Working on the weekend.

New thread, guys!  Sorry, but my last few days have been a little full. Today I’m training at MSU with, among others, the architect of the Tampa Bay Times amazing “Failure Factories” project. 

Talk amongst yourselves. 

Posted at 10:11 am in Housekeeping |
 

45 responses to “Working on the weekend.”

  1. MarkH said on April 1, 2017 at 10:56 am

    From the previous thread:

    State marijuana laws are easily sourced. Medical weed has been legal in Illinois since 2013.

    http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-marijuana-laws-map-medical-recreational.html

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  2. jcburns said on April 1, 2017 at 11:04 am

    Seems like Spartan facilities.

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  3. Heather said on April 1, 2017 at 11:11 am

    Deborah, to respond to your comment from the last thread, I’ve noticed pot wafting out of cars while riding my bike in the city for years.

    My ex was a wake-and-bake guy. One of many red flags I failed to heed. I don’t have a problem with occasional use but if you’re relying on it to get through each day (and you don’t have chronic pain)–might be a problem.

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  4. Kirk said on April 1, 2017 at 11:13 am

    Head shops sell one-hitters that look like filter cigarettes.

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  5. brian stouder said on April 1, 2017 at 11:28 am

    Gotta see Suzanne’s ‘male brain’ link toward the end of the last thread; made me laugh out loud!

    And, Basset – you really must tell us more about merry old England.

    Pam and I have a notion to visit the southwest US in a year or two (thinking Grand Canyon/lights of Las Vegas/Four Corners) – but if we were to go international, the UK would be high on the list…

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  6. Deborah said on April 1, 2017 at 11:42 am

    NPR had a piece on how segregation costs cities, everyone in the city not just minorities. Here is the source of that piece http://www.metroplanning.org/uploads/cms/documents/cost-of-segregation.pdf

    One of our neighbor in Santa Fe is high all of the time, he hits up before he goes to work and comes home during his break and hits up, hits up when he comes home etc etc. I don’t think I’d recognize him if he wasn’t high. He’s a nice guy though.

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  7. Deborah said on April 1, 2017 at 12:20 pm

    Wow 15,000 operatives involved in the Russia hacks and fake news dissemination http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-probing-whether-trump-aides-helped-russian-intel-in-early-2016/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab8a&linkId=36077589 Follow the money.

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  8. coozledad said on April 1, 2017 at 12:51 pm

    Deborah: All Putin has to do is say he hates blacks, and he’ll have the Republicans teabagging him. They want an oligarchic clusterfuck like Russia right here, because the lowest of white trash is forever optimistic they’re going to be barking the orders and orchestrating the killing.

    Putin has already started the mop up operation here in the US. There’ll be more than dead Russians to follow.

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  9. coozledad said on April 1, 2017 at 1:00 pm

    And Flynn, like Mike Pence, believes that women want him for his dick. Old-ass rightwad men believe this so strongly the Russians bank on it:
    http://potustweets.net/2017/03/18/new-reports-show-link-flynn-kremlin-honeytrap-uk/

    Dumbass old egotistical fucks. They must run through watches and wallets like palletloads of shitty Depends.

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  10. Jakash said on April 1, 2017 at 1:06 pm

    Re: marijuana smell. I thought I was familiar enough with the aroma, until a few years ago when I started noticing this “skunk” smell in odd locations. It didn’t smell like dope — to me. It smelled… like a skunk. I had a few unusual moments: “how could there have been a skunk on this bus?” before I became aware that there was a strain or strains that smelled like that. Living in Chicago, I don’t happen upon many (any) skunks, but I’ve sure noticed quite a few spots that they seem to be frequenting since I made that discovery…

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  11. ROGirl said on April 1, 2017 at 1:23 pm

    Skunk odor wafts out of cars in the parking lot where I work.

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  12. Sherri said on April 1, 2017 at 3:49 pm

    I’m sure there will be conservatives screaming that Jon Chait is mean and uncivil for pointing out that Charles Krauthammer has been a paraplegic since he was 22 and likely has needed expensive on-going medical care, but I think it’s obscene that Krauthammer is advocating for dropping the essential benefits part of the ACA.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/the-gops-best-health-care-idea-is-to-stick-it-to-mothers.html

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  13. Deborah said on April 1, 2017 at 4:08 pm

    Jakash, that’s exactly it, definitely a skunk smell. When I first smelled it in Chicago recently on Michigan Ave, I did a double take thinking how could a skunk be there. Then I quickly realized what it was wafting off the smartly dressed woman beside me. She didn’t appear to be smoking a joint on the street, it was coming off of her clothes or hair or something. She obviously used it a lot to be so embedded on her.

    Nice day in Chicago, around 50 and sunny which has been rare since I’ve been back. We took a 4 mile walk running errands.

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  14. Kirk said on April 1, 2017 at 4:12 pm

    I, too, have whiffed skunk where it would be unlikely to see or smell a polecat.

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  15. Suzanne said on April 1, 2017 at 4:25 pm

    I simply cannot understand what it is that the Right does not understand about insurance. If everyone can pick only those services they want, there soon will be no coverage for expensive diseases, especially genetic ones. Prove you don’t have the genetic make-up for certain diseases and opt out. But then the people unfortunate enough to have those diseases, or the possibility of it, will be left with nothing or insurance premiums so high, only the super wealthy could afford it.
    But then, I guess that’s what they want.

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  16. Sherri said on April 1, 2017 at 6:00 pm

    Waste is government spending on other people. The biggest lie the American people have been sold is that there’s already plenty of tax money to do everything if we just eliminate the waste.

    “There’s a lot of wasteful spending, so cut other places,” Moreno said.

    Cut those Obamaphones, not my program. Never mind that tax dollars don’t pay for those, and they aren’t an Obama program. Those people are cutting in line.

    Yeah, they are dumb bigots. They aren’t mad at me for seeing the truth, they’re mad at me for not joining them.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/in-trump-country-shock-at-trump-budget-cuts-but-still-loyalty.html

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  17. beb said on April 1, 2017 at 6:10 pm

    Curious… we’ve often smelled skunk coming from our neighbor’s garage. Since we already have city racoons, possums and rats, skunk seemed natural enough. But skull smelling pot makes a lot of sense, too.

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  18. Danny said on April 1, 2017 at 7:37 pm

    About pot smell, a buddy of mine has a great line years ago when we were walking through a parking lot and smelled it.

    “Hey, I think I smell pot…. or at least that’s what I heard it smelled like”

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  19. Julie Robinson said on April 1, 2017 at 8:57 pm

    Well, I didn’t smell any pot in NYC on Wednesday, but there were lots of regular smokers. I’m not used to it anymore. Blech.

    Sunday in the Park with George was incandescent, and I’m so glad I got to see it. But I was less impressed with the city. We were in high-priced areas, and they were uniformly dirty, with lots of stores going out of business, and many more empty storefronts. And unfriendly–no one made eye contact with me. Of course, I realized why when the first two people I looked at panhandled me!

    After the show we waited by the stage door, and the actors who came out all took a moment to speak with each fan while they signed autographs, also posing for pictures whenever anyone asked. This was after the first show of a two-show day, which was very generous of them. Finally they told us that Jake Gyllenhaal wouldn’t be coming out, which was a disappointment to Sarah. I don’t blame the guy a bit for saving his energy.

    And then it was back to the Fort, except as we were getting close to landing, a couple of student pilots crashed their plane off the end of a runway, so we were diverted to Indy. Just as I was reconciling myself to the idea that I would spend the night there, they announced that a runway had been reopened and we would be able to fly back after refueling. So my day, which had begin at 3:45 am, didn’t end until 1 am the next day. I never did hear an update on the students, except that both were in the hospital with non life-threatening injuries. Glad that was all.

    All in all, a day unlike any other in my life so far.

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  20. Rana said on April 1, 2017 at 10:33 pm

    Suzanne @15 – I think it’s less a lack of understanding about insurance and more tapping into that strain of resentful thinking that one deserves all the benefits one gets, but heaven forfend any of one’s money goes to someone else who doesn’t deserve it or one doesn’t care about. That’s part of why I’m doubtful that any of Trump’s supporters who’ve been screwed over will wake up and smell the coffee – they refuse to put two and two together in order to understand that in that worldview someone is going to be shorted, and there’s no way to guarantee it won’t be you.

    Re: pot smell – that stink is a huge part of why I never wanted to try marijuana. It has always smelled gross to me, no matter what form it’s in. Even the plain dry buds smell disgusting.

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  21. Rana said on April 1, 2017 at 10:37 pm

    Speaking of smells… one of the things that strikes me each time I visit NYC is how stinky a city it is. I don’t mean car exhaust or that sort of thing. It’s the slight undernote of garbage that permeates everything. I didn’t really understand why until I visited after living in Chicago for a while.

    NYC has no alleys. Or at least, very few in the areas I’ve seen. So all the garbage and junk is just right out there on the street, merrily rotting away, instead of hidden away from the main thoroughfares. I never appreciated our alleys more than after we visited NYC in summer.

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  22. brian stouder said on April 1, 2017 at 11:44 pm

    Something like 40+ years ago, I visited NYC. My mom was from Brooklyn, and we were visiting her sister (Aunt Fannie) – and at some point during the trip, my cousin Frankie and I were walking through Times Square. I recall being struck by how many beautiful women with not many clothes on were there, offering cards and other printed things regarding movies and massages and so on(!); and I remember a guy vomited all over the street, just ahead of us. (this was probably 10 in the morning)

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  23. ROGirl said on April 2, 2017 at 7:36 am

    The first time I spent some time in NYC I was struck by how dirty, grimy and smelly it was. Some things never change. It was summer, I was wearing sandals and did a lot of walking. By the end of the day my toes were coated in black grime. The stores with the “going out of business” signs may or may not actually be going out of business. It’s an old tactic to draw in bargain hunters. Garbage and urine on the sidewalks and in doorways. Also no garbage disposals in NYC, so everything that would normally go in the disposal ends up in bags on the street.

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  24. Suzanne said on April 2, 2017 at 8:25 am

    The first time I went to NYC (not all that many years ago), I was surprised too about the garbage on the sidewalks. And it struck me why the sanitation workers strike beach in the 70s was such a yuuge deal!

    New York is a funny place. It is dirty, grimy, smelly, and all that and yet, every time I’ve been there, the minute I leave, I want to go back. I am always surprised as well by how different it is than Chicago–completely different vibe.

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  25. Deborah said on April 2, 2017 at 8:49 am

    Chicago is pristine compared to NYC. The bags of garbage on the sides of streets in NYC takes a bit of getting used to. I’d live there though if I could, it’s a great city.

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  26. coozledad said on April 2, 2017 at 10:23 am

    If you want to imagine a world with only white Christians, just think of a bunch of toothless savages wiping their ass with moss and carrying on decades long feuds with anyone who doesn’t share their special flavor of recessive traits. Another little dark ages of endless internecine strife.
    https://twitter.com/RobDotHutton/status/848503912130895872

    At least we’ll be back to good old white trash on white trash violence. I sincerely hope Brexit voters are disproportionately fed into the meat grinder. It would also be good if London seceded and left the racist set with a more appropriate capitol. I nominate Shitterton, if only because it conjures an image of Nigel Farage’s teeth.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitterton

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  27. alex said on April 2, 2017 at 10:29 am

    I haven’t been to New York since the 1990s, but even then it was notably cleaner than I remembered it in the ’70s and ’80s. The only place I ever saw cockroaches bigger than mice and they were skating along the sidewalks as if they owned them.

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  28. susan said on April 2, 2017 at 10:48 am

    That Shitterton wiki page is hilarious. Imagine writing that entry without sounding like The Onion. Wait. It does sound like the Onion.

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  29. basset said on April 2, 2017 at 11:03 am

    Comments like those above are what have made me avoid NYC so far… never had been there till this past Friday night on the way home from London, just passed through JFK airport and that was bad enough. what a rat maze and it wasn’t even particularly busy, must be true hell Thanksgiving week.

    About the trip: two of my bucket list items have been walking across the famous crossing at Abbey Road and seeing the house where my mother grew up in northeast London. I have no family that I know of over there any more and the last relative left the house in about 1960; wrote to the current occupants, no reply, figured we’d just go by there and see what it looked like. little row house on a side street… if you remember “All In The Family” think of the houses shown at the start of each episode, she used to say they looked just like hers.

    Anyway, we took the tube to the bus, got on the wrong bus and rode around for awhile, got on the right one, hopped off in the neighborhood and it was, while not really scary, less than nice. broken appliances on the sidewalk, young men walking around in twos and threes, nobody was hostile but we weren’t gonna make eye contact either. Got some pics of the house, and the boarded-up pub on the corner, and the elementary school across the street, back on the bus and outa there as dark was falling. I have an old coin I carry, believe I’ve told that story here before, and touched it to the garden wall as we were leaving.

    London in general… was just fascinating. We stayed right next to the main city center train and tube station (Victoria), main bus station was right down the street, good connections to everywhere and within an easy walk of Buckingham Palace and many of the standard attractions.

    Now that I sit down and add it up, we really did a lot in six days:

    Hop on and off bus tour on the morning of the first day just to get oriented, had been up all night on the plane so it didn’t take that well
    Buckingham Palace
    Tower of London
    Westminster Abbey
    Side trip to Windsor Castle
    Another side trip to Stonehenge
    And yet another to Liverpool, two Beatles tours there
    British Museum
    Churchill’s wartime command bunker
    Abbey Road
    Site of the Beatles’ rooftop concert, ground floor front is now an Abercrombie Jr.
    Random walking around just exploring, shopping, and eating

    Damn, no wonder we were so tired when we got home. Booked the trip as a package on Expedia, flights were British Airways codeshares so we went out on American, came back London-NYC on British and on American to Nashville.

    The idea was basically to see the house, standard attractions, and Beatles stuff just as the first visit of several, and we will definitely be back. A few thoughts to share:

    Go in the off season. Crowds weren’t too bad this time, but we saw the structure that’s set up for handling peak audiences, particularly a front court full of pedestrian-herd fences at the museum, and I’d expect the height of summer would be just too much.

    If you get to Liverpool, definitely go on the National Trust tour of Lennon & McCartney boyhood homes, Mendips and Forthlin Road. The Trust owns both of them so it’s the only way you can get inside, and actually being in the houses is truly memorable. Even if you’re not a Beatles fan it’s interesting to see how people lived at the time… we saw Ringo’s and George’s homes as well, at least one of several apiece, but someone still lives in George’s (Arnold Grove) and Ringo’s (Madryn Street) is trashed, abandoned, and awaiting redevelopment.

    If you’re larger than most, go on a diet before you visit Abbey Road – the T shirts in the studio gift shop nearby only go up to XL, and that’s European XL so it’s even tighter. I don’t care, I have mine all stretched out and I’m gonna wear it anyway.

    The Grosvenor Hotel (not the Grosvenor House, which is way more upscale) is a good place to base your visit. Nice place, prices reasonable if you get a package, perfect location.

    The Sony DSC-HX80 is the camera you want for this or nearly any vacation. I have been getting paid to take pictures for about forty years now and have a bad habit of hauling too much camera gear when I go on a trip – this time I wanted to be about the visit and not get distracted by cameras, so I looked for a high-quality pocket cam and the Sony was it.

    More later, someone’s coming over to borrow a canoe and I just got a call that he’s almost here.

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  30. Joe K said on April 2, 2017 at 11:26 am

    Bassett,
    Have heard the war bunker is a must see, would love to visit some of the ww-2 airbases,and walk the beach at Normandy, and visit the drop zones where the 101st and 82nd airborne jumped.
    Pilot Joe

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  31. Deborah said on April 2, 2017 at 11:38 am

    Basset, your trip sounds great, wow you really did a lot while there. Takes me back to when I lived there for a short bit.

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  32. David C. said on April 2, 2017 at 11:57 am

    I was visiting my uncle NYC in ’81 and don’t remember it being particularly garbagy, but as a rube from Grand Rapids other things attracted my fascination so maybe I just didn’t notice. I was sent back in 2014 to give a deposition for a lawsuit the company was defending itself against. I went to the neighborhood where Don lived (81st and Lexington). The eight apartments in the brownstone he lived in have been converted into a single family valued at $3 million according to Zillow. I guess that’s why he and his partner decamped to Connecticut and why everyone else is moving to Brooklyn.

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  33. Kirk said on April 2, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    Marijuana smells just fine. Eggs stink. It’s why I don’t eat them.

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  34. Deborah said on April 2, 2017 at 1:07 pm

    I love eggs, would eat them for every meal if I could.

    I’m suffering from a bout of sciatica, I’m pretty sure that’s what this is, lower back pain that shoots down my left leg. It’s weird I shoveled dirt and chucked rocks in Abiquiu for days and was fine, but then I was washing a lower window here in Chicago a couple of days ago, and the next morning I had this pain. I still took a 4 mile walk yesterday, didn’t seem to hurt it more, what I’ve read about it on line is bed rest doesn’t necessarily help it, that you should try to do what you normally do. I’ve been popping advil, seems to help some. My dad had sciatica and eventually had to have surgery. I hate all the aches and pains that go with aging. My foot is still giving me pains too, not horrible but enough to keep me in clunky shoes.

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  35. Julie Robinson said on April 2, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    Back in (mumble, mumble) I spent three weeks in London and had a wonderful experience. And I agree the vibe of Chicago is very different from NYC, and preferable in my mind. But I wouldn’t want to live there, or in any city. Too much noise, not enough green space. Visiting is good, leaving even better.

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  36. Jerry said on April 2, 2017 at 2:31 pm

    Bassett, visiting London in the off-season is certainly sensible. I try to avoid going into town in peak tourist season; it gets so crowded that getting around is difficult. And of course tourists are so busy checking things out that they tend to walk slowly and clog up the pavements even more. Grumble, grumble.

    Haven’t visited NewYork since about 1973. Myra wants to visit and we’d thought about going this year to celebrate our Golden Wedding but instead our son and grandson are visiting from Australia so that’s our celebration budget spent for the year. Perhaps in 1918.

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  37. Sherri said on April 2, 2017 at 2:55 pm

    Jerry, it’d be fascinating to visit New York in 1918, except for worries about the flu, I guess. Can I borrow your time traveling machine when you’re done? I promise to return it in good shape.

    On a more serious note, one last comment about the Billy Graham rule. There’s much about the adoption of the rule by others that smacks of cargo cult, and doesn’t take into account the particular circumstances that led Graham to adopt the rule. Graham was building a movement that was inevitability centered around him; that kind of position regularly leads to opportunities available to one that can be difficult for someone with the ego strong enough to build such a movement to turn down consistently. We know MLK wasn’t able to, for example. Graham knew that such scandals could derail what he wanted to accomplish, and took measures to prevent it. Given the times, one can make an argument that the cost to women around Graham was minimal compared to the benefits for Graham’s organization.

    Most men aren’t in Graham’s situation, and the times are different. The harms done to women by such a policy are more substantial, and a man like Pence, while obviously a scandal would be terrible for him, is not the leader of a movement centered around him and his strength of personality. Not to say he doesn’t face temptation, but not on the scale of Billy Graham.

    In other, shorter words, the Billy Graham rule wasn’t just about Billy Graham the man, it was about “Billy Graham”, the performer who stood in front of the crowds after an orchestrated process leading up to him. He was a rock star, with the equivalent temptations. (Not saying he was insincere, but it was a performance.)

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  38. Jolene said on April 2, 2017 at 3:48 pm

    Brian, what has happened with your school board application? Still waiting to hear?

    Thanks for the great travel report, basset. Glad to hear you had such a great time.

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  39. Deborah said on April 2, 2017 at 4:04 pm

    Jerry, yes the tourists clog up the pavement. I always grumble about this when I’m in a hurry in Chicago, especially on the weekends when the city of Chicago is flooded with people coming in who don’t understand how to walk on the busy sidewalks. They are slow because they’re always looking around, understandably. They tend to stand in the middle of the sidewalk to check their maps (smart phones) instead of stepping off to the side etc. I’m sure it doesn’t cross their minds how disruptive they can be to the city dwellers. I try to be understanding and even helpful when I can facilitate what they’re looking for but I can be frustrated when I have a goal and not a lot of time to achieve it. I will say when I was in London that the sidewalk traffic was unbelievable in certain places, I got bumped into so many times when I was there I sort of became OCD about going out in the fray, I almost had agoraphobia. There were so many things I wanted to see and do while I had the opportunity but I was literally afraid to go out sometimes.

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  40. basset said on April 2, 2017 at 4:14 pm

    Been sorting trip photos this afternoon. We have 716 (OK, I had the phone on burst at Abbey Road, that’s probably 80 or 90 right there) total, of which 42 are selfies and 15 are pictures of food.

    David C, my mother’s old neighborhood in NE London (Leyton) is the city’s hottest real estate market according to one article I read, sure doesn’t look like it but I did see one high-speed young man in a suit on the street so maybe it’s turning around.

    Joe K, the Churchill bunker was indeed one of the most interesting spots we visited. Surprised to see David Gilmour (of Pink Floyd) and his wife named on the donors’ wall on the way out.

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  41. brian stouder said on April 2, 2017 at 7:59 pm

    Basset – with our daughter’s upcoming graduation from Wayne (New Tech)High School, Pam bought a Canon Power Shot SX530HS….it looks like an old fashioned camera, but it’s digital and internet friendly.

    Jolene, the last candidate was interviewed by the board –

    http://www.journalgazette.net/20170331/final-fwcs-board-candidate-interviewed

    and now all there is, is to await their April 18 board meeting, wherein they will vote for the replacement. Whatever else happens, I can always say – from now on, forever – that I went for it, and advanced from the initial 21 candidates to the Final Six.

    Honestly, they have several excellent candidates to choose from, and I’ll be somewhat stunned if they vote for me. I think I provided a good base-line choice for them, in any case.

    The other big news, which I may have mentioned already, is that our graduating daughter got a very nice scholarship and shall sttend (and take up residence at) Indiana University at Bloomington.

    On one hand, Pam and I are so proud, we could burst; and on the other, it’s somewhat wrenching to ponder all the changes coming to our household, in the near future.

    That’s life, I guess

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  42. Joe K said on April 2, 2017 at 8:17 pm

    Brian,
    Had 2 daughters graduate from I.U. Best advise I can give, intensive freshman seminar, it cost a bit extra but your kids go to school 3 weeks early take a class, live in a dorm with a roommate. It gives them a head start on getting used to campus life, make some friends, get a lay of the land.
    Both my girls said it was the best thing they did.
    Good luck on the school board.
    Pilot Joe

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  43. brian stouder said on April 2, 2017 at 8:30 pm

    Joe, thanks very much!

    And, indeed – Shelby got a “Groups” scholar –

    http://www.indiana.edu/~groups/#home

    and it includes housing and study-support and so on. They require her to go down early and spend a few weeks there, before school begins, getting their sea-legs.

    I’d never been to the Bloomington campus before we went down for a meeting of all the new Groups scholars (about 300 students, and their parents); and indeed, it is quite impressive. Luckily, Shelby got her mom’s brains, so I’ve no doubt this enterprise shall succeed

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  44. coozledad said on April 2, 2017 at 8:50 pm

    Me favorite tour guides guv’na and all that shit:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRNHbBg6HVc

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  45. Suzanne said on April 2, 2017 at 9:05 pm

    I graduated from IU Bloomington. It’s beauty spoiled me when we did campus tours with our kids. All the other campuses looked awfully ugly in comparison.

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