1 Dec

 

 

Flag Today  47°/14°   Week 48  Day 335 Air Quality: Fair  Sunshine Wind 3 mph Gusts 9 mph  Light Breeze Active Fire: 132 miles away       Risk of fire: Moderate Nearest Lightning: 2185 miles away Dec. Averages: Temps: 45°\18° Moisture:  5 Days

Monthly Observations

Adopt A Turkey Month Link  Link (Oct.-Dec.) Aids Awareness Month Link Bingo's Birthday Month Buckwheat Month Link

Car Donation Month  Link Give The Gift of Sight Month Honor Your Pharmacist Month Internat’l Sharps Injury Prevention Month  Link

Weekly Observations

24-12/1 National Bible Week 27-12/3 National Deal Week

1-7 Cookie Cutter WeekLink National Hand Washing Awareness Week Link  Recipe Greetings For The Holidays Week

Daily Observations

Antarctica Day Artist's Sunday (First Sunday after Thanksgiving) Basketball Day Bifocals at the Monitor Liberation Day Link Civil Air Patrol Day Clark Kent's Birthday (Superman)  Link  Eat A Red Apple Day

International Maratheftiko Day Link Meteorlogical Winter (Temperature) National Christmas Lights Day Playboy Day Rosa Parks Day Secondhand Sunday Link  World Aids Day  Link

Today’s Quote                                                       

 

Today’s Meme

 

Thoughts for the day

The temperature say it is time for December…so here I go.

Yesterday I got to watch the CU Buffs really beat OK State University. Good game.

Every year the TV commercials for Part C Medicare arrive just after Thanksgiving. It seems like every commercial break on Cable TV is about researching Advantage coverage. I must wonder where the money is coming from for these constant commercials. My guess is that everyone who has a Part C plan is helping pay for these commercials through their monthly premiums. The older I get, the less I want to spend time reading insurance policy gibberish to see if I can get a better deal. It also seems a little like a scam when the policy can change every single year. Sounds like they delete any much-used high cost coverage, increase less-used coverage and still raise the monthly cost.

Do you know about Elon Musk? He grew up in South Africa until he was 18. That time was during Apartheid which ended when he was 15. He claims to have been anti-apartheid. He left South Africa to avoid mandatory military service. He moved to Canada, where is mother was from. He later moved to the US. He now holds three active passports.

Trivia Time

 

Christmas Traditions

Using Evergreens as Christmas Trees

Before Christianity was even conceived of, people used evergreen boughs to decorate their homes during the winter; the greenery reminded them that plants would return in abundance soon. As Christianity became more popular in Europe, and Germany in particular, the tradition was absorbed into it. Christians decorated evergreen trees with apples to represent the Garden of Eden, calling them “Paradise Trees” around the time of Adam and Eve’s name day—December 24. Gradually, the tradition was subsumed into Christmas celebrations.
The tradition spread as immigrants did, but the practice really took off when word got around that England’s Queen Victoria decorated a Christmas tree as a nod to her German husband’s heritage (German members of the British royal family had previously had Christmas trees, but they never caught on with the wider public). Her influence was felt worldwide, and by 1900, one in five American families had a Christmas tree. Today, upwards of 30 million real Christmas trees are sold in the U.S. every year.

Random Thoughts…

·   The word ‘pyrokinesis’ was coined by horror novelist Stephen King in his 1980 novel Firestarter to describe the ability to create and control fire with the mind.

·      A couple sued AC/DC in 1981 for $250,000 because their telephone number is in the song “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” resulting in hundreds of prank calls

·      Henry VIII of England agreed to marry Anne of Cleves after seeing a portrait that he commissioned of her. After meeting in person, Henry realized she wasn’t as attractive as the painting suggested and annulled the marriage. The portrait is now displayed in the Louvre.

·   I’m playing hide and seek with the neighborhood kids right now. They’ll never find me because they aren’t old enough to drive or get into this bar.

·   Natalie Portman skipped the film premiere for Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace because she had to study for her high school finals.

Ancient Roman Life

Ancient Roman Beauty Routines for Women

Women in ancient Rome strived for beauty standards that signified status and class, focusing on a pale, unblemished complexion with a subtle blush. Achieving this look required an array of natural cosmetics, such as foundations made from white lead and blush from various organic and inorganic materials.

Elaborate hairstyles embellished with ropes or golden threads displayed wealth and artistry. Icons like Poppaea Sabina exemplified these ideals. These beauty rituals went beyond vanity, embodying the wealth and societal roles of Roman women, and were integral to their identity in the public and private spheres​​​​​​​.

Historic Events

1783 – The first manned voyage of a lighter-than-air hydrogen balloon left Paris carrying Professor Jacques Alexander Cesar Charles and Marie-Noel Robert to almost 500 feet and landed 28 miles away after about 2 hours in the air.

1841 – The first steamboat engine built in America for a screw-propelled vessel, designed by John Ericsson and built by Captain Sylvester Doolittle, installed on the ship Vandalia, was launched.

1913 – The Ford Motor Company introduced the continuously moving assembly line, producing a complete automobile every two-and-a-half minutes. It was the first true “mass production” system.

1913 – The first U.S. drive-in automobile service ‘filling station’ opened at the traffic intersection of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1952 – The New York Daily News reported that Christine Jorgensen was the first case of sexual reassignment surgery.

1953 – The first issue of Playboy was published.

1955 – Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

1958 – A fire at Our Lady of Angels School elementary school in Chicago killed 90 children.

1990 – The Chunnel between England and France was connected and celebrated when an Englishman and Frenchmen broke their respective sides. It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II and the French president, François Mitterrand, in a ceremony held in Calais on May 6, 1994.

1994 – The Game Show Network, the 24-hour channel dedicated to game shows, made its debut

1994 – Home & Garden Television (HGTV) made its debut.

Birthdays

Zoë Kravitz, 36 Movie Actress Liberty Barros, 17 Gymnast Sarah Silverman, 54 Comedian Bette Midler, 79 Pop Singer Woody Allen (Allan Stewart Konigsberg), 90, American actor, director, screenwriter Lee Trevino, 85, American golfer

@88 – Marie Tussaud, French-English sculptor, founder of Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum (d. 1850) @88 – Rex Stout, American author (d. 1975) @76 – Mary Martin, American actress, and singer (d. 1990) @72 – Lou Rawls, American singer-songwriter (d. 2006; brain cancer) @65 – Richard Pryor, American comedian (d. 2005; heart attack) @63 – Dick Shawn, American actor (d. 1987; heart attack on stage) @44 – Pablo Escobar, Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist (d. 1993; shot/suicide?)

…The End for today…

               

30 Nov

 

Week 48  Day 335 Flag Today  45°/11° Air Quality: Fair Sunshine Wind  -mph Gusts 4 mph Active Fire: 132 miles away Risk of fire: Moderate Nearest Lightning: 1669 miles away Nov. Averages: Temps: 51°\24° Moisture:  3 Days

Today’s Quote                                                       

 

Today’s Meme

 

Thoughts for the day

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I know I did.

While I was waiting to leave for my dinner with friends I stumbled upon the booklet for my sound bar for my big TV. It had stopped working in July, and I couldn’t find the booklet. I grabbed the book, made a couple of changes and the sound bar is working again. I am thankful.

Violence of any kind is unacceptable. Both some Trump nominees and a some Dem candidates have had bomb threats and/or swatting. This is unacceptable in today’s world. I hope the criminals are found quickly and end up behind bars.

Trivia Time

 

Christmas Traditions

Caroling

Though it may seem like a centuries-old tradition, Time reports that showing up at people’s houses to serenade them with seasonal tunes only dates back to the 19th century. Before that, neighbors did visit each other to impart wishes of good luck and good cheer, but not necessarily in song. Christmas carols themselves go back hundreds of years, minus the door-to-door part. The mashup of the two ideas didn’t come together until Victorian England, when caroling was part of every holiday—even May Day festivals. As Christmas became more commercialized, caroling for the occasion became more popular.

Historic Events

3340 BC – Earliest believed record of an eclipse, in Ireland.

1609 – Galileo Galilei realized that the moon was a landscape, not a flat surface on a circle in the sky.

1858 – The Mason Jar was invented and patented (#22,186) by Philadelphia tinsmith John Landis Mason.

1872 – First international soccer game was played. Final score: Scotland-England 0-0 (in Glasgow)

1931 – The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer was published.

1936 – London’s Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire.

1956 – CBS became the first network to broadcast from videotape. It was a rebroadcast to the West Coast of the 15-minute Douglas Edwards and the News program. It was recorded on 2-inch tape with an Ampex Mark IV machine.

1994 – Italian cruise ship MS Achille Lauro caught fire off Somalia, with 3 people dead, and most of the nearly 1,000 passengers and crew escaping in lifeboats. It sank on December 2nd.

2004 – Longtime Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City, finally lost, leaving him with $2,520,700 – television’s biggest game show winnings.

2009 – CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) started. “CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has today become the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning.” CERN is experimenting with things like “The Big Bang” but hopefully on a smaller scale.

Birthdays

Kaley Cuoco, 39 TV Actress Ben Stiller, 59 Movie Actor Chrissy Teigen, 39 Model Billy Idol, 69 Punk Singer Woody Allen, 89 Director Bo Jackson, 62 Baseball Player Gael García Bernal, 46 Movie Actor Clay Aiken, 46 Pop Singer Ridley Scott, 87 Director Mandy Patinkin, 72 Stage Actor

@95 – Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., American actor (d. 2014) @90 – G. Gordon Liddy, American lawyer, radio host (d. 2021) @90 – Winston Churchill, English colonel, journalist, and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Nobel Prize laureate, d. 1965) @89 – Robert Guillaume (Robert Peter Williams), American actor and singer (d. 2017) @84 – Virginia Mayo, American actress (d. 2005) @82 – Dick Clark, American TV host, and producer (founded Dick Clark Productions, d. 2012) @77 – Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist, and essayist (d. 1745; dementia) @76 – Richard Crenna, American actor, director, and producer (d. 2003; cancer) @74 – Mark Twain, American novelist, humorist, and critic (d. 1910) @52 – Abbie Hoffman, American activist and author co-founded the Youth International Party, (d. 1989; OD) @48 – Allan Sherman, American actor, comedian, singer, producer, and screenwriter (d. 1973; respiratory failure) @45 – John McCrae, Canadian physician, soldier, and poet (In Flanders Fields, d. 1918)

…The End for today…