Out of Witty Titles

My blog is public again; for some reason AOL won't let non AOL'ers be registered as readers, and 90% of my readers are non AOL'ers.  The reason I took it private is that recently I read a news article about Blog Stalkers.  People who have nothing better to do than surf the internet looking for people to creep out.  But then I realized that there is really nothing earth shattering on my blog, and any stalker who came across it would fall asleep from boredom before he could plan anything.  So ... here I am, back in the saddle again.

What's going on?  Let's see ... Colin is leaving for Japan in 6 days!  He is going with his Japanese teacher and 14 other kids from his school.  They will fly to Nagoya, where they will each stay with a family for a week, go to school with their kids and basically hang out and learn to live like the Japanese.  The next week they will go to Hiroshima, Kyoto and Osaka.  They'll be home on June 2.  He is really excited and I am completely jealous.  Several times over the last year I offered to go along as a chaperone but Mr. N. just laughed.  He didn't get it that I was serious.  I haven't been back to Japan since I was 15 (having lived there for 3 years in 1965-1968).  I've had to buy him a whole new wardrobe of plain t-shirts since most of the ones he has have some rock group logo on it or something.  I have to take him to get a hair cut (or should I say a bush hogging - I didn't realize afros were back in style).  At least his pants don't hang down around his knees and he has no body piercings that I know of - ha!  He's a very good, conscientious kid and thinks the "freak" are just plain stupid. 

Right now he's looking at colleges, as he'll be a senior next year.  We visited UNC-G over his spring break and he was completely pumped up about the whole thing.  Dorm rooms, etc.

Speaking of UNC-G ... Supposedly I am poised to go to grad school there this fall.  Imagine my shock when I got a letter from the dept. of Library Science saying that I still hadn't submitted some forms.  WHAT?  Apparently my transcripts from Trinity U. have been misplaced.  And I had sent them to UNC-G in January, and again in April.  I had stopped by the grad school while Colin and I were there and were told that the transcripts were missing, so requested them again.  A call to Trinity told me they had been mailed in January AND in April.  I placed an outraged phone call, and the Dept. Head called me yesterday to tell me it wasn't too late.  That he would try to track down the transcripts.  They were under my maiden name, so they're probably in someone's file trying to find their way to the proper place.  So I'm hoping I'm still on track.  I was told that if Charlotte-Meck schools found out I was in grad school they would hire me in a second.  Well, shh, don't tell them.  I'm not ready to work AND go to school.  YET.  And my goal is to work at SouthLake anyway.  In the future.

Quentin turned 15!!!  And my bad, I didn't do a special "Happy Birthday Quentin" post.  He is so grown up, just got contacts and will take drivers' ed in June.  His birth was the easiest of the three, but man oh man, he screamed like a banshee for 6 months.  But once he became mobile he was the funniest, laughing-est, cheerful-est baby on the planet.  And that sense of humor has remained, honed and sophisticated, to this day.  Poor guy had around 7 projects due this week, poor guy.  Talk about pressure.  This school is pretty challenging, and he's only a freshman.  (For another week!) [Woo!]* <--_Added by Quentin himself.  Why did we name him Quentin?  (Which he thinks is a totally cool name, thank goodness!) 

In college, I was a history/political science major.  I studied a lot of US foreign policy history, which included Theodore Roosevelt, the Panama Canal and  all that.  He and his second wife, Edith, had four sons: Teddy Jr., Archie, Kermit and Quentin (and a daughter).  Quentin was a mischievous imp -- one time his brother was ill and Quentin brought a pony up in the White House elevator to cheer the brother up.  He was also an aviator in WWI.  I just always liked the name.  And his personality really matches the first Quentin Roosevelt.  Go figure.

And to close out ... a bit of trivia.  One time when I was working for a law firm in Baton Rouge, we had a lawyer from New York come in on a case.  He was the grandson of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  (Who was related to Teddy Roosevelt by marriage -- Eleanor was a cousin of Teddy's).  Anyway, I was assigned to drive Mr. Roosevelt to the airport at the end of his visit.  He was very tall and squeezed his long legs into my tiny Honda Civic.  I was all aquiver about being so close to my historical hero, even if only through a descendent.  He wasn't really that friendly though.  I asked him who his father was, (the youngest of FDR's four sons) but he wasn't really into talking much.  Oh well.  My ten minutes of a brush with fame.