I’ve been trying out a variety of other blogging venues/platforms and haven’t found anything that floats my boat enough to make me abandon wordpress for good. anyway, it’s been a good couple of days, what with the healthcare law surprise, the toasty days we’re having (it’s about 100 here today in the shade), and many excellent things to watch on the tube (Olympic trials in swimming and track & field).

Emily has been home for the past few months and is less than 2 weeks away from moving to Thailand. No, that is not some small village in the piney woods of east Texas. When I was 23 I am damned sure that the thought of moving literally to the other side of the world was out of scope for me. I am hugely proud of her, anxious that she be successful and as always, only really concerned that she be healthy and happy. You are only as happy as your saddest kid, and while she is no longer a child, she is still our only kid, so . . .

I am still looking for employment. Am I sorry that I had parts of my brain fried by strokes and can’t do what I used to do? Sure. However, I have a job lined up at a Starbucks that I am excited about, but am having to wait for their computer systems to purge me from a 60 day window before I can reappear in their DC database so they can hire me. Yes, I know, it is a “huh”? Trust me, I’ve tried that, whatever it is you are going to suggest, so has the store manager, sometimes the bureaucracy is so large that you can’t just shove it aside, even when that is the clearest course. So, in a few more weeks I will be that barista at the Starbucks in Chevy Chase with a Ph.D.

I am totally cool with that.

I have a daughter with a college degree from a great school who has the cojones to move around the world to teach and learn about others and herself, a ridiculously hot wife who is about to become a member of a society that is 375 (yes three hundred and seventy-five) years old in London, three dogs (only 1 is actually ours, 2 are Emo’s), a cat, a pond full of fish which we have raised since the Clinton administration, a house in Bethesda so close that I walk in to an excellent Irish pub where the bartender (Paul) knows our name and frequently provides me with free Guinness. Life is good.