Here it comes

Here comes Sandy.  Woke up this morning at about 6 o'clock to the loud ringing of my wind chimes. 

I thought I had done everything I needed to but they were a noisy reminder that I had forgotten something.  When it gets lighter I'll take a walk around outside and make sure I haven't forgotten anything else.

There are reports of power outages already in sections of CT so here we go!

Sad Commentary-2nd Edition

Judging by recent reports and remarks made by various people, it's looking more like this race is boiling down to race. 

That's a very sad situation.  We have a very, very long way to go in this country.

Here we go again

Donald Trump is at it again.  This time he's offered the president a $5 million donation of his choice if he would produce a variety of documents, i.e. passports, birth certificates, diplomas, etc.

This time he's gone over the edge.  He's nothing more than a racist gas bag who doesn't deserve one nano second of attention. 

The only reason I even know about this is because once you've turned on the morning news, you're bombarded by this sort of crap.

Clearly, the lesson is to not watch morning news shows. 

Happy Halloween

You know you are too old to Trick or Treat when:

10. You keep knocking on your own front door.

9. You remove your false teeth to change your appearance.

8. You ask for soft high fiber candy only.

 7. When someone drops a candy bar in your bag, you lose your balance and fall over.

6. People say: 'Great Boris Karloff Mask,'  And you're not wearing a mask.

5. When the door opens you yell, 'Trick or...' And you can't remember the rest.

4. By the end of the night, you have a bag full of restraining orders.

3. You have to carefully choose a costume that doesn't dislodge your hairpiece.

 2. You're the only Power Ranger in the neighborhood with a walker.

And the number one reason Seniors should not go Trick Or Treating...
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1. You keep having to go home to pee.

No matter, have a HAPPY HALLOWEEN anyway.

I'll take today

I wouldn't want there to be a particular day where the weather never changes.  I like the occasional surprises Mother Nature throws at us.

Nevertheless, if I was forced to pick such a day, it would be today.  Beautiful puffy clouds in otherwise sunny skies, warm temperatures, trees in full color...What's not to like?  Sure beats sleet and ice.

Politics in an election year

The political ads this year have been among the nastiest I've ever seen.  I, and I'm sure everyone else, can't wait for this election to be over.

What's so hard about being civil?  I don't get it.

Yet another birthday

Cole celebrated his 5th birthday yesterday (10/13) at Chucky Cheese's in Danbury.  The last time I was at a Chucky Cheese's was many years ago in Waterbury.  The place was a dump.  I'm happy to report Danbury's Chucky Cheese's is much nicer.  Plus the food looked fairly edible although I didn't have any pizza or cake.

It certainly would seem to be the place to be.  Besides all the kids there for Cole there were a great many for other parties or just playing.  In a word it was a zoo...but we all had a great time.

Yet more to like about grand parenting.

Joe Gets It Done

Nice work, Joe.  You made it crystal clear that Paul Ryan is a lying little weasel.  Now your running mate has to step up. 

Give him a few lessons on how to develop a backbone. 

Raise taxes? Why?

Sooooo...Mitt Romney vows not to raise taxes.  Of course he's not going to raise taxes.  He doesn't have to.  He's already paying about half the tax rate as the rest of us.  It's a win win for him...unless Obama wakes up and calls him on it.

Come on, Mr. President.  You can do better.

The Jersey Boys

Remember Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons?  Probably not but it doesn't matter.  Their music is just as good today as it was 40 years ago.

We saw the play Jersey Boys yesterday at the Shubert Theater in New Haven.  It was a great performance.  If you happen to see that it's being performed in a theater around you, go see it. 

Happy birthday, Sandi Stockwell

Happy birthday, Sandi, the year of which shall remain a secret except to say welcome to the world of Medicare and numerous discounts.

Will the real Mitt Romney stand up?

Without question last night's debate was not Barack Obama's finest hour.  He managed to let Mitt Romney slip away from so many lies he looked like Mercury.

For the next debate Obama's got to get much tougher.  He's got to call Romney on his elitist attitude toward all people and his right wing position on the issues.  What people saw Wednesday night was a guy who did so many flip-flops that he made me dizzy.

Obama needs to focus on that or Romney's going to be the next president--God help us all!

The Note!

Some of you might remember a time or two in high school when you thought you might get away with penning a note in  your parents' name to either permit you to do something or excuse you for something you didn't do. 

It seems the art of note writing is getting an early start these days as witnessed by 6-year-old Courtney's effort to convince me her mother has given me permission to allow Courtney and her sister to watch 10 TV shows and have ice cream for dinner. 

I of course fell for it completely!

What's a reward to a 5-year-old?

Nearly 5-year-old Cole: Grampy, how did you get that treadmill in the back of your truck?
Me: I spent all Sunday morning taking it apart so I could load it little by little.
Cole: Wow. That's great. Did grammie give you a big hug??

Rain, rain, go away

OK, enough with the rain.  I have a ton of yard work to do--not counting autumn chores which don't hit their full stride for about a month when the leaves start coming down.  But in the mean time I have mowing and pruning to do.

Maybe later.

A morning at the library

Nicholas and I went to the library yesterday morning and as you can see he had a good time entertaining me with their puppet collection.

From there we looked at books, did puzzles and generally explored.

A great morning.

Parenting and Soccer

Yesterday Nicholas had his third and last soccer lesson until he resumes a new batch of lessons in November.

What makes this tidbit  particularly interesting to me is not so much watching Nicholas run around although that's always fun to watch but my observations of a couple of the other parents. 

Witness:
Parent One:  "Come on, Kerry.  You don't have Alexis's power so you're going to have to develop speed.  Now let's get out there and hustle."

Parent Two:  "Jack, you've got to concentrate.  Now go after the ball.  Pay attention"

These and similar remarks continued throughout the 45 minute session.

Guess how old these kids are?  10? 12? 14?  No, 3 and 4 yrs old. 

Amazing!

It's Here!!!

Wonderful news, the Apple 6 iPhone is out-and preorders number in the several millions.  Isn't that great, or are you like me and don't even have a smart phone of any kind?  I do have a cell phone but it's as basic as you can get and it doesn't do much of anything except make and receive calls...which is all I care about.

I regard myself as a fairly tech savvy person but I simply don't need a fancy phone.   If it's any consolation we do own other Apple products, i.e. 3 iPods, 1 iPad, 1 iMac and a laptop MacBook Pro.  Plus Sandi has an iPhone so Apple shouldn't feel bad that we're not contributing to their already considerable wealth--and mine since I own a little Apple stock.

OK, where's the iPhone 7?  What's taking so long?

Who Cares!

Donald Trump on the Today show again this morning.  When are they going to realize no one (except NBC and Trump himself) gives a hoot what this obnoxious gas bag thinks.  He's an arrogant jerk who isn't nearly is smart as he thinks he is. 

Good bye, Today show.  Hello, practically anything else.

Happy Anniversaries

Happy 6th anniversary to Pete & Jen and 45th anniversary to George & Sandi.

Happy birthday, Courtney

Happy 6th birthday to our sweet little grand daughter, Courtney.  We actually celebrated last weekend but today's her real birthday.

Mitt's at it again

The tragic assassination of the U.S. ambassador to Libya is evidence that that part of the world continues to be extremely unstable regardless of how many Taliban we manage to kill.

The fact that Mitt Romney wasted no time whatever blaming Obama's leadership for this unrest is not only completely wrong but extraordinarily insensitive.

This dirt bag will do anything to capture the White House.  He'll lie, whine and cheat his way to his goal while not having an original thought or idea in his head.  He'll tell any group whatever it is they want to hear, thinking that will get their vote.

The guy is pathetic and needs to be sent back to Bain Capital where he can count the money he has squirreled away in the Caymans.

Guest Blogger

From the pen (and head) of blogger Ken Mackenzie:
I just heard on the news that Obama raised $114,000,000 and Romney raised $110,000,000 to promote their cause IN AUGUST ALONE! I use all the zeros to make a point of how much we are talking about here. I think that translates to one quarter of a billion dollars.

The average annual American wage is about $35,000. Can you figure out how many folks this insane amount of money can put to work for one year???

If you do the math, you will find out that the answer is 6400 people. And what do we actually get? Hours and hours of being blasted by super pacs feeding us BS about the two candidates and their subordinates all of whom will save our collective asses.

If I use a more conservative estimate of only 5000 people to be employed from each month, that would equal 60,000 folks with full time jobs for one year. That's probably all the working people in Danbury, Bethel, Newtown, Brookfield, New Milford, New Fairfield and some other towns combined.

Only in America.

Editor's Note:
The closing sentence "only in America" is apt.  We are after all a democracy.  That means people have the right to do what they want...including be stupid.

Announcing a new web page

With my days as a columnist, first for Newtown Patch and more recently Hamlet Hub/Newtown, drawing to a close, I herewith am proud to announce the addition of a new web page on my web site.

It is called "Odds and Ends".  It can be viewed by logging onto my website and clicking on 'Odds and Ends' in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

There's a brief intro to it explaining what it's all about.

As always, feedback is welcome.  Hope you like it.

http://georgeswebpage.com

Entertaining a three-year-old

During my teaching days I used to make a concerted effort to provide plenty of stimulating activities for kids to do when they were done with their regular work.  This is important because kids have such different learning styles so there is never one thing that fits all.

Consequently, I used to get a tad annoyed when a student or even a parent used to complain to me about the kid being bored.

I would point out the variety of choices each individual student had available to them and the advice that they had to meet me half way by mustering up the energy to haul themselves out of a chair to go to one of the learning centers.

That usually solved the problem and when I retired I thought I was pretty much finished hearing about kids being bored.

I should have known better. 

Now that Cole is in kindergarten all day, Nicholas and I spend the day together until we go to pick up Cole.

On my first day alone with Nicholas he greeted me at the door and asked, "what are we going to do today, grampy?  I hope it's not boring!"

Here we go again. 

Labor Day 2012

I remember as a kid that it wasn't until after Labor Day that we returned to school.  But these days most kids have been back for a least a week or more.

It's Labor Day that usually marks the end of the summer season.  Vacations are over, pools are getting closed, gardens are about done and the days are getting shorter. 

Autumn is a beautiful time of year.  The weather is perfect (to me) and the fall colors are beautiful.  But it's that which lies just beyond  that tends too dampen one's enthusiasm for Autumn.

But before you know it, that too is over and the flowers begin to bloom.  And so it goes.  Round and round. 

Happy Labor Day.

Time passages & mixed emotions

This past week has been a reminder of the passage of time and one of mixed emotions. Our two older grand children returned to school to start first and third grade and grand son Cole entered kindergarten. 

I was surprised at how enthusiastic and proud Cole is turning out to be.  At first he was upset he would be missing two 'grampy days' every week but since his little brother and I pick him up he at least gets two grampy afternoons.

All this serves to remind me of how quickly they're growing up...and how quickly I'm getting older! 

But it's all good stuff and all the more to look forward to.

Back to the routine

After four days visiting with a good friend in Butler, PA, we are back home.  It's a 7 hour trip both ways complicated by quite a bit of traffic and a lot of construction but we had a great time and got to visit a lot of nice people some of whom we've known for about years!

The highlight of the trip--besides the reunion with friends--was a two-hour ride on Segways.  Great fun.

Now it's back to the routine...Babysitting, mowing, closing the pool, etc.

Next trip:  Thanksgiving in Naples, FL.

Four Day Break

Off to Pennsylvania for four days to visit a friend.  Part of what we're going to be doing is riding Segues along the Allegheny River.  Video to follow.

While there we'll be carefully watching news of the hurricane headed for the area where we have a condo.

Who's more stupid?

MO republican Todd Aken has got to be the dumbest politician ever.  You mean to tell me he didn't realize the stupidity of his remark before it popped out of his mouth? 

Even if there were a modicum of truth (which there isn't) to what he said, wouldn't he have realized the insensitivity of the comment? 

It's a measure of his arrogance and ignorance that he wasn't able to figure this out.

Are republican politicians generally less sensitive to these kinds of issues or is it my imagination?

Consider the first thing out of Romney's mouth for example:  "He meant well"  Oh??!!  Did he??