A snow day. Oh, wait, I mean SNOW DAY!!!!.

Listening for the radio announcer to work his way through the alphabet for your school and the WOO-HOO’S. Were we terrible? I don’t think so, but if I were a student today, this is what a school closed would be: eLearning Day.

Here’s a selection from the information page:

Important Facts:

EVERY cancellation is an eLearning Day.
All classroom work will be posted by 9:00 AM on the day of the cancellation. K-4 students will find their work in their Google Drive folder. 5-12 students will find their work on Canvas.
Teachers will have set office hours that will be communicated to parents either on the teacher website, through emails to parents, on the class Canvas page, etc.
You should expect your child’s work on an eLearning Day to take 4-5 hours to complete.
Completed eLearning assignments will be used to determine attendance on an eLearning Day.
Students should be able to complete the work on their own without assistance from a parent.
Less than 15 percent of our students do not have access to the Internet on a weather cancelled day. If your elementary child does not have access, the media centers will be open for one additional hour at the end of the day for three days following an eLearning day. This extra time will give students an opportunity to download their needed content, and teachers will be flexible with elementary students concerning assignment due dates. If your secondary child does not have access, the media centers will also be opened for one additional hour for two days following the eLearning day. Assignments for secondary students will be due based on the current make up work policies in your child’s school.

It’s Valentine’s Day AGAIN? I did not like this day in the 50’s when my little hands stuffed valentines in handmade sacks on small school desks. That, by the way, was in the day when the desks bolted to the floor and joined together like portions of a railway train. The front of your desk was the back of the one in front and your seat folded up. Usually someone had carved initials in the top and there was the ever present, but no longer used inkwell hole at the upper right.

We didn’t use inkwells; our pens – when we graduated from the pencils that were really big, about the size of an adult finger – had a lever on the side that allowed you to suck ink up from a bottle. I remember my grandmother gave me a beautiful ladies pen in ivory and gold.

I had terrible penmanship, and still do, for that matter. And I still don’t like Valentine’s Day. I truly do not see the sense in it. I don’t know what the Valentine’s Day equivalent of the Grinch is, but I’m an acolyte.

I guess I’m an Alice.

*

* I can dish it out, but I can’t take it. Must work on that, along with Fist of Death.

I was reading when my grandson turned on the TV to a Hoarding: Buried Alive show and what caught my attention was the narrator referring to a woman going to jail four times for hoarding. I surmised it was because of fire hazards and such and looked up to watch. Just then the show switched to a house in California previously owned by “Bonnie” and just sold to Tad and Amber – SIGHT UNSEEN. Well, the outside could be seen and it didn’t bode well . . .

At first glance, I thought Tad and Amber were house flippers who had got themselves into trouble. No, they had it all figured out: with architectural plans and permits already in order before closing, they were all ready to buy the house (LAND) at a good price – because, believe me, no real estate agent was going to have an open house for Bonnie’s place. Oh, in Amber’s blog, she writes, “Tad, being a top selling real estate agent.”

Then they got The Learning Channel to make the house a project, which, of course revealed it had to be demolished –  so they could just build their home on the site of the demolition. By the way, the loan they had secured before escrow was for house and construction.

I found this all out from Amber’s blog Our Home, Trash into Treasure.

They are very clever people. And for one of the moves: “Tad being involved in what seems like a trazillion moves decided he didn’t want to ask for help. ;( He asked the Missionaries fort (sic) help with the big items and then asked our 15 year old neighbor to help with the rest.”

Found at this site

First made aware of this credit goes to Pottermom.

What has this started for Der Bingle and me? Let’s see, Anthony Quinn, he was Greek  . . . and wasn’t he in the movie The Cows of Navarone?

Since those of us who are over a certain age and went to college when Freshman courses were basically dictated by the curriculum and therefore toted around our Western Civ books, can we consider the theory that moose evolved from cows? Oh, forget that, it’s a stretch.

It looks so much worse than it is, but, gosh, it’s fascinating. But not fascinating enough to look again.

Lana, you are so right; my angels were wiping their brows . . . and now they are giving me a good talking to.

LADY IMPALES SELF ON RETRO TV STAND LEG.

When I was little my father was very diligent in trying to teach me to be careful – handwashng, avoiding rusty things, never leave sharp objects in a potentially dangerous position. On and on and on with the cautions; sometimes it seemed overwhelming. But he was right.

A couple of days ago I was moving stuff around in the den and upended an old TV stand I had picked up at a garage sale. I thought it was nifty – steel tubing fashioned into four legs and a horizontal TV support that included sliding parts to accommodate TV’s of various widths. I used it as an easily moveable stand for computer accessories: printers, scanners. Since I use a laptop, it made it easy to set up shop anywhere.

Now, when I upended it, I did think of those four tubular legs poking up into the air, but I ignored the thought; I mean, Hey, it’ll be all right. I was all wrong.

I had scooted some firewood away from the hearth while I was moving stuff and I forgot that and turned around and tripped, sending myself flying flat on my face. Between the floor and me, though, there was a table leg. I wish I could claim some James Bond/Jackie Chan great maneuver that allowed me to avoid it, but it was luck, pure luck that caused my body to turn slightly. I do remember a flash of fear: I’M BEING IMPALED.

And then I wasn’t. I was only poked about an inch, on an angle and I hit the floor as the leg pushed on my rib or sternum. Who knows – it hurts in the general area when I touch it. And I don’t touch it often.

This is what resulted:

Old dogs need to remember and heed the lessons they were taught as pups; luck may not always be positive.

I’m not certain I know how to pronounce this name, but I think when I first saw it along with the band of purple weather that is due over my head Friday night, I exclaimed RATS – or something to that effect.
National, this is MATEO:

Yeah, it’s going to be FUN.

It’s not so much that I mind the storm; it’s the elongated bullseye. On the other hand, if I owned a Hummer with all the bells and whistles, I would probably be waiting in said “car” eagerly anticipating the first snowflake. But I have a Buick; it is front wheel drive with a good solid 3800 Buick engine – and it still gets stuck where my driveway meets the street. You see, there is a road that intersects my street at a “T” just one house to the south; and the wind whipping down that street makes a drift in the street in front of my driveway which the snowplow moves into my driveway entrance.

Now, that’s not real bad – at first. I can drive right out through brand-new snow (unless it’s a major blizzard), but then there are ruts that form and repeated trips by the snowplow make it worse. Snow-packed tires in deep icy ruts bode ill, as in plague ill . . . and one winter it took three people shoveling and an ATV with a cable to get me from where I was stuck half into the street.
I have used a snow blower, a shovel, high-quality ICE MELT and if I am very lucky there are times when I don’t have to “run the ruts” which is not unlike running the bulls as far as jostling and disaster are concerned.

This is a rambling, whining complaint. I don’t feel any better for it. You probably don’t . . . so I suppose I should have added warning flares to the post title.

Groundhog Day has come again, and once again I refer you to the left sidebar.

I just checked in at a news site and see that in Kentucky there was a school shooting. One dead so far, seven wounded and the shooter is in custody. The school is being evacuated as I type this.

What is it that people are now thinking they can go in someplace and commit an act of violence? It used to be you could go out in the United States and not even consider someone in your own community employing deadly force en masse with random victims.

Other political and social issues pale in the light of such behavior, in my opinion.

Quite a few years ago, I interviewed Darcy about a program called Kids on the Block for a small, local newspaper. Her last name was the same as mine and I think we quickly compared family homes of our husbands. Mine came from two towns on the banks of the Mississippi River – one in Iowa, Keokuk, and one in Illinois, Carthage. Hers hailed from Danville, Illinois which is just over the Indiana/Illinois state line. So, if there was a link, it wasn’t a close one. She was very nice and personable and worked with kids, and, well, our interests were a little different.

And, after lunch, she went her way and I mine.

Yesterday, all these years later, I looked in the mail slot and found a card addressed to “Mr. Vance” and the address was indeed mine. It was mysterious and with Der Bingle in Dayton and never having mentioned anyone from Albion, Indiana, I had a hunch it was a condolence card. I suppose it could have been birthday or some other occasion, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was something very timely. The hand-printed address on the card also seemed to say, This is special. So, I opened it and yes, it was a condolence card and the name below the sentiment was totally unfamiliar to me.

I had another hunch and thought maybe if I Google Vance and obituary and Kendallville, I will find the person to whom it should have been delivered. And I was right, too right. I had thought perhaps he had been listed in the survivors of a relative from an earlier generation. No, the obituary that came up on the screen was that of his wife – the lady who was 10 years younger than I – the one I had interviewed all those years ago.

I found myself sitting there in a state of taken aback shock. She was a woman who was very involved in her community and had a tremendous relationship with her children and their friends. And I discovered she had been battling cancer for about 18 months. And now the battle was over.

I tried to find her husband’s phone number on the Internet, but the one listed was no longer in service and I had no idea if the address was current. So I am going to try and send a FaceBook message to her daughter and then go by the last address listed. I’ll knock on the door and maybe someone will be there or there will be an indication this is his house.

I guess I won’t be complaining about the weather for awhile.