Only YOU can prevent forest fires!

I’m not really sure how much of the country is on fire right now but I’m guessing that it has to be A LOT.  And if your part of the country isn’t on fire, then you’re probably dealing with flooding.  And I don’t know about you, but I’m sitting here going “REALLY?!”

The smoke from the fires in Florida are so bad today that there’s a haze everywhere, even up as far north as our house in South Carolina.  At work in Georgia, I can smell the smoke even when I’m inside the building.  It took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t because the smoke smell was stuck in my hair, but that it was actually coming in through the ventilation.

And meanwhile, the people in Minot, ND, are looking at flooding eight feet higher than the record.  Eight feet more water than the last time they had major flooding?  That’s a LOT of extra water.

Where on earth is it going between there and the coast?  Can anyone explain that one to me?

In other news, I saw a great way to annoy people this morning:  Remind them that they need to attend a meeting, and then when the meeting starts, close and lock the door and turn away all people who show up to the meeting late.  While it’s a very good reminder that promptness is required, it’s really confusing to the people locked out and adds the burden of letting those people know what happened in the meeting to the people who were good enough to show up on time.  I have a hard time arguing with the fact that it’s an effective way to keep the meeting on track and inform people of what the leader thinks of tardiness.  But I’m not totally sure I agree with the tactic.

In other randomness, because I’m really just bouncing from one thought to another here, I realized that I have a strange fondness for documentaries on yoga.  I was checking out our Hulu Plus subscription last night and while I found a lot of interesting things that I would enjoy watching on there, I settled on watching a show about the yoga industry and how much money is in it and the controversies about that. (Should a yogi be interested in the money or is that against the very principles of yoga?  How about competitive yoga?  Is it an ancient tradition or is it a perversion of the practice?)

I’m not sure how I feel about a lot of those issues and my own yoga practice is in a sorry state.  I haven’t been to a yoga class in ages, since the gym closed down and I haven’t got the money to go to the yoga studio in town.  But I do enjoy yoga and I find it interesting to listen to the conversations about it.  It’s one of those things, like playing the guitar and speaking multiple languages, that I wish I could do well but haven’t found the patience to actually commit to doing.

I expect that I’ll be at work for at least part of the day tomorrow.  I have some projects that need to get caught up and there’s just not been enough time to do it.  Plus, being out sick on Tuesday didn’t help me much with the task load. On the up-side, after next week, I get a full week of vacation!