Grandma
7/31/09

Happy Anniversary, Karen and Brent!!

Grandma and Donna and I went several years ago. It's an evening bus ride around Lincoln with a tour guide up front with a microphone telling the stories. The stories are all "true," whatever that means, so some of them are creepy and disturbing -- and for that reason they don't allow kids on the tour. Just FYI. --Gary

August still stands between us and the best part of the year (i.e., September-December), but there are signs of fall already. For one, tickets go on sale August 13 for the Lincoln Ghost Tour. Dates are October 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, and 21, and tickets are $10 each. You can order them over the phone with a credit card from Here & Back Again (817-4177), a little gift/candle/incense store at Indian Village (which is where the bus tour leaves from). Tickets do go fast!

Speaking of school, I got my schedule today too... Not excited about it, but whatever. School has to start sometime I guess :/ It's not the classes, as much as the teachers. I have geometry, career ed/health, toddlers/infants, biology, french 2nd year and english. Those are my classes, in order I think...

We took Shadow to the vet today to get two shots, and he did great! No whining, just layed there. Took but 10 seconds. So he is 3 months and a week today. Training classes start tomorrow at Petsmart and couldn't be more excited!! I taught him how to sit and lay down and we are currently working on shake and stay... I just wanted to get him started before the classes start, kind of be prepared. Anyways, that's all I had to say so I'll talk to you all later!!!

Happy Birthday, Sean!!

P.S. I was just wondering if anybody heard about the Mars thing? On August 27th?

Sorry, Livy, but the Mars thing -- the email rumor that Mars will approach extremely close to Earth on August 27 and be as big as the Moon in the sky -- is not true. Mars never gets that close to Earth. If it ever did, we would have serious problems -- and probably only a few days to live! There's a website called Snopes.com which keeps track of rumors and urban legends, and is a good place to check on whether something like this is true or not. (Scroll down to #10 on that page to read about Mars.) It would have been cool to see Mars up close, though! :-) --Gary

Quiet week here. Erika is at a friends for a swimming party this afternoon. Tomorrow we are going to Brent's nieces wedding reception.

Livy how is Shadow doing? You need to send in a picture of him.

Kidding...! Today's page up now. :-)

And here is a series of photos that need no comment: Sarah Palin, who hates the "gotcha" journalists, out on a fishing trip with...journalists.
Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3

Love that last one. Kinda says it all, about her and about the media.

And speaking of NASA dropping the ball, you know the original videotapes of Armstrong setting foot on the Moon? That priceless historical record of our first interplanetary spaceflight? Yeah, it seems NASA taped over them.... I thought it was a joke at first too, but it's true. They taped over them! The mind reels. Fortunately, CBS News kept some grainy copies that have been restored somewhat, so thank them for the footage you will be seeing today. Asked about the erased tape, a NASA official said, "We all wish that somebody had said, 'Those tapes are special, let's put them aside.'" Every time I think I have heard the stupidest thing ever, somebody proves me wrong.

And speaking of stupid, you will probably also be hearing today from the "the moon landing was all a hoax" crowd -- those people who think that, for whatever reason, the "landing" was faked and filmed in a warehouse somewhere. As often as this theory is debunked, those people never seem to get the idea. We did go to the Moon -- six times between July 20, 1969 and December 7, 1972 -- and twelve astronauts have walked (and driven) on its surface. If the hoax-theorists need proof, it is proven every day, like this: The astronauts left highly reflective metal plates on the lunar surface, and every day scientists aim laser beams at those plates to get precise measurements of the Moon's distance. Oh, and also they brought back rocks! Rocks that are unlike those found on earth.

Happy Moon-day, y'all!

There were 3 brothers at Pet Doctor (Shadow being one). He was the most docile and the one with the least white on him. He is all black with white on his chest and stomach. A white patch under his mouth and one white toenail on each foot. He has huge paws to grow into as well. He slept a lot when we first got him, but he is sleeping less. Max loves him! At first he was kind of weird that we got another dog but now he just plays with him until they both fall over! Max can still be a little jealous of him but we don’t think he will ever get over that.

Shadow is supposed to get up to around 75 lbs and about 20 inches tall. He looks like a border collie but when he’s full grown he will be the size of a golden retriever. He doesn’t like to be away from anybody for too long, whether it’s people or Max, he doesn’t like to be alone. He didn’t like his kennel at all the first couple nights, but now that Max sleeps in the kitchen with him, Shadow is ok. I’m going to be taking puppy training classes with him at Petsmart. I’m still training him at home, but I want him to be ok with other dogs around also... and I think that’s all I had to say... I’ll talk to you all later!!!

Coming this fall to NBC. --Gary

Hey, you probably heard this news story, but if not here it is: A guy in New Hampshire went to a convenience store and purchased a pack of cigarettes (like around 5 bucks I think?) with his Visa card. When he got his next statement, he was shocked to learn that the amount charged to his card for that purchase was $23,148,855,308,184,500.00. That's right, over 23 quadrillion dollars, which is about 2000 times the U.S. national debt. Oh also, they also added a $15 "overdraft fee." :-) Obviously a glitch somewhere, and he won't have to pay it off, but still... Check your receipts!

John sent in this link (thanks, John!) for the Disney Christmas Carol Train Tour, which is arriving in St. Paul tomorrow and will be in Omaha August 28-30. It's free, and is promoting the new "Christmas Carol" movie starring Jim Carrey which opens November 6. A little Christmas in July (and August) sounds like a good idea!

This first one is called "Women in Art," and it morphs together a series of portraits from the past 500 years (to the music of Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major).

And this one is a commercial from Thailand for Pantene Shampoo. It is about four minutes long, and they pack an incredible story into it. It's like seeing an entire movie in four minutes. The music here is Pachelbel's Canon in D Major.

I saw that storm on the weather map this morning, headed straight for Sioux City. It's like SC has a target painted on it lately! --Gary

So Grandma is home now, going through her mail and clearing off her TiVo, and the Nelson group (minus Brent, who I understand was looking forward to Long John Silver's take-out tonight) is headed back to Sioux City.

So I'm working up an alternate method of sending stuff in, which will work by email. It should function more or less as the textbox does. I should have a working version of it up by this afternoon. Stay tuned!

And thanks to Marsha and Sam for making the long trip! We all had a great time and it was excellent to see y'all.

Sorry, I meant to do a progress report here, but obviously never got to it. Yes, Marsha and Sam arrived yesterday around 4. Tristen, Teghan, Amanda and Ryan were over at various times through the day -- juggling swimming lessons and gymnastics and their various professions. Paul and Livy were there for dinner, and then we finished off the day watching an episode of "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency." Today Sam and Lindsey herded the rest of the girls to the manicure place for toenail and fingernail maintenance. Several shopping trips. Lots of daylight fireworks through the afternoon and evening. A couple of Valentinos pizzas for dinner, and then the whole crowd of us watched "The Wizard of Oz" on TV, re-casting it with family members. I don't remember them all, but Teghan claimed Dorothy, I was assigned the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Woodsman went to Sean (metal, you know). Everyone's plans for the 4th are all over the place, so I don't think there's any one central thing happening. I'm pretty sure I, and maybe a few others, are going to wind up in front of a movie on TV. Tomorrow night I think there may be some grilling going on for the evening meal. Tell Brent to take it easy -- he should cut his usual daily 10-mile run down to 3 or 4. --Gary

And a little further down the road, the Oscars are only 249 days away. The Academy Awards people have made two major changes to the system this year that will affect how you vote. First, it's possible that there may be no "Best Song" category. Each song now has to be given a rating when it is nominated, and if a song's rating isn't high enough it won't make the list. So, it could happen in a year of crummy songs that none of them make the grade.

The second and biggest change -- maybe the biggest rules change since the Oscars began -- is that the number of films nominated for Best Picture will be increased from 5 to 10. The idea is to give a chance to all those good films that don't make the cut. Of course, this also doubles the number of movies that can advertise themselves as "Nominated for Best Picture" -- which dramatically increases their revenue. But I'm sure that's just incidental....

So be aware that next year's ballot will look a little different.