Hey big head!

Toddlers do not lie. Well maybe they do lie about being tired or needing to go to the potty, but never about physical appearance. I have always known that my upper body was large...no, not my overly muscular chest and arms, but my head. Well today I was sitting down at the table eating some apple sauce with Evie. Evie was studying me with this curious look on her face and she finally says, "Your face is big. [she pauses] and your head is big. [she takes a longer pause] Your chin is big too." I am just glad she left my nose out; or maybe she realized it was just to obvious and did not require verbal enumeration. I have come to accept this truth as self-evident: my skull is large and at the age of 43 and one-half I will be doomed to spend the rest of my days staring at the ground because my neck muscles will have given up. All in good humor.
Jude Collins

I degree

I had my last final on 30 July 2008 Wednesday. My undergraduate education is finally over! I thought that it would be some sort of overwhelmingly thrilling feeling, and I think that it would have been except I had a presentation to give at work the next day that I was stressing over. It still has not really sunk in and I admit that I feel somewhat disappointed in the way I am feeling because I was expecting something way cooler. Oh well. This next week is our "vacation" and I start back to work the following Monday. Vacation - this really means that we will be busy all week doing everything we normally do and everything else that we are behind on, and my job/school will not be interfering. We will however be taking a family trip to the Chattanooga Aquarium during the week. We had originally planned to go to Nauvoo for a couple of days, but after a few more 1-2 hour car rides to places like Birmingham and Florence, we realized that a 10 hour car ride with the girls was the most ridiculous thing we had ever thought of. So we canceled our hotel reservations and decided instead to make a short day trip to Chattanooga. I do not know if our girls will like it or not, but I am very excited to see it (http://www.tennis.org/).
That is all that I really have to say right now.
- Jude