Lot of milestones lately, and the latest one put me, the lovely mother of my lovely children, and the middle child of that collective in White Plains, New York at Purchase College for orientation. It was our daughter's orientation and first visit to the college of her choice. It was a pretty regular assortment of meetings, sessions, icebreaker type activities. Given it's location, about 30 minutes north of New York City so there were folks from all over.



I was relieved a bit that it looks nothing like U.B. and is a nice sized community for our daughter to start off and gain some confidence being on her own. It's right next to White Plains, but built so it is its own little world as well and I think that is kind of cool. One can ease themselves into things so it's not too much too soon. That didn't stop my amusement at some of the parents whose questions sounded more like they were sending their ten year old off to camp as opposed to their young adult off to school.



If a community can take our too cool teenager and move her from "I can tell already I'm going to hate it here" (when she saw students dancing parking directions for us) to somebody who has a schedule, two job prospects and three prospective roommates, they must be doing something right.

You never know anything for sure, but this feels like a positive start.

This might be one of the cooler work pictures I might ever get to take.

Now how this happened, but the renowned number one son graduated 8th grade this week. In a week of milestones, his older sister graduates high school on Monday, so allow me a rare moment of hey, aren't my kids cool

The stuff you have to do sometimes.

The Xbox died after a lengthy run, and a few repairs, so I've decided to trade in the peripherals and games and go gently into the goodnight for a bit, or at least treat myself to a Wii perhaps.

To do Netflix and download from their library of marked up software, I signed up for a gold membership, which means nothing really, only you can't escape it.

In calling "customer service" despite having all the financial information, the lovely people at Gates World insisted I know the security question for the Xbox Gamertag, not the Charge Card Holder. This might be the dumbest security measure I've heard in the age of paranoia. Fortunately, I picked up the Xbox used from a good soul, ((e:Terry)), and round two wrapped up tonight and they stopped billing me. I think I'll use the savings for HBO or something.

Thanks Terry and watch out on them thar internets, ya'all

Silliness I tell ya.

It is possible to be getting too old for some things. I've been playing kickball leagues behind UB for a couple of weeks, but I think my season is over. Last week after visiting my dad in the hospital (he got out the next day), I ran home, changed, and hauled over to the field to join my team. It had been raining, and I almost thought it would have been cancelled.

Probably shoulda been.

It's the goofball league so nothing gets taken too seriously, but I scrambled, played poorly the first game, dropped a couple of easy catches. But in the second game of the doubleheader, I started to find my game. I made a few plays. I got on base a few times. The team was winning, until.....my fourth trip to the plate.

Connected! Sure fire extra base hit, until.....I planted my left foot to start running and it felt like somebody hit the back of my ankle with a sledge hammer. I collapsed like lawn furniture and I think looked back at one point to see what did hit me.

I'd never felt the muscles in the bottom of my leg tighten so fast before. Everybody must have known because I was surrounded in a heartbeat.

"don't put any weight on it" "quick, get some of the beer and that duct tape" and I was on the bench. It wasn't throbbing or anything, so I didn't think it was the end of the world, but I stayed put till the end of the game. When it finished, I hobbled to my car, thanking god that I had the good sense to have automatic transmission. The more you hobble like that, the farther away the car does seem.

To make sure I didn't screw anything up to bad, I drove over to immediacare. When the rest of your team is headed to Gecko's to drink, it is a lonely drive. I checked into the Hertel Ave facility and got xrayed to see pulled ligaments which are slowly returning to normal.

But, I think my season is done.