Its Electrifying!

You inherit much of who you are from your parents. I know there has always been a nature vs. nurture argument, but looking at myself, and the hundreds of kids I have taught, I have become a firm believer that nurture is by far the stronger influence in many cases, although there are some freak shows out there that you just can't explain. This does not mean that if your Dad was a mass murderer, Little Johnny will grow up to be the next axe-wielding maniac. I just think that much of who we are, and in particular how we behave and what we like/dislike comes from our parents.

Many people like storms. My Mom likes storms. I like storms (see what the intro paragraph was for?). Kingston is a good place to watch storms, particularly the thunder storms in the summer. Last night we had a doozy. Big lightning cracks everywhere, many of them close enough that you couldn't really tell the time difference between lightning and thunder. It was really cool. How cool was it? Cool enough that I got up at 4:30 am to watch the storm. And that had nothing to do with the fact that I had to go to the bathroom, or that the thunder had woken me up.

Alas, electricity can be dangerous as well. There was a power blackout in Kingston earlier this week. Let us all have a moments silence for "Fluffy" (I just made that up) the squirrel, who on Tuesday found out first hand what happens when you fall into a transformer at the local power station. Yes, the city wide black-out was caused by a clumsy squirrel. Ironic how those little pests always seem to get the last laugh.