Happy Birthday Jack!

My roommate and I are probably the youngest people that live in our building. Our indoor pool is packed at 6am with people doing water aerobics, we have a woman in her 80s that walks on the treadmill in her bathrobe, and half of the gray haired men in our building have green hair from spending time in the pool. Our newsletter this week had a birthday announcement for Jack Weil. He turned 107 this week! He owns this western wear store in Denver and I think still goes to work for an hour or two every day. Jack Weil invented the pearl snap shirt and is credited with inventing the bolo tie! Happy Birthday Jack!

Check Your TA-TA's!

A friend of mine from Macon was Diagnosed with Breast Cancer recently that has spread to her Lymph Nodes... she's only 21. She's the youngest person in Georgia to have this type of cancer. Catherine is amazing- she's so positive about this. You can read her blog about her experiences through treatment and everything else at http://catherinecarswell.blogspot.com/.

Don't forget to check your TA-TA's!

Georgia is Terrible

... at least that's what I heard from people all the time while I lived there. Especially when said people were talking about education. There's a media rumor going around that Georgia ranks 49th in test scores so we're all dumb. Let me tell you that it's not true. Most of the tests that states use to probe student performance were NOT normed to judge an entire state of students. They were originally meant to assess individual student performance. I won't try to explain it all here, but it will be my job to look at test norms and stuff like that- and these aren't necessarily valid for entire states- especially when those states are compared to each other based on different tests.

OK, so that said, my friend Jenny mentioned this article in her blog.
It's long, but if you're interested in how your state is doing it's worth reading the first 3 pages and then skip to the page on your state. The article rates things like money, people, and infrastructure too. I have to say that I'm pretty impressed by Georgia and disappointed in Colorado. Colorado is one of those states that acts like they've got it all together and are on the cutting edge of EVERYTHING. The longer I live here, the more I'm finding it isn't true. Colorado is a great place to live, but there are definitely issues that could be improved. Almost none of the public services provided by the state are automized- getting a driver's license, Social Security Card, registering your car all take FOREVER. Far longer that those things take in Georgia. The only exception here is paying parking tickets, which you can do online within hours of getting the ticket. Anyway, there are other issues too, but the point for all you Georgia folks is that things aren't as bad as you think!