Friday Free For All

As occasionally happens, seems like there are a lot of little (and unrelated to each other) thoughts... so we'll just go with it.

Labor Day - Which in Arizona is kind of like Groundhog Day... only 6 more weeks of summer!  It usually takes to around mid-October for it not to feel like what most folks think of summertime... and it's been an extra hot one this year, Phoenix broke the record for most days over 110 degrees... 29 days (and counting).  The average is 10 days per year.

Plans - Not a whole lot planned for the holiday weekend, beyond sitting in front of the TV and watching hours (and hours) of tennis.  Let's hope there are more thrills like last night's Blake-Santoro match and less of Sharapova winning matches 6-0, 6-1.  On Monday, we get Lucy the Pug for a few weeks as Todd's parents are headed out for a big road trip of their own. 

Big Brother - Ah, the show will not be as fun without Amber.  Though even I was starting to feeling a tad uncomfortable that the folks behind the scenes were encouraging her (What do mean by "encourage"?)  to do things that would make us laugh at her (and not in a good way).  This also means no more prayers where she God blesses God.   My favorite line about that line was on Fox Reality's Reality Remix...  Kennedy pondering, "Well, what do you say to the Almighty when he sneezes?"   Easily the line of the night was the ChenBot's questioning aloud Eric's romance or "show-mance" with Jessica... "Is America's Player really America's Playa?"  Ah, Jules!

Blogs - It seems like there is a " back to basics" renovation trend on many blogs lately.  I have to admit to not being immune to it.  I am kind of tired of the look of my blog.  However, it took quite a bit to get this "design" to work... so not really wanting to go 100% back to a ready-to-go template, I am sticking with this one.  In the spirit of "simplifying," I have tried to de-clutter the sidebar.  Likewise, I am heavily considering deleting my Kiva blog.  I am thinking I bit off more than I wanted to chew with it.  Now this is pretty typical for me... a big initial burst of activity and interest about something (in this case... the blog, not the organization!) that trickles away.  Which only makes that fact that I will start my 5th year of blogging in a couple of weeks a truly amazing accomplishment.

Tags/Categories - In an act of blog un-simplification, I'm going to use categories more like "tags"... so you'll see things get a lot more specific, though I will try to make sure they have (or will) have more than a handful of mentions.  For example, some of my first new additions are things like:  Dancing With the Stars, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal.   Again, I'm not sure if it matters... but something a little new and different. Apologies in advance to Bloglines and other feed readers if these category changes make my older entries show up new/updated.  On a few posts I changed yesterday, some of them showed up while others did not... so who knows!

Hope everyone has a non-laborious Labor Day weekend!