Landscape of Virginia

R iding the Local Transit with my bike, it was the very best of rides being that it was on time and fast. The only problem was that it did go in a round-about-way of getting from my place to the street my job is on but it was manageable for me and I plan to do my transit this way more often in the future. Granted I have to awaken a half an hour earlier and I need to put aside time to prepare to ride my bike which means gathering my gear putting my bikebag together with lunch, lock and chain, wallet and glasses for reading with my notebook for taking track of who belongs where at work then I have to dress for the weather if I'm going to ride home. But let me tell you it's all worth it when you zip by traffic at a standstill downtown while they are waiting for a light to change. I usually only go to the head of the line and wait unlike many bike riders who tend not to obey the laws of driving a vehicle and they cross no matter what color the traffic light is and ...

I've been wanting to go biking but other things seem to get in the way, either I need to carry things too big to carry along on my bike or just needing to get some rest from activity for the moment. Biking is a great way to get around and I plan to ride to work in the morning since the weather is cooperating lately but sometimes a person can just be too too worn out to make it onto the saddle. Thankfully, I can choose to ride my local transit system to work with only one transfer in getting their, I can always choose to do that if I don't feel like riding as long as I am awake early enough. The city bus system takes a good deal of time to use in order to go just a few miles, but it is a money saving method of travel here as long as your not in a hurry. These buses tend to loop around to places where not many travel but a few do, they just don't go one way down a street here, they take a lot of side trips to get from place to place. It's Charlottesvil...

I think a friend of mine was right when he said "if a hurricane hits and destroys buildings and such, why do they rebuild in exactly the same spot, they shouldn't be allowed to do so because they will just get the same thing to happen again." I think he has a good point in these days of "global warming" because if one rebuilds in New Orleans we're seeing how the same type and size storm will come again, and again to this spot on our planet. With atmospheric conditions like they are and water temperatures higher than ever before one can pretty much see that storms along our Gulf of Mexico are only going to remain bad to worse in the near future so why should we invest in areas destroyed by storms like Katrina and ones to come like the one on it's way today to New Orleans Gustav . I believe we do need to take a look at our own behaviors in light of the new weather patters that are changing the actual formation of our planet. We need to project ...

School is terrific so far, we've only been on the job site one day since last Wednesday, but I am hopeful that it will be useful to our student's job history and future. We are getting things in order for the coming school year, it takes a while to get use to the new pattern of activities but it's coming. I have started a new painting but I haven't been able to find the time to work on it much. I think I put in two sessions of a few hours per session on this new painting. I'm feeling like this will be the last of the Japanese painting series. I can always go back to them later on but I'm finding it more interesting to draw pen and inks from those photos my Dad took in Japan while we live their. Either way I will work with those photos again, but I think I will tackle them with another medium.

We know you want to be one of the one's on the cutting edge , did you get the text message from the Obama camp? It came early in the morning, I heard it was sometime near midnight. Granted everyone wanted to know who the choice for Vice President would be and no doubt there must have been an attentive audience on the edge of their seats when the message was sent out early Saturday morning, I just wasn't one of them. It's a good thing to be using new technology but I think that a little forethought should go into it's usage and not just using it because you can. You've got to put yourself in the place of the person your sending your message to sometime, don't you think?

Walking around town , I see many faces who's names aren't known to me but their face is; because seeing them over the years brings familiarity of them into my life. I enjoy seeing people gain their own stride in life and working in the school system you see students graduate and once in a blue moon you see them walking downtown and one can see if they are continuing to accomplish their goals in life by merely seeing their outsides. Now I don't belief you can tell a book by it's cover but you can tell some things by the appearance of said book but granted one doesn't know the whole store until one communicates with that person. But people change over time, the question is does the person inside change? I'm still seeking the answer to that one. "Some do and some don't" so it seems to me. In my twelve step program I've learned that only through "stepwork" can we change that addict inside to be a person who's ok in...

Preparing for the coming new school year what story is on the news but how the governor is planning to put education on the table for cuts in the coming year's budget, now that is an issue for me to feel good about and look forward to continuing to work in my career. Nothing like job security huh? It seems that the notion of job security is gone by the table with every career, but I know all I can and have to do is take care of myself today and let tomorrow take care of itself. Afterall, who really knows what lies ahead anyway, and why let it ruin today. Or this coming schoolyear for that matter, I'm hoping for a really good year. I will be working in a cafeteria dishroom with a couple of our students, keeping track of their work and progress towards independence on that job. I'm amazed that I am being called upon to teach others what I know about dishroom work, something I did for so many years and in so many different situations and something I never t...