Kidz

There is a summer music camp going on at my workplace right now, which is pretty much the only time of year I'm around high school-aged kids. This has caused me to make 4 observations:

• They're not really sure how to talk yet. Most of them either talk way too loud, or they are so painfully shy that they don't talk at all. Also, the loud ones do a LOT of singing that sounds horrible! Today I heard about six of them (girls AND guys) singing a terrible song from a musical, and they had chosen a key that was out of all their ranges!*

• High school kids have a smell. I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad...just kind of "musky." They bring it in here every Summer and it takes a couple of days after they've left for it to go away.

• Every year, there's ALWAYS a kid that works to actively destroy some part of the building. A window will get shattered, or some graffiti will show up, or some other shenanigans will happen. EVERY YEAR.
• There is always someone who barfs. Always gotta have some barf in there.

Wow, this totally makes me sound old and crotchety. It's not that these things really annoy me (except the terrible singing,) it's just interesting to see how these things stay the same year after year.

*OK, those *particular* kids were doing the musical theater camp, but I still think they fall into the I-don't-know-how-to-use-my-voice-yet category.

I Got the Shakes!

So yesterday when I got home from work, I noticed that my right pointer finger and thumb (my mouse-clicking hand) were twitching involuntarily. Uh-oh...

This may be one of many signs that my desk job is getting old. Time for less work and more slacking!!!! Woo! Happy Summer, imaginary blog readers!!

Poop Surprise

So one of our dogs, Beauty, has developed the weirdest phobia...grass. She's decided - only in the summer months - that she hates it and doesn't want to "hang out" on it at all. You can guess what happens when she does her business in backyard. Poop surprise! She's developed this complicated method of straddling the concrete walkway and the grass that doesn't always succeed in hitting the target...so that's cool. (Naat!)

The only explanation we can think of is that grass and summer brings bugs to our yard that seem to love biting her. They don't bite Fritz hardly at all. Beauty has the sweet blood. Another possible explanation is that she's always hated being wet or having any part of her body touch water,* and in summer, grass has a much greater chance of being wet than any other time of year. So she'd rather just avoid the wet feet.

Funny girl! She's got all kinds of personality quirks. We've only just grazed the surface.

*After she takes a drink of water, she literally dries her tongue by licking the first available soft surface -- every time. Usually it's a person's leg or shoe. Some of our guests get pretty confused by this.