The Hammer Will Fall

The weather here continues to be marvelous, warm and un-January like.  The digital sign on the bank in downtown Alma today said the temperature at 3:00 PM was 71 degrees.  Now, I think that's a little higher than it really was, but it was at least 65 or thereabouts.  I'd like to know where the measuring device for the bank is located.  If the thermometer is in the sun it's going to give a higher reading than the true temperature.  We have one more day of this and then Mother Nature drops the hammer.  Friday, the high will be 31 degrees with clouds in the morning and rain then snow in the afternoon.  And so it will be through Tuesday, with each day promising snow.  We could really use the moisture.  By a week from today, though, things will start to warm up again.  

Okay, last post I asked  if anyone out there could identify the singer who changed her name from Mary Isabella Catherine Bernadette O'Brien.  That's a mouthful for a name and we all liked her better as Dusty Springfield, one of the all time greats.  I have had her "Dusty In Memphis" album for decades, first on LP and now on CD.  I also acquired an album that contained several songs she recorded in the 60s and 70s but which were not released until five years after her passing.  One of the best is her cover of Carol King's "You've Got A Friend".  Outstanding.  We lost her to breast cancer in 1999, and the world of music has been a little emptier ever since.  For next time, let's see how many of you can identify the actor who was born Thomas Mapother IV.  You can email me if you think you know it, or you can click on the "comments" link at the bottom of today's blog entry.

Nebraska has changed a law it passed that contained a glitch that caused the state to get nationwide notice.  Like most states, the legislature passed a "sanctuary" law intended to allow unwanted newborns to be taken to a hospital and dropped off, no questions asked, no names taken.  It is certainly better than finding dead newborns in dumpsters.  That was the intent of the law.  In writing it, however, the legislators neglected to put an age limit for the child involved and people begain dropping off unmanageable teenagers, saying, "OK, Nebraska, he/she is your problem now."  The writers of the law also neglected to limit its applicability to residents of this state, so one lady drove up from Atlanta, GA, and dropped off her 11 year old son who she said she simply could not handle any more.  All of this made national news and the law was recently corrected on both counts:  children involved must be residents of Nebraska and can be no more than 30 days old.    It has also brought to the state's attention the fact a great many parents are at their wits end when it comes to dealing with their kids, so the state government is holding conferences and hearings to try to develop solutions for the problem.  It is probably more than this state can solve.  It's a national issue with tons of contributing factors, but it's nice to know that the problem is being recognized as affecting everyone:  The more these kids wind up in the state systems, the more it costs everyone in every state, and the answers always start in the home.  

 

Good Weather and Guessing Game

The good weather we've enjoyed will hold for the next couple of days, but then the forecasters say we are in for cold and snow for four consecutive days.  It is winter, after all, so I can't complain too much.  I drove to one of my favorite fishing spots on the lake today to see if all the warm weather might have thawed the shore ice and allow some fishing, but no such luck.  Ah, me.  Such is life.

For many years, my great aunt was involved in the Hollywood scene and was wardrobe mistress to Lucille Ball during the greatest days of Desilu productions.  She did pretty good - she married the Desilu treasurer and they ran off in the sunset to Palm Springs.  Among other favors, she got me autographs of many of the movie celebrities.  My book had the signatures of stars such as Van Johnson (shows you how old I am), Cyd Charisse (When I was younger, I thought she was the sexiest woman alive), and Robert Taylor.   Aunt Dell, as she was known, also got me tickets to the filming of I Love Lucy, December Bride, and Our Miss Brooks.  The tickets were great because I was such a nerd in High School that going to the filmings was the only way I could get a date.  

A life long obsession started when my aunt told me that the actor Robert Taylor's real name was Spangler Arlington Brough.  No wonder he changed it.  Then I wondered what the real names of other stars were, and I have collected them ever since.  I'm not going to list them all here, but I'd like to pull one out of my database to see if any of my readers know who she is.  I'm speaking of Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov.  By what name do we all know her?  Hint: She has won an Oscar, three Golden Globes and four Emmys.  She's not from the past; She is one of the today's A-List actors. I'll reveal her name at the bottom of today's blog.

 Out here in the boonies, cable TV is a hit and miss proposition.  It costs a lot of money to string cable to a small town of just a few hundred people, and not a lot of companies are willing to do that for the meager income it will bring.  For that reason, Dish TV and Direct TV satellite dishes are everywhere.  I had Dish TV installed shortly after I moved here because it gives me a couple of neat benefits.  During the football season I subscribe to a sports package that gives me both southern California Fox Sports stations so that I can see the games of my beloved UCLA Bruins.  I watch them faithfully, even through miserable seasons like this last one.  Also, for 1.50 a month I opted to get KTLA, channel 5, Los Angeles, because it shows the Rose Parade uninterrupted.  Most stations here that show the parade tend to cut out the bands and horses, which I would like to see.  Before I moved here, KTLA was my source for morning news and sports, and now I can stay aware of what's going on out there for my old friends and neighbors.  

An emerging threat to both cable and satellite TV systems is on-line streaming video through computers.  New websites such as Hulu.com offer all kinds of TV shows with minimum commercials.  Example:  I am an enormous fan of the new Battlestar Galactica, which is totally unlike its 1970s namesake.  The new season started last Friday and I had a commitment that kept me away from home.  Not to worry.  The very next day it was available on Hulu and I watched it at my leisure.  Also, the commercial breaks on Hulu contain one thirty second commercial, that's all, then back to the show.  It doesn't subject the viewer to three or more minutes of an endless series of commercials.  Since my computer has a 22 Inch LCD monitor, and an upgraded sound system with a subwoofer, it delivers a true home theater experience.  Since my computer system, of course, is all digital, the picture quality puts my standard definition TV to shame.  It is one step short of HiDefinition.  

Hulu also has all kinds of older TV series to watch.  I used to love WKRP Cincinnati and Hulu has it.  I watched every episode of the series with only one twenty to thirty second commercial interruption per episode.  I always loved the fact that in that show, the buxom blonde was the only smart one in the room.

I'm not paid by Hulu, but that site and new one, TV.Com, have drawn a line in the sand that the cable and satellite people will have to deal with.  Even Netflix and Blockbuster.com offer streaming videos of the movies they rent so that a person doesn't have wait for the mail.  The Times, They Are A-Changing.

All right who is our mystery actor, Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov?   She is Helen Mirren.  How about that?  Maybe next time we'll try to guess who changed her name from Mary Isabella Catherine Bernadette O'Brien.  Email me if you think you know the stage name of this singer.  

 

A Seasonal Affliction, I Guess.

An annoying side effect of my move to Nebraska is that of allergies. I've never been allergic to much of anything except citrus products, an allergy that affects me and both my daughters. My mother was terribly allergic to citrus, also. I thought I had been suffering head colds last winter and this winter. Nothing terribly serious, but my nose would not stop running and I was going through enough tissues to cause a national paper shortage. The sneezing and the constant nasal draining was awful. I had a siege earlier this winter and then went through it again two weeks ago, then three days ago it hit me again. All this time I firmly believed those incidents were head colds, but it suddenly occurred to me yesterday that it might be allergy related. I went to the local pharmacy and picked an over the counter allergy med and it stopped the "cold" in its tracks. I have no idea what It is I am allergic to, but it seems that whenever we have significant winds this winter, I've come up with these symptoms. I have a regularly scheduled appointment with the doctor in a couple of weeks and I'll discuss it with him to see what I can learn. The town doctor actually takes time out to talk to his patients at length if need be. What a refreshing change for the "get them in and out" philosophy of most doctors in the L.A. area.

We have had some winds recently, but this remains an extremely moderate winter. Yesterday the high temp was 54, today it will be 56 (and may hit 60) and tomorrow is the same. There is a weather dividing line, however, that is not too far north and above that line it is bitterly cold. My apartment manger, Denise, told me that there have been years when January high temps above 70 have been recorded here in Alma. It's not a common event, but it has happened more than once. I noticed this morning that my bad weather boots are feeling neglected. I wore them for a couple of days in early December when we got some cold and snow, but they've just been sitting unused since then.

I'm taking my youngest, Valerie, to Kearney this afternoon where she will board a bus for Dallas, TX, to spend time with her youngest, my grandson Vani who lives there and is in training to be a fireman. He seems to be doing well. His fireman class started a couple of months ago with about twenty people and is now down to six, so he's hanging in there.

On the subject of buses, there are none locally. If you want a bus you must drive north 60 miles to Kearney or south 95 miles to Hays, Kansas. For the seniors and disabled in town, there is a service that delivers them to the hospital complex in Kearney if they need specialized medical services. The city of Alma senior center has a nice sized van with a wheelchair lift and is
available at no cost, not even for the driver, who is a terrific lady named Trish. But for the general public, you can add buses to the list of things that are near at hand in metropolitan areas but are not available to the rural populations of this country.

No Rocket Scientists Here.

I am constantly bemused by the number of drug busts Nebraska State Troopers make on I-80, which travels east and west through the center of the state. If you get on I-80 in Sacramento, CA, you can drive all the way to New York City without seeing a stop light. That makes the interstate attractive for dumb s#%$s delivering drugs cross country.

If a guy knows he's got 80 to 225 pounds of illegal substances in the trunk of his car, why in the world would he attract an officer's eye by tailgating, speeding, making unsafe lane changes, driving with expired tags, driving with no taillights, or (as happened once) driving a stolen car with no license plates?

At least twice a week the Omaha World Herald carries stories of these drug stops. Further, when the officer stops the suspect on a traffic violation and his instincts lead him to suspect something more is going on, he asks the driver for permission to search the car and the yo-yo says, "Sure. Go right ahead", apparently oblivious to the fact that after the officer looks in the trunk, the driver is going to become a "guest" of the State of Nebraska for the next several years. Of course, if the subject declines to allow the search, the officer only has to speak into the microphone clipped to his shoulder to summon a car with a drug sniffing dog.

In November, the troopers picked up a guy from California with over a hundred pounds of pot in the car, and at the booking process the authorities discovered he was awaiting trial for a similar drug running bust on I-80 in the month of March, 2008. You would think that at least he would have taken I-70 through Kansas and well south of Nebraska, but I have read statements from police investigators over the years to the effect that people who do these things "are not rocket scientists" and make some of the stupidest errors you can imagine. These ongoing drug busts have convinced me of the absolute truth of that observation and they provide me with ongoing amusement amid all the negative stories that surround them.



The young lady to the left is a cheerleader for the Houston Texans of the National Football League. Her name is Summer and the cheerleading is only a part time job/hobby. She is only of interest to me because of her full time job. Are you ready? She works for NASA and is (honestly) a rocket scientist. She holds a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Wichita State University and is a project manager for NASA. See, brains and beauty often co-exist in the same body, much to the distress of many new husbands who discover after the wedding that she's a lot smarter than he thought. Hmmm. There go his clever little scams to spend more time drinking and watching games with his buds. Right on, Summer, or as they say these days, "You go, girl".


I would think by now that all the geese would have migrated to the southern extremities and would be enjoying pina coladas adorned with little paper umbrellas, but for the past couple of days I have seen large flocks of geese flying and "honking" their way North. Why North? Do they know something we don't? Stay tuned for further information.

OK, So I Lied.

I didn't leave for a day or so: I'm back on the same day, but I hope with a good purpose.

At the end of August I "went off the air" with an internet problem that gave me fits. I swore it was the local phone company's DSL function that was the problem, but they swore it was my computer that was at fault. I am disgusted to acknowledge that they were right. A new utility program I installed to help my computer run better had tweaked my browser settings so that it would run faster but it didn't work like it should and wound up making my internet connection intermittent and then flat out dead. It took me a lot of work to find the problem, but now all is well.

I should explain that I regularly place a lot of stress on my computer because I like to see how far I can push its performance levels. I also love to try out new programs I find interesting and useful. What this means is that I regularly crash my machine. Sometimes it's easy to get it going again, and sometimes I have to wipe the hard drive clean and start over, depending on how much the "test" program screwed things up. On the good side, I regularly back up my data, music, photos, etc., so I don't lose much if my homebuilt system crashes. I, of course, urge everyone I know to back up his/her stuff regularly, which for me is the first day of each month. I have a DVD burner and it takes three disks to get it all backed up, but I have a lot of music (all legally obtained), photos and short videos to save.

I make two copies of each backup disk: One copy stays in my emergency tornado bag and the other stays at my daughter's house across town. I should state that my emergency tornado bag used to be my emergency earthquake bag before I abandoned the wilds of Los Angeles for the metropolis of Alma, Nebraska. I would urge everyone who backs up his/her computer to make two copies and stash one copy with a friend, relative or safe deposit box (as I know one friend has done). If just one backup copy exists for any of us and our place is burglarized and the thief for whatever reason grabs the disks around the computer, the backup is gone. Likewise, if a fire roars through a home and burns the backup disks, nothing good has been accomplished by the backup. Protect your photos, music, data, whatever. Make two backups and store one in another location - and backup your computer on a regular basis.

For those who like to use their computers but are not necessarily very computer savvy, please be careful of the emails you answer. In particular, a thing called "phishing" can really put a dent in your bank account. In phishing, we receive an email from what seems to be ebay, Amazon, Citibank, Bank of America or whatever and it tells us that some kind of personal information must be verified to solve some kind of problem with our account. If you look at the web page it looks exactly like the web site for that company, but it is a fake and once you follow their instructions and enter the information (social security #, credit/debit card number, address, etc) you are screwed. Normally the legitimate outfits will never ask for more info by sending you an email, and if you get one and think it might be real, do not, do not click on the link they provide you in the email. Close the letter, leave your email program, open your browser and use your bookmark or you favorites entry to go to the website for that company. If it's legitimate, you'll be able to navigate to the part of the website you need.

Another current danger is the invitation to make money by taking surveys, and if you do take the survey (which asks lots of personal questions)you will probably not enjoy the experience. One of my daughters is several hundred dollars poorer after having gotten involved in such an exercise.

The fake websites, those that are "phishing", seem to have one trait that can be a dead giveaway - they usually don't use good grammar, and that's because they don't come from the U.S and they were not put together by native English speakers. I got one supposedly from ebay recently and the page was a dead ringer for a legitimate ebay web page. In reading the explanatory text, however, it was obvious that whoever wrote it had an excellent command of the language but made a couple of grammatical errors that a native English speaker would never make. So, read everything on such a page word for word with a critical eye. As an example, I found one that used the word "irregardless". Wrong, wrong, wrong. No informative text from a legitimate organization will ever use that word. It is in the dictionary as an improper form of "regardless" and should never be used. Actually, I learned that lesson on that word many years ago in college English when I turned in a typewritten, double spaced six page assignment. In the third paragraph of the first page I used the word, "irregardless". The instructor read that far, circled the word in red and gave me an "F" for the entire assignment. Needless to say, I have been extra sensitive to the use of that word since then, and when I saw it in the fake email all my alarms went off.

Enough lecture from professor Brown. Have a good day.

Heat Wave

Got a call from my friend Jean in Duarte, CA, today. She's been hearing about all the super cold weather in the plains states and wanted to make sure we in Alma are all OK. We are super OK because all that cold is well north of us. Sure, it's not California weather here, but it has been an unseasonably warm winter with a few days of true cold and snow. The high temp today is about 50 degrees F, which is much better than the high of 10 degrees to the northeast in Omaha. Most of the snow here is gone except in the shadier spots where old, dirty snow can be seen. In fact, pictures can tell the best story.


Standing in my front doorway, this was the scene on Christmas day. Mother Nature had been kind and gave us all a two inch coat of fresh snow for the big day, which was nice because on December 26, the high temperature in beautiful downtown Alma, NE, was 68 degreees. Go figure.








This is almost the same view taken this afternoon. As you can see, it ain't summer but it's not bad. I went walking along the trail by the lake today and most of it is free and clear of ice and snow. In a couple of shaded gullies, the trail is covered with ice, so I walked on the grass shoulder to get through. No problem at all. Got in my standard 2.25 mile walk in about 45 minutes.

It's certainly not bikini weather at the lake here, but we are not catching weather hell like the people in northern Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota, where the wind chill approached 60 degrees below zero today.


Did you know that UCLA has a women's rugby team? Neither did I until someone posted a video of the team's annual "prom dress" game, which is a promotional stunt to publicize the team. If you want to seem some hard tackling by women in formal dresses, here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoG5duF1N64

On that spectacular note, I will leave for a couple of days.

The Vacation Is Over

I've been off the blog for four busy, busy months. As most of those reading this know, I spent a month of that time back in Duarte, CA, helping to care for our friend Jean Moore, who took a nasty tumble down her condo stairway. She seems to be doing quite well and is almost back to her old self.

For me, I'm still happy to be in Mayberry, or should I say, Alma, Nebraska, winter notwithstanding. In fact, it has been an extremely moderate winter. We had four days in December when the high temp was six degrees F, but for the most part we have had no evil winter weather. Today our high will be 48 degrees F and by Thursday we'll be at 55. It was that temperature last Saturday, so I took my trusty Mercury Sable to the local car wash and gave it a badly needed cleaning. Why do cars seem to run better after they have been thoroughly washed and vacuumed?

Winter fishing has not been available here. The ice out on the lake is simply too thin to support a person and the ice around the shoreline has made it impossible to cast out. Northern Pike and Walleye are available in the winter here, but getting a lure out to them is next to impossible. Of course, I've got to get my 2009 fishing license this week. Being both a veteran and a senior citizen, it costs me only $5.00 for the year.

Both my girls are doing fine and my granddaughter, Enchantra, will graduate from high school in May. I'm not saying that the school is small (as is Alma), but the graduating class consists of 18 seniors. She has taken her ACT exam and passed with flying colors and plans to attend Concordia college in Seward, NE. She likes the school's computer graphics reputation and wants to be a professional in that field. Seward is a bit south of Lincoln, NE. so she will about three hours away if we want to visit. Concordia is a Christian college operated by the Lutheran church's Missouri synod, which means it is a serious place and is not known as a "party" school. Of course, if kids want to party, they'll find a way to do it regardless of their location. Enchantra has been awarded a scholarship which will pay for part of it and she has applied for a Pell grant as a result of her ACT score. She is a talented artist and I am delighted that she wants to use her gift of art to build a career. She fits right into that old saying, "Get a job doing something you enjoy, and you'll never work a day in your life".

I am relieved to be back on this blog. I've been jotting down some notes on things I want to write about and I have finally broken through the logjam of inertia. More a bit later.