Monday, March 31, 2008

It's 5 AM...

...do you know where I am?

Of course you do! I'm right here, sitting in front of my computer. I've been up since 1:30 with what doctors blithely refer to as "gastric distress". In order to keep noise to a minimum, I decided to dork around on the computer rather than turn on the TV. Not that it's been exactly silent around here. I mean, besides that. I was talking about the cats. They realized that someone was awake and started howling at the basement door, hoping to either be let out or fed or both. They got neither, and they finally gave up and went back to bed. I'd like to go back to bed, but until my gastrointestinal system settles down I think I'll stay right here.

The challenge with being awake in the wee hours of the morning is finding stuff to do on the computer. I'm not a gamer (except for that annoyingly addicting Marbles game) so I head over to FOXnews and Drudge to see what's up, if anything. Not really. The jist of the news is that the economy is still in crisis, Hillary and Barack are still sniping at each other (and neither of them is in Bosnia - HA!) crime is still running rampant and all four of the Number One seeds in the NCAA basketball tournament made it to the Final Four for the first time in tournament history.

How many of you have watched the games? I've caught most of them (except for Drake's humiliating loss to Western Kentucky) and so far it's been a good tournament. West Virginia beating Duke was wonderful, and some of the really close games have been terrific - I loved the Louisville/North Carolina game. Right now I tend to favor Memphis for the national championship. They have the look and feel of a NBA team. I mean, they really put on a clinic when they played Michigan State. (Sorry, Jonathan!) I don't think Drew Neitzel knew what hit him, and he probably still doesn't know what hit him. And that was his last collegiate game, poor kid. But I bet he'll go pretty high in the draft.

Anyway. Back to web surfing between restroom runs (pun intended). Hmmm...what else to do, what else to do? Ah! Go back and read my last blog, and the comment from my brother...

Bad idea. I read it and suddenly the word "chooglin'" sounds completely unpleasant. I think I'll head over to Amazon and see if they have anything that I'd feel like wasting money on.

Jewelry? No thanks. Metal things attached to your body isn't recommended when working for an electrical contractor. Ooh! the new Christopher Paolini book is coming out! In September. I think I'll buy it once it's actually on the shelves. Ah! DVD sale! The Star Trek TV series, starring William "I'm not a starship captain, I'm a lawyer!" Shatner is half price. Sort of. You have to buy each season individually because the 3 DVD set isn't half price. Whatever. I think I'll hang on to my money for now.

And the time has come for me to get the girls ready for school. It's raining, so I'll drive them to the elementary school where Hannah can catch her bus and Mary can wait in the gym until the start of classes. Which, until April 9th, are extended 30 minutes a day to make up for some of the 13 snow days we've had.

I'd better get "chooglin'".

Thursday, March 13, 2008

The Return of Blatherskite

Well, since my last posting, we've had two more snow days. That makes a grand total of 13. The school district is trying to figure out how to make up the time without extending the school year any farther than June 5th. Good luck to them.

In today's travels (to and from KCC) I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said, "Ban Mercury from Vaccines. Stop poisoning our kids!" As I read this, the driver tossed a cigarette out of her window. Good grief. Don't poison our kids with mercury, but second hand smoke is OK? Not to mention polluting the environment with what you throw out the window. Some example she sets.

Meanwhile, the weather here is slowly getting better. We've had several days of temperatures above freezing, so alot of snow has melted. The 10-foot tall drifts along W-28 are now only 6 feet high. With all of the melting, of course, has come some flooding, but nothing too drastic yet. Not that flooding would affect me: I live on a hill. The melt-off is exposing stuff that was hidden for weeks: my Dutch yard figures, my birdbath, the sign at the end of W-28 that says "Cedar Rapids 26 miles" and scores of fence posts. Also exposed are all of the poochie bombs in the back yard that got covered with layers of snow. All over the drifts along the fence, it's doots, doots, doots, looking out my back door. They're everywhere!

Why, all of the sudden, do I have a desire to listen to Credence Clearwater Revival?

Anyway. Along with the warmer weather is a harbinger of spring that I watch for every year. I haven't seen one yet, but today for the first time I heard the distictive song of red-wing blackbirds. They're true migrants (robins aren't) so when the red-wings come back, spring is near.

And the nearer, the better.