Yep, another collection of odds and ends from the Blog Fodder file, and from other sources ...
Yesterday's mail (a Saturday delivery, which is not long for this world) was enlivened by the sparkling presence amid the junk post and bills of a postcard from Amanda and her family, sent from Hobbiton* in New Zealand. I was touched by the gesture, and insanely jealous of the fact that she and Richard and the boys were able to go there and I wasn't. Sigh ...
The weather here in Northern Virginia continues to be schizophrenic, alternating between springlike shirtsleeve weather and bitter cold. While New England is digging out from under more than three feet of the white stuff, we've had scarcely enough to notice**. On the one hand, this is a good thing, because I'm really not into getting my exercise by shoveling snow. On the other, a good snowfall (or around here, even a mediocre one) can bring things to a screeching halt faster than even Congress can.
Yesterday afternoon and evening Agnes and I were baby-sitting for Leya and Elise, our local grandchildren ... an exhausting task to be sure, but nevertheless a joy. After dinner and baths (Leya was desperate to have a bath in our jacuzzi tub, although Elise just wanted to watch, being a bit weirded out by the rumble of the jets), we settled down to watch a movie - Disney's The Little Mermaid. It was cute, as most Disney films are, but the best part was a wonderful calypso-melody song called "Kiss the Girl" that is now part of my favorites collection on my iPod. The song is clever and tuneful, and the video is delightful ... you can't not love this song ...
Another high point of yesterday was the chance to talk again via FaceTime with our other four grandchildren, who now live in Germany. We'd gotten spoiled having them living so long in Dayton, but now that they're on another continent, staying in touch is harder, especially given the six-hour time difference which complicates live chats. It was great to see and talk to them again, and to see how little Ava - now approaching three months old - is growing. Like all babies that age, she looks a lot like a cute, chubby Winston Churchill. Or a chipmunk with full cheeks. Joe and Noah are as rambunctious as ever, and my beloved Marcy, our oldest grandchild, will be a teenager (gasp!) in April. I'm way too young for this ...
Governments at every level are desperately trying to save money, often in the most inappropriate places ... like slashing budgets for schools and libraries. Courtesy of my old friend Dave in Germany, here's an example of what can happen when we skimp on education ...
CNN and other news outlets reported earlier this week that the largest prime number identified to date had been discovered. It is more than 17 million digits long, which makes it almost long enough to use in discussions of the federal budget deficit (if you are a conservative) or the annual number of deaths attributable to guns (if you are a liberal). A prime number, for those of you who may not be aware of the term, is a number that can be evenly divided only by itself and 1 - the first ten prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, and 29, and there are people out there who dedicate their lives, fortunes, and computer time to finding increasingly enormous primes. The prime number identified this week also happens to be a Mersenne Prime, a distinction of no particular use to those of us whose mathematical talents are limited to balancing a checkbook to within a few dollars and not running afoul of the IRS***.
And that's all for today.
Tomorrow morning I have an early dental appointment, which means I'll be going in to work late, which also means that I'll have time to both do my time on the elliptical machine and write a Monday blog post. See you back here again tomorrow morning!
Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.
Bilbo
* The home of Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit, from the movie of the same name, in case you didn't know.
** Back home in Pittsburgh, it used to be said that it didn't count as a snowfall until you could track a cat in it. By that yardstick, we ain't got $%#!.
*** Did you notice that all the people in the pictures on the IRS website are smiling? What's up with that?
5 comments:
I've always loved The Little Mermaid
Grandchildren visits are exhausting; I'm surprised that we had the stamina to be parents, even though my wife bore the heavier part of it.
I really enjoyed that song in The Little Mermaid. I was preschool at the time and it was my first taste of calypso.
Slashing the budgets for schools and libraries is allying oneself with ignorance.
WOW! It 40 days to move from Hobbiton to your home! Maybe they used some Hobbit postal service...
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