Hey, I recognize him.  Hmm, a bit younger, wearing pink, and in a wheelchair- I guess I didn’t recognize her after all.  No, I’m not on any sort of drug, illegal, prescription, or otherwise.  The class I was in today, a mentally impaired class, had a dead ringer for a boy who was in my cabin last summer and comes to church from time to time.  No, he didn’t look like a girl, but rather with the short haircut and the familiar face I thought the girl was a boy.  Then I saw the pink jacket and shoes, so I actually asked if the student was a boy or girl.  I didn’t realize at first why the face, not just the haircut but the face, cried “boy” to me, but once I looked closer at her I was like, “Wait a minute, I know that face…”  Well, if not the boy I know, then was she his sister?  Nope.  Completely different last name, and a foreign first name to boot, Preet, unlike his very English name of Danny.

To get on with things, this day was extremely easy for me.  It seemed like whatever I tried to do I felt like I was just getting in the way more often than not, so the usual best thing to do was in fact nothing at all and let the teaching assistants (there were three of them for the six students, usually eight though two were absent) do their thing.  These were primary kids (K-2), so that coupled with their impairments meant they needed the consistency anyway.  Their schedule for the day looked something like this: calendar time, which included singing; writing, which was either cutting and pasting words and pictures or inconsistent script for the higher-level students; an assembly which was a band concert by the area junior high; language lab where they put toppings on cookies (one refused to eat his too, saying the icing on it tasted “yucky”); making ziti for the party in the afternoon; lunch; self-selected reading; party with another class- they had made the dessert to go with the ziti- delicious!; more writing.

Well, I’m about to fall asleep so I will let the post end here.  If you see any errors, it’s because I couldn’t be bothered to fix them.  Tomorrow.  Until then.  Maybe I’ll add a picture to the top then too… 😉

I am a self-professed game show freak… AND PROUD of it.  Maybe that is why I enjoy the semi-weekly game nights.  If I had a bucket list, I would put being on a game show high on that list (not number one but high).  I very nearly made it on Who Wants to be a MIllionaire when it had the phone in game.  I made it to the second round at which point I got a phone call and had to get through another set of questions in order to progress to New York City; unfortunately, I did not pass that test.

Tonight saw the return of Password, hosted by Mr. Regis Philbin.  Two celebrities are paired with two contestants.  Actress/comedienne Aisha Tyler and actor/director (maybe not so much… has he directed anything aside from the forgetable Star Trek V?)/author/and now, celebrity interviewer William Shatner were the stars.  To say that Shatner was his normal, over-active self would be an understatement.  At half-time, the celebrities switch sides, Bill nearly fell over something and almost ended flat on his face.  You would have thought he was back on the starship Enterprise being tossed around, holding onto the railing for dear life.  His game play was nothing short of memorable… if you take my meaning.  But he was in there punching, having a good time, and able to have a good laugh even at his own expense which has been a trademark for his 50 years in entertainment.  Unfortunately, I did not find a clip of  tonight’s episode, but surely the memorable performance will be preserved in cyberspace very soon for all to enjoy over and over.  However, here is a clip of a younger Bill playing a solo round of Pyramid.

Happy Birthday to my daughter who loves the snow. We had a good amount of snow. It started early yesterday evening and continued on into the night. Of course the schools the had either delays or closures. This doesn’t affect my work schedule, but I sometimes wish it would. I do work in a school building, and the only good thing about no school is no students. I don’t teach or work with the students, so for me they just get in the way.

Anyway my daughter wanted two things for her birthday. One was snow. Well we got that. The other was to be able to swim. We went to our local “Y” last night and got some swimming in. I can’t see the thrill in swimming during the middle of a snowstorm, but it was exercise, and I do need that.

Even with the snow, which I do not like, I had two decent days. I’ll take all the decent days I can get.

We are scheduled (if the weatherman can do that) to get more winter precipitation later this week. I’m sure hoping it clears up a little on the weekend, mine is booked solid again. I would like to be able to get where I need to go.

Five years ago this evening, my second youngest daughter celebrated her 16th birthday. It was the last birthday dinner with her mother, and our last evening out as a family with her. That dinner was no my daughters pick for a favorite place to eat, but it was close, and we had some gift certificates to go there. Money was tight at that time, with all the bills and extra gas that was used for trips back and forth to Toledo. It was a place we could afford. Not exactly what you want for a sweet 16 birthday, but it was the only thing available. I was sorry at the time, but I couldn’t put it into words for my daughter.

Today that same daughter turned 21. The family left at home went out for her birthday again. She brought along her fiance. It was a better dinner, at least it was a restaurant she chose. With others in the family we went out for Pizza last Sunday, also her choice. I’m hoping the 21st birthday was better than the 16th.

Here is to my latest 21 year old. I hope you had a happy birthday, and wish many more for you. Love you bunches.

For only the second time in the history of The Price is Right, a contestant guessed the price of his showcase EXACTLY right.  Unfortunately, the other contestant at the end of the show missed her showcase by $517.00.  According to the shocked Drew Carey, the only other time this phenomenal feat occurred was in 1973 just months after the show began.  I’m not one to make judgements, but to me it looked like the bidder came up with the bid awfully quick.  Check it out! Something else I have been curious about.  Hypothetically, if both showcase winners were to be the same amount away from the suggested retail price of the showcases, would they each win their showcase?  Even more unlikely, if they were to both be within the $250.00 range, would they indeed win both showcases?  Thank goodness for wikipedia, as this nearly happened.  However, on a 1974 episode the differences were $29 and $30.  And yes both contestants would win both showcases.  Law suits surely would result if this were not the case.  Thanks to my brother who was watching while he is laid off for the holidays.

While the Benihana Christmas episode is about to begin, I saw on my email that a surprise guest is coming to The Office for the hour-long post Super Bowl episode.  Jack Black will be dropping by the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin and what the plot will concern is anyone’s guess.  Will he be bringing surprises of his own?  Will we see a wedding, perhaps?  Maybe an appearance Jan and her baby and a resolution to that plot line?  What do my fellow watchers think?  Sorry, D.

Many post big game episodes have done really well.  Most also feature celebrity guests like “The One after the Super Bowl” episode of Friends featuring Julia Roberts.  The brilliant series Alias (that was cancelled way too soon) had a memorable post game episode.  Unfortunately, J.J. Abrams seemed to put the spy series starring Jennifer Garner on the back burner while making way for his new series Lost.  There were also Simpsons post Super Bowl shots.  Hopefully, the Dunder Mifflin crew can bring another great addition to the post Super Bowl hour.

Saturday morning started off completely crazily of course – it was the morning of our oldest daughter’s ninth birthday party.  We were running around like lunatics, trying to take care of our own 4 kids and getting last minute details for the party worked out – we didn’t even know how many kids were going to show up since people refuse to RSVP, but that’s a separate post altoghter.  I had invited 25 kids – I know that sounds completely crazy, but my daughter’s school has a rule that you have to invite the entire class if you’re handing invitations out at school (understandable, don’t want any kids’ feelings hurt) – so with the 17 in her class + Brownies + outside of school friends = meant almost 30 eight and nine-year-olds could have shown up at my house on Saturday.  But thank goodness, only about 6 or 7 showed up (they never stood still long enough for me to count them), which is another reason why I invite every kid my daughter knows – if we had only invited 5 kids, none of them would have been able to come probably.

So Saturday morning was hectic, to say the least.  Various kids were melting down in anticipation of the party, and adults were scrambling to decorate and plan games for somewhere between 5 and 25 kids.  My husband is brilliant and came up with an idea to do a craft, and luckily we have a pretty big supply of craft items.  So we threw a bunch of stuff together, and the kids made Christmas ornaments out of small red plastic cups and whatever else we found and had an awesome time doing so.  I was feeling much better after the craft idea was hatched, because it was almost time for kids to arrive and now everything was ready.  My dog started barking, so I went to the window to see what the barking was about this time.  Just as I got to the window, a squirrel ran out in front of a car and got hit – right in front of my house and my eyes – ugh.  What an awful way to start a birthday party – I’m really sensitive about those kind of things.  I wanted my husband to go out and move it – it was right in front of our house – but he refused.  I can’t say I blame him, I wasn’t going to go near it for anything, and I made him tie the party balloons out front.  But I knew at the very least, kids (especially boys) would be talking about the dead squirrel for the entire party.  At least it wasn’t warm out, which would have increased the chances of the party spilling outside, further leading to more attention on the poor unlucky squirrel.  So I don’t know, what’s road kill / birthday party ettiquette?  Should we have removed the squirrel?  Never had to deal with THAT problem before.  And I hope I never have to again; it cast a terrible shadow over my day.  But as it happened, no need to worry about the squirrel – by party time he was flat as a pancake and no one noticed him.  By the end of the party, he had disappeared completely.  I’m just glad none of my kids had to see it happen; I think that would have been rough on them.  And I’m happy to report that the birthday party was a HUGE success with several kids exclaiming that it was the best birthday party they had ever been to…  of course one of those comments came from a kid who was at his first birthday party ever.  But we did catch one kid lying about calling her grandma to come pick her up.  She said grandma wasn’t home but it turns out that she had never dialed – I’m glad I’m well-informed of that trick now.  This same kid’s grandma didn’t show up last year until an hour after the party was over, hmmm…  As President George W. Bush would say – Fool me once, shame on…  fool me twice….  if you get fooled, you’ll be fooled again.

Happy 9th Birthday Taylor!

I hope you don’t mind my not-so-good attempt at dressing the site up with a decorated header…  🙂

It seems my new pet has gone missing.  Thank goodness I didn’t end up with something bigger, like a rat or a tortoise or something I wouldn’t really want crawling around the house unattended.  But I didn’t see this coming.  If anything, I thought my new ladybug friend would kick the bucket.  I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d vanish.  I don’t think the kids got to him; they wouldn’t have been able to keep something like that a secret for long.  But today when I went to check on Francis the ladybug he wasn’t in his cage.  And by the way, the name is after the ladybug in A Bug’s Life, not my late Grandmother – that would be FrancEs and yes, I still want a daughter to have that name.

Yesterday at the thrift store I found a bug catcher for a quarter, so I bought it and put Francis in his new home last night.  Today when I went to check on him, he’s no where to be found in the bug catcher.  My husband and I both examined the lid, and we don’t think he escaped, so my guess is that he’s hiding in these little pockets in the bug catcher that hold the screws – people can’t see in them, but they’re ladybug-sized.  And I think ladybugs hibernate during the winter, so we might not be hearing from Francis for awhile if he crawled into one of those holes to hibernate…  Nuts, he had a bunch of visitors all lined up!

As a change of pace from the usual “the world is falling apart”-type articles about conservation, I decided to share the following article from CNN.com about an area of Asia called the Mekong Delta region.  Scientists are calling the place a “biological treasure trove” because of its rich diversity of flora and fauna.  1,068 species were discovered there between 1997 and 2007 alone; including 15 new species of mammals.  Fascinating stuff AND something to read that contains promising news about the status of the Earth, rather than the usual bad news and negativity.  Here is the article – I find the part about the hot pink cyanide-producing dragon millipede particularly interesting – there’s a picture of it on cnn.com, see the link at the bottom of this post.

(CNN) — A rat believed to be extinct for 11 million years, a spider with a foot-long legspan, and a hot pink cyanide-producing “dragon millipede” are among the thousand newly discovered species in the largely unexplored Mekong Delta region.
The “dragon millipede” is among the 1,068 new species discovered in the Mekong Delta region.

more photos »  The region, including parts of Vietnam and five other countries, is home to 1,068 species found between 1997 and 2007, according to a World Wildlife Fund report released this week.

Some of the creatures were not lurking in fertile floodplains or tropical foliage.

A scientist visiting an outdoor restaurant was startled to see a Laotian rock rat among the nearby wildlife. The hairy, nocturnal, thick-tailed rat, which resembles a squirrel, had been thought for centuries to be extinct.

“There is a certain amount of shock because our scientists will sometimes see something that doesn’t fit anything they know,” said Dekila Chungyalpa, Director of the Fund’s Mekong Program. “They run through a catalogue of wildlife in their brain, asking themselves, ‘Have I seen this?'”

Perhaps a more startling discovery than the rat was a bright green pit viper scientists spotted slithering through the rafters of a restaurant in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

The Fund dubbed the Mekong a “biological treasure trove.” The organization’s report “First Contact in the Greater Mekong” says 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, four birds, four turtles, two salamanders and a toad were found.

Scientists are still trying to determine if they have uncovered thousands of new invertebrate species.

Scientists are discovering new species at a rate of two per week, said Chungyalpa, who said the reason for publishing the report now was twofold.

“We realized that we should highlight these discoveries in part because of the legacy of war and conflict in the region,” she said. “There’s an urgency with the threat of development in the Mekong countries.”

A horned bovine found in 1991 living in the evergreen forests of the Annamite Mountains of Laos and Vietnam has not been found in recent years, she said.

Timber development and mining industries are encroaching. There are 150 large hydropower dams that have been constructed along the Mekong river, and another 150 are slated to be built, according to the Fund. Dams that can trap and kill fish are at different stages of planning in the Greater Mekong.

High variation in geography and climate zones that enabled species to flourish are now jeopardized by climate change, said Chungyalpa.

War is always a threat in countries touched by the Mekong River, particularly Burma. Also known as Myanmar, the largest country by geographical area in mainland Southeast Asia has been ravaged over the years by conflict, political instability and natural disaster.

This summer, for example, the United Nations reported that as many as 100,000 people were killed by a cyclone that hit Myanmar. The country’s ruling military junta blocked the outside world for weeks before allowing aid to flow into the region.

There are cultural obstacles to protecting rare species, too. Many restaurants serve them as food. Restaurants often have rickety bamboo floors that one can look through to see cages filled with exotic animals, Chungyalpa says. The more exotic the animal, the more status it often bestows on the person who consumes it.

“Reports [like the WWF’s] are important because these regions can be educated,” said Maureen Aung-Thwin, the director of The Burma Project, which is funded by the George Soros Foundation and supports local Indonesian organizations working toward an open society.
“People are taking climate change more seriously and even the ruling junta have a forestry NGO. There are glimpses of hope,” said Aung-Thwin. “But it’s also a situation where someone could step forward and say ‘We don’t need this’ and cut it all down.”

WWF said it is working with governments and industry to plan the conservation of more than 231,000 square miles of forest and freshwater habitats that cross borders with all countries in the Greater Mekong.

The preceding article was published on CNN.com.  To read the entire original article, click here.