Hello on Monday

Dear Friends,

Sunday was a quiet day for me since I laid low for most of the day. My most strenuous activities were to water the plants, take a nap, watch the Red Sox, watch the last few holes of a professional golf tournament, watch "60 Minutes", grill some chicken leg quarters, respond to emails, and finish reading a Clive Cussler book. I am in my sneakers right now without my boot, and my strained Achilles feels pretty good. A little puttering around the house will remind me that I am not ready to jumping jacks. My Achilles thanked me for doing quiet activities!

While I was doing my thing, Linda had a restful morning and slept until about an hour before she had to go off to her 11 AM wedding shower. She had a fun time bonding with all of her female friends while having brunch at the Dakota Restaurant. The wedding takes place during mid October.

After the wedding shower, she had a little break before being picked by another girlfriend at 4:15 PM as they headed off to see a local production of "Guys and Dolls" at 5 PM. She said that it was spectacular and it was so professionally done. She understands why the New Yorker's, and the Boston crowds love coming to the Berkshires to see great plays at half of the costs of what they would normally pay in their respective cities.
They met a couple other girlfriends who were at the play, and they five ladies all headed off to Patrick's Pub for dinner after the show was over.

Linda has one of those totally free days until a 6:45 PM Mah Jongg session which she is hosting this evening. I was asked to cook some hot dogs and hamburgers for the ladies, but two ladies said that they couldn't make the cookout at 6 PM. I will be cooking for Linda, one girl friend, and myself.

We will get some down time this week where we will just be having fun. No baking, cooking, grilling, hosting will be taking place. We will be attending a weekend rehearsal party and wedding in Vermont. We are going a day earlier for just some plain old relaxation before the wedding stuff begins. Kevin and Kyla will be attending the wedding also without child and creatures which means that we could bond a little with them too.

Observation 1. -- While watching "60 Minutes, half the program focused on homeless vets. You watched heart breaking success and failure stories. Some of the Vets seemed so young to have been in the sorry state that they were in. Some of the interviewed Vets said that when they retuned from war, they could not adjust to a life of normalcy. After watching the program from beginning to end, I reached the conclusion that wars do a terrible harm especially to the men and women on the front lines. You just can't program a young person to be a killing machine, and then expect them to a normal functioning citizen when they return home. You can't expect a person who saw their buddy get killed or maimed, and not replay those images in their mind when they return to civilian life. As I said in an email months ago, the Mom of one of my former students who entered the Army right after High School, and did several tours of duty in Iraq, and she told me that her sons sleeps with one eye open. He reacts to any slight sound or noise.

Observation 2. The other half of the program focused on Fracking which is a process where Companies drill miles through shale until they reach Natural gas. They interviewed the CEO of one the companies who guaranteed that the process works. They showed farmers who were paid big bucks to let these companies drill on their properties. They then interviewed people who had their water supply affected by the process, and how they are suing the mess left in their yards by the less than above board companies. I arrived at the conclusion that it is such a good thing that we have the tree huggers and environmentalists looking out for our best interests. I would just keep purchasing crude oil from any country who wants to sell it to us. I wouldn't let these countries tell us what they will be charging us per barrel. I think that we could do a little better in the negotiation process. We would have to make cars a little more environmentally friendly. I would also have the best minds in the world working on finding a way to be less oil dependent.

Sports -- The Red Sox and Yankees won their respective contests on Sunday.
No Red Sox for the next couple of days because of the All Star break which is the half way point of the Major League Baseball season.
Tiger Woods is schedule to make an 11 AM statement on the Golf Channel today. The Sports' writers are trying to guess what he is going to say.

Weather -- We have a week of summer like temperatures scheduled for the whole week. We might reach the 90 degree mark today with increased humidity.

While we were entertaining some of our friends on Saturday night, who spend the winters down south, I noticed that they feel the coolness very quickly.
They started putting on sweaters and jackets as darkness arrived. Linda and I called the cooler temperatures refreshing, but they called it cold.

Well, I have to do some quiet activities. I hope that the telephone doesn't ring at our house until the Queen wakes up.

Have a great week at work or play.
Talk to you soon. Bootman (alias The Curley Lad)