This is Week 42 of 2010►Day 292 with 73 days left.
FREE RAMBLING THOUGHTS
I believe I am not losing it. I seem to be having quite a problem knowing what numbered week it is. I use a word template for this blog. I designed it and that allows me to follow the right order, and not to forget anything. For those who read it, you will know that things move around every month, some new things are added, some old things disappear. Every Saturday, while preparing the Sunday blog, I change the ‘This is week ?? of 2010’. When I returned from Malaysia, I looked a calendar, counted the weeks and used that number. While I was waiting for some downloads today, I used the web to find out for sure if I was correct. It might have people wonder about my credibility if we get to December 31 and I am posting it’s the 51st or 53rd week of 2010. So now it is correct. This is the 42nd week of this year. I won’t get into when the new decade will, or did start.
Still not losing it...My sleeping habits have changed since I went to Asia. It looks likes the days of going to bed about 11pm and getting up about 6:30am just don’t want to return. I go to bed about 11 and watch some TV, I’m not asleep by 1:30 so I get up and walk around our work on my computer pictures. Then about 2:30 I go back to bed and am asleep within minutes. My alarm sounds at 6:15am every morning, but I never hear it. In fact I don’t wake up until about 9am. Before the trip I took a power nap—about 15-30 minutes about 2:30p. I haven’t taken any of those since I returned. I still have hope of returning to my old pre-trip habits, but that may be lost.
My computer has been busy today. I now have a ‘movie’ of my time in Taiwan, a video of cruising the river, (with cuts from Taiwan and Malaysia along with the Borneo cruise), and a video of clips showing the entertainment we had on board the ship. They are each about 7 minutes, and I will be posting them, hopefully this week. I still have at least 4 ‘movies’ and a couple of compiled videos. I am not the best videographer, but they sure bring back memories for me. My still shot ‘movies’ have some great shots and even traditional Chinese Music. I was also compiling my Asian experience, with pictures, from this blog. One would think—well at least I think—that moving pictures from one blog to another blog from the same provider should be little more than ‘cut and paste’. Alas, that is not the way it is. Each picture has to be downloaded to the new blog while the text simply is ‘cut and paste’. With the first blogs about the trip, I could download a series of photos to the blog with a couple of clicks. Today, for some reason, only one picture at a time would load. All the pictures are high resolution and even though the blog site compresses them—which I fully understand—they take forever to download. A smarter geek would have copied the picture files into a new folder and then used a program to mass shrink them for posting. Maybe next time.
Some in Flag are celebrating when the latest numbers came out on home prices—the median cost of a home in Flag has fallen just below $300K for a single detached house. It is now a bargain @ $283K. Prices have dropped about 15% since the National housing crisis began. This, of course, is not good news for current homeowners. Our current banking system does not really help those homeowners who bought at or near the top of the market. They still have to pay that highly inflated price or, as many already have, do a short sale or just walk away. Flag does have a lot to offer, but what it doesn’t offer, and never really has offered, is good paying jobs for the middle class. Many homes in the newer areas are ‘second homes’, which means that these owners don’t spend a lot of their money in Flagstaff retail. ‘Second home’ owners really don’t help the middle class of Flagstaff. Another big part of our population are college students. They don’t have a lot of extra cash either. To get our Flag economy out of the red, our leaders must find other ways—not more property taxes and sales taxes—to build our city. This means a lot of change, and big change is hard to bring to any town.
Flag…H—63°; L—32°; RH—66%; and 9mph breeze. We have the clouds, and some areas have seen rain today, my area had one early evening shower. It was just a dreary fall day.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY-- Salvador de Madariaga, Spanish writer/diplomat
No one has ever succeeded in keeping nations at war except by lies.
Bonus Quote: Ambrose Bierce: Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
HOLY MACKEREL: 1960 The US imposes an embargo on exports to Cuba
SOMEWHAT USELESS INFORMATION—
returns tomorrow
GREY MATTER PUZZLE 1—Double Jeopardy Answers (1984 games)--Inventions
$200-"The mother of invention"
$400-Country credited with invention of pasta, porcelain, & paper
$600-Tissue originally used as a WWI gas filter, but now literally something to sneeze at
$800-1st developed for the blind, they've become the most widely used business machine
$1000-Printing press inventor associated with the world's most valuable book
UNUSUAL NEWS ITEM
FORT WALTON BEACH, FL - A Florida woman said a potted violet containing her grandmother's ashes was mistakenly sold at a yard sale. Piper Gaffrey of Fort Walton Beach said her husband was running the sale before she arrived last week and she soon found the potted violet holding the ashes of her grandmother, Marjorie Potts Gaffrey, who died in February at age 99, had been sold, the Northwest Florida Daily News reported Thursday. Gaffery said she posted a message on her Facebook page asking whoever purchased the flower to take good care of it and she was surprised to receive a message in return from the buyer.
"Fortunately, it was (bought by) someone who knew me," Gaffrey said. "I was just glad to have her back."
A LITTLE LAUGH
*Murphy's First Law for Wives: If you ask your husband to pick up five items at the store and then you add one more as an afterthought, he will forget two of the first five.
* Kauffman's Paradox of the Corporation: The less important you are to the corporation, the more your tardiness or absence is noticed.
* The Salary Axiom: The pay raise is just large enough to increase your taxes and just small enough to have no effect on your take-home pay.
* Miller's Law of Insurance: Insurance covers everything except what happens.
* First Law of Living: As soon as you start doing what you always wanted to be doing, you'll want to be doing something else.
* Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross-references.
* The Grocery Bag Law: The candy bar you planned to eat on the way home from the market is hidden at the bottom of the grocery bag.
* Lampner's Law of Employment: When leaving work late, you will go unnoticed. When you leave work early, you will meet the boss in the parking lot.
FOUND ON ‘YOU TUBE’
Not the first, but the world’s largest discothèque: Click Here to View!
GREY MATTER PICTURE
This is a close up of what object?
SOME CALENDAR INFORMATION
¤ Weekly Observances ¤
17-23: Food and Drug Interaction Education and Awareness Week ^ Getting The World To Beat A Path To Your Door Week ^ International Credit Union Week ^ Teen Read Week ^ National Chemistry Week ^ National Hospital and Health-System Pharmacy Week ^ YWCA Week without Violence ^ National Character Counts Week ^ National Forest Products Week ^ National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week ^ National School Bus Safety Week
18-24: Freedom From Bullies Week ^ Freedom of Speech Week ^ Medical Assistants Recognition Week ^ National Food Bank Week ^ National Infertility Awareness Week ^ National Massage Therapy Week ^ National Businesswomen's Week
24-31: Disarmament Week ^ Give Wildlife a Break Week ^ Pastoral Care Week ^ Peace, Friendship and Good Will Week ^ Prescription Errors Education & Awareness Week ^ International Magic Week ^ National Respiratory Care Week
27-11/3: World Hearing Aid Awareness Week
¤ Today’s Observances ¤
Evaluate Your Life Day
Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity
Mauritania (Islamic Republic of Mauritania) : Independence Day (1960 from France)
Virginia: Yorktown Day (1781)
Albania: Mother Teresa Day
Niue: Constitution Day, in honor of the country's independence (self-governing in free association with New Zealand) in 1974. (a small island off the coast of Tonga)
¤ Hit Songs on this date ¤
1896...On the Benches in the Park / George J. Gaskin (Original Not Available)
1906...Love Me and the World Is Mine / Albert Campbell (Original Not Available)
1916...If I Knock the 'L' Out of Kelly (It Would Still Be Kelly to Me) / Marguerite Farrell (Original Not Available)
1926...Baby Face / Jan Garber Click Here to View!
1936...The Way You Look To-night / Fred Astaire Click Here to View!
1946,,,Rumors Are Flying / Frankie Carle Click Here to View!
1956… Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog / Elvis Presley Click Here to View!
1966…Reach Out I'll Be There / The Four Tops Click Here to View!
1976…If You Leave Me Now / Chicago Click Here to View!
1986…True Colors / Cyndi Lauper Click Here to View!
¤ Today’s Births ¤
╬ THE ARTS
Leigh Hunt, British writer (Lord Byron), born in 1784
John LeCarré, 79, author (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Constant Gardener)
Peter Max, 73, artist, designer
Ty Pennington, 45, carpenter, television personality
♦♦♦♦♦♦
Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead) ,film actor, born in 1945
John Lithgow, 65, actor (Don Quixote, Harry & the Hendersons, “3rd Rock from the Sun”)
LaWanda Page, actress (Aunt Esther-Sanford & Sons), born in 1920
Robert Reed, actor (Mike-Brady Bunch, Nurse), born in 1932
╬ ATHLETICS
Evander Holyfield, 48, boxer
Annie Peck, mountain climber,@ 45, she gained international recognition by climbing the Matterhorn, born in 1850
Michael Young, 34, baseball (Rangers)
╬ BUSINESS & EDUCATION
Jack Anderson, newspaper columnist (Wash Post), born in 1932
John McLoughlin, Hudson's Bay Co pioneer in Oregon Country, born in 1784
Charles Merrill, stock company mogul: founded Merrill-Lynch, born in 1885
╬ POLITICS
Patricia Ireland, 65, feminist, social activist
Martha Jefferson (Wayles), wife of 3rd U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, born in 1748
Bertha Landes, 1st woman elected mayor of a major US city (Seattle), born in 1868
╬ SCIENCE & RELIGION
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, physicist (Nobel 1983), born in 1910
¤ Today’s Obituaries ¤
Edna St. Vincent Millay, American poet, heart attack @ 58 in 1950
Martha Raye, American comedian and actress, Alzheimer’s & pneumonia @ 78 in 1994
Jonathan Swift, Irish author @ 78, in 1745
Gig Young, actor, kills his bride of 3 weeks & then commits suicide @ 64, in 1978
¤ Today’s Events ¤
╬ THE ARTS
1959 The first discothèque opens. Scotch-Club in Aachen, GermNY
╬ ATHLETICS
1933 Basketball was introduced to the 1936 Olympic Games
╬ BUSINESS & EDUCATION
1937 A staple at checkout racks in supermarkets everywhere, Woman’s Day, was first published
1953 1st jet transcontinental nonstop scheduled service
1968 Golden Gate Bridge charges tolls only for southbound cars
1970 One World Trade Center was ready for its first tenants
╬ INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
1818 Chickasaw treaty: Andrew Jackson and Isaac Shelby will represent American interests. The Chickasaws will cede their claims to lands in Tennessee.
1836 Lt.Col.John Lane, with 690 CREEK warriors, and 90 soldiers, reach Fort Drane northwest of present day Ocala, Florida. They are there to fight the Seminoles
╬ POLITICS (US)
1864 Approx 25 Confederates make surprise attack on St Albans, Vermont
1870 1st (4) blacks elected to House of Reps
1919 1st Distinguished Service Medal awarded to a woman
1988 Senate passes bill curbing ads during children`s TV shows
╬ POLITICS (International)
1781 Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown at 2 PM; Revolutionary War ends
1988 Britain bans broadcast interviews with IRA members
1988 S African anti-apartheid leader Sisulu wins $100,000 Human Rights prize
╬ SCIENCE & RELIGION
1512 Martin Luther becomes a doctor of theology (Doctor in Biblia)
1872 World's largest gold nugget (215 kg) found in New South Wales
1901 Santos-Dumont proves airship maneuverable by circling Eiffel Tower
GREY MATTER ANSWERS
↔ 1 Jeopardy
$200-"The mother of invention": What is necessity?
$400-Country credited with invention of pasta, porcelain, & paper: What is China?
$600-Tissue originally used as a WWI gas filter, but now literally something to sneeze at: What is Kleenex?
$800-1st developed for the blind, they've become the most widely used business machine: What is the typewriter?
$1000-Printing press inventor associated with the world's most valuable book: Who was Guttenberg?
↔ PICTURE
A bicycle seat cushion
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