs

I am creating:

Plans for a grand Texas barbeque dinner this weekend, I am even going to decorate the yard with cute little lanterns and set up a table outside. I love dinner parties and as long as the pesky outside bugs stay outside of my screen gazabo, we should be good.

I am going:

To go to a giant Volkswagen rally in Fredricksburg in a couple weeks. I am looking forward to it for sure. This will probably be the last camping trip before the blast furnace of summer opens and I have to wait until fall to camp again.

I am reading:

A book of Japanese myths and folk tales

I am hoping:

My new neighbors tone it down so I don't have to call the cops on them. They have been boozing it up VERY loudly in the front yard all weekend. I am hoping it is just the whoo-hoo-we-just- moved-in celebrating. I hate to be a cranky curmudgeon but dang, 3am and I have to be up at 5:30am, it is too much. Why don' t they do this in the BACK yard.

I am hearing:

My students working on their test

Around the house:

I am the worst housekeeper in the world, I have decided. My house looks like a bomb went off in it, school stuff all over the dining room table, an abandoned project in the livingroom, the kitchen looks like am 8 year old was cooking, it is not pretty at all. It is a good thing I am going to have company this weekend so I have to clean. If it were not for company I am convinced I would live in a space that is a cross between an absent minded professor's office and a Disney bumbling wizard's cottage.

One of my favorite things

I really love the sound for trains blowing their whistles in the distance. I live about 3 blocks away from train tracks and I hear the train blow every night as I am going to sleep. It makes me feel good and sleepy to hear it.

A few plans for the rest of the week

Clean my house, do everything I can ahead for the food prep for the weekend, do partial water changes on my fish tanks, put up my weather proof decorations for the party.

Words I am pondering

“I must learn to love the fool in me- the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries, it alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility and dignity but for my fool. Theodore Rubin

Here is a picture I am sharing

I went to walk around the Johnson Space Center at lunch a couple days ago and here is the picture I took of the shuttle, it is HUGE. I tried to climb on it but for some reason they take offence to that, go figure.