Friday the 13th, what better day to write about some little things that have been happening.
Is it going to be Spring soon?
I'm REALLY looking forward to some spring like weather so the snow will melt and I can drive the Solstice and motorcycles again! The last couple of days have been beautiful, clear blue skies, no clouds, and even before the Daylight Savings time change it was getting lighter every day. On the news it was said that we're getting about 3 minutes of more sunlight each DAY. With the change its already light until about 6:30 pm and starting to be light in the mornings about 6:00 am. By June that light in the morning will be starting around 3:30 am!
Ah, but as clear and beautiful as its been it is still COLD! Right this moment 10:30 am when I'm starting this, its very sunny and 32 degrees. Still snow and ice in lots of places. The last few mornings have been record breaking cold, some records since the 1800's, like two mornings of +4 degrees at our house for lows, with highs back in the January temps of the teens and twenties for highs. But as much as I long to be driving and riding again I also realize that with the warm weather will come the included yard work for the weekends, and the bugs! In our area spring to mid summer is mosquito time! Break out the "OFF" to be working out in the garage or shaded forest areas. Even on the riding mower in the shaded areas they attack! By mid summer though they retreat to the forest and you can be out doing pretty much anything, except it is wasp season by then! Because of my allergies I have to be wary of all critters that bite.
Photos to see
In the last week or so I've been adding many pictures to our web albums so family and friends can if they like, see what we'd been doing for a couple of decades or so. Many of our family motorcycling summer vacations, my very first solo motorcycle trip back when I was just 20 years old, as well as many of our photos from our years of Animal Control, Sandy's wedding, some different things here and there that I've been slowly adding to for a while. I'm still finding old snapshot and 35mm photos, scanning them into my computer, and now I might have found a place to put some of them. Turns out the Picasa web albums is a pretty good place for them. At first I wasn't to sure about the photo quality of the posted albums, but they aren't too bad after all and it's a bit easier for everyone to access those albums then to get into the FlickR site I also have some photos posted. There also is a pretty easy 'Slide Show' function that works just like in Picasa. I hope they'll be liked by those that look and maybe some friends and family will be able to do the same and start an on-line album or more of their own! Up to 1 GB is free with Google. Hint, hint!
Social Networking, or I'm not a 'friend' anymore!
Sometime last fall or so the girl that works the reception desk at the airport was trying to think of ways to get info out to the people, pilots, club members etc., of the airport about upcoming meetings and events at the airport. So she'd sent out invitations for everybody to join and be her friend with Facebook. So I got a Facebook account set up. And after a couple of months, nothing. I'd check every once in a while but there was never any airport news so I quit looking. Turned out she never got much of a response so she went back to the old way of e-mails and newspaper blurbs about upcoming events.
Last January on my regular e-mail account I had a Facebook e-mail that some people from my Animal Control days wanted to be "friends". Took a look, started to check the account more frequently, and more of the people kept popping up as having accounts and connecting. Then about two weeks ago I got an invite from a person that, as her supervisor, she'd caused me A LOT of grief and problems my last year in the department. I guess I should have just ignored the invite. Some of the other people popping up as possible "friends" are people I didn't really care too much for when I worked there so why would I want to stay in contact with them now? But her, I said OK to being her friend, then after thinking about it for a few days I decided to, and took the opportunity to, I thought nicely and not too harshly, explain to her about the grief she'd caused and how she probably didn't realize that I'd saved her butt from getting fired 'twice', at a large cost to me in the department at the time. And in retrospect with 20/20 hindsight, sometimes isn't that the clearest vision!, if I could do it over she'd have been fired the first time she'd screwed up as in the end she just hadn't been worth all the effort at all. So I sent it, just a paragraph. The short speech I'd written out was what I thought would best relate some of what I'd spent many nights back then formulating in my mind. A tell off to her without her tears or shouts about unfairness. A kind of finally getting to get closure for me about this. Several days went by with nothing. Then I checked the Facebook account and saw that any trace of her was gone. I was no longer a friend of hers and it was like she didn't exist on Facebook anymore at all.
I told Stacy about what had happened and she said she'd have taken it pretty badly if she'd gotten something like that back, here this girl had sent out an olive branch of forgive and forget and I'd in essence lit it on fire and sent it back! So, Stacy made me feel REALLY guilty about even doing that at all. It had been after all 4 years, so why did I bother? I got none of the expected satisfaction from it, not like I'd wanted, not like I probably would have had, had it been "of the moment" and not 4 years later. So here I am, 51 years old and still learning!
As for social networks, I'm still learning about them too. Personally I'm not so convinced about their necessity in my life. Interesting, a little bit, but I keep thinking then what's e-mail for?
Other family news;
Clifford had his second cataract surgery yesterday and other than some issues with his tranquilizer meds for the surgery he sounded pretty good and is looking forward to seeing clearly in both eyes again.
Mike had the chance to spend last weekend with them in Missouri as he's quite the traveler in his position with Boeing. I think Mike actually travels about as much as he said he used to when he was in the military! I told him he ought to get a small decent camera to take photos of some of the places he's traveling to.
Daughter Laura and family might be moving to Cedar Rapids as she'd called this morning and said that Russell has been offered a job their. Could they finally be getting into a good area and good jobs after almost three years of struggling? We hope so!
Well with interruptions its a little after 1 pm so I guess that is it for this Friday the 13th Blog.
Oh yeah, it's 1:05 and up to 37 outside. A little warmer than yesterday!
Type later, Tad
Is it going to be Spring soon?
I'm REALLY looking forward to some spring like weather so the snow will melt and I can drive the Solstice and motorcycles again! The last couple of days have been beautiful, clear blue skies, no clouds, and even before the Daylight Savings time change it was getting lighter every day. On the news it was said that we're getting about 3 minutes of more sunlight each DAY. With the change its already light until about 6:30 pm and starting to be light in the mornings about 6:00 am. By June that light in the morning will be starting around 3:30 am!
Ah, but as clear and beautiful as its been it is still COLD! Right this moment 10:30 am when I'm starting this, its very sunny and 32 degrees. Still snow and ice in lots of places. The last few mornings have been record breaking cold, some records since the 1800's, like two mornings of +4 degrees at our house for lows, with highs back in the January temps of the teens and twenties for highs. But as much as I long to be driving and riding again I also realize that with the warm weather will come the included yard work for the weekends, and the bugs! In our area spring to mid summer is mosquito time! Break out the "OFF" to be working out in the garage or shaded forest areas. Even on the riding mower in the shaded areas they attack! By mid summer though they retreat to the forest and you can be out doing pretty much anything, except it is wasp season by then! Because of my allergies I have to be wary of all critters that bite.
Photos to see
In the last week or so I've been adding many pictures to our web albums so family and friends can if they like, see what we'd been doing for a couple of decades or so. Many of our family motorcycling summer vacations, my very first solo motorcycle trip back when I was just 20 years old, as well as many of our photos from our years of Animal Control, Sandy's wedding, some different things here and there that I've been slowly adding to for a while. I'm still finding old snapshot and 35mm photos, scanning them into my computer, and now I might have found a place to put some of them. Turns out the Picasa web albums is a pretty good place for them. At first I wasn't to sure about the photo quality of the posted albums, but they aren't too bad after all and it's a bit easier for everyone to access those albums then to get into the FlickR site I also have some photos posted. There also is a pretty easy 'Slide Show' function that works just like in Picasa. I hope they'll be liked by those that look and maybe some friends and family will be able to do the same and start an on-line album or more of their own! Up to 1 GB is free with Google. Hint, hint!
Social Networking, or I'm not a 'friend' anymore!
Sometime last fall or so the girl that works the reception desk at the airport was trying to think of ways to get info out to the people, pilots, club members etc., of the airport about upcoming meetings and events at the airport. So she'd sent out invitations for everybody to join and be her friend with Facebook. So I got a Facebook account set up. And after a couple of months, nothing. I'd check every once in a while but there was never any airport news so I quit looking. Turned out she never got much of a response so she went back to the old way of e-mails and newspaper blurbs about upcoming events.
Last January on my regular e-mail account I had a Facebook e-mail that some people from my Animal Control days wanted to be "friends". Took a look, started to check the account more frequently, and more of the people kept popping up as having accounts and connecting. Then about two weeks ago I got an invite from a person that, as her supervisor, she'd caused me A LOT of grief and problems my last year in the department. I guess I should have just ignored the invite. Some of the other people popping up as possible "friends" are people I didn't really care too much for when I worked there so why would I want to stay in contact with them now? But her, I said OK to being her friend, then after thinking about it for a few days I decided to, and took the opportunity to, I thought nicely and not too harshly, explain to her about the grief she'd caused and how she probably didn't realize that I'd saved her butt from getting fired 'twice', at a large cost to me in the department at the time. And in retrospect with 20/20 hindsight, sometimes isn't that the clearest vision!, if I could do it over she'd have been fired the first time she'd screwed up as in the end she just hadn't been worth all the effort at all. So I sent it, just a paragraph. The short speech I'd written out was what I thought would best relate some of what I'd spent many nights back then formulating in my mind. A tell off to her without her tears or shouts about unfairness. A kind of finally getting to get closure for me about this. Several days went by with nothing. Then I checked the Facebook account and saw that any trace of her was gone. I was no longer a friend of hers and it was like she didn't exist on Facebook anymore at all.
I told Stacy about what had happened and she said she'd have taken it pretty badly if she'd gotten something like that back, here this girl had sent out an olive branch of forgive and forget and I'd in essence lit it on fire and sent it back! So, Stacy made me feel REALLY guilty about even doing that at all. It had been after all 4 years, so why did I bother? I got none of the expected satisfaction from it, not like I'd wanted, not like I probably would have had, had it been "of the moment" and not 4 years later. So here I am, 51 years old and still learning!
As for social networks, I'm still learning about them too. Personally I'm not so convinced about their necessity in my life. Interesting, a little bit, but I keep thinking then what's e-mail for?
Other family news;
Clifford had his second cataract surgery yesterday and other than some issues with his tranquilizer meds for the surgery he sounded pretty good and is looking forward to seeing clearly in both eyes again.
Mike had the chance to spend last weekend with them in Missouri as he's quite the traveler in his position with Boeing. I think Mike actually travels about as much as he said he used to when he was in the military! I told him he ought to get a small decent camera to take photos of some of the places he's traveling to.
Daughter Laura and family might be moving to Cedar Rapids as she'd called this morning and said that Russell has been offered a job their. Could they finally be getting into a good area and good jobs after almost three years of struggling? We hope so!
Well with interruptions its a little after 1 pm so I guess that is it for this Friday the 13th Blog.
Oh yeah, it's 1:05 and up to 37 outside. A little warmer than yesterday!
Type later, Tad
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