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One Word At A Time
4:28 p.m. - 2007-07-23


Still plodding through the Harry Potter 7. I am such a slow reader, always have been. I remember when it was popular to take speed reading classes, some president or other had done it so speed reading lept into public popularity. One year in junior high, they decided to make all of us do some kind of speed reading training. We all had to sit in a dark room while the text was beamed up on a screen. The text sped by at whatever speed they had set, and after that we had to answer the questions in the workbooks. My eyes would dutifully follow the galloping text, but I had no retention abilities at all, and the subject matter was boring anyway. To my great luck, the workbook assigned to me had all the answers written down in it, so I was able to get through the course without much problem. Still a slow reader though.

The weather has hotted up again. I had a little earthquake adventure the other day. I was working in the family room when I heard the neighbor dogs and other dogs having conniption fits - howling and yarling and yipping. I was immediately scared because animals act up right before an earthquake. A bird flew down our stove vent the day before the last big quake. I got up and shoved the wooden spoons through the cupboard door handles so that I would not be showered with china and glassware, not to mention heavy cans of food. But nothing happened so I gradually forgot about it until I got up the next day and saw the newspaper. There had been a quake in the middle of the night centered out in Alameda County on the Hayward Fault.

Here is another earthquake story. I was out in the backyard some years ago with Melissa, who was about 3 years old. I was watering some plants and she was playing on the lawn. She stopped and turned to me and said "What dat shaking, Momma?" I found this peculiar so I went to see what time it was - about 4:20 in the afternoon. That night on the news was the announcement of the big Coalinga earthquake at exactly the time Melissa felt it, but I did not. Was it because she was closer to the ground, being shorter? Or are kids just more sensitive?

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