1. Something you learned from your father?

How to be confident in situations. Do I always act that way? No, but I have seen him exhibit such composure even though he should be panicked. Funny part is that when I was little, he flew off the handle all the time. But I guess because he was busy trying to keep it together in other situations.

2. Do you like onions? Raw or cooked? How about onion rings? What’s something you love to eat that calls for onions? 

Raw, no. If they’re on a sandwich I get mad. Cooked, heck yeah. I guess onion rings are ok but I don’t tend to eat them. I really like pickled onions on tacos and if something has caramelized onions I love it. Can’t think of anything specifically.

3. It’s officially summer (in the Northern hemisphere)…your favorite and least favorite things about the season?

I’ve mused about this before: I love late evenings in Summer. There’s something so nice about the glow in the yard as the sun sets; the way the fireflies come out and you can hear all the sounds of the season. It feels right to me. But I do hate when, like now, we have hot June temps. Normally June is nice and late July and all of August suck but this year, it’s already hotter than the surface of the sun. I also hate how I usually reach a point where the whimsical feeling I get about swimming in the pool and going to the beach just turns and I’m all, ‘Bring on Fall!’

4. When you think about the summers of your childhood what are two or three things that come to mind?

I think about how we owned a slip n slide and my mom made us lunches and let us sit outside to eat them in between sliding around. I also think about going to the beach a lot (we lived close) and eating slushies from a truck parked nearby. And on that note: homemade popsicles. We made them out of Five-Alive, if you remember that drink!

5.  A hot mess, the heat of the moment, beat the heat, if you can’t stand the heat, catch heat, in a dead heat…choose a ‘hot ‘phrase and tell us how it applies to your life right now.

Beat the heat. We have a two story house and a split unit – which means the one unit switches between cooling downstairs and upstairs. They don’t do that anymore but our house is a little older so it’s kind of outdated in that way. Well, with these higher temps, it’s taking a while to cool upstairs. It cannot keep up! So we have to just deal in those late afternoon hours. It’s not AWFUL but it is noticeable.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

It took me a little longer than usual to get to work this morning and I’m wondering if the folks who only work a few days a week are ALL working on Wednesdays. It made no sense. Some days I fly through the downtown area, getting every green light. But not today!

We leave for vacation tomorrow and here’s hoping it all goes well. I am not upset yet and I have packed a lot and done some of the other necessary things like getting the pool ready to be left alone for a week, etc. Got my neighbor looking for my mail and we mowed the lawn. I also have a long list of things to remind myself. And actually, we were supposed to got o a brew club happy hour tonight but our appointment to pick up the rental car got moved to smack dab in the middle of it so, I guess we can focus on packing and getting ready all night now. I guess I am not complaining, to be honest.

Got some good news today: the community college I work at just gave all adjunct instructors a 15% raise, which is pretty good. I go from about 2400 per class I teach to nearly 2800. That finally puts them comparable to some of the other places I teach. They’ve long been known for lower adjunct rates so this is awesome. Should really help me in the fall so I can save and be all ready for next Summer when I hopefully won’t have to scrimp like this year!