Autumn is lovely

Luke loves exploring outside, so we took a walk in the park yesterday to enjoy the sun and fall weather. He found leaves and acorns, and thought the acorns looked yummy.

Luke has been walking for about a month now, and can take 4-6 steps at a time on his own. He's still much faster crawling on his hands and feet.

Cool-weather clothes have been a shock to him. He does not enjoy wearing pants or long sleeves, and will try to take them off.

The Lure of Books

Uh-Oh!! This is why Mommy doesn't want me to touch her books. Good thing she wanted to get rid of them anyway.

Gas Update

2 1/2 weeks after Hurricane Ike:

We're still experiencing gas shortages in Atlanta. On Sunday, David was driving on fumes. Every gas station he drove by had bags over their pump handles, or yellow tape around the islands. Once home, he spent hours on the phone, calling every gas station listed on Google Maps, within a 15 or 20 mile radius of our house. Not a single one had gas. But two stations said they expected a delivery overnight.

At 6 am on Monday Greta and David headed out, expecting long lines. They happened to time it well; a tanker was just leaving the first station that thought it would be getting gas. David had no wait and got his gas. On the way home he saw that one of the stations near our house had cars at most of the pumps. With that news, Chuck and I jumped in our cars and snagged the last two pumps. But no one was pumping. Wondering what the deal was, I asked the cashier. They had gas, but he had to reset the pumps, a one hour job. We waited. We got our gas (limit of $40). We went home.

Although I have gas now, I continue to walk. Yesterday I even did the three miles to the grocery store, and three miles home. Not too bad. My car is acting as our reserve gas tank, to be used if David can't find gas again, and they need to get to school.

I did a little woman-on-the-street survey of gas stations this week. The news media is reporting that the whole problem is caused by consumers "panic buying", but the info I got from gas stations says otherwise.
Station #1: No deliveries for the past 13 days. Usual deliveries are twice a day.

Station #2: His first delivery in 7 days. Usual deliveries are once every two days. Sold out in four hours.

Station #3: Last delivery 5 days ago. Usual deliveries once a day.

Station #4: Selling the last of his delivery this morning; previous delivery 5 or 6 days ago. Usually gets a delivery every day.

The typical price is $4.29 for regular, but one or two stations are selling at $3.99. Only diesel and regular are being delivered. We understand that most of the rest of the country has it for $3.19 to $3.39?

We heard yesterday that the refineries are finally fully operational and gas is flowing through the pipeline at the normal rate. But "normal" is 5 mph, so it will still take two weeks to arrive. Again, they tell us all stations will be back to normal in two weeks.

No Gas Atlanta

Twelve days ago, when Ike hit Texas, we got hit with no gas. Not many people can go that long without gas, including us. We thought everything would recover quickly; after all, there was no damage to the drilling rigs or the refineries. But Atlanta, unlike the rest of the country, is still without. A station here or there gets a dribble of gas delivered once in a while, but it's gone in a flash. Costco hasn't had any at all since the day of Ike. When there is gas at a station, it's 75 cents to 95 cents higher per gallon than pre-Ike.

I stopped driving altogether for the first week because I didn't want to participate in the immoral price gouging. Instead I walked everywhere. I drive a little now because walking 3.1 miles to the grocery store to buy a weeks' worth of groceries, then lugging it all home, presumably on my back, the same 3.1 miles, is extremely difficult.I seems that the reason for the shortage is complicated, involving the EPA's air quality standards for Atlanta, the Colonial Pipeline which brings gasoline from the Gulf to Atlanta, greedy customers, and perhaps crooked business practices. They keep telling us that we should be back to normal in two weeks. But it's been almost two weeks, and they still say two weeks.

At any rate, we're tired of 1 1/2 hour lines, driving from station to station looking for gas, and high prices. An idea: Could the rest of the country reduce their driving a bit to free up more gas for us? Just a thought.

Luke's first step!

I took Luke to the nursery when we got to church yesterday. He doesn't like the nursery, so he hasn't been there much recently. I stood him on the floor next to a big basket full of toys, and attempted to extract my clothes...neck...hair...face... from his frantic grasp while pointing out some colorful noisemakers to distract him. He wasn't buying it. When I started to back away, Luke reached out his arms toward me and took a tiny step in my direction!

Luke has been standing on his own quite well for about 2 weeks now, and will stand up from a squatting position if I am above him, ready to pick him up. He loves walking when holding onto our fingers. But we thought his first unsupported step would still be at least a month away.

Luke has taken three more steps since then, but we haven't managed to document them yet.

Life as a Freshman

This is my first semester at Kennesaw State University. I've got five classes (15 credit hours): English 1101, Math 1101, Music 1107, Information Systems 2101, and KSU 1101 (basically an "intro to college" course).

Math isn't quite as bad as I was thinking it would be - still boring, but not quite as bad as high school math. I guess the biggest difference is in this course, we use real-world data so you can see how you might apply the different things you learn, while in high school it was "memorize these numbers. We don't know exactly why you need to know them, but we promise, you will, maybe, sometime a lot later."

English is mostly a creative writing class, which I can manage. Just insert a fair amount of dry humor if possible, make sure you cross the t's and dot the i's, and its all good.

The music class is quite fun - we sit in a auditorium and listen to classical music, and by the end of the course we're expected to know the difference between a few distinctions in music and musical form. It is by far my biggest class, with about 150 students. Last week, I played my bagpipes in the class after my teacher found out I played the bagpipes.

KSU 1101 is, as I said, an "intro to college" course, and aims to train you in good study habits, and stuff your mind full with lists of campus services that I am not interested in.

IS 2101 is probably the easiest class. Dubbed "Computers and Your World", it covers all of the elementary computer skills, plus a few extra things. I tried to test out of the class, but the head of the Computer Science dept suggested I don't for several reasons - but mostly because they didn't have any test written up for it yet, and by the time they did, it would have caused more headaches to try to test out of it.

Today I interviewed for the Freshman Senator seat on the Student Government Association. SGA pays 1/4 of your tuition per semester, which should cover books for that semester. For now, at least. I'll find out Thursday if I have been appointed to the seat.

Luke is Famous

Look! Luke is published in a magazine! The front cover, no less. It's a new magazine, just out on the newsstands.

Hehe. Not really. I made this in Flickr. Go here to try it yourself.