Twenty-nine minutes... it's amazing how much can change in twenty-nine minutes.

So, I was going through the caller ID yesterday, looking for a number, and noticed that by looking at the times of the calls received, I had a pretty good timeline of my morning - and it was quite a morning.

At 10:10, we received a call from the National Park Service. Al applied for a job there back at the end of June - maintenance supervisor, his old position, at about the same pay level. Thing is, this job is at...

Yosemite National Park.

We'd pretty much forgotten he even applied for it, but he did, and did his phone interview right then and there. It's not a job - yet. But he is in the final running, and it's not one we have any intention of passing on if it's offered.

What, you think we're nuts???

At 10:21, Nic (~lostko) called. She has a friend with a new baby who was born with heart problems, and in the first ten days of her life has already had open-heart surgery. Little Julieanne was taken off her ECMO machine yesterday morning, and Nic called to let me know that her heart was beating strong, vitals were good and all looked great. YAY!!!

Needless to say, at this point I was riding high. Little did I know...

At 10:39, there was a call on the ID from a number that's never called here. That would be a house about four miles down the highway. Immediately after Nic's call, I headed into town to run some errands. I was going down Highway 17, a two-lane road with a 65mph speed limit - which, thank ALL the gods, I was at least ten under - when the tread tore completely off my back right tire. I drifted to the right, took my foot off the pedal in hopes of slowing down enough to pull off the road... and the car immediately bounced LEFT, traded front end for back and wound up at the bottom of the ditch, nose out to the highway. Still running... seems I didn't forget to leave my foot on the clutch, thus preventing any power from going to the wheels and keeping it from stalling out. According to the amazingly wonderful State Patrolman who arrived shortly afterward, it was... "absolutely textbook, you couldn't have handled it any better."

Brook and I are both fine, if a bit sore... she banged her knee pretty good on the door handle (we think), and I torqued pretty much everything, but all in all, not nearly as bad as it could have been. To be honest, I truly thought we were going to flip when we hit the ditch - if I hadn't been in the Nova, which is old, STEEL, very heavy and low to the ground, I probably would have. LOVE that car!

So we have a couple of tires to replace - I also flat-spotted the right front pretty good (NASCAR slang, look it up! ), but we're HERE.

Love you all... and remember... twenty-nine minutes.