One cruise ship waiting to go into Charlotte Amalie. This is low season so there are days no ships are in at all. That makes things difficult for the local businesses. Our cheap DVD player from KMart gave up the ghost so we went downtown to the tourist area on Saturday to look for one and ended up with a great deal on a much better quality one for about the same price. They are dealing right now! Wish I could do that for the CD player in the car. It gave up the ghost too so I can't listen to book right now. Need to find my portable one so I can.

From the looks for the porch it rained during the night. It is still dreary out there, but we sure can use the rain. I decided even if I have to pay for the water I am taking real showers! I rush through it, but I don't turn the water off to soap up anymore. Hopefully we have gotten enough rain and the renters and the owner have been off island a lot so that means less water usage. Come September, when I am in Greenville, is when the real rains start and water won't be an issue. Last year the cistern overflowed down the inside of our livingroom wall.

Still pondering over how I feel about K.L. Going's Saint Iggy. This is an inner city white kid who gets himself kicked out of school. He follows a girl he thinks is good looking into a class he no longer attends and the teacher views him as a threat and things get out of hand. It isn't like this is the first time Iggy has used poor judgment - that is a way of life with him. He has all the good intentions in the world, but intentions and the outcomes of his often erratic behavior are two different things. In a way this book reminds me of Chris Lynch's Who the Man. Neither teen is what one would call mentally disabled but they certainly aren't making wise decisions and school is not easy for either of them. But Iggy wants back into school so he figures if he does a really good deed, saves someone, he will be seen as a hero and can get back into school. Coming from a home where he father is a stumbling drunk alcoholic and his mother is a drug addict who only comes home on a rare occasion, Iggy doesn't have much in the way of role models. But Iggy has Mo, who also has good intentions, but he is just talk. Although Mo hates where he comes from, he knows he can always go home to his parents' penthouse apartment and be taken care of by his mother. Out of money, and owing a drug dealer big bucks, Mo takes Iggy home with him. Mo is using Iggy to help him sweet talk his mother into giving them money. They tell her it is for Iggy to go to technical school. But, Mo's mother is not as dumb as she seems and things don't quite work out as Mo wants, but in the end Iggy does get his "sainthood", but not in the way one expects. This isn't a book that all teens will relate to, but it is a book I wish all teens would read. There are lots of Iggys out there in our schools and on the streets, with good intentions but not the life experience (even if they do live in the projects) or the knowledge to match appropriate actions to those intentions.

Time to haul boxes of books into the car to send to ECU. The power went out again this weekend and then the Internet was down so I was "forced" to do some packing for the move. Another day sweating in the buggy heat at Montessori. They took the screens out to clean but since I am working in the library this month they are waiting to clean until I am gone. So it is hot and the mosquitoes come in swarms. I have speckled legs.