I'm not an addict, it's cool. I can stop anytime.

There's a problem with some satellite somewhere, so right now, our internet is pretty sketchy. Hopefully this will post today.

It is on days like this that I realize just how much the internet has played into my life. I realized that tomorrow is a work day for teachers at the school, and if I can't get online to use our electronic gradebook, I'll just work on y forums for my online class. . . Oh, wait. No, that won't work. Oh well, at least there's Facebook to . . . Oh, right. Not that either. Skype? Blog posts? Comics? Lesson planning? Nope, no, nada, hunt-uh.

Turns out that I use the internet a lot more than I thought I did. And when I realized that I might not be able to upload my paper, I realized I could have my buddy in the class tell the teacher. Until I realized that I'm only friends with this woman through the class, and on Facebook, and we've never met in real life, and I have no idea how to get ahold of her otherwise. I guess I could look up her phone number, but since she doesn't live in western Alaska, I'd have to use the internet to look her up anyway.

There's some irony for you.

Signs of the Times

When I was young, a woman from the church complemented my sisters' eyes. She said they were gorgeous blue eyes. Then she looked at me, and said, "Not you, Colleen, you have poopy brown eyes." And it hurt. I don't know why. She was a silly woman who wasn't thinking. When I got home, my mother reminded me that I had her eyes, and while I knew that was true, it didn't make me feel any better at the time.

Now I am older, and as I smiled at myself in the mirror tonight, my eyes crinkled in the exact same way my mom's always have. Mom, I wouldn't trade my eyes for all the blue eyes in the world. Thank you for giving them to me, I cherish them.

That's my mom with her first grand-daughter, Kendall. And the crinkles around her eyes make me feel loved, and connected. I didn't like them when they first started to show up, but I've grown up a bit since then, and I even sort of like them now.