Not for too much longer, though. 16 hours of school and an exam or two left to go before Theresa is unleashed into the world of cubicles and windows that won’t open.
It’s like introducing someone to your spouse and forgetting that they are her cousin (or something), but I’ve been reminded a lot of how not everyone knows everyone else here. So, once again, from the blogroll of Solonor’s Ink Well comes Solonor’s Aortal Site of the Week: Dandelion Wine.
Somehow, this just seems appropriate for Maria’s birthday:
I am not generally one of those who shout “back in my day” or “let’s go back to the good old days.” I don’t see how anyone who has a cable modem and a blog could go anywhere near that. Besides, which “good old days” do you mean? Do you really want to go back before you had all your toys? No PC’s, DVD’s and MP3’s? Hell, I don’t even want to do without self-flushing public toilets!
And yet I found myself looking at this list from Tanya and saying, “Yeah, we did all that stuff.”
How did we survive?
When I was a wee tyke, we lived in Wallingford, Connecticut, for a couple of years. I went to kindergarten and first grade there. It still amazes me that I walked about four or five city blocks, including crossing a main street (with the help of the fat, friendly cop) – by myself! I can’t imagine letting my 13-year-old walk by herself through the streets of Wallingford, much less a 5-year-old.
One summer, we rode across the country in the back of a pickup truck with a cap on it. Seat belts? Where would you put them? Three kids and a big dog in the back, my parents, baby brother and a poodle in the cab, hauling a pop-up camper from Maine to Denver, down through the South, and back. We got caught up in nearby tornadoes one night in Illinois. Our dog accidentally bit one of my cousins in Mississippi. One of my brothers got sick in Tennessee (probably from eating undercooked catfish).
I used to “surf” in the back of the pickup, seeing if I could stay standing as we went around corners. I used to bike to my best friend’s house 15 miles away, then hop in a canoe (without a life vest) and paddle down Kenduskeag Stream. I used to snowmobile to another friend’s house. (Oh, the ecological devastation and waste of precious energy!)
We played softball, football, soccer, basketball and everything from badminton to volleyball all the time in the summer, and the only time we ever had a problem with fights and injuries was when we tried to get into “organized” baseball.
But the one thing I miss most of all was the freedom to run out in the woods and play a “mean game o’ guns.” You know the drill: “I shot you! No you didn’t! Yes, I did! I shot you first! Nuh-uhhhhhh.” Almost every night, we’d be sneaking around in the trees until dark, laying ambushes and killing our friends (except during hunting season – we weren’t stupid!). I think that’s why I love MOHAA so much. It’s a virtual “mean game o’ guns.”
Excuse me. I have to go kick the kids off the PS2.
Not quite up to the level of the dullest blog in the world (yet). But I have great teachers.
PC Magazine has a nifty little article about how they spotted a PayPal scam.
I’m sure you don’t need reminding, but if you get an e-mail from someone asking for your passwords and/or credit card number, don’t give it to them. Unless it’s me, of course.
Common Sense & Wonder gives a little graphical spice to this week’s Carnival of the Vanities. Don’t worry, there’s a text version, too.
We went to the middle school chorus’ final concert of the year last night. Pepperkat is in the “Concert Chorus” (in the middle between “Beginning Chorus” and “Ensemble”). It has amazed me ever since the kids were in elementary school what a fantastic music program we have between our elementary, middle and high schools. Their elementary school music teacher was a part of a presidential commission on music and the arts and traveled to China to compare notes on teaching methods. Some of the harmonies and musical selections we heard last night were things my high school chorus never did.
That’s why it annoys the hell out of me to go to one of these concerts.
I can’t help but feel sorry for these kids who have worked their hearts out only to be greeted by a rude audience filled with screaming babies, yakking parents, ringing cell phones and rude cat calls. When the music teacher needs to lecture the supposedly adult audience on proper behavior, something is severely wrong (although I wish that instead of “Please, be respectful,” she had said: “Stop embarrassing your kid by acting like a fucking moron!”).
Is it this way at your kids’ schools? Or are we “unique”?
Continuing the comic book theme of the month, it’s A Blog for Galactus!
Of course, you’ll only get it if you know who Galactus is, but them’s the breaks. If you want to understand everything around here, you’re a sick, sad person.
Yes, especially made for the Spork Posse, it’s the Snowpeak Titanium Spork.
Damn! Why did I spend that tax refund so fast?
[ via The Spork Queen ]
N.H.’s ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ Is History (washingtonpost.com)
Wow. I’m glad I got to see it, at least.
