Same Stuff We Have Had

It began snowing today at about 11 a.m. and did not stop till about 4 p.m. and we got at least seven inches of the stuff, which froze and made havoc of the Friday rushhour. Cars sliding all over the place, and several school buses slid off the streets, and now at 2 a.m. the streets are solid ice and the wind has started to blow loudly. I know, this is normal seasonal winter weather, but it is making everyone grouchy and depressed. The economy news is its usual gloom and dreariness. The Stimulus bill got passed today by the Dems. I suppose the news on what it is supposed to do can be found on miriads of news and opinion websites. I do not think the bill is going to really create all the millions of jobs Obama says it will create. I woke up yesterday morning to watch Red Eye, and all the news was about the commuter plane crash outside Buffalo NY that killed 49 people--all burned up when the plane burst into flames. There was a brief mention the other day that actor James Whitmore had died, but with everything else going on in the world there seems to have been mention of him on any TV news shows. Sad, because he had had a very long succesful acting career. Yesterday was the official 200th birthday of Abe Lincoln. Netanyahu has won the Israeli election, over Zippi Livni. Hugo Chavez wants to be allowed to stay in power forever, with the end of term limits for Venezuelan honchos. A suicide bomber--a woman--blew up herself and maybe 40 Shiite women and kids in Karbala. The fires in south Australia have finally been put out. There was a lot of news coverage from Oz the other day about a singed baby koala someone found. And in animal news a ten year old spaniel named Stump won the Westminster dog show. He looks like a nice old doggie. Uno the beagle can now retire. This is going to be all for right now. I should sleep for a little while to get ready for the ordeal of going out in the Saturday traffic tomorrow with the streets iced up. You all stay warm till spring finally arrives. Di di mau!

Six More Weeks of Winter

Groundhog Day was today. Phil in Pennsylvania say his shadow after he was pulled out of his tree and held up and then put on a table, and the head honcho of the festivities said that Phil had seen his shadow and there will be 6 more weeks of winter. So, the warmish weather in the midwest turned cold this afternoon, and the arctic wind has come back. So, maybe by the middle of March we will get the beginnings of Spring. March and April are unpredictible for weather. It may be a while till the shorts-sandals-Tshirts season gets here. At FEMA they are probably praying for a calm spring and summer with no or mild tornadoes and hurricanes, since there may be little money in the US treasury to pay for any major weather disasters. The ice storms that hit Arkansas and Kentucky last week knocked down thousands of power poles and electric lines and about half a million people are electricityless. A volcano in southern Alaska has been rumbling and in Anchorage people are waiting to see if ash covers the city, like happened in Washington when St. Helen's blew up about 30 years ago. Mike Phelps got caught sniffing something from a bong at the U of South Carolina back in November. The Super Bowl was an exciting game in the last quarter last night. The Steelers finally won. More next blogging. The woman in California who had 8 babies has 6 other kids(3 sets of twins), no job, and no man(the kids are all testtube). Her parents are not happy about the whole thing. Obama is having trouble filling his Cabinet, because he keeps picking honchos with bad tax problems. Daschle is behind payment on 145 thousand bucks, and claims he didn't know he was delinquent. It was a busy week for Events, and I should get into some news websites to see what has been going on, and it would not hurt to read some newspapers to see what is going on. My first winter of being retired has become very disorganized, and I need to get Life organized, since I have a long time to live in this phase of life. More and more people are losing their jobs. The Macys company is laying off at least 7,000 people. I suppose that will hit the Marshal Fields store in Chicago. I have been doing a lot of writing about the weather, but Weather affects our lives. This is going to be all for right now. More later. Di di mau!

First Blog in the New Era

The New Era refers to the Obama Administration. The Inauguration was a mess. Roberts and O both messed up speaking the words to the presidential oath and had to do it again in the White House the next day. Commentators are still debating whether the speech O gave was Great or was convoluted and weak. Aretha Franklin sang My Country tis of Thee, and I think made a hash of it. And then some lady read a poem and bombed. She was no Robert Frost. Some guy who was drum major for a band in the parade winked at O on the reviewing stand, and he got fired from his position. Then the next day O signed an executive order to close Gitmo in several months, without any plans for where to put the prisoners. Congress is going to put the TV change over to digital off till June, which is going to cost local stations a lot of money to stay on analog for 6 more months. More and more people in the thousands are being laid off every day. The economy is in the hole, and I need to look up what is going on in England, which seems to be have troubles with its banking system. I need to look into the world's money mess and halt my searchings into YouTube for a while. Cold icy weather is still upon us in the midwest, and the east half of the country is getting a winter pounding today. Warmth will get here in a month or so(depending on what we get in March.) I am watching a cage fighting match right now while typing. Obama the other day told a bunch of GOP congressmen that they should stop listening to Limbaugh on the radio. John Updike died yesterday. I read part of Rabbit Run years ago, and was not overwhelmed by it, and that is all I have actually read by Updike. I knew who he was but never got around to reading him. I stopped reading for about 20 years and lost track of current literary matters. There is much more that has happened since the Inauguration, but it is in cyberspace or in print, so I should look at news of this week to see what I missed. This is going to be all for right now. You stay warm and I will return. Di di mau! Oh yes! How can I forget to mention that a woman in California had 8 babies yesterday! More on that as the news comes out.

blog entry

Real dull title for an entry, but here it is. I have been grouchy for a couple of days, probably due to the Cold, and spent a lot of time yesterday under the warm covers, with Vicks smeared on. Am better today, but the winter blues and a pity party have taken over. A guy in town yesterday died outside his house when he froze in his hoveround while trying to clean his sidewalk. Four kids were killed in a house fire in northern Iowa the other night. Ricardo Montelban and Andrew Wyeth have both passed away, beginning the list of who famous have died in 09. And the Big news is the Miracle on(or in) the Hudson; the airliner that made a landing in the Hudson River in the middle of Big Apple, but everyone(150 people) got out alive, after 2 bunches of geese got sucked into the jets and destroyed the engines. The hero of the whole thing was Sully the pilot, who has an amazing bio. And W gave his farewell adress to the nation last night, too. It was not very good and no one gave it a big news coverage because the plane crash was the news of the day. I am a W fan--that is my freedom to feel that way, so do not start sending me messages. I do hope that O does good and does not turn out to be just a hustler who talks better than he can deliver, once he gets into the Oval and has to actually be a managing President. We will see. I am reading a history book an George Marshall, and one onAlexander Hamilton, discovering how the first years of the US and the World War 2 era were managed. If the weather stays lousy I can stay inside this weekend and read and view some movies. More to report on in an upcoming blog. This will be all for right now. Stay Warm. Di di mau!

More Moaning about the Cold

The Cold is still with us, and has taken over as the Thing of Life in the midwest. It is 9 below at midnight and the wind and windchill makes one's body feel like it c. 30 below, which is the record setting temperature we had one day in 1996, a day when I had to get to work, but had the flu and my heating system in the apt went out and the car would not start. I remember that the boss was not happy when I had to describe all the reasons I could not get to work. Several houses have caught fire around Iowa yesterday and today, and at least 4 people got killed in the fires. Not a happy cheery wintertime this year. Valley Forge and the Wehrmacht in front of Moscow in 42 come to mind to compare to this winter. The Obamas are the News, and W is going to give his Farewell speech tomorrow night. I watched The Lady Eve tonight as the video of the night, and it was very funny, but should be watched more than once to get all that Sturges put in it. Henry and Barbara were at the top of their form. As of right now I have commenced watching Camille, to see what Garbo could do. I have not seen very many flicks of hers, and for my cultural education should rent some more of her stuff. And I have not seen much of Robt. Tayor's flicks either. In a while when Red Eye comes on I will have to switch over to it. Can't miss Gutfeld. Very many of the schools around Iowa are going to be closed tomorrow, due to the icy roads and the Cold. This winter will be over in a few weeks, I hope. This will be all for now. You stay warm. Di di mau!

More of What We Have Been Having

It is five a.m, and the temp is minus 4 and windchill is minus 26, and northpole wind is sucking around my building, and snow will either come back in this afternoon and more of it tomorrow. And Chicago and the east half of the US are getting it worse than we are. Traditionally we get a January Thaw with a few warm days but the thaw is not in the forecast from the Weather Channel. On Feb 2 the groundhog will come out to see his shadow, but so far I have not heard any forecasts of Feb and March. Hopefully next week those 5 million people who hope to pile into DC will not be stuck in an inauguration day blizzard, like in 85 or way back in JFK's inauguration in '61. We will just have to see what happens. The weather and the economy seem to dominate people's lives right now--with Gaza being down on the list of crises. It would be interesting if Adam Sandler could be asked on a talk show about whether he had changed his views, after he created Zohan, which was a movie about Israelis and Palists getting together in some kind of lovein. In about 1971 there was a cold spell of 70 degrees in South Nam that felt like an arctic blast in that area. No movie of the night report on, due to me going to bed early last night, after the comedies on CBS went way over the edge on their sex humor. I have a prudishness in me that seems old fahioned, but that is my rural heritage. This is going to be all for right now. You all stay warm. Di di mau!

More Prose

Cold icy weekend and more snow is supposed to be on the way when the rush hour starts Monday morning. I seem to be spending a lot of blog space b...ing about the winter weather. Winter comes every year, and this one is not as bad as some others in the past. The Gaza war is still going on, and the Palestinians say they have lost over 900 people since the thing started. Sunday night I watched a rented dvd of Kung Fu Panda, which is great visually, but the story is not quite very good--too much rip off of Karate Kid and other chopsockie movies. And now I am watching Walk Hard--a compendium of the bios of a whole bunch of pop singers since the 50s. Elvis, Johnny Cash, maybe some Hank Williams, Jerry Lee, et al. Like Kung Fu Panda it's a little too full of itself, but John Reilley does a great job acting Dewey Cox, and the satire in dead on much of the time. Some confusion in whether the flick is satirizing pop singer movie bios, or the world of pop music, but interesting effort. More and more people are getting tossed out of work in Iowa; I think the local newcast at 10p.m said that 75,000 people are now unemployed in Iowa, but I need to check to see if that amount is the right one. January 9 was Richard Nixon's birthday. He would have been 96. This is going to be all for right now. You all take care. Di di mau!