This is my 100th post of the year. This marks the 8th year since this blogs inception in 2009, and the 4th consecutive year that I’ve published 100 or more post in a year.
That is of course, it will be my 100th post of the year if and when I publish it. A few years ago I wrote a post about having 100 posts in draft status. At the end of the post in the only comment, I had written that I had deleted all but 15 of the posts in draft status and hoped never to accumulate nearly as many post there again.
Well it turns out that I have been accumulating posts in draft status again. I currently have 77 posts with that distinction. The majority of these are from 2023, but I do have 14 from this year. As part of my 100th post of the year celebration,I will now list each incompleted post of 2024 by title in Chronological order.
Double Library Day
Team Saturdazzle
(Untitled)
Milwaukee Brewers Catcher William Contreras bringing major league streak to begin season
Crystal Lake Library
(Untitled)
(Untitled)
Anniversary vs. Annual
A to Z 2024 Reflections
(Untitled)
What’s most wrong about the 2024 White Sox
The Newfangled Four - A Spoonful of Sugar (Parody) [From Mary Poppins]
Former Chicago White Sox MVP , The late Dick Allen, elected to the Hall of Fame.
Not everybody needs a college degree (Writers Workshop)
That’s the 14. Some of these may see the light of day and most will be discarded. One of the drafts from last year is scheduled to post tomorrow for the next edition of Wordless Wednesday. I also hope to share the story behind that picture in a subsequent post.
Tomorrow’s post won’t be the last post of the year as I have a Michael Card Christmas Concert video scheduled to drop on 12/25. I’ll probably land somewhere between 103 and 107 2024 posts before the New Year and the whole race to 100 begins again.
Today, on my Facebook page, I asked: What is a phrase you hate? Here are the answers I received. I have listed the contributors by First Name, Last Initial, and where I first encountered them.
Have a good one. Dave R - Mother's Womb, Illinois
Welcome in. Amy R - Macomb, Illinois
Behind your back Patrick G - Elk Grove Village, Illinois
A whole nuther. Valerie T - Peoria, Illinois
God showed up. Stephanie D - Elgin, Illinois
I will leave my question out there for a little longer if I get any more responses I'll add them here.
Yesterday I got my hair cut. It's been very hot in Illinois and my hair has seen better days. So I got my hair cut.
Before Haircut
After Haircut
Day After Haircut / After Shaving
I got a two all over which is perfect for the hot weather and swimming. When I get my hair this short it literally dries while I'm waiting in line for the diving board. My hair grows back rather quickly, but I hope that as short as I got it cut that I won't need another hair cut until late September making this my last haircut of my fifties. I will probably need one more when school starts but just in case I made this post for posterity.
For The A to Z Challenge this year, I am focusing on everyday holidays. Each day there are multiple unusual things to celebrate. Every day of the challenge I look for an event taking place that day and pair it with the letter of the day. I have also made up 5 holidays to coincide with the vowel days of the challenge. At the end of each post I will share a special song of the day for that day's letter. At the end of the month, these songs will be assembled in a to z keepsake playlist on Spotify. Every day is a celebration, let's unwrap today's together.
The third Wednesday of April is One More Time and you Get a Parade Day.
As today's letter is a vowel, it is another opportunity for me to make up a new holiday. Many holidays come with traditions, games, or events that go along with them. Easter egg hunts, for example are believed to have originated in Germany in the 16th century. The first Turkey Trot (a race taking place the morning of Thanksgiving) took place in Buffalo New York in the late 19th century. One More Time and you Get a Parade Day may be the first holiday that was started to celebrate a tradition rather than the other way around .
My wife and I have been playing a game I invented around the time we got engaged called "What A Thing to Say". It started as a game to play when we were in a social setting that required a lot of mingling. I believe the original occurrence was at my Grandfather's wake. I gave my fiancé a thing to say, I believe it may have been The Almighty Dollar. Over the course of the event she had to work in the phrase into ordinary conversation 3 different times with 3 different groups of people.
Some of the original "what a things to say" besides the almighty dollar were, The Stevenson Expressway (A Chicago road), People don't floss like they used, to, and one of my favorites, I don't like blank (whatever person , place or thing just mentioned) they supported the war movement.
It's a totally random game that when played well is oblivious to all but the player, and when played poorly is a staple of group conversation for a very long time.
"What does this have to do with parades?" you might ask. A few weeks ago I was subbing in one of my favorite classes. It was the class in fact, that I had been a long term sub in for the 1st semester of the 2022/2023 school year. I have a great deal of familiarity with these students and they have a great deal of familiarity with me. The class is comprised of 6th graders and 7th graders and one of the 6th graders tends to sneeze 5 or 6 times in a row on a frequent basis. On this particular day, after the 3rd or 4th sneeze I responded with the quip, one more time and you get a parade.
I'm not sure how that phrase came to me. True, I just made it up, but, I was definitely thinking something along the line of when you do something multiple times you get a prize. I don't think I was remembering the below scene from A Few Good men, it is in my collective unconscious .
One way to celebrate One More Time and You get a parade day is by playing a version of What a Thing to say with your friends, family, classmates or co-workers. This could be done virtually or in person. Each person writes one phrase down and then they are distributed. Then each person has to use that phrase in a conversatToday'ion throughout the day. Another way is to try to make up your own expression and use it in the course of the day.
April is a month that starts with foolishness, but One More Time and You get a Parade say insures that foolishness doesn't end on the first.
Today's Song is Off Again On Again Love By Allen Levi
I generally put a video on of the song, but as far as I know there are no videos of this song, so here is a link to it on Spotify.
With this song, my playlist is now up to 15 songs.
It is already 9:15 P.M. in Chicago and this is the latest that I've posted in the challenge so far this year. I now must go, and work on tomorrow's. When I finish this one, I might not get a parade, but I will be caught up. That is certainly something to turn a phrase about.
To go to the home of the A to Z challenge click here, to see the 2024 master list of participating blogs click here. Enjoy the 2024 A to Z challenge, and Happy Holidays!
I'm in my late 50's. I was born in 1964, the last year of the Baby Boomers.
The year before I turned 50, I wanted to do something special to commemorate my last year in my 40's. On or about my 49th birthday I was with my family visiting the elks in Elk Grove Village. Elk Grove Village is a suburb of Chicago located near O'Hare airport, It is where I grew up and where my parents lived until very recently. There is a forest preserve in Elk Grove that extends into neighboring towns like Schaumburg. Ever since I was a kid there has been a herd of Elk maintained by the Forest Preserve in Elk Grove.
As my family watched the elk, an idea came to me. I could write a limerick, and post it on Facebook every day until I turned 50. I wasn't completely successful in my quest, but I do believe that I wrote and posted over 300 limericks over that time period. Why limericks? I never did figure that one out, but I think I owe a lot of the personal poetry renaissance I have been going through the last 15 months due to my year of limericks.
As my mid 50's turned into my late 50's I have been thinking how to celebrate the last part of my 6th decade. No "elks" moment has hit me and I'm not sure my FB friends want a year of haikus or anything like that.
A couple of months ago an idea came to me that instead of having some special activity, I could just be more purposely reflective during the time. I decided since my 50's were ending that I could perhaps extend the year to 500 days. So starting tomorrow I find myself in the last 500 days of my 50's.
Today is May 11th so that means that there are 20 full days left in the month. There are 30 days in June, 31 in July and August and 22 days before my birthday in September. That's 134 days before my birthday. There are usually 365 days in a year, but 2024 is a leap year so there are 366 days from September 23rd, 2023 and September 22nd 2024. Some may wonder why I don't count until September 23rd, my birthday. The answer, of course, is because that will be the first day of my 60's.
So, what do I plan to do with this time period that 1150% greater than Lent? First of all, give it up for Lent, it's a great religious observance, and it doesn't get nearly the credit it deserves. I'm not sure really. I think what I'll do is when I'm reflecting on my adventures in ageing, or perhaps doing something for the last time in my 50's I might blog about it here. But mostly I'll do what I encouraged my 11 year old future sister in law to do 8 years before I courted her sister, and that is cherish the time.
In the Bible we are encouraged to number our days. By delineating the last 500 days in my 50's I am inviting myself to live purposely. It is of course very possible that I publish this post and then regular life and my ADHD conspire that I never think about it again. This is part of the reason why I'm publish posting this on my blog and on Facebook so I do pay attention during these final days of my fifties.
Dear Facebook friends, this doesn't mean that there will be no more limericks. It just means I'm commemorating the end of this decade differently than I did the last. In fact, I think I feel a limerick coming on now:
My ADD gets in the way of my everyday life but it often leaves a pleasant wake in it's path. Today, right now in fact,I was getting ready to leave the house on what will be a very busy day. I couldn't find my phone and when I found it it was totally uncharged so I needed to charge it. I noticed it had earbuds in it that were not working on my phone last night when I was trying to listen to Moby Dick before I went to bed. So, instead of plugging in the phone and continuing to get ready to leave. I took the earbuds plus the phone to the computer to check if the earbuds worked on the computer, which they did.
I thought the best way to check it, would be to go to YouTube . Instead of going to the video I was going to look up, I got distracted by a Jim Edmonds video and began watching the video of his 8 amazing catches. I liked it so much, I decided to post it here. I also googled Jim Edmonds HOF and found this good article about his qualifications to be voted in by the veteran's committee. I was right about to go back in my archives and see if I voted for him on my mock ballot when he was eligible, when my wife walked by and asked if I found my phone and then reminded me it still needed to be charged. I'm going to go back now to my busy day, which I just made a little busier for myself. Thanks ADD!.
When I post this in a few days, the today referenced at the top of this (6/24/2022) will actually be in the past. How long in the past? Only my ADD can say for sure. For now: enjoy this video of great Edmonds catches that my ADD left in it's wake.
Hello A to Z Bloggers. The A to Z Blog had been maintaining a bit of radio silence since last year's doings, so I asked the team if I could write a guest post. To my surprise and delight, they said yes. Before I get into full A to Z mode, let me tell you about myself.
My name is Dave I'm a 57 year old Midwesterner, who's been happily married to my best friend Amy for almost 24 years. a father of 3, an educator, an avid blogger someone who absolutely loves the A to Z Challenge
My first year in the challenge was 10 years ago. It was the first and only year that I did not have a theme. On Sunday April 1st I wrote this post about not fooling around. Si nce then I have participated in several of my blogs. At least one year, I did 3 at the same time.
That's probably a good enough introduction about me for now.
I love a good palindrome. A palindrome is anything that is the same backwards as forwards.
I am writing this on January 31st 2022 or 1/31/2022 or 1-31-22. Tomorrow is 2-1-22 and Wednesday is 2-2-22, a palindrome. Could you imagine an alarm clock next to a calendar at 2:22 showing 2-22-22? If that's not enough awesomeness for you, it's also groundhog day!
But wait there's more ...
There is another spectacular palindrome filled day coming later in February. February 22nd 2022 otherwise known as 2-22-22 it's a twosday that falls on a Tuesday.
(If this isn't a place for a mind blown emoji I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS!!!!!!!)
So what does this have to do exactly with the A to Z challenge? Well, let's put it this way:
If you guys are going to get back into the challenge you probably need to do some forward thinking at the same time. What will you write about? Who will you invite to participate along with you? How will you make this the best A to Z year ever?
I may do more than one theme this year, but one of them is definitely going to be limericks. 8 years ago between my 49th and 50th birthday I wrote and posted a limerick a day on my Facebook page. For the challenge, I will be recycling about 10 of those limericks, writing about 10 new limericks prior to the challenge, and creating approximately 10 more during the challenge, generally on the day of the entry.
Here is a palindrome based limerick I wrote for this post::
I have a dear friend named Jerome
Who sure loves a good palindrome
on 2-22-22
in a racecar he "flew"
both backwards and forwards towards home.
I am really hyped up about this year's challenge. I hope that many of you are getting ready for it as well. I'd like to thank the team for letting me do this guest post.
Shameless Plug: Please check out my blog Leap of Dave, it was called Home School Dad for many years but since our home schooling days have been over for a few years now, I decided to at long last change the name and consolidate my other blogs into the flagship. This means that you can see all of my a to z blog entries over the last 11 years in one place.
It's been quite a while since I've posted here. So I have set my timer for 15 minutes have put on Larry Norman radio from pandora on Alexa which is playing Rich Mullin's oddly enough. I am going to just type for 15 minutes and see if I can produce a short message.
As the school. year started this year, for about 3 weeks I was working 3 jobs. I have had a long term sub assignment as an art teacher at my favorite elementary school. I also had been working along with my wife and daughter at a minor league baseball park selling concessions. There was a section in the employee handbook that said I had to disclose to my supervisor if I wrote in a blog, but I think that was written 20 years ago when blogging was more common place. The problem was that my supervisors would change with almost every shift and the supervisors I did tell didn't know what a blog was. I also continue to work 2 nights a week at the movie theatre. I was very glad when the baseball season ended in early September and I could get back to the relative ease of working only 2 jobs.
The problem with getting back into blogging was 2 fold. The first our family has 3 birthdays in a 3 week period in September which kept us all on our toes. The 2nd is that once you get too busy to do something like blogging or reading which both came to an abrubt halt it's hard to get them back going again.
I lost 30 pounds this Summer. The trick will be not to find it again this winter. I am counting calories consistently for the first time in my life and it seems to be working okay for me. My wife and I are doing it together which is better than going it alone.
My timer just went off so I will continue this again hopefully soon with the opening sentence. I always told myself that when I got under 250 pounds I would start running again.
In April my blogging efforts are almost entirely spent on the A to Z challenge. This doesn't mean I don't have other content that I am pursuing. I just don't usually have the time, inclination or energy to get into it. On one of the last Friday's in March Amy, myself and the girls went bowling. I wrote a draft of this the next day but all thing A to Z kept me from completing it until now.
About 25 to 30 years ago I decided I would try to bowl in every state. When Amy and I got married, she embraced that and quite often when we were in a new state for the first time we woud bowl I'm not an especially good bowler, even though it used to be one of my favorite things to do . I used to bowl somewhere between 80 and 120 a game. If I broke 100 I'd consider it a good game. Over the last 10 years, 100 has become more of a rarity. I have my own ball, but lately when we have bowled it's been at the spur of the moment, and I have not brought my ball. My ball is probably a little too heavy for me now, but when I found out we were going bowling I decided to bring it.
I did not start well. I ended getting1 pin down in the first frame. two more in the second frame and then 2 straight gutter balls in the third frame.
At this same point all of my family members were bowling better than me, and my wife was suggesting that I switch to a lighter ball. I decided that better or worse I would stick with my ball. I knew though, that something needed to be done and on the next frame I decided to go with the Fred Flintstone approach.
I generally do this novelty move once each time I bowl and always have fun with it and also a bit of success. I have bowled many a strike with the "twinkletoes" approach. However, this was not the case on this occasion. I guttered to the left, mustered what was left of my pride and attempted the maneuver again only to gutter to the right.
3 pins in 4 frames, quite the auspicious start, So, when in the 5th frame when I got 7 pins down on the first roll it more than doubled my previous score even though I guttered the 2nd ball.
. In the 6th frame, faced with the prospect of my lowest score ever, things began to get a little better. I changed my approach and instead of bowling in stride I stopped at the line and then sent the ball down the lane. I got a strike and followed that up with a spare in the 7th or 8th. I knocked down pins in all of my first rolls during the 2nd half of the game. As I started the 10th frame. I had gained 59 points since the Flintstone debacle in the 4th frame, I was the last to bowl in our party and I had already caught up with my daughters and was just a few pins behind Amy. (Nobody was especially bowling well, but we were all enjoying our selves)
I was able to get a spare in the 10th frame and followed it up with a strike to end the game. It was a definite tale of two halves. I had a score of 10 entering the 6th frame and bowled 72 (88% of my total score) in the latter half to finish with a normally measly 82. But as I said in the title it was the best 82 I ever bowled.
I'm glad I got the ball rolling on post A to Z blogging. I may still have a little more A to Z aftermath in the near future, but it's good to be back to abnormal.
Last year in my A to Z challenge on my blog Random Acts of Roller. My theme was State Capitals. I stated in my introduction ...
My Theme will be Capitals. Due to the random nature of my blog, and specifically my mind, each entry may only be somewhat related to the capital mentioned. For example, it is entirely possible that Friday April third's entry will feature the Krispy Kreme themed love song I wrote in 1995 because I wrote it while living in Columbia, South Carolina where I encountered my first Krispy Kreme.
I mention that here. because today's post about Sergei Prokofiev will tell you probably a lot more about me than Prokofiev. But let's at least start with Prokofiev.
Sergei Prokofiev
Years lived before 1921: Thirty
Years lived after 1921: Thirty Two
Sergei Sergyevich Prokofiev was born in April of 1891 in the Ukraine. . Sergei and I have something in commo that we both share the first name of our father but not our grandfather. The way you can tell this with Prokofiev is that according to his Wikipedia page his father's name is Sergei Alexeyevich Prokofiev. In Russian the 2nd name is the patronymic name which means it is derived from the father's name. Boys names end in -ovich or -evich and girls patronyms end in -ovna or -evna. So Prokofiev's Dad's name was Sergei and his paternal grandfathers name was Alexei. The way you can tell it with me, is cause I'm telling you. You'll have to take my word for it, as I don't have a Wikipedia page.
I first became aware of the music of Prokofiev was when I was a kid watching the Disney version of Peter and the Wolf. It is narrated by actor Sterling Holloway best known as the original voice of Winnie The Pooh. Different instruments play different characters in the folk tale.
Sterling Holloway
Years lived before 1921: Fifteen
Years lived after 1921: Seventy-one
Winnie The Pooh aka Edward Bear
Years lived before 1921: zero
Years lived after 1921:100+
My family watched a lot of Disney, but we also listened to a lot of Alan Sherman also to a lot of the Boston Pop's conducted by Arthur Fiedler. In 1964 Sherman, Fiedler and the Pops produced an Album called Peter and the Commissar which is a parody of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. This was a family favorite and I was overjoyed to see it available on Spotify.
The next time I encountered Prokofiev was in the early 1990's I was living in Russia as a Southern Baptist missionary. My job was to teach English classes and help start a student ministry. In that capacity I got a lot of invitations from my students to experience traditional Russian culture. I got invited to a a concert one afternoon and it was some sort of adaptation of Rome and Juliet. As I watched the performance I realized that the instruments were kind of telling the story not exactly like Peter and the Wolf but there were some similarities. At the break I looked again at the program and read in Russian that the composer had also writeen something called Peotr y Volk which in English is Peter and the Wolf.
Here is the London Symphony Orchestra playing a famous selection from Romeo and Juliet ...
Well that was a more random look at Prokofiev. I hope you enjoyed it. Tomorrow we'll have to mind our p's and q's as we are dealing with royalty. For more of the A to Z challenge click here.
I was recently lamenting about how people don't watch movies together any more. I will write more about this later. So, I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the advent of the 1 man barber shop quartet.
One of the reasons why I don't blog as much as I used to, is because it takes so much of my time to type an then retype my posts. I'm a slow typist as it is, and now that I spend most of my work day behind a keyboard, I don't enjoy the prospect of going back home and sitting behind one again.
Another reason why I don't blog as much as I used to, is because since I'm easily distracted, and that tends to suck a lot of my time away and generally after 15 or 20 minutes I have nothing accomplished.
A third reason is that, as someone who is just one step ahead of being special needs and also a perfectionist(a unique but challenging combination) I often struggle with writers block.
So for today's post, I am trying to conquer those 3 reasons at the same time. I am using speech recognition software and speaking this post. I am only using my keyboard when, for example, the software interprets this post as with both and then interprets with both as with bull and then interprets with bull as with all.
I also, set my timer for 21 minutes, to avoid the time suck involved. I am also using the Amy plays Balderdash method of blogging. Which means I am just saying the first thing that comes to my head. I may edit my head later.
I set the timer for 21 minutes and now have six minutes left. I'm going to play to the buzzer, but by the small content I have achieved in 15 minutes, you can see what kind of time suck I am up against.
I've been working a lot of overtime at my job lately, which may explain why this is my first post in eight days. It's better than the months at a time absences I usually experience. I am trying to use some time to expressing myself in blog form at least twice a week.
I am not sure if this speech software will work for me or not. We actually got it for spider droid, so this is just a secondary use of it.
I am currently reading a book. It is the first book in a mystery series that has Peter Rabbit author (that's the timer but I will finish this thought) Beatrix Potter as it's protagonist. I read through the historical note at the end of the book today. And I'm going to put this Beatrix Potter quote on the blog masthead. She said it of her rabbit Peter when he died in 1902. "Whatever the limitations of his intellect or outward shortcomings of his fur, and his ears and toes, his disposition was uniformly amiable and his temper unfailingly sweet. An affectionate companion and a quiet friend."
Well I am past the time I assigned for myself. So I will and now (but first I'll add punctuation).
It's Time for Six Word Saturday at Show My Face Dot Com.
My Six:
The Burpie Challenge: 64 to 25
I was driving in the car today with Amy and the family and Amy mentioned doing burpies in Jr. High or High School gym class. I told her I didn't know what a burpie was. I some how got roped into training to do 25 burpies by my birthday which is 64 days from now. SO Sunday, September 23rd my 48th birthday I will be attempting 25 burpies. Hopefully, I will know what they are by then.
It's been far too long since I participated in Six Word Saturday at Showmyface.com. I talked about my new job in my last post. I didn't mention that I am earning minimum wage for the job. This fact gave me two (count them) different six word reflections . . . Haven't made minimum wage since 1996
OR
I make 13.75 cents a minute.
I prefer the second one because it require more math. It also puts a more positive spin on it. That's 20.625 cents a minute if I can get some overtime going.
