[smugly]  Voter #106 reporting in.

To be honest, I wasn't even aware there was an election going on today until my son, Jonathan, mentioned it.  There's precisely one item on the ballot . . . whether or not to keep the 1/2 cent special tax for the police.

I voted in favor of it, BTW.  The money's been well spent, so far's I can tell.

Isn't that sort of silly, to have an election solely for this purpose?  We just had a general election last November.  Wouldn't it have been more efficient to have voted on this question back then? 

What a bitter, unhappy, crabby person Wanita Renea Young of Durango must be. 

Isn't this a depressing story? 
Last July a couple of teenage girls in Durango, CO baked some chocolate
chip and sugar cookies, made packages of them, and left them on
neighbors' porches as a surprise.

Well, surprise! 

They had the misfortune to select Ms. Young as one of the recipients of
their largesse, blissfully unaware she's what could be charitably
called the nervous type.  When shadowy figures on her rural home's
porch banged (knocked, probably) on her door, she called out "Who's
there?" only to have the figures run away.

Which makes sense, considering what the girls were doing . . . leaving surprise treats for people.

Ms. Young was so terrified she spent the night at her sister's house,
then headed to the hospital the next morning because of her "shaking"
and upset stomach.  Somehow she found out who was responsible for
the frightening experience she'd suffered, and declined the offer by the
girls' families to pay the medical bill, instead choosing to sue.

The judge went ahead and ordered the families to pay those bills, while
refusing to set punitive damages. 

Make no mistake, I can understand it would be a bit nervewracking to
have someone knocking on the door late at night and running away, but
surely once it's discovered it's just a couple of girls delivering
cookies as a nice surprise, that should have been the end of it?

Ms. Young, you are obviously too much of a scaredy cat to live in a
rural area....get thee to a gated community, so you can be protected
from vicious kids delivering cookies. 

P.S.  Here's how another website put it:  Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Jo Zellitti of Durango, Colorado wanted to do
something nice for their neighbors one mild
summer evening. So they skipped the local hoedown and baked cookies for
their neighbors. They began delivering the cookies at around 9 PM, between Civil
Twilight and Nautical
Twilight, taking care to only knock on the doors of people who had lights on
inside. Some time around 10:30 PM, after Astronomical
Twilight, the teens knocked on the door of 49-year-old Wanita Renea
Young.

Young did what anybody would do if someone knocked on their door at 10:30 PM:
she had a complete mental meltdown. She called the Sheriff's Department, who
told her no crime had been committed. So she took the next best course of
action: an anxiety attack and a trip to a local hospital emergency room.

The families of the girls offered to pay for Young's hospital visit and the
girls sent letters of apology, but Young refused, saying the apologies weren't
delivered in person. She sued, and a judge awarded her . . . reimbursement of the cost of her hospital visit.

None of the girls' other neighbors were terrified by the cookies.

In these troubled times, it's reassuring to see the advances which have been made on A Very Important Front.  (You need Flash to be able to see it.)

Looming on the horizon is one of the primo events of Fort Worth:  The quadrennial Cliburn piano competition.

The Star-Telegram has had its music critic attending the auditions around the world (a few days ago they'd left Russia and were in Switzerland, with NYC next on the itinerary) and reporting back on who looks like they might make it and who probably doesn't stand a chance.  There will be auditions here in Fort Worth later this month, and attendance is free.  Naturally the level of play will be uneven, but that's okay.  I think I'll go to those!  It'd be interesting to pick out a favorite or two now, and wait to see if they make the cut, then root for them when the competition gets under way rather than starting from scratch.

Being addicted to Middleageguy's blog, I eagerly anticipate his Friday Foolishness, which includes "Stupid Quote of the Week," which is certainly stupid this week:

Stupid Quote of the Week:  "We do not think it rises to the level of a safety defect."  --  Chrysler Spokesman Max Gates, fighting a recall of 600,000 Dodge Durango and Dakota Trucks even though Chrysler has acknowledged that upper ball joint separation "might make the trucks' wheels fall off".

A couple of days ago I managed to oversleep.  Normally I'm the first up, awakening Don at 7 a.m., then Dmitry about 20 minutes later.

This time I was roused from a sound sleep by Don, curiously inquiring if Dmitry doesn't have school today.  Muzzily looking at the clock, I'm horrified to find it's 7:26.  We should be walking out the door.

After he's hastily woken up  and gotten ready for school, we began to leave, with me yawning my head off (I don't do well when woken up) to the point of making Dmitry nervous.  He worriedly and earnestly pointed out, "It's not safe to drive when you're sleeping!"

Can't argue with that logic. 

A benefit of growing older - "maturing" has a nice ring to it - is
discovering a willingness to (occasionally) eat stuff I used to refuse
to touch.

Rye bread, for instance.  I'm quite partial to it now.

Yellow squash and zucchini for another.  (Still not touching stewed squash, though....it was revolting when I was a kid and it's revolting now.  Ugh.)

I'm waiting anxiously to see if a softening of my revulsion towards the Denizens of the Deep sets in.

That'd be cool.

I tend to listen to oldies stations when in the car, and one of the most frustrating things is to hear the tail end of a favorite, not-often-heard song on a station which boasts it "never plays the same song twice in one day!"

IOW, "That song we just played?  You missed it." 

Speaking of good ideas, here's one I wished I'd thought of when going to collect Dmitry....taking along a game of Memory.

Brianna, who I now keep for a bit on Mondays, is addicted to it, so I bought a Disney Memory game for us to play.  On MLK day Dmitry was home from school and he joined us for a rousing game . . . turns out he'd never played before.

He loved it. 

And handily beat both Brianna and me.

Now he and I play by ourselves, though he is anxious that Charles not see him play, fearing (regrettably, not an unfounded fear) to become An Object of Derision.  Still, play we do, and the pest of a boy usually beats me.  Usually.  Not always.

If anyone reading this is waiting to go to Russia to collect their children, take my advice and pack a $5 memory game.  The directions are nearly intuitive and it's lots of fun. 

The story of winter weather in Texas, for the most part.

Winter weather watch!  Snow advisory! 

Nary a single flake. 

What annoys me is there will be explanations as to why the Weather Event is being predicted, but when it fails to materialize, there is no equivalent explanation of why the forecast bombed.  And I, for one, am curious as to what the heck happened.

Really, sometimes my father has the best ideas.

Case in point:

This is a handy chart with most (my shortlived stint as a business owner and Kirstin and Alex's college graduations were omitted, I'm sure inadvertently) key family events on it, beginning with 1947, when he and Mom met (in June, at River Crest Country Club), up to the present (last entry - Jill's pregnancy).

It's laminated! 

Along with this came a spiral bound book, handwritten, with details from every year from 1960 on. 

Betcha didn't know 1960 we had a white Christmas tree.  Or that on January 1, 1970, Dad, Mom, Louis, Don and I all attended the Cotton Bowl, where the Texas Longhorns beat Notre Dame.  Or that 1986 was the year Dad and Don completed the most fabulous, well-constructed tool house ever built. 

For years Dad has made notes of every milestone and event in his family, large and small, and it's such a treat to be able to thumb through the years, exclaiming over this or that forgotten occurance.

I daresay it's never too late to start making such notes. 

Thanks for the cool memorabilia, Dad.  ;^)