Vacationing with Ticks, Chiggers, and In-Laws

We have returned from the Ozark Adventure. There were Four Thousand Ticks, Four Million Chiggers, and Four Generations of Beckers. Next year we're going to Seattle & Alaska.


Click on the photo for more shots of the trip.

The funniest thing that happened was that The Goose, while playing naked amongst three dogs on the front porch (you can do this in Arkansas), used the picnic table to pull himself up to a standing position, pooped, and then rocked back and forth until the log dropped from his bottom ... all while looking back at us and grinning. He is relatively tick and chigger free, although the same cannot be said for the rest of us and our wobbly bits.

I returned to find a Brown Recluse (heretoafter referred to as BR) in the upstairs shower and an email stating that ALL of my final evaluations for my online students are inappropriately formatted, written in the wrong tense, and attached as individual files rather than together in one document. Those evaluations are the equivalent of a ten-page paper, so this is just a little disheartening. Also, our housesitter did not collect her pay (a dozen fresh eggs), so now we're wondering if she's actually going to expect some other form of compensation. The nerve. Who wouldn't want fresh eggs for staying in a BR-ridden house? I love eggs. Especially with tomato paste.

This is boring, so go read some of the new additions to my "Links" sidebar.

p.s. You might be interested to know that the housesitter was Ann Dos from the abandoned story of the Owlnapping.

p.p.s. Ironically, last night I taught a lesson on the differences between the participles "bored" and "boring," which ESL students often confuse. At some point I said, "Usually we don't refer to ourselves as boring." However, this is clearly evidence that one can be both "bored" and "boring" at the same time.