Not long after Melissa first started at Boise State in 1999, she gave us a lecture on how to say “Boise”.
“It’s pronounced BOY-see not boy-ZEE.”
It took both Rich and I while to consistently get it correct.
The next city name pronunciation to work on was for the small nearby town of Kuna. Then Coeur d’Alene, or Pend Oreille. How about the really tricky ones like Kootenai or Pahsimeroi?
Now there’s a song that teaches newcomers and visitors how to pronounce Idaho cities names.
It contains my favorite three F’s: family, food, and football.
But lately it seems like Thanksgiving has become the Rodney Dangerfield of holidays. If Thanksgiving could talk, it would say, “I don’t get no respect!”
Halloween is getting bigger every year. Decorations for it go on sale immediately after Back to School supplies hit their peak.
Stores replace Halloween merchandise with Christmas decorations and merchandise.
And I get that. It’s all to make a buck or two.
But what I don’t get is people rushing Christmas decorations.
About one in five homes in our neighborhood already have their Christmas lights put up and/or Christmas wreaths adorn their doors.
But what about Thanksgiving! When is it its turn for special decorations?
I’ve got my ‘fall’ decorations up and I won’t take them down until after Thanksgiving weekend. Next year I think I’ll do this with flowers and pumpkins and squash.
Competition in biology and sociology, is a contest between two or more organisms, animals, individuals, groups, etc., for territory, a niche, for a location of resources, for resources and goods, for mates, for prestige, for recognition, for awards, for group or social status, or for leadership. Competition is the opposite of cooperation. It arises whenever at least two parties strive for a goal which cannot be shared or which is desired individually but not in sharing and cooperation. (From Wikipedia)
Until recently, one of the skills lacking in my pickleball tool kit is competitiveness. I truly didn’t care if I won or lost games. I was fine being bunny #1–last in the race to the finish…
Some of the people I play with can recite the scores in each of their daily games. And good for them.
I am usually more concerned about learning lots, laughing, and getting a good sweat on.
I’ve had other players tell me that I should take more ‘kill’ shots and that I don’t ‘put it away’ enough.
And that was probably true. I would have rather kept playing than end the game.
But that all changed because of a player named “Herb” and because we’re going to start competing in a ladder league for pickleball.
First, all about the ladder league. A ladder league is designed so that players most often play with others of similar skill levels. A player’s ranking on a ladder is based on a winning percentage (ratio of points won to total points possible). Players move up or down the ladder based on their cumulative winning percentage.
After the first few weeks of the ladder league play, higher skilled players will have higher winning percentages and be ranked higher on the ladder.
Newer players and players who don’t adapt their play to their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses will have lower winning percentages and be ranked lower on the ladder.
While I hope to use all the skills I’ve worked so hard to develop and move up the ladder, over the last few days I’ve decided that I only want to be higher than Herb and some of his friends.
Herb and his friends are very similar in many ways. They are in their late 60’s and early 70’s; they believe a woman’s place is NOT in the gym on the pickleball court; and they believe that they are better than most of the male players and ALL of the female players. (Player pictured below is NOT Herb but looks a lot like him.)
Herb and I played against one another today. He was trying spin shots and trick plays to beat me and my partner. I was fine with that until I saw the look of disgust in his eyes whenever I played one of his shots well. Then I decided the gloves were off; that’s when I started playing his shots right back at his feet to make him miss.
If a man made those shots, he’d say, “Good shot.” If a woman (any woman, not just me) made them, he was very quiet.
Obviously, playing against Herb and his cronies is helping me develop my competitive side.
I can’t wait to beat the sh*t out of them!!!!!!
And I’ll wave to them from my place higher up on the ladder. 🙂
Ever want to watch a telenovela–‘a limited-run serial drama’?
Telenovelas are popular basically everywhere but the U.S. Their name is derived from tele, short for television, and novela, a short novel.
Telenovelas are similar to soap operas, but unlike soaps they generally don’t run more than a year.
There’s a series that started a year ago on the CW network called Jane the Virgin. It’s about “Jane Villanueva, a working, religious young Latina virgin, who becomes pregnant after being artificially inseminated by mistake.”
While Jane the Virgin isn’t a telenovela, it is similar to one in tone, playfulness, and content…
And it’s excellent! I highly recommend it!
Gina Rodriguez plays Jane, and her portrayal of a strong, confident, and religious young woman is spot on.
The supporting cast and characters are varied and perfect!
Season 1 is on Netflix, and Season 2 is currently airing on the CW.
PS Thanks to Melissa for telling me about the show. I’m loving it!
Wanted for theft (of a garden hose) and murder (of a tulip bed): Police post hilarious joke appeal for wayward DOG called Dudley
Police posted a hilarious fake appeal for a dog who they said was later ‘arrested’ as part of a dawn raid.
Officers from Dumfries and Galloway posted the dog’s ‘mugshot’ on Facebook after a man reported the ‘theft’ of his garden hose and the ‘murder’ of his tulips.
They said the force’s ‘murder squad’ had identified the Labrador down using CCTV footage and later detained the five-month-old puppy, named Dudley, as part of a police operation.
In a similarly playful follow-up message, posted yesterday, the officers added they had followed a number of ‘leads’ and that it was expected the ‘perp’ would be sent to the ‘big dog house’.
In response, dozens of social media users started a spoof campaign for the dog’s release, using the hashtag ‘#freedudley’.
The post yesterday said: ‘You may recall on 17th September 2015, Police were informed of a theft and a subsequent ‘murder’ [theft of hose, murder of tulips].
‘The Murder squad quickly recovered CCTV from the locus of the “perp” in the act and circulated the suspect’s image to officers.
Facebook user Clare Muir said: ‘Poor Dudley…looks too innocent to have committed this outrageous deed. What about innocent until proven guilty? Free the Dumfries one.’
And Facebook user Jonathan Dempster hoped that the pup had been told its rights.
He said: ‘I hope an officer is going through the Puppies and Criminal Evidence Act with Dudley.
‘As his lawful defence, I submit Dudley was legally ‘ barking mad ‘ at time of the offence, and the court will note this is punishment enough, and request an order for Dudley be made to reside outside any big doghouse, instead having access to open fields, secure humane kennelling, and proper puppy care.
‘It is felt Dudley will make a full recovery, full rehabilitation, leading to the potential of Dudley making positive public contributions over the long term, I respectfully submit.’
Georgia Trooper Helps Siblings After Parents Killed in Halloween Crash
When a fatal car wreck on Halloween night claimed the lives of a young Georgia couple, state Trooper Nathan Bradley responded to the accident and was tasked with delivering the devastating news to their family.
Bradley and two other officials knocked desperately at the front door of Donald and Crystal Howard’s home in Newborn. When the door finally cracked open, four young children answered. They were dressed in their Halloween costumes.
Bradley learned that no other adult was home, and that the nearest relative of the couple was a grandmother — seven hours away in Florida — who couldn’t get there until the following morning.
The 25-year-old trooper told NBC affiliate WXIA that he was faced with a delicate situation: Keeping the truth from the siblings until their grandmother arrived. On top of that, it was Halloween, and the children — ages 6 to 13 — were in a festive mood.
They said their parents had gone out to buy face paint and Halloween candy, and they were due any minute.
“The first thing I said was, ‘Hey, let’s go get something to eat,'” Bradley recalled. “They said, ‘My parents will be here soon.’ I said, ‘Your grandma wants you to hang out with me ’til she gets here.”
Through the night, as Bradley waited on their grandmother, he became more than just the children’s temporary caretaker — he became their friend.
He distracted them by talking about one of their favorite shows, “Law & Order: SVU,” buying them Happy Meals from McDonald’s and then taking them to the patrol post to watch Disney movies.
“The eldest son (the 13-year-old), who sat to my right would carry on in conversations that were beyond his age,” Bradley wrote in an online post. “We discussed topics such as the observable universe and his father’s service with the military. He explained to me that his father served in the United States Army for eight years, completing two tours; one to Afghanistan and the other in Iraq.”
News of the orphaned children had spread, and people began arriving to the station bearing buckets of candy and small toys. Once it got late, the kids were taken to a bedroom in the station to sleep until their grandmother arrived.
Bradley said he was stunned when one of the little girls told him he “turned an F-minus day into an A-plus night.”
“I can’t begin to explain how hard it was to hear that, considering the night would be memorable but for reasons that were yet to be disclosed to them,” Bradley wrote.
When grandmother Stephanie Oliver arrived by dawn, Bradley explained what happened to her son and her daughter-in-law, who had been together for more than 15 years. Their 2015 Dodge Journey went too fast on a curve, and the SUV wound up careening into a ditch and hitting a tree, police said.
They decided not to wake the children up right away so that the tragedy wouldn’t be associated with Halloween. The next morning, Oliver took the children, and Bradley said he heard the 13-year-old say, “Hopefully, mom and dad will be home by now.”
As a final gesture, Bradley said, he wrote down his number and told the boy to call him if he ever needed anything. The boy later did.
“I was glad he felt comfortable reaching out to me,” Bradley wrote. “He told me that it is going to cost his grandparents $7,000 dollars to transport his parents to Florida and the remaining funeral costs.”
The trooper helped start a GoFundMe page for the children with hopes of raising the $7,000. By Thursday afternoon, it had raised that and more — with the more than $200,000 going toward a trust fund for their higher education.
The children’s grandmother told WXIA that she was touched by the way Bradley bonded with the siblings — and he managed to be a bright spot on what could have been a dark day.
“He took care of my kids when they needed them,” Oliver said. “He was there for them, all the way.”
Emily Crawford, a spokeswoman for the Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority (PDA) said the gum wall is cleaned “every other month” by the PDA with a steamer, but this will be the first time all the gum is removed from the original wall.
Silvia Lim CQ, visiting from Sweden, takes a self-portrait at the the Gum Wall attraction in Post Alley. It’s her first visit having read about it in a tour guide.
The PDA has hired a contractor, Cascadian Building Maintenance, “because it’s going to be a very large job,” Crawford said.
Kelly Foster, of Cascadian Building Maintenance, said the gum will be removed with an “industrial steam machine that works like a pressure washer.”
The machine will melt the gum with 280-degree steam; it will fall to the ground, and a two- to three-man crew will collect the gum in five-gallon buckets.
It’s virtually impossible to read the No Parking sign covered with pieces of gum on the west wall of Post Alley.
“This is probably the weirdest job we’ve done,” Foster said.
Crawford said the PDA estimates 1 million pieces of gum are adhered to the walls of Post Alley, and the buildup is in some places 6 inches thick. The cleaning job is expected to cost $4,000.
It’s hard to see out this window with all the gum attached in Post Alley at the Pike Place Market.
More accurate figures on the amount of gum could be forthcoming.
“We want to weigh it,” she said.
Crawford said the gum needs to be cleaned off the walls to preserve the historic buildings in the Market district.
“It was never part of the charter or the history of the Market to have the walls covered with gum,” she said. “Gum is made of chemicals, sugar, additives. Things that aren’t good for us. I can’t imagine it’s good for brick.”
Evoking lips by Man Ray, many pieces of gum went into this attachment to Post Alley’s Gum Wall. to be cleaned in a week.
Crawford said cleaning will begin Nov. 10. The job will likely take three or four days.
Colorful globs of salivated chew will no doubt return shortly, the PDA expects.
“We’re not saying it can’t come back,” Crawford said. “We need to wipe the canvas clean and keep (it) fresh.”
The PDA hopes that fresh start hinders gum-wall sprawl. In recent years, Crawford said gum has advanced to new turf “far beyond the original wall.”
One more piece of gum is added to the estimated more than 750,000 pieces in Post Alley. The Gum Wall attraction in Post Alley with visitors to the covered brick, to be cleaned in a week.
Her theory: “It’s so gross,” she said. “People don’t actually want to touch or get near the gum wall. They’re looking for empty surfaces.”
The PDA plans to place more public art in the alleyway and hopes having 20 years of gum removed will keep future visitors more targeted when in placing their gum.
Meantime, the Market is holding a photo contest on its Facebook page, where people can vote on favorite gum-wall pictures.
A woman approaches Michael Buble during a concert and asks him to let her son sing with him.
Buble wonders, “Are you asking me or are you telling me?”
Mom’s reply, “I’m a mom.” *
And the rest is a surprise…
Thanks to Sandy for posting this on Facebook.
*Mothers: How many times in your lives have you used the same justification for bending the world’s forces to help your kids? If you’re like me, a lot. 🙂
on the ladder.
“The first thing I said was, ‘Hey, let’s go get something to eat,'” Bradley recalled. “They said, ‘My parents will be here soon.’ I said, ‘Your grandma wants you to hang out with me ’til she gets here.”
