7/9/05---Does weather affect your brain?

The above question came into play today as we dealt with the outside edge of Hurricane Dennis here in south Florida.  Kim & I were woken up around 5am by the wind howling outside of our bedroom and the flashes of lightening.  It was pretty ugly, but nothing compared to what the people of Key West & Cuba got hit with, or what the folks along the Gulf Coast might be facing pretty soon.  (Let's hope it stays away from my brother & his family in the Florida panhandle)  However, the bad weather that hit us here in south Florida inspired our question of the day---does the weather affect your brain?  Well, I didn't think so.....but the lovely Kellie Poe-Bowdren may have convinced me otherwise today with some of her comments.
We decided to take a drive down to the beach late this afternoon to take a look at how the weather was impacting the surf.  So we're having a conversation in the car, and at the time Kellie & I were talking about last week's horrible television presentation of the Live 8 concert.  Don't get me wrong....I didn't mind the concert itself---I hated the fact that the stupid v.j.'s kept cutting away from the music to talk to some idiot in the audience who had driven 200 miles to be there.  Who cares?
Anyway, this afternoon they were rebroadcasting the concert and---here's a concept---they were only showing the music!  Anyway, right before we left Kim & I were watching R.E.M. perform their song "Man on the Moon", and I was talking about how amazing it was that lead singer Michael Stipe had written a song that included references to Sir Isaac Newton, Darwin & the biblical problems in Egypt that the asp presented.....all that and the song was a huge hit!  So I'm talking to Kellie about this and she let's fly with this gem:

1) "When Isaac Newton got hit on the head with the apple, did it make him smarter?"

Now, if Andy had come up with a question like that....we'd be used to it.  But Kellie doesn't usually offer up questions like that.  So we visit the beach, and the surf is absolutely insane.  We had a guy who had been bodysurfing come up and tell me that it was the roughest he had seen the ocean in his whole life.  So we continue to drive up A1A and stealing a glance towards the water through the rows of hotels and condo's and Kellie says:

2) "Mom...are all the beaches here connected?"

Say what?  Hey...that isn't one of the great Lakes your looking at!  That's the ATLANTIC ocean!  So after driving around awhile, we stop to have a little dinner at Bobby Rubino's rib joint.  Andy naturally decides, since he's at a rib place, to order---chicken parm.  Don't ask.  So Kim gets an order of onion rings as an appetizer and when they come out...Kellie asks if they're the kinds of onions that make you cry.  Kim says that onions only make you cry when you're cutting them raw, and the way you take care of that problem is to put a match in your mouth.

3) "You light a match and put it in your mouth?"

Well no honey, that would cause a slightly different problem....although the whole crying from the onion would probably be forgotten about.  So we're really giving her the business about some of the stuff she's blurting out today and then she closes with this little gem:

4) "Maybe I'm asking stupid questions because of the bad weather."

My daughter.  I love her.....but she was having one of those days.

Later,
Jeff