End of Summer

College started last week for my daughter. She is finding it easier than she expected. That's good. School starts Tuesday for my son. He is not excited about going back, but I am. He's been running pretty free this summer and I'd like him to have more structure in his life.

We spent a night this week in the ER with a football injury. My son sprained his knee badly when he got tackled during practice. He was in a lot of pain for two days, but today, it seems back to normal. The doctor didn't want to release him for football until next Friday, but I expect he'll be back at practice before then.

Work has been incredibly busy the last few weeks. I am kicking off a global project to implement SAP security tools for all Consumer operating companies. So I had people in from all over the world for a week to begin the planning and design work. We got a lot done during the week and I've gotten kudos from the project sponsors and my boss. I spent a lot of time getting ready for it and then spent every day leading the discussion and the evenings documenting our accomplishments. By the time the weekend came around, I was exhausted. Plus, we have another project we are working on that has a critical deadline, will save us $15-20 million a year ongoing, that is behind schedule. The project manager is, in my view, not doing a very good job and I've had to step in too many times to try and get it back on track. It was stressful for me because I don't like having to tell my boss this person isn't doing a good job and trying to intercede tactfully, but effectively, has been draining.

I am also teaching myself FrontPage. My church has asked me to take over the church website. It was redesigned recently by someone, but no one has been able to keep it up to date. The task was assigned to one of the church secretaries, but she didn't really have the time or the skills to update it. It has been a little frustrating, because some of my changes appear to the public, but others are not showing up. As I look at the different files, they don't seem to be connected the way the manuals tell me they should be. And, errors are present in most pages when I look at the error reports. I've finally gotten the contact information for the person who redesigned it and hopefully once I sit down with him, I'll be able to make more sense of it. Any FrontPage experts out there can feel free to send me some tips 'n tricks!

What does the future hold?

Several of us went to a psychic fair today and had our fortunes told and underwent a reike healing exercise. I thought my reading went very well. I've done this before and had some readings that turned out to be extremely accurate - sometimes they would mention people in my life without any way of knowing about those people. Once I had a reader tell me something about my Uncle Charles. I told her I didn't have an Uncle Charles. She insisted I did. And, actually I did have an Uncle Charles, but we always called him Chuck and I never thought of him as Charles. Other readers took my comments and created a future based on my words and comments.

This reading was from tarot cards and I spoke very little so the reader was not feeding my information back to me. She started out by saying that I was working through an issue with my mother. I said I didn't have any issues with my mother. She insisted I did and that I was working through it and was beginning the separation process from her. That I needed to separate from her before I could have a permanent relationship with anyone. I asked her if possibly she was talking about my daughter. Since she is in her late teens, of course, we are working through the normal separation process. But in our case, we have always had issues with my dating ever since I left her father eight years ago. As she moves onto college and is dating herself, we are working through this.

My reader identified a number of issues I am currently working through and said she saw positive resolution by year-end. She also had positive things to say about my career. She had some messages from my father and said that he is trying very hard to contact me and is frustrated that I am not hearing him. My father died when I was 19 and after his death, I felt him and heard him quite often, but now, not so much. She said I need to start spending a few minutes a day opening myself up to him to try and let him get his messages through.

She had a lot of information about my daughter, that without my saying anything about her, was very true. I regret now I didn't ask about my son. Although another reader did say positive things about my son to my mother who was also at the event.

Next year, I am to have a stronger sense of stability and will be striving for balance in all aspects of my life. Since I feel more stable, I will have more peace and more relaxation and fun in my life.

On a sadder note, I have learned (not at the reading) someone I care about very much is probably going to die in the near future. He is at peace with this news, says he has had a good life and has done whatever reconciliation he needed to do with the people in his life. He is not an old man and should have had many more years to enjoy his life and family. He is going to live his days out the way he wants to and with the people who mean the most to him.

Vote for Amanda Kaletsky

On the radio to the left, vote for Amanda. Voting is through Sept 18.

For those of you who haven't heard Amanda, check out her website (link on my site) and give a listen to her music. She plays on the east coast and I think she's pretty good. The song she has entered is not one of my favorites. I really like her song "December" and the song "Never Enough"

Dress Makes a Man

I had to go to NJ the other day for work to visit the home office. While driving home, I was listening to the BBC on my Sirius radio. They had a news item where they referenced a British saying that dress makes a man. That's probably not the right phrase - my memory doesn't retain as much as it used to... but it's very similar to our saying in the States.

But anyway, they were doing a segment of three incidents that happened in the world recently about the style of dress. I only listened to the first segment because they were going to report on them in separate parts of the hour's show. The first incident they talked about occurred in South Africa. A woman wearing pants was attacked by a mob who were unhappy about her wearing such modern, urban attire. They stripped her of her pants and made her parade half-naked in front of them and then they burned her house down. On BBC they were debating whether this was done because they feared the pants as being an urban symbol or because they viewed pants as being too modern. Such attacks are unfortunately not uncommon.

When we were in Niagara Falls the other week, there were a large number of Muslim visitors. I'm assuming they were tourists since they were in the tourist area, but maybe they were residents. It was a warm day, but not overwhelmingly hot if you were wearing light clothing. Several of the Muslim women were wearing the full burkas, including only a small slit for their eyes to see through. Dressed all in black, it must have been extremely hot for them. Others were fully covered and wore head scarves, while a few had decorated black burkas without the full headcovering, but only a scarf covering their hair. Most of the young Muslim female children were wearing less clothing, but I did see one or two very young girls wearing full coverings and head scarves. I also saw a few families with several generations where the older women wore the full coverings and the other generations were less covered, the younger they were. Grandmothers in almost full burkas, mothers fully covered but only with a head scarf, teenage girls fully covered but with their hair uncovered. The fathers however, all were wearing short-sleeve shirts and shorts, much more appropriate for the weather.

I remember trying to leave my house as a teenager and my father would stop me and tell me to go change because no daughter of his was leaving the house looking like that. Young girls today, like my daughter, dress in a sexier fashion than I would like at times. As Chair of the Worship Commission at church, I sometimes get complaints about the attire of the young female acolytes. At the later service, which mostly older members attend, we ask the acolytes to wear a robe. Short skirts can cause problems when lighting the altar candles. I remember arguing with my parents that people should judge us by our character, not by our clothes, makeup or hairstyle. Problem is people don't see your character, they see your appearance.

I can understand dressing modestly, or wearing certain clothing styles, as part of your religion. I can't understand covering yourself up from head to toe in black with even a black net covering your eyes.