Kind O' Glad Tidings

I have some kind of great news. Er, um, wait--that is not piratically correct, and today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day! Let me try again. Me be havin' some kind o' glad tidings. The great news is that I will get to work on my internship with Linda in Illinois for at least a month! But it is only kind of great news because, as it stands right now, the IHPA employees will still be laid off--just not as soon as they thought. Today Blago announced that he is postponing the budget cuts until November 30. So first everything was going to shut down on September 30, then October 15, and now November 30. It's not fair that Blago keeps stringing everyone along. BUT, it does mean that there is now more time for the legislation to go through that would completely restore the funding. So that is great news too. I received a bunch of e-mail replies from various Illinois senators today, and they all (both Republicans and Democrats) expressed their support for the bills to reverse Blago's budget cuts. They all said that they would try to raise the issue during their meeting this coming week--but now, even if that doesn't happen, there is still hope that the bills could be passed on November 12--the original Senate meeting date. At least things are looking up a bit. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

It is now less than a month until I get married--I can't believe it! It feels like I just got home from school. Time has been flying by lately. Since I will soon be moving to a small town in the Midwest, I decided to reconnect with my small town self and read one of my favorite books: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson. It is such a funny book. He writes totally random things. The book chronicles his "journey of discovery" across the United States. Said journey was inspired by a sense of nostalgia he felt for his homeland after spending a number of years in England.

Here are some of my favorite tidbits:

"Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. Outside town there is a big sign that says, WELCOME TO DES MOINES. THIS IS WHAT DEATH FEELS LIKE. There isn't really. I just made that up. But the place does get a grip on you."

"A sign just ahead of me said, BUCKLE UP. ITS THE LAW IN ILLINOIS. Clearly, however, it was not an offense to be unable to punctuate."

"Every parked car along the street had a license plate that said, MISSOURI--THE SHOW ME STATE. I wondered idly if this could be short for 'Show Me the Way to Any Other State.'"

"Just south of Grand Junction, Tennessee, I passed over the state line into Mississippi. A sign beside the highway said, WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WE SHOOT TO KILL. It didn't really. I just made that up."

"A state trooper pulled up alongside me at a traffic light and began looking me over. He said, 'Hah doo lack Miss Hippy?' I was quietly distressed. The man was armed and Southern and I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Finally it dawned on me that he was asking if I like Mississippi. I said, 'Oh! I like it fine! I like it heaps! I think it's wonderful. The people are so friendly and helpful.' I wanted to add that I had been there for an hour and hadn't been shot at once, but the light changed and he was gone."

"The lady at the desk said, 'You pocked on the skwaya?' I said, 'Yes.' She said, 'Okay, honey, you git in yo' car and you makes the skwaya. You goes out the other end, twoads the university, goes three blocks, turns rat at the traffic lats, goes down the hill and you there, un'stan'? I said, 'No.' I wint outsod thinking that Miss Hippy was goan be hard work."

"From time to time I would pass a sign that said HISTORICAL MARKER AHEAD, but I didn't stop. There are thousands of historical markers all over America and they are always dull. I know this for a fact because my father stopped at every one of them. Usually they would commemorate something palpably obscure and uninteresting--the site of the first Bible college in western Tennessee, the birthplace of the inventor of the moist towelette, the home of the author of the Kansas state song. You knew before you got there that they were going to be boring because if they had been even remotely interesting somebody would have set up a hamburger stand and sold souvenirs."

"The streets were the widest I'd ever seen in any town, even out here in the residential neighborhoods. Mormons sure do love wide streets. I don't know why. When Brigham Young founded Salt Lake City one of the first things he did was decree that the streets be 100 feet wide, and he must have said something similar to the people of St. George. Young knew the town well--he had his winter home there--so if the townspeople ever tried anything slack with the streets he'd have been onto them right away."

It's a pretty funny book. Or, as me pirate mates 'd say, "'Tis a good ol' read." Arrrrrrgh.