In my opinion, the worst and most dangerous storms are the ones that come through at night. First, because most people are asleep and don’t hear the warnings so they do not take cover. But also because most homes have the bedrooms on the second floor, and when a tornado strikes a house, the roof and the second floor are the most likely to suffer extensive damage. So, if people are asleep in their bedrooms and a tornado does hit their house, they have a very high probability of not surviving that storm.

At my house, we got a lot of wind and rain that re-arranged parts of my backyard. Thankfully, we did not have a tornado come through this area. But there is a huge gully that was washed through my backyard and down the hill that didn’t used to be there. I have to get a shovel and fill in a huge hole and the canals that were created. When I say huge, I mean that an entire car could be driven into this hole. I don’t have any idea how long it is going to take to replace all that dirt, shovel by shovel.

One of my good friends that I’ve know since the 1980′s is retired and having a lot of health problems. She had to to go to the hospital recently for total hip replacement surgery. They kept her in the hospital for 3 days and then moved her to a nursing home for the rest of her recovery and rehab – estimated to take about 8 weeks, maybe longer, depending upon her healing and progress.

I can just imagine how upsetting it must be to realize that you have to spend 2 months in a nursing home. I truly hope that the surgery goes well and that she recovers quickly.

Another good friend is dealing with serious financial issues and having problems with her bank. She is trying to work with the bank to get everything resolved, but her fiance is a hothead and every time she makes headway with the bank he gets upset and causes trouble for her. I don’t know what to say when she calls me, crying, because I cannot give her money and even though she is convinced that the lack of money is her problem, I believe that her real problem has nothing to do with money.

Today I found a game called Bookworm and it reminds me a little of Scrabble. I downloaded the free trial and get to play a few free games. If I like it, the purchase price is reasonable – cheaper than the Playstation and XBox games.

If there are specific, concrete things that the educators want the parents to do that will result in a better education for the children of America, let me know exactly what the parents need to do. I will help get the word out and maybe we can turn this thing around.

Our future depends on it.

This year we got a live tree. It didn’t look this big at the Christmas tree lot. I love it, though. It took us over 4 hours to put it up and I even had to run up to the store and buy more ornaments to fill it out. Looking forward to a really nice traditional Christmas this year.

This has been a rainy autumn. The past three weeks have been rain, gloom and doom. I think we only saw the sun two times in the entire three weeks. We might as well be living in Seattle.

Doing laundry today, I was assaulted with a variety of added fragrances. The detergent has a fragrance. The bleach has a fragrance. The fabric softener has a fragrance and the dryer sheets have a fragrance. My poor clothes are just bombarded by perfumes.

The funny thing is, when they come out of the dryer they have a faint fragrance in them, but by the time they are fluffed and folded and put in the closet, they don’t smell like anything at all any longer.

Something new for me this year will be a formal table with a centerpiece of fresh flowers. That is the nice thing about having just adults for dinner. You can dress up a little more, and we can splurge on a nice bottle of wine and fresh flowers. I’m really looking forward to this being the first of many more nice dinners.

When I was a kid, a tablet was basically several sheets of paper bound to a stiff cardboard backing by a coating of glue across the top. You could easily use the top sheet then cleanly tear it off and have a fresh unused sheet ready to use.

Even the word notebook was different. I used a notebook to hold multiple sheets of paper in one place. The notebook had a series of clasps inside and the paper would a corresponding number of holes prepunched in it to insert between the rings. You could release the rings and remove or re-order the pages easily. Now the children have to call them binders and a notebook is just another type of computer.

My favorite magazine was always McCall’s Magazine. I know they stopped publishing it many years ago. I miss that one.