I am not feeling particularly loquacious, but I seem to have a little time on my hands. I am so used to being overscheduled that when I do get time, I’m not really sure what to do with it. I end up tinkering with fish, plants, or paperwork. Perhaps I should tinker with my long-suffering blog more. I have sixteen or so occasional readers who have stayed with me through this dry spell. I know some of you, but the land-o-lakes reader in Minnesota is a mystery, as is the Navy ship on Westpac. Hello to you readers, I hope you are well. Thanks to the reversible mirror of stat-counter technology, here is where you are viewing me from of late:

26 St. Louis Missouri
6 Chicago Illinois – Justin/Vicki?
5 Wichita Kansas - Vanessa on vacation?
5 New Melle Missouri
4 Merritt Island Florida – Kelly?
3 Kansas City Missouri – Jason/Bethany?
2 Ames Iowa – Kim?
2 Washington Pennsylvania
2 Kirksville Missouri – Jen?
1 Florissant Missouri – University Medical Center?
1 Mexico Missouri
1 Jefferson City – R?
1 Carthage Illinois – Gary?
1 Jacksonville Florida – Vicki?
1 Ft. Worth Texas – Amy?
1 Grand Rapids Michigan
1 New Orleans Louisiana
1 Austin Texas – Angela B?
1 Dallas Texas – Amy?

I handed in my final grades for seniors on Friday, which means that my work load just dropped by half. Three of my classes ended and one of the remaining three lost half of its students. I have three weeks left at the puppy mill (my extra job) and only two of those involve instruction. The class I am taking ends Tuesday night. My academic life is winding down for the summer. This means that soon I will have time and be a person again. I will drink herbal tea and walk the dog. I will refinish furniture. I will clean. I will not drive three hours a day.

Yesterday we went out to Fairmont Park to place bets for the Kentucky Derby. Jes and her father had never been so Mary and I showed them the basics – emphasis on the Mary showing them as I have only been a few times before. We bet a live race and won our bet back plus forty cents – wow – we should have bet Win instead of Show. We left the park before the craziness got too bad and watched the Derby at Mary’s several hours later. None of us won our bets, but the mint juleps were tasty and the pecan pie was really excellent. I am not really much of a gambler, and when I do it is mostly a break even affair on a very small scale.

We have a new realtor, Tina, and she took us on a tour of houses today. We liked two of them. One is move in ready and at the upper limits of our price range; the other is very low for what it is; it needs a great deal of work. It does not need so much work that we couldn’t do a great deal of it ourselves this summer.

I expect that a rehabber will buy it to flip before we can get an offer together, but you never know. It’s two stories, one block from here, and already has a serviceable coy pond location. We liked it a great deal, but we’ve been riding the house train too long to get our hopes up. If you saw it you would love it and think that it is very us. It has twice as much space as our current digs. It has a great deal of potential as a long term residence and as an investment property. Who am I? Did I just say investment property? Good lord! Well, I had to grow up sometime didn’t I? It’s a good house. Maybe we’ll get a little lucky and land it.