We had a very successful day running errands this weekend, but one highlight was during a quick trip to the grocery store. I was zipping back to pick up some butter for holiday baking when I encountered a young family. The baby in the cart smiled at me and gave me the backwards wave, such as this youngster is doing. Our daughter did that when she was very young. It made my day.
Happy holidays to all.
Just returned from our organization's annual meeting, which includes a legislative-style debate on policy.
This is often routine but sometimes interesting and occasionally amusing. In one debate, delegates were deciding whether to encourage the dismissal of "incompetent teachers." A delegate who's also a school board member said the appropriate term was "underperforming teachers," and offered an amendment.
That led to a discussion of "incompetent" vs. "underperforming" and, finally, to a vote. At that point, the chair instructed the delegates:
"All those in favor of underperforming, say aye."
... will be the training base
at Twentynine Palms. He leaves Tuesday and will join 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. The 2-7 has just returned from there. According to its Web site, the 2-7 has performed a couple of tours in the Fallujah area of Iraq and deployed to Afghanistan in April of this year.This will certainly be a learning experience for all of us.
... is about the congresswoman from Florida who hung up on President-elect Obama. Then she hung up on his chief of staff, when he called to try to convince her it really was Mr. Obama. Apparently, she thought she was being "punked" by a radio station in her district. Come to think of it, I've seen a couple photos of the president-elect where I'm convinced he's looking more like Fred Armisen. Can you tell which is which?
We have adjusted pretty well to the empty-nester situation, I think, but the house felt empty yesterday. I have this somewhat melancholy ritual now where, after a child's visit has ended, I shut the heater vent in the child's room (energy saver!) and close the door so our friendly cat doesn't shed friendly cat hair all over the child's bed. And it struck me that it may be unusual in the near future to have both children home at the same time, what with one of them headed to his first posting as a Marine.
It's also been disturbing to read about the ugly incident in New York, where the crowd trampled the poor man who was too slow to open the doors at the WalMart at 5 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving. The always-astute media columnist in the New York Times made a great point about the sad incident today: The media are now tut-tutting like mad about the stampede, the death and what it supposedly reveals about our society. But, of course, it is the media that essentially created the whole Black Friday mystique and which hypes it, relentlessly, in the days immediately before and after. I usually enjoy holiday shopping but have never understood the wait-before-dawn-for-the-store-to-open idea.
Happier thoughts next time ...
We were fortunate enough to be allowed to escort our son the Marine to the boarding area for his flight back to SD. As he was walking away to board the plane, his sister called to him: "Have fun blowing things up!" ... then, realizing what she had said ... "But not on the plane!"
Apparently, no one heard her and she said the next time, she will use a different Marine activity, something like, "Have fun digging a hole!"
Pretty much by accident, I have created this blog. All I wanted to do was to leave a somewhat-snarky comment on the daughter's blog. But to do that, I had to create a user profile and, it turns out, that comes with the opportunity to create one's own blog. So, what the heck ...
