I hit brain dead with grading. Between the trip to Greenville and Upper Michigan I feel like I will never catch up with anything around here. Just found the coffee table that I loaded with "stuff" that I brought back with me from North Carolina. Sorting through the paperwork wasn't an option yet, but at least it is in a pile. Nor is figuring out how to use my new cell phone.

I finally got the dishes washed. Every time I take a break to do them the water isn't working. We went out to eat last night because the water was off again. We ate at the outside tables at Duffy's Love Shack and were actually cold! Even a few of the tourists had sweaters on so I knew it wasn't just us. On the way home Steve turned the heat on for me in the car. You would have thought we would have no problem with island winter weather after being in single digit temps. in Upper Michigan.

I did find one of the other books I read during the Greenville trip. While at the airport, killing time in the gift shop "bookstore" I found a copy of Koren Zailckas' Smashed - a New York Times bestseller. Wow! The subtite is appropriately Story of a Drunken Girlhood. I wish every teenage girl tempted by alcohol as a form of self medication would read this book. Zailckas doesn't pull any punches - she just tells it like it was - the stomach pumping, the frat parties at college, her sorority sister drinking binges, etc. I thought about this book when we drove through the Michigan Technological University campus in Houghton, Michigan. The Winter Carnival had been the week before and ice sculptures lined the road. Lots of alcohol was consuming by the students while they were constructing them. What I find interesting about the book is that Zailckas does not consider herself an alcoholic, but rather an alcohol abuser. When she graduated from college and found a man she cared about, it was time to quit and he quit with her. I read the book with fascination, especially her use of alcohol as a young teenage girl to get the other girls to accept her. So very sad, but true. This is a great addition for any high school level YA collection as it focuses more about her college experiences with alcohol. The whole idea of rich college girls hanging out in bars buying high cost drinks with daddy's gold charge card blows my mind. Maybe if Zailckas didn't have friends like that she may have come out of the alcohol haze a bit earlier.

All for now. Steve should be home shortly with all the makings for pizza. It is always an experience to go to Pueblo with a meal in mind. Who knows what alternate ingredients he will have to choose for the ones I requested. I was in second heaven when I walked into a big Kroger in Greenville. Just the different varieties of pretzels had me hyperventilating in glee! We don't even want to go into my delight over the produce section. It took everything in me not to buy fruit I knew I couldn't eat before I left. Living down here reminds me so much of living in Alaska years ago, but here at least I don't have to call the grocery store in Anchorage to have the groceries shipped out via Alaska Airlines, that seemed to always freeze my canned goods and not the frozen foods. Here you have to check the containers. We bought Pringles for sailing and got on the boat, opened them up and there were about 3 chips left on the bottom. Even a bottle of whole cloves had been opened. We don't even want to go into the # of loaves of bread we have brought home that have been moldy. Maybe I am not hungry after all!