Hi,

OK, I’m changing the rules, I hope you don’t mind.  Instead of quoting the anniversary for events the day of my post, I’m going to start talking about the ones for the next day.  This way, when you go in to school or work, you can impress people with the breadth of your knowledge.  Tomorrow is Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, it’s WC Fields birth anniversary (1880), Kansas was admitted to the union on this day in 1861 and it is the anniversary of the first publication of The Raven in 1845.

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger’s explosion, do you remember where you were when you heard the news?

Now that the Winter Classic is over as are the playoff games, and it’s January, I have time to straighten my world up.  I just finished clearing up the photos I have in my computer.  What a project that was.  That’s why I never got to it until I knew I could spend the time needed on it.  As I have been taking them (over the past five years since buying The Parador), I’ve just been dumping them in my computer.  They are all labeled, grouped by group and duplicates deleted (close to 200 duplicates).  Also, a few months ago, I bought one of those butcher block tables on wheels to be a rolling TV table in Bougainvillea’s living room.  It was/is in great shape.  So I cleaned it up, primed it, did a mosaic on the top and it’s sat in the basement since then.  I started doing the faux finish on it today and really made some nice progress.  Like most things in my world, I don’t have a clear picture of what the finished product’s going to be.  It evolves as I work on it and I’m liking how I think the finished product’s going to be.

How’s your Myron Cope impersonation?  Next Thursday, at Ross Park Mall around 6 p.m. they are having auditions.  The contestants will be asked to do a sixty second description of a recent Steelers football event.  They will be judged on linguistic accuracy, appearance and cleverness.  First place gets a 42″ plasma TV; second place gets a framed photo of Cope & $200 mall gift card; third place gets a Tiffany style Steelers lamp, a Steelers banner and a framed photo of Roethlisberger.

How about all that activities over in Northern Africa.  I think it may turn out to be an incredible event (s).  These aren’t Islamic radicals, they’re everyday Arabs.  Working class, educated, poor even many of the elite seem to be apart of this uprising.  After twenty or thirty years under corrupt dictators, the citizens have finally gotten fed up and want change.  (Maybe we should take note 🙂 ).   I’m not seeing looting either, this isn’t an excuse for the dishonest to fill their bags.  And chasing the one dictator out and having his cronies shuffle around in the cabinet didn’t work.  I haven’t seen anyone group being the “ins” or the “outs” as I’ve watched in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  As a nation, if they choose woman should wear the burqa, I’m fine with that.  Just as I’m fine that the French don’t want a burqa worn in public.  I have a problem with fear, terror, torture and intimidation used to force a minority’s agenda on the majority.  Wouldn’t it be incredible if a country in the middle east with a predominantly Muslim population created a nation based on democracy, ON THEIR OWN.  What an incredible model this could be.  The repercussions are incredible.

Good night,

ed