Once more for the old year

I don't want to wish my life away, but I have to be honest. I can't recall another year I've wanted to kick under the bus more than this past one.

Goodbye 2011...don't let the door hit you.

It's been a rough year around here, but let's talk of pleasant things instead. Right now, my family and I are really enjoying a visit with our eldest daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter from California. Certainly one of the highest points of the year, along with their earlier visit near Thanksgiving.

Other highlights...back in June, my wife, my sister and I drove to Ohio to visit some of my relatives. That was a really fun visit, we enjoyed seeing my aunt, uncle, and four guy cousins and their wives. Stories were told, pictures were taken, and dinners were eaten. The other thing that made this special was the time spent with my sister visiting, taking turns driving and listening to music.

I also got to do a couple of things I've always wanted to do. Our church had a fireworks tent this year, and I volunteered to work a shift. And in mid November, I helped a friend of the family wire up a professional looking Christmas light display...animated, computer controlled, and set to music. The works. The family and I drove over there a few days ago to watch and listen to the show. It turned out really nice.

So I ought to just leave it at that, count my blessings, and end with my wish for a healthy, prosperous, and Happy New Year. May 2012 be a better year for us all. It just about has to be (I didn't go into all the various losses here this year, so just trust me on that).

I did get to thinking about one other thing...what was new in my life in past years. Regular readers of Poppy's Front Porch know that I like to make lists. Anyway...

Some positive things the years have brought...

1957 - my family's big trip to Colorado

1959 - our move to a bigger house and my start of school

1964 - baptized and joined the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod

1966 - lit the candles at my sister's wedding and added a brother-in-law to my family

1967 - flew with my dad to Atlanta and back. Later, discovered the hobby of model rocketry.

1969 - watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on tv and started high school in the fall

1972 - graduated high school and went off to Central Methodist College

1975 - transferred to the University of Missouri (lost some credits, but hey...)

1977 - graduated with a BA degree and got my first (short lived) mapping job

1979 - became interested in genealogy and started working on the family tree

1982 - married my best friend, still my lovely young bride. Saw the ocean for the first time on our honeymoon to Florida.

1985 - our first daughter born

1986 - attended a National Association of Rocketry regional meet and started becoming active in the NAR

1988 - landed my longest mapping job (lasted 13 years)

1989 - our second daughter born

1991 - our son born

1995 - our third daughter born

2005 - our first daughter's wedding. Later, our first granddaughter born.

2009 - our family's big trip to Colorado, Utah (Zion NP), California (our daughter's house and Disneyland), the Grand Canyon, and back

2010 - our second granddaughter born

I could probably find a few stories in all that.

The New Years Evening Rambler

Apologies to my few readers for the small number of posts here the last month or two. There are things I've been meaning to post about, but I've been easily sidetracked with other activities.

I have another installment in my "Astronomy Stuff" writings on the way.

And I need to finish posting photos and comments from the 2009 California vacation trip.

And rumor has it, there's another unofficial Marty story in the works.

And of course, I need to look through more recent photos from this Christmas season. We had a great visit from our California family - granddaughters and all, along with a fun day trip to Branson, where I had a good though short visit with other family members (and I got to ride in a small plane)!

At least it's not like I've been sitting here all by my lonesome. Check back here on The Porch for updates these next few days.

I had a couple of observations about New Year's Eve today. I saw this AP headline for a Yahoo News story...

"Millions gather worldwide to ring in the new year".

So now, what would happen if all the celebrations were cancelled, and the millions did not gather? Would the approaching 2011 stop in its tracks and say, "Hold it...what now?", or would it arrive anyway? If I were a betting man, I'd bet on the latter.

Then another thing. Holidays have colors, right?
Valentine's Day: red and pink
St. Patrick's Day: green
4th of July: red, white and blue
Halloween: orange and black
Christmas: red and green

I think New Year's needs official colors! It's wide open, so I'm going to start something, right here, right now. I took a poll of my family, and from now on, the official colors of New Year's will be...

purple and silver.

Who's with me on this?

Finally, I hope you all have a Happy, Safe, and Healthy New Year!

01-01-10

This is just nuts, as I told my wife earlier in the day. 2010 already? When we were younger, The Year 2000 was a ways off yet, but it was something we could kind of imagine...it was on its way. Then, there was that movie 2001. But 2010? Yeah, right.

Where did the last 25 years go?

The kids spent New Years Eve with some good friends of the family, so my wife and I had the house to ourselves. We built some popcorn and watched a movie we hadn't seen in a long while, The Princess Bride. We enjoyed the quiet evening at home, and the kids had a good time at their party...stayed up until midnight even.

This morning after breakfast my wife and I bundled up and drove to the local Wally World to exchange the flannel pajamas I got for Christmas for the same thing in size XL. That, and we bought a few other things.

It's been bitterly cold all day, it may have made it up to 15. In the afternoon, I went out to sprinkle some snow melt chemicals on the worst of the icy patches, and to take the trash cans to the curb for tomorrow morning's pickup. Other than that, I've stayed in. The weather guessers say it may get down to one or two below zero tonight.

We're starting to put the Christmas decorations away, bit by bit, which always makes me a bit sad. That, and I had hoped to light the oven to bake some snack mix this evening. Our oven is tempermental about lighting, and it was nothing doing tonight.

Not much of a report, I know. But I thought it was interesting how today's date looked, using just the last two digits of the year. There will be some fun number sequences this year...08-09-10, 10-10-10, and 12-11-10, to list some obvious ones.

The New Year's Eve Evening Rambler

My last post of the year.

Christmas update, part 1

Well, Christmas Eve the power stayed on, the dimming of the lights was caused by an infrared heater cycling on. In fact, the sleet quit just a few minutes after I posted, and it snowed the rest of the night and pretty much all day on Christmas. We got five inches of snow here, and I heard mention that some parts of the metro got as much as 11. Another inch and a half fell on Sunday the 26th. That's a bit misleading if you expect I could measure 6 1/2 inches of accumulation out there now...since then, the snow's blown around some and compacted some. And Tuesday (or was it Wednesday?) it got up to 34 briefly, so some has melted. It's colder now, and it may get down to the teens or even single digits tonight.

I took a lot of pictures this week, and I planned to transfer some of them from my camera to the computer earlier in the day, to post here. But that didn't work for some reason, and I'm not sure what I was doing wrong. So for now, allow me to back up to late November, and show you a few older pics...

Lights!



It was a reasonably temperate day the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when I finished putting up my outside lights and tested them.

A few days after that, we had a visit from my Sister and Brother-in-law. They gave me the address of a good friend of theirs who lives on the Kansas side, and who is seriously into decorating.



This display really has to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.



This is an actual show or program, computer controlled, synchronized to music which is broadcast by a low power FM transmitter to your car radio. There was the effect of motion; different segments of the tree would change color in synch with the music, at times a star on top of the tree appeared to spin, there were "leaping arches" around the tree, the lights outlining the roof would change color and so on. Planning for this year's display started months in advance, and I understand there is a group of people who put on these elaborate displays in different locations all across the country. My Brother-in-law helped set this up in October, and mentioned a big, thick three ring binder with page after page of detailed instructions, and custom made wiring tagged with numbers or letters to keep the assembly in the proper order while hooking it all up.

By the numbers:
5 - days to set up and test
14 - minute program
47,000 - lights.

More Christmas stories and photos to follow. Also, I plan to start January with a few blogs with some highlights of 2009 - things I should have posted months ago but somehow didn't get around to.

For now, have a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! And remember...it'll be 90 years before we have two zeroes together in a year again. I don't know what that bit of trivia does for you, but there it is.

The Evening Rambler for the last day of 2008

It's interesting what you can find when you clean out a drawer.

I went through a desk in our kitchen today. It had been my mom's, and beside the stuff I had recently put in there, I knew there was a stack of loose, blank paper...including some tracing paper and some carbon paper, of all things.

(As an aside...for a fun experiment, ask a child or a teenager what carbon paper was and what it was used for. Let me know what you find out.)

So you might ask, "Bob, how did they package things for sale before they started putting everything in clear plastic shrink wrap?


Well, sometimes they used a paper band. And not to change the subject, but while I'm thinking of it, does anyone know what year they stopped punching notebook paper with five holes? Not that that's important...but I do vaguely remember that a few notebooks had only two rings.

I'll bet you're itchin' to know what the Useful Premiums were. So, here you go.


Okay, it says Valuable Premiums on the back. I guess they were both Useful and Valuable. Or some of each.

Let's look at the list...hmm...

Only three of the item used electricity*. Two were battery powered (Flashlight and 6 Transistor Pocket Radio), and only the Electric Wall Clock plugged in. Many houses back in the day had an outlet high up on a kitchen wall, to plug in a wall clock. This was before battery powered clocks were common, much less any digital clocks.

I was told once that one reason that power companies took great pains to keep the Alternating Current at exactly 60 cycles per second was so electric clocks would keep the proper time. Even if you lived near the end of the line and the voltage would sometimes be allowed to drift up to 130 or 135 - and you'd burn out a few light bulbs that day - well, by golly the frequency would stay true and you'd be on time anyway.

(*Why, when I was a boy, we didn't have computers or even electronic calculators. No one had heard or even dreamed of video games, VHS tapes, DVD's, CD's or iPods. I tease my kids with talk like this...my youngest daughter's response "Oh dear, not again". Too much fun.)

I digress. Back to the list...

I'm thinking that if this promotion happened today, they wouldn't offer the Jack Knife.

Actually, I doubt that saving up a bunch of 25 cent** coupons would go over with kids today (In fact, I wonder how many coupons were sent in back then). How exciting would it be to save up for a fountain pen, a box of stationery, a stapler, or a pencil sharpener?

Yeah, I thought not. The Wrist Watch might be of interest...if it was digital. And for those who played sports, the Baseball, Softball, Basketball, Football, or Volleyball might be wanted. Notice that "Soccer Ball" hadn't appeared on the radar of our collective consiousness yet. At least not here in the good ol' USA.

And how about this interesting description "Beautiful Teenage Doll". Not a Barbie or any other recognizable brand name. Just a generic doll (not that we were familiar with the term generic yet).

The only item that really caught my eye (so to speak) was the flashlight. I could use another good flashlight. One of these days I'll go to the store to purchase one with some hard earned money. Serves me right for not saving up coupons for 45 years or so.

Anyway, I'm guessing pre-1964 here. At least, there's no ZIP code in the address...and I think those were first used in '64. Oh and Mike, did you notice this paper came from Springfield?

(**And where's my cent key gone? We used to have those on our typewriters - at least, on the old ones. Not to be found on modern computer keyboards. That's inflation for you, I guess. And now that makes me wonder how many young people today know what the lower case c with the slash through it means.)

Here it is again

Happy New Year...here's my wish for a good and healthy 2009 for all of you. I may post more thoughts on that, and some reflections on this Christmas season tomorrow.