Last night was Meet Your Teacher. I'll have a K, 1st, & 2nd this year. I volunteered to be on the PTA. I am in charge of Family Fun Nights. During meet the teacher, the PTA offers pizza and soda. This was my duty. My kids watched for a week as I made phone call, bought sodas, and prepared hard for what was to be my first event.

I think the evening was quite a success. Steady, hard work...but lots of parents and children streaming through. My kids and husband were there....

• Be honest with yourself, find your “faults/weaknesses” (mine was soda)
• Be positive – every good thing no matter how small is a triumph
• Drink water! If you need cold water to drink it, keep one in the refrigerator at all times, so you have one to “swap” out when the one you are drinking gets room temperature.
• Don’t deprive yourself of something you want – just do it smaller than normal
• Take your “normal” portion and cut it in half, put half away.
• Eat many small meals – every 2 hours

...

Today I received a question: how is the market in Northern Virginia?

In reply, I said:

In Northern Virginia, the real estate market varies from place to place. Overall, we're down about 15% as an average drop in prices. But there are places, like Prince William County, which leads the area in the number of foreclosures, where property values have dropped considerably more.

In the City of Fairfax, values have dropped about 11% from a year ago. In Manassas,...

I have to talk about something funny which happened to me regarding Uni.

Here in England we do our A-levels(Advanced levels), It's a certificate of education for people who have opted to do two years of secondary school and the grades received after those 2 years are very often used by Universities to decide if they want you or not. universities will almost always give you a conditional offer such as for example "achieve a grade A in music" or "get a B in English literature...

I was reading one of Nomadicus' blog entries, the one where he jumped into the river and landed on a snake ... (poor Nomadicus) and it reminded me of the time I jumped into blue hole. I was a very unwilling jumper. It was not one of my proudest moments... Blue Hole is in Texas, around where I went to high school. It was a place we went to swim sometimes.

One day an old friend showed up on our doorstep. Todd. A friend I went to elementary school with in upstate New York. We kept in...