I'll

be hanging around Medford for the next few days. I plan to return to Reno on Wednesday, the day after the Nevada primary.

I am thinking about leaving early that day and going over to Lassen National Park, just as I did back in 2003. I really like it there, and it is only fifteen miles from the Old Station junction of California 89 and 44. I will have two dogs with me this time, but I don't plan on leaving them in the car while I mess around.

Anyway, when I leave Wednesday, I will be able to rest a few days before I have to return to my school the following Monday and get ready for another exciting year of new kids, new challenges, writing up IEPs, attending classes so I can get certified before I become certifiable, and trying to figure out what in the hell I am doing.

Summer break went too goddamned fast for me.

Next summer should be even more exciting, with a trip I have planned for New York and possibly one to Italy, if I can swing it financially. My oldest sister is going there courtesy of an all-expenses-paid trip by her son and daughter-in-law.

There are other things I want to get this coming year, assuming I have a big enough raise in my check to afford them.

Meanwhile, back in the present, I am supposed to have breakfast tomorrow with the other sister, her daughter, my oldest sister, and my brother. Sometimes I just hate eating out with the sisters because of all of the dickering over money. Why bother to eat out if you are going to bitch? Worse still, the younger sister of the two, Sharon, the one who is getting the divorce and acted like a royal bitch the other day when we were returning from Portland, always has to make some goddamned stupid remark about the food being "fattening." Does she really think that's cute? After listening to that bullshit for 35, 40, or 45 years, I think it ought to stop for good. I think once I mentioned to her that if she thinks whatever food she has on her plate is "fattening," why in the hell does she eat it? Nobody's pointing a goddamned gun to her head to eat the stuff, for chrissake. I suppose she thinks it's cute, or she's fishing for remarks about how she shouldn't worry about the "fattening" food or something. I can just image how the men she marries or shacks up with or dates get tired of that crap. It's a rotten habit, just as bitching about paying for the food is a rotten habit.

Eating out with the family is more often than not an appetite killer.