Dog Days of August

It's August and that means one thing. Crawford. I'm doing my Crawford duty for a week and trying not to think too much about the fact that this is my last summer in Texas. Thankfully, God has been smiling down on me because yesterday was the first day under 90 degrees in almost three months. I was mentally prepared for 120 degrees so I'm happy with whatever we get! But my hair is not doing very well in the humidity, as seen in the picture on the left. I really shouldn't post pictures this bad of me but who knows when the next time will be for another journey out to the ranch.

Oh btw, I almost didn't survive commercial travel on Friday. We didn't have a charter this time (the first time in my tenure as producer) so we had to fly commercial. We were on the 6a flight. That means leaving the house around 4:30a. That's early. We should have gotten to Dallas at 9a ET which would have put us in Crawford around noon. Instead, we circled Dallas for a while and then the pilot announces "We don't have any more fuel. We have to go to Austin." It's a little disconcerting to be 30,000 miles up in the air and hear that we don't have fuel. So we spent some quality time on the tarmac in Austin getting fueled up, all without food!! We finally got to Crawford around 4p and since I missed lunch, I rewarded myself with some Katie's Custard.

Yesterday, we were travel pool and POTUS and Sec of State Rice made a statement on Georgia at his ranch. So we loaded up the vans and went out there. We don't actually see his house. He drives up to the office building and then comes out to talk. I'm sure you'll remember that I was on vacation for two weeks and I think I'm caught up on all the world's events. I caught on early on that we were talking about Georgia the country, not Georgia the state. I think if it had been Georgia the state, someone would have recognized Russian tanks entering Atlanta. Anyway, I digress. I feel 75% confident that I understand the situation and all that has been said but it's a little intimidating to be in a small group of reporters, standing in front of POTUS and Rice and making eye contact and I'm sure they could tell that I didn't quite get what they were saying. They were using all kinds of acronyms that I didn't understand so I just had to do a lot of smiling and nodding. We've actually been pretty busy for the past two days so I have only had time for ice cream once or twice a day. And I have yet to make it to buy Western White House souvenirs. Don't worry though, I am here for four or five more days.