rain

The changing of seasons seems to inspire St. Louis to...rain. I think it rained every day for the first two weeks of June, and then approximately twice during the rest of the summer. Now it's been raining just about every other day for the last two weeks. The forecasts keep predicting large hail, which we (fortunately) have yet to see. We moved here last year right after a large hail storm and all the car dealerships were having "hail sales". Good if you want a new car for cheap and don't care if it's a little dinged, bad if you have a car and want it to stay in decent shape. At any rate there's another big storm headed our way this afternoon, but it's ok because all this rain is getting me prepared for a trip to a country with a reputation for all rain all the time: England. I've only ever been there in June/ July before, so it'll be interesting to see it this time of year. More on this later. The condo next door is still for sale, but the realtor's website doesn't seem to be working so no update there.

nothing to do here

Overheard last weekend while eating at Kayak's after the Great Majestic St. Louis Balloon Race Extravaganza: (She was an 18 year old asian chick with a valley girl voice) "You guys, do you ever think there's nothing to do here besides eat ... and watch movies ......... and talk??!!" D. kept asking me the very same question all the way home, in the very same valley girl voice. Then followed it up by saying if that's what she really thinks, she's going to gain the freshman 50, not freshman 15.

i need, a little inspiration please

I think it's been about a year since I started writing this whatever-it-is. I'm not very good at it. At the beginning of 8th grade, my English teacher assigned us a journal. We had to, I believe, produce one notebook page a week. She didn't read them, just skimmed to make sure the requisite page had been produced. I filled approximately 12 spiral bound notebooks that year. I toted them with me everywhere, wrote in them in class while pretending to be taking notes, wrote in them in study hall, wrote in them at home while pretending to do homework. I had a journaling addiction. This process continued through high school, although with a little less fervor. I filled a couple of notebooks a year. I kept writing a little bit into the first few months of college, but I stopped shortly after I began talking to D. The last (paper) journal entry I ever wrote said something along the lines of: I met a wonderful boy, the love of my life. I never knew it would be like this, and I don't really have anything more to say here. It was true. The thing is, all the thoughts and ideas and emotions and jokes and...stuff that I put into the journals, I gave to D. instead. It was wonderful to be able to do so then, and it still is now, 4 1/2 years later. I think this is the reason that I find writing here to be a continual struggle; I think about a lot of things and have every intention of writing them down, but then D. gets home and I tell him instead and then I've moved on to something else. So this is my uh, end-September resolution. I want a record of my life, something more permanent and less fleeting than memories. I will write, something, anything here at least twice a week. We'll see how it goes.