You know who you are.  The people who pop in look and never say Hi.  In other words lurkers.  Hello and welcome.   Reason I mentioned this is I was looking at the new back end, and again hit the site statistics area.  I don’t go there much, because I thought I knew who was visiting.  I was wrong.

There are people from the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, and others   People using PC’s or Macs or other.  People using IE, Firefox, or other.  Seems like a lot of Others here, but they only make up a small percentage.

It is also interesting to see what other people find interesting here.  Not always what I consider the most interesting, but it was at one time, because I wrote it.

So if you like, leave a comment.  Unless you’re on the already approved list (made one comment), your post will be moderated.  If you don’t want anyone else to see your hello, let me know. It will be our little secret.

Just having fun with all of you.  For those who do post comments, thanks.  For those that don’t, I hope you found something interesting in my Random Thoughts.  This is probably as random as it gets.

Oh yes, the main page is the most popular by far, but the post visited the most right now list on the bottom right of the page.

Hello world….

Today was a rather dull day at work. The rain did not help although Wednesday’s are notoriously slow days. I found myself staring out the window of the store at the lamppost across the street at the post office and remembering Gene Kelly dancing and splashing with his umbrella while Singin’ in the Rain. An excellent movie musical even if you can’t dance.

Later this afternoon, things picked up. I happened to be glancing at the front page of our area newspaper and I saw the face a certain young lady who I know quite well in full color right on the front page. I must admit to being slightly jealous.

About 2:30, the mother of one of my high school classmates came in just to deliver something she had for me. She went out to her car and brought back a picture of me dressed as the Herald from Cinderella along with her four granddaughters.
I made it a point to mention Little Women coming at the end of June. She was not sure if the girls were old enough to appreciate this show but she would ask. I am sure that the oldest of the four would definitely be.

So, a little sunshine was spread on a rather dismal, rainy day.

In my previous post, I touched on “Where are they now?” when it comes to celebrities.  I read an interesting article the other day about the “kid” who played young Forrest in Forrest Gump, one of my favorite movies.  Michael Conner Humphreys is now a 23-year-old young man who is currently serving in the army like Forrest Gump did in the movie, ironically enough.  Another twist of irony – in the movie, a young undiscovered Elvis Presley teaches young Forrest how to dance, and Michael Conner Humphreys served in the same place that Elvis did in Germany when he was in the army!  Humphreys joined the U.S. Army in 2005 and is currently an infantryman assigned to a tank battalion and is known by the nickname Gump.  After a year deployed to Iraq in its dangerous Anbar Province, Humphreys was transferred to Fort Riley, Kansas.  He will leave the Army when his enlistment ends on June 4, 2008, and has already landed a part in an upcoming World War II film, Pathfinder.  It’s nice to see a former child actor making a good name for himself.

One of my daughters lives in Florida with her husband and kids. This weekend, on Mother’s Day, some wildfires started in their part of the state. By Monday, their town was hit with fires. Sections of I-95 were closed due to heavy smoke. Monday night I was on-line looking for maps of the exact locations of said fires, and seeing if any area near them was being evacuated.

There are many things a parent worries about when it comes to his/her children. When they are younger it is how much they get to eat, how much they sleep, why they are crying, what hurts, why does it hurt, are they sick, ect. When they get older there are different things to worry about. School, sports, friends, drugs, ect. When they move out, most of the time you can put worry behind you. Until of course something big happens where they live.

Accidents in the area they live in, with cars that look similar to what they drive are seen on the news. Fires in their apartment complex. And then any other acts of nature, in this case droughts and wildfires.

For the better part of the day, I was more than a bit concerned about my ‘little girl’ and her family. I finally got another phone call saying that all the fires are contained. A relief was felt.

The other part of this, is that I am an ONLY parent. I emphasized the ‘only’ for a reason. On this earth, there is no other parent than me. This is a huge responsibility. I don’t have an Ex who can share some of the burden (I burden I gladly took by the way). No one to share ideas with. No one to complain about the kids too. I tend to internalize all of this, for better or worse. I know my girls can see it most of the time, but I’m not sure about the rest of the world. Even as the children grow older, and need a parent less and less, the worries still come. There are times when I wish I wasn’t on my own in this. Fires scant miles from where one of your children is, is exactly one of those times

We put in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire for the kids the other day, and I was curious about what happened to the youngest daughter in that movie, Mara Wilson, because I’ve always thought she was so cute.  So I looked it up on imdb.com, and discovered that this movie is 15 years old already!!!  Which means that little Natalie, the cute girl from the film, is almost 21 years old!  I looked her up elsewhere on the internet because I get curious about the “where are they now” aspect of celebrities, and I found the following interview she did while promoting a Cinderella stage play she was in.  It was from 2006, when she was 18, but little “Natalie” is all grown up, and it’s weird to see her as an adult…  well, a legal one anyway.  Here is a link to the video:

https://www.spike.com/video/2702330

Sigh. If there is one thing that is deficient it is the software that one of the districts I’m in uses. No teacher comments on jobs, and no way to change the school in the case of a traveling teacher. So, it is up to the teacher to contact the sub and let that sub know when a position doesn’t start where the system says it does. Needless to say, today I was that sub. Last time I took a social studies position the teacher called me to let me know where I would need to be. Not this time. While I was aware it was likely to be an itinerant position again, I just figured since no one contacted me I would be going right where the system said I would. Silly me. I went there and, you got it “Oh, she doesn’t come in until the afternoon. You have to go to this other school…” I was pretty POed when I was told this. Someone has the responsibility of letting me know, whether it be the teacher or the office. At the other school I actually ran into the teacher in question. She was doing an observation so that was why she needed the sub. I didn’t want to be rude played it calm and apologized for not being on time because the system said I was to go to the other school. Whether or not she got the hint I don’t know as all she said was it was no problem since I didn’t start teaching for another hour.

I’ll have to say she did prepare thoroughly for me with all the materials separated by class, detailed plans, and whatnot. Meaning of course that I couldn’t blame her if things went wrong. 😀 Okay, I wouldn’t anyway, and nothing did go wrong. It was a rather pleasant day. Between the two schools I had four first-grade classes, one second, and three third. The lesson plans unfortunately were not quite the same for each class of the same grade so I was kept on my toes. The one thing I really didn’t like having to do was pick one student from each class to get an award for behavior. While I would like to say I was completely objective on the selection I really couldn’t keep a constant eye on each student to determine who best earned it. It was inevitably more like picking three or four students to watch who seemed to be behaving themselves and look for reasons to disqualify them, then still winding up picking between two or three at the end, completely subjectively. Oh, well.

Yesterday I was at a local middle school as the industrial tech sub. Tomorrow I will have a half day (oh why do I take these? At least I will get to sleep in!) for IT at another school. I already know what to expect there, so I could write up a comparison of the two, but I will save it for tomorrow anyway, just because I can. 😛

I ran into a bit of news today that made me take a bit of notice. Microsoft has launched a new site Worldwide Telescope. I’m downloading the software as I write this, so I will give a more in depth look later. The software is supposed to be a virtual telescope with access to images from all over the world and from space. Terrabytes of data are supposed to be available.

For me, a one stop shop of various space images is just what I am looking for. If this even gives half of what the press release states, I will be interested.

I’ll keep you posted as I use the software.

I can’t imagine what these teens were thinking…  Teens often do stupid things, but this one is beyond stupid…  I just don’t have much to say about this; I’m dumbfounded.  I don’t understand how a person or persons would come up with such an idea – too bad they couldn’t use that “creativity” more productively!

https://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/0509081corpse1.html

And check out the part in the police report where they say that one of the defendents regurgitated upon being questioned…  is that a consequence of remorse or fear of getting busted?  Is there actually a chance that he realized how disgustingly heinous his crime really was?

Ok, I know this is just asking for trouble but something strangely intriguing was brought up in David Letterman’s Monday night  Small Town News segment.  I have heard some strange town names before but this one takes the cake: Intercourse, Pennsylvania.  The weekly publication “Intercourse News” has the subtitle “about families that do things together.” Strange and twisted I know but I just had to research it further.  What prompted this post is the fact that it has ties to two Hollywood movies.  The previously mentioned film Witness was filmed in the Pennsylvania Amish community.  Secondly, the Tim Allen/Kirstie Alley starring comedy For Richer Or Poorer (?) was set, but not filmed in the Amish community. And the reason I decided to watch Dave Monday night…. Shia LaBeouf who revealed absolutely nothing about his little movie opening on May 22nd and spent most of his time talking about his arrest in a Chicago Walgreens in November.

I’m a glutton for punishment. I watched the second of the “Land of the Lost” shows, “Return to the Land of the Lost”. The same actors, with a different story. It was much better actually. I already knew that the story could not be anything like the book. After the first movie I wasn’t expecting much at all. The storyline was actually good. They writers did a much better job this time, since they didn’t have to throw anything away. It made my initial reaction to the actors in the first movie. They filled the roles well in both movies. The dinosaurs in this movie were actually worse than the first movie. There was one instant were someone hit a dinosaur and it looked like they were hitting foam rubber. Which of course they were, and they looked it. Oh well, I knew that going into.

I’ll have to get another “B” dinosaur movie, I actually enjoyed the last couple of evenings. Even if I complain a little about movie makers abandoning books. More on that in another blog, it just started getting to me again.