Playing Catch Up

Sorry I was offline for while there folks, work was nuts (Say it like never-poke-a-squirrel, “NnnnUTZ!”) and there’s a lot going on the home front too.

In the “Well, it wasn’t all bad” department: Tsunami reveals ruins of Ancient Capital of India

COOOOOOOOL!

*pardon me, I think I’m drooling….*

Start classes up again tomorrow night: History of Religion and History of the Middle East. Looking forward to both, esp. concurrently. Especially looking forward to re-engaging my brain. I think it’s beginning to melt.

I don’t have much for today, but as the “Pre-game show” for the NASCAR season, The Budweiser Shootout, was this last Saturday, I thought I might take a few moments each day this week to give a brief description of some of the names that will pop up in my racing posts from here on out until November. From thems that don’t know. ;)

First of all, the two guys I am routing for~

Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Dale, Dale Jr., “Junior” when referring to media figure)
Drives the #8 Red Budweiser Car.
Is 30 Years old, has been racing "professionally" (I'm not sure how you would classify it, "got really serious about it.."?) since the age of 17.
Drives for: Dale Earnhardt Inc. (DEI)
Other Teammates: #15 Michael Waltrip
Crew Chief: Pete Rondeau (of Saco, ME. Whooo!)
Driving style: Both smooth and assertive punctuated by moments of either brilliant aggressiveness or occasionally, just a boneheaded move. ;) *chuckle*
And now for something completely different: After spending six years screaming at and being screamed at by his Uncle and cousin every weekend for 40 weeks a year, Dale Jr. made the decision to try something a little different and swapped crews with his teammate Michael “Schillmiester” Waltrip. So this team is going to be spending at least the first 5 months of the season under the fan and media microscope.

Mark Martin (MM, Mark)
Drives the #6 Blue and Black Viagra Car
Is 45 years old, has been racing "professionally" since the age of 15.
Drives For: Roush Racing
Other Teammates: #17 Matt Kennseth, #97 Kurt Busch, #16 Greg Biffle
Crew Chief: Pat Tryson
Driving Style: Sneak attack. Nobody ever thinks of MM and then *boom*, there he is in the top five.
Sentimental Favorite: This is Mark’s last year in Cup racing after coming in second for the championship four times throughout his Cup career he’s known as “the best driver never to have won the championship”. Quiet, down to earth (no really down to earth, forget the frou-fra, this guys is here to race), self-depreciating, a natural pessimist pleasantly surprised by good results, pretty much everybody is quietly rooting for Mark.

I also recently finished Deep-Sea Detectives: Maritime Mysteries and Forensic Science by Peter Limburg. While disappointing on the true forensics/science side, it does give an interesting overview of the bureaucratic side of handling shipwrecks in the modern era.

And in honor of the Day (since I'm not a red satin and chocolates kind of woman)...

"I Remember
By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color — no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine."

~Anne Sexton