Category: Uncategorized

For those of you who want to donate to the Red Cross, to help get the basic necessities right to the people who need it most:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/philanthropy/red-cross.html/104-8552742-4709549

Additionally, I received an email from the president of Coffee Cup software, Nick Longo, that was sent out to their corporate mailing list. (I am a user of their FTP software). They raised 1 million dollars for 9/11, and 50k for the Tsunami victims. Now they want to help the Hurricane victims.

They are located in Corpus Christi, TX, and are offering their warehouse for storage and their staff and trucks for delivery of the “non-essential” stuff that will help the tens of thousands of refugees arriving in Texas to get through the dark, dreary days when they’ll be living in shelters with not much more than the clothes on their backs. Because the Red Cross and other relief organizations are handling the basics like food and water, Coffee Cup is recommending people donate “goods”. Over 25,000 people will be arriving at the Houston Astrodome in the next day or so, and Coffee Cup wants to help provide them with toiletries, small toys, and other items that will make life a little more bearable. They don’t want money, food or water.

You can buy things from online vendors like Amazon, Target and Staples, and have them delivers right to Coffee Cup, or you can pack up your own boxes and mail them. Here is the address, and a list of some of the items that would be very welcomed. He says that they’ll be documenting the effort with webcams and photos.

Coffee Cup Software
c/o Hurricane Aid
226 South Tancahua Street
Corpus Christi, TX 78401

Diapers, Baby Wipes, Infant Care Items
Personal Care Items (Soap, razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, hygiene items)
Clothing (socks, underwear, shirts, shoes, pants)
Phone calling cards, batteries, FM radios, walkie-talkies
Toys (books, drawing paper, Coloring books, crayons, puzzles, any activity toy, small stuffed animals/dolls/action figures) [Jody’s note: I’d try to keep these things small – I was thinking about the little handheld electronic games, or travel games]

I will also let Nick know that I’m posting this on my site, just to help get the word out. I think it’s great that they are willing to use their warehouse, staff and time to do this. For a child who just lost everything, having a stuffed animal to hold can mean the world.

In a perfect world, where I had unlimited funds, I would start an effort to send backpacks to each child, containing fruit snacks, a stuffed animal, crayons, drawing paper, and a book. That way they’d have the backpack to store their things so they wouldn’t have to worry about losing them again.

Thanks for reading this far.

Ahh, the stench of bus exhaust is in the air today. Leominster Public Schools are back in session. This summer went by FAST. I mean, seriously, did they have more than a few weeks off? It doesn’t seem like it.

I took the requisite first day of school photo, and I actually think that maybe he’s wearing the same shirt today that he wore for the first day last year. Well, we’ll just keep it in rotation until he bursts out of it like the Incredible Hulk. If we’re lucky, it will happen when he’s angry.

I hope he has a good teacher this year. Nobody recognized her name, so she might be new. Scary to get the new teacher, because nobody can tell you anything about her. But her name sounds nice, if that makes any sense, so we’ll see.

All seriousness about this Katrina thing aside, I do want to say that I seriously pity the people who rented the house we rented for vacation this week. Cause it’s a couple thousand dollars a week, and they have no sun in sight. We apparently hogged it all up. Of course, there’s no chance that they will have water up to their eyeballs and have to go sleep in a football stadium, so I can’t offer too much pity, but man, if it was me down there in the rain with the kids for a week, I’d be slowly drinking myself into a stupor. As it is, while we tried to limit the amount of time the television was on, they still watched these two Gamera movies I had with me about 50 or 60 times. Lord help us if we hadn’t been able to spend a few hours down in the water every day. I’d have the dialog memorized.

(You know what’s cool? When your kids discover the stuff you loved as a kid. I wasn’t a big Gamera fan, but my sister was. She was into channel 56’s “Creature Double Feature” every Saturday starting at noon, too, which is I guess how she knew Gamera. So the kids are totally into it, and aren’t at the “so campy it’s cool” stage. They actually find it thrilling when the big pointy-headed monster that kind of looks like an octopus uses his pointy head to stab Gamera, but then Gamera uses his fiery jets to spin off with the monster stuck to him and he wins the fight! Hooray Gamera!)

But enough. I don’t need to see these again for a number of years, thanks.

Okay, I can complain, I’m good at it. But I won’t, not when I’ve got half an eye on the news reports from Louisiana.

You’d think you would come back to work after vacation refreshed and raring to go, but maybe it’s the 2 weeks remaining of a 4 week contract thing that makes it hard to be refreshed about anything. Or maybe it’s mentally preparing for Wednesday’s first day of school. Or the fact that the dog either has some kind of urinary tract infection or he’s in puberty because he is literally peeing all over the entire house since we picked him up from the boarding place Saturday. I’m tired of walking in pee. Oh, and by the way, they gave him the more horrific haircut ever. When they brought him out we thought it was the wrong dog. I want my schnoogie woogums back, not this little ratty poodle-faced pup. *sigh*

Wait, I said I wasn’t going to complain, right?

I am such a liar.

Okay, it took me all day, but here are some photos of our trip. Of course, these are only a few of the 300 I took, but I’m not going to bore you completely. You can click the restaurant sign to pull up the page of images (it may take a few extra seconds to load, but hey, I’m worth it!)