Spaghetti

Another day, another spaghetti dinner. But...really good spaghetti today, and in fact yesterday too! I'm glad there are other dinners besides spaghetti, for sure, like baked steak, etc., and I'm also glad I like spaghetti!

Went to church this a.m. and as usual, our Sunday School class - we call is Sunday Taco - was the first hour. Our youth minister, two other leaders and I team-teach and each of us has a specific job. I do a newscast - a wrap-up of the week's news, selected and edited by me. There was a terrible story this week out of Georgia, about nine 3rd graders who had an amazingly organized plot to kill, or at least stab, their teacher. Unbelievable! Equally unbelievable on the other end of the spectrum is the plan to make an opera out of the life of Anna Nicole Smith in London...although this same outfit apparently did one on the life of Jerry Springer with some success! Go figure. And unbelievable in still a different way - the story of the "pregnant man" in Oregon. I can't begin to explain it but if you're interested and don't know about it I'm sure you can find it with no trouble on the internet. Sorry not to be more descriptive about that one but...I've got to move on here!

Taxes are finished, pretty much, and my son and I just took our dog, Jack, for a walk. Jack will have been a member of our family for one year on the 28th of this month. He'd been a stray in Knoxville, Tennessee, and my daughter-in-law Alice, AKA "The Dog Whisperer," found him and talked us into adopting him. I'd been promising a dog to the family for a long time but had never quite gotten there - to be honest, I was scared of loving a dog like I had my dog Rinny who got killed when I was 13. I got him when I was 3 - before I had a brother or sister even. I still remember the day my grandparents brought him to me and I tried my best to lift him - he was so heavy! He became my best friend and I miss him still - he's buried in a spot right by the road near where I grew up, and when I drive past there I usually wave-

But Jack did come into our family and he's a good dog. He's bored a lot - we have to put him in the bathroom when we're all gone and he has been in there for up to 8 hours. He can't be trusted to roam the house; he's still a chewer-upper. But for the most part he's good and very loving. I had his toenails clipped one day this week which helps a lot! Because before that, his "very loving" nature often came laced with pain! Jack is featured in my campaign billboard logo.

I've gotten good response to the commercials and am getting a bit of a second wind in the campaign energy department! Tomorrow, I have a very busy domestic violence docket and then a meeting in the evening; Tuesday all day in court and two meetings that night; and also court Wed and Thurs and a meeting Thurs night but not sure of anything on Wed - I might just have to take that night off! We'll see if I get to!

I do not know how the presidential candidates keep up this pace for so long - and I'm sure not traveling like they are and I'm not under the pressure they are. Let's just say that I've made a "fairly firm" decision that I am not throwing my hat into the ring for Prez of the US ever!

Well - I have the taxes done in draft form and so must transpose into "official" form. Annette signed the forms before she left for Haiti - my trusting wife! - and I hope to get them in the mail tomorrow. We're actually getting a refund from the feds, just a few hundred dollars but I'm not complaining, and our State refund was exactly $5.00 which we're donating to a child-abuse prevention fund through the State tax department.

Another work/campaign week starts tomorrow and the election is 5 weeks from Tuesday!