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I had actually hoped to start writing a lot more here since my last post, but August slipped away and September is here with all its changes. But before I get to those, here's how the rest of August went.

The week following the 8th, we had to travel to Florida for unavoidable family business. It was fairly last-minute, and traveling cross-country is no picnic. We were essentially gone from Monday through Sunday.

The week after that was a continuation of the job search and interview process. I actually did a fair amount of running around and, of course, it was the "recovery week" from the previous week's trip to Florida.

The final full week of the month was spent essentially getting ready for school and the Labor Day weekend—my brother and sister-in-law were coming up from San Diego and they were staying with us at least part of the time (that we knew of—it actually was the whole time) so there was a fair amount of shopping and cleaning to do in preparation.

Labor Day weekend rocked, and I can safely say I exercised my liver quite a bit without any ill effects. (It's all in how you pace yourself.)

There you are, the capsule version. My next post will encompass what's happened since the beginning of this month.

We're back from Florida none the worse for wear; we actually got back Saturday late, missing hurricane Wilma by two days. As my friend Kerry said, ironic that the one time we should pick to visit Florida, the biggest storm ever tracked starts building up nearby.

Florida was... flat and humid. No, really.

Well, it was. Anyway, we had a good time. My wife's grandparents have a swimming pool (of course) so we spent a lot of time in it. And of course we drove up to Disney World for a few days (three and a half hours each way), that was a trip; it's utterly mind-boggling just how big Disney World is. We only had time to visit the Magic Kingdom (which is basically all of Disney Land), and part of Epcot.

Some general Florida observations, from an outsider: what's up with drivers there? Nobody uses turn signals! And apparently they'll hit-and-run other cars in parking lots (which seemed to happen to us— borrowing the grandparents' car— on our mini-trip to Disney) all the time, we're told. Also, everywhere you go— and I mean everywhere— there's air conditioning. All the time. Many times we were in restaurants and it was too cold— people were wearing sweaters or jackets. Not what you expect to see in Florida, of all places.

Didn't see any gators (in the wild, anyway). I was kind of hoping.

Meanwhile, it's interesting to note some of the local goings-on while we were away:

• There was an E. coli outbreak at McGrath's; Bulletin story here, Bend.com here. Damn, I knew there was a reason I'm always resisting going to eat there... What really worries me though is the Bulletin's article states, "No changes in McGrath's operating procedure were suggested"— say what? Yeah, I'm done.
• More information has come to light regarding Deschutes County Commissioner Tom DeWolf's sex abuse scandal: details from the investigation reveal that he allegedly put his hand down two separate women's pants and groped their genitals. Bulletin story here, Bend.com story here. Not surprisingly, DeWolf is resigning. His statement is here. Not really much more to say, other than I'm not really surprised. That's some seriously stupid shit to do, Tom.

Anything exciting anybody wants to tell me about?

Ah, we're quite the travelers this year: tomorrow we're flying out to Florida for a week. We'll be visiting my wife's grandparents near Fort Lauderdale and yes, taking some time to drive up to Orlando for Disney World.

It probably goes without saying that I won't be online much, or at all. We're taking the laptop, but time and connectivity may not permit much. I'm not too devastated by this.

See y'all on the other side.