You know what frosts me?  When ARC (Association for Retarded Citizens) sends out cards saying they'll be in my neighborhood today so if I've anything to donate, put it in a box, set it outside and attach the card.

Which I did.  Large box of stuff, wrangled from the back porch to the street by Dmitry at 7:45 a.m.

Guess what's still there?   At 8:10 p.m.?

So now we've a good-sized box of stuff sitting on the curb.  Who's going to deal with it, that's what *I* want to know. 

Maybe someone'll steal it over night.  Hey, so far's I'm concerned they're welcome to it.  ARC had their chance and blew it.

Yup, they're definitely in Japan.

Alex called a while ago, sounding quite groggy, to tell me they'd just experienced their first earthquake. 

Woke 'em up out of a sound sleep around 5:45 a.m. (he'll doubtless put the accurate story on his blog later on) by the bed bouncing back and forth.  According to him the usual assurance he'd been given regarding earthquakes in their locality was "Oh, you hardly feel them."

He says they felt this one. 

A couple of nice bits of news arrived this morning:  first, a long email from Sveta, along with many photos taken on her vacation trip to someplace on the coast, and second, confirmation that the short email I sent to Charles (regarding Summer) was indeed sent on to his boat.

Wasn't absolutely certain I remembered his email address correctly, but apparently I did. 

Tell you what, I've been to the mountains, and I've been to the ocean, but it's uncommon to be able to do both at the same time.  Beautiful!

Sveta says she'd love to live by the ocean where it's always warm, and she needn't be bundled up in heavy coats.  (Already it's cold in Samara.)

Gorgeous sunset!

Russia's a lovely, lovely country.

The last photo (well, that I'm posting...she email many) took Dmitry aback somewhat; "Is that a wine bottle she's holding?"  

"Could be, Dmitry....for crying out loud, the woman's almost 26 years old.  She can have some wine if she wants it."  

Tell you where I'd love to take Sveta and that's Hawaii!  She'd be in hog heaven, wouldn't she?  

I hope, trust and pray that all of you read one of the best blog's extant, which is Middleageguy, who is a fellow DFW'er (in fact, he might live in Tarrant county, but I'm not sure about that).   If you've not done so, well by jingo, now is the time to start.    A snippet to get you started:

Is everyone up to speed on the surprise purchase of YouTube by Google?

According to an article at CNN.com, YouTube is just a few years old, has a grand total of 67 employees, has yet to show a profit, but sold for $1.65 billion. 

So far's I've been able to discover, that's nearly all gravy.  Oh, I daresay there are some start-up loans to be repaid, and large credit card balances to be paid off, but even were there to be $65 million in outstanding debt . . . which I seriously doubt . . . that'd still leave a cool billion bucks profit. 

Seeing as how I've got some videos stored on YouTube myself (Charles' passing in review at his graduation from Navy boot camp has been viewed over 1,200 times, while one of Alex's Senior Recital snippets is over 1,700), I'm torn between feeling flattered that the repository of my children's videos is so highly valued, and worrying that someone, somewhere is gonna be expected to make the purchase lead to a profit, and possibly those "someones" are those who use YouTube.

A not completely illogical expectation.  I mean, they DO provide a service, and bandwidth costs money.  How it'd be priced so as to make a $1.65 billion price tag seem sensible in retrospect has me a little anxious. 

Mostly, though, I just wish I could come up with some obvious offering such as YouTube, or Broadcast.com, which made Mark Cuban the tantrum-throwing pro-basketball-team owner he is today.  There it is, though....for a few years I'd tried to find some way to be able to share the little videos I shoot of the children and grandchildren, but the idea of something like YouTube never occurred to me. 

From the "Things I Sort of Thought Everyone Knew But Apparently They Don't" file comes this bit of information that might prove to be useful to some of y'all:

Y'know, as long as an elevator's doors are open, there's simply no point in pushing the button to call another one.

This morning I was Doing My Civic Duty by presenting myself to the pool of the day's potential jurors and as we tended to move in a herd up and down the Justice Center, I noticed how frequently people would push the call button for the elevator, even though the crowded one hadn't yet closed its doors.  This was not once or twice....such would not rate a blog post....but the last time we were heading downstairs upon being released from duty, I counted no fewer than six people try to call another elevator while there was one still having people get on.

They'd push the button, it'd light momentarily, then go out.  Repeat, sometimes with the same person, usually with a different one.

It's always perplexing to find that other grown people don't possess a bit of practical knowledge I assumed was widely known.  It's not as if I'm the most technologically savvy person on the planet, but even I figured out decades ago that so long as one elevator on a floor is open, there isn't gonna be another one available.  Sad, but there it is.

If you didn't know it before, you do now.  Wait till the doors close on the elevator you missed before pushing the button to summon another.

As has been mentioned here before, Kinky Friedman is running for governor of Texas.  An ex-submariner, whose blog I read, noticed this photo from Friedman's website:

See the lower medal.....the wide, skinny one?  That's what Charles is hoping to qualify to wear during this tour on the Dallas, i.e. dolphins.  Right now all he can do is clean and stand watch, as he's not sub-qualified yet.

So far's anyone can tell, Friedman's never served on a submarine, so couldn't have earned those dolphins.

The ex-bubblehead blogger is trying to decide whether to be upset or not; should sporting a medal one hasn't earned be taken as a compliment, or taken right off his jacket? 

Personally, I think it's inappropriate for someone to wear a medal to which they are not entitled, but maybe I'm just being a crab.

If you want to be driven to the Funny Farm in short order, just visit it and start working on the puzzle found there.  Some of us have been chewing at it for a couple of days now, and I know where I could go to sneak peeks at what others have done, and heaven knows I'm not above doing so, but still....that's a last resort, filching off strangers.

I'd rather filch off of my friends. 

This has me totally stumped; any suggestions?

Y'know, the last time I checked Fort Worth is not in England, so why the deuce are the floors at Harris Hospital numbered in the English fashion:   G, 1, 2, 3....?

Over the past week  -  while visiting Charles' friend, Summer, and Dad, both of whom have been in that hospital for surgery  -  I've had to stop at the 1st floor more than once due to people getting on the elevator and instinctively hitting "1" when what they actually wanted was "G".

There's not a rationale in the world that will separate me from my firm conviction the floor directly above street level should be "2".

The downtown library also tends to be a trifle mixing, even though it only has two floors, but the upper floor IS street level, and the lower floor is essentially in the basement.  The floors are labeled as "PL" and "LL", which causes first-timers no end of confusion as their finger hovers over the buttons, uncertain which to push.

For the uninitiated, BTW, those translate into Plaza Level (i.e. street level) and Lower Level (i.e. basement level).  Heck, just call 'em "1" and "-1".  That we'd all understand.  

The other night I was sitting with Dmitry, helping him locate answers to the questions in his biology pack he'd been unable to find.

Suddenly my eye lit upon a word that caused me to shriek in rage and pound my fists upon the offending page.  Dmitry, being of a rather nervous disposition, was understandably startled at my outburst, which in turn caused him to yell in dismay and surprise.

Basically, pandemonium reigned.

What caused such a ruckus?  I'll tell you....

One word:  cactuses.

CACTUSES?  CACTUSES?   

I beg your pardon, illiterate folk who are writing biology texts, what happened to CACTI?  Look, the song "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas" is a cute song, and the "hippopotamussusses" is amusing, but it isn't proper grammar.  Neither is "cactuses."

One cactus.  Two cacti.  One hippopotamus.  Two hippopotami.  One virus.  Two virii. 

This is actually one of the simpler grammatical rules of this wacky language we call "English."  If a noun ends with the plural "us", make it the singular "I".

It's a fine how-de-do when those who write textbooks of whatever subject cannot manage to use correct grammar.