Lucy the Bruiser

The other night Susan took Lucy home to the Puckett's next door. However, it didn't take Lucy long to break free and head back over to our house. She cried at the door. Of course Basil went nuts and barked along with her. A few minutes later, Lucy came waltzing through the doggy door and into the living room. She had knocked open the back gate. She is a tiny little fullback. The next night Lucy tried the same manuever but Susan had propped a big 4 x 4 post against the gate. Lucy knocked out one of the slats on the gate trying to get in. I am very flattered that she wants so badly to stay with us.

Susan drove down to Milton this morning with the B so I have the house to myself. I chickened out on Saints Day and didn't do my standup. All the jokes I liked were too risque. I was impressed that my 1:15 students showed up on time while all the BBQ and games were going on. I have three lectures left and then finals week. I always get a little sad to see them go. I've had a good semester. Of course I have made mistakes but overall we survived.

I have picked out a destination for my May trip; Pittsburgh. You may ask why. Well, Andrew Carniege funded some of the earlier dinosaur digs in the western states. So the natural history museum in Pittsburgh has a magnificent fossil collection. After Pittsburgh, I thought I would drive east across Pennsylvania and see Gettysburg. My mom and dad took us there when Brent and I were kids. Of course, it didn't make any sense to me at the time. I was so moved by other battlefields I have visited: Vicksburg, Corinth, Bull Run and most of all Shiloh that I thought Gettysburg needed another visit. I would like to visit Antietam one day since that was the bloodiest battle of the war...insanity.

After Gettysburg, I want to visit Bethlehem to see the giant steel mill that built much of America. I heard the other day on NPR an interview with a former steel worker who now gives tours of the site. I know the Sloss Furnaces are just up the road in B'ham but Bethlehem steel sounds like the epicenter of the industrial might of last century. Just down the road from Bethlehem and Allentown is Philadelphia, home of the nation's oldest natural history museums: the National Academy of Sciences at Drexel University. The NYT had a wonderful slideshow of their collection including an early photograph of Edgar Alan Poe in the museum (he studied mollusks). And then there is the fact that Edward Drinker Cope worked out of Philly...one of my paleo heroes.

Last of all I am thinking of returning home down the coast through Delaware, the southernmost state I have yet to visit. I will probably be ready for home after that so I may just speed home as fast as I can. Time for lunch. May all your bases be paired.