Reflected Sunlight

For a Friday the 13th, today was a pretty sweet day. I only had to work half a day. I took the afternoon off so that I was home for my appointment with AT&T. We switched from DSL to U-verse, twisted pair to fiber. The serviceman got the new service working in only two hours. We’ve gone from 6 megabits-per-second (Mbps) to almost 30 Mbps. I can now stream high-definition movies, websites load faster and Anne and I no longer have to fight over bandwidth. Most of all, when the kids come home again they will no longer be able to ridicule me for still nursing my DSL, which they came to believe stood for Dad’s Slow Line.

Anne’s been substituting up a storm this year. She had hoped to have a day off yesterday, but got an early morning call instead. She worked fourth grade and she got a field trip to boot. This is a rare treat for her; she almost never gets to work field trips. When she is called in to substitute and the class is going on a field trip, she usually gets to handle the malcontents that were not allowed to go along, but not this time. The fourth grade went to Soulard Farmers’ market. This is part of the school’s curriculum teaching the children about the food they eat, where it comes from, how to grow it and how to eat healthy. According to Wiki: “Soulard is the oldest Farmers’ market west of the Mississippi, filled with over 100 vendors that include, farmers produce, meat shops, a spice shop, florist shops, amazing food, and it’s world-famous Bloody Mary’s.” Anne never mentioned anything about Bloody Marys, but that does help to explain all the winos that hang around the market. Anne lucked out; her class didn’t have to lineup right next to the bums.

One more story from last weekend’s MS-150. To protect the guilty, Anne has asked me to obfuscate some identifying facts. Let’s just say that this story involves two marketing reps for a left coast smoothie chain. We camped next to them. Friday night they left about nine, returned about two and there was an empty liquor bottle on the roof of their car in the morning. There was no sight of them in the morning, but after Saturday’s ride, we saw them manning their marketing booth. Saturday night went pretty much like Friday night. Sunday morning the rains rolled in and their tent got a lake in it. We saw them out on the course that day and like the rest of us, they were doing their best just coping with the weather. They were wearing their sponsor’s jerseys, which appeared to be in women sizes, so they fit rather snugly. Afterwards, while we were all packing up to leave, they promised to be back next year.