Monday night was another scary one for those of us here on Pinto Point in west Little Rock. It’s 11:30 p.m. and we’re still without power, but as best we can tell in the dark, there is no severe damage.
This will be the second time in 11 days for an extended loss of electrical power for those of us on the south side of the street. This time, though, our neighbors across the street are in the dark as well.
Thank God that we all apparently are OK, We know that some people were not as fortunate, in regard to damage to their homes and surroundings.
Nancy, Daisy (our Lhasa Apso) and I wound up in the closet when the tornado apparently was going over us. We had Ed Buckner of Channel 11 playing on 94.1 FM The Point on our battery-operated boombox, but we didn’t lose power until a few minutes later when Ed was telling us that powerful straight-line winds were blowing through downtown Little Rock.
Oh well, I hope the alarm goes off on my alarm clock in the morning.
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Central Arkansas Library System is accepting votes through tonight for writers’ names to be displayed on the remodeled top floor of the Main Library.
Votes will be accepted at CALS website through midnight or at any branch until 6 p.m..
The nominated writers are available at www.cals.org/writer-election.html.
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Our church, First Presbyterian Church of North Little Rock, had a Blessing of the Backpacks ceremony for the children Sunday. It gave the kids a chance to take part in the service. It gave the rest of us an opportunity to pray for students, parents, teachers and all others to be involved in the coming nine months of school.
The pastor, Anne Russ, noted how many things begin anew for the students — new teachers, new classmates and maybe even new subjects of study.Some of us go to school for 13 years, others stay at it for 17 or 20 years.
Even though we may go on to parts of our lives where the “new year” doesn’t start in mid-August to early September, the habit and mindset is hard to break, especially if one has children reasonably early in adult life. If that’s the case, the whole process starts again.
Think of all those new people thrown together for the first time. You may meet friends that you have for the rest of your life. You may discover an interest that turns into a lifelong hobby or even your vocation.
We may not realize it, but this time of year is fraught with the possibility of adventure and life-changing discoveries.
And you just thought it was an excuse to get new notebooks, pencils and crayons, right?
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We are a two-alarm-clock household.
My wife gets up about 5 a.m. and gets ready to be at work between 6:30 and 7. I go in later, so I have a later wake-up time. Right now, we’re sharing a car, so I sometimes take her to the office and then return home for a quick nap.
Nancy’s clock-radio with a buzzer quit early in the week. So she trusted me to set the alarm with my battery-powered LCD travel clock until she could go buy a new one.
I performed my new job well for a couple of days, but she still reminded me often before she went to bed. (She usually makes it until the sixth or seventh inning of St. Louis Cardinals games, but I watch the entire game and then the post-game interviews before I consider going to bed.)
But Thursday morning (or Wednesday night) was different. When I got to bed, she was awake enough to remember to remind me to set the alarm. I still was awake enough to reach over and do it — or so I thought.
Nancy raised up in bed quickly and said: “Did you set the alarm?” I looked at the clock and thought I saw “1:32,” and I said, “Yeah, I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
I looked again and this time the clock said “7:32.” When I looked at the on-off alarm switch, it was neatly there on the right under “OFF.”
Nancy quickly called in to work and explained that her alarm clock had died and that she had just gotten up. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be in the office for an 8:30 a.m. training seminar over the Internet. The techie-types like to call such sessions Webinars, but it seems like a pretty hokey, too-cutesy word to me.
Still, I was due to be in the conference room in less than an hour.
Nancy took a quick shower and I took a quicker one. We dressed rapidly and jumped into the car. As we started up Kanis Road, my wife kindly offered to drop me off and keep the car. We rushed down 12th Street and waited until we reached Woodrow Street to get on Interstate 630 to head downtown. (I still prefer Wilbur Mills Freeway, which is what it was called when it was built.)
She pulled up next to the Stephens Media office at Second and Main in Little Rock about 8:10 a.m. I even had time to grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen before the training started. It worked out well because several of my fellow Webinar-ists were caught in creeping traffic as they closed in toward downtown or tried to cross the Main Street Bridge from North Little Rock.
Still, the day turned out to be a struggle. We even had trouble getting a computer hookup from St. Louis to work. Eventually, it did and a second session in the afternoon went smoothly, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that when the alarm clock fails early on a given morning, you seem to be swimming against the current the rest of the day.
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The announcement Friday afternoon by Apple of the OS 4 operating system for the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad has a lot of people buzzing.
The commitment to multitasking seems to be the most popular feature announced. Also, a lot of people mentioned the folders feature, which would allow iPhone users to sort applications by category. In other words, you could place all your game apps in one folder, reference materials in another, and so on.
I believe the camera gets a 5X zoom feature, too.
The new system is supposed to be available this summer.
Can you get rusty at writing a blog?
Has the process existed long enough for rust to form? Still, it has been more than a week, so I should deposit butt in chair and write, as an old English teacher used to tell me.
Between the unseasonably cold weather, the sickening slaying of Salvation Army Maj. Philip Wise on Christmas Eve and the apparent sudden death of former state Rep. Sharon Dobbins on Wednesday, it has been tough getting into the spirit of 2010.
(By the way, I think I’ll go with the pronunciation as “twenty-ten,” rather than “two-thousand-ten,” because it’s shorter and … let’s face it, we’re all going to be saying either “twenty-whatever” or “two thousand-whatever” for the rest of our lives.)
A few items to close out 2009:
- My favorite Christmas-related moment in the spiritual sense was the beautiful job of singing by the children (consisting of three youngsters) of First Presbyterian Church of North Little Rock at the Christmas Eve candlelight service Dec. 24.
- Favorite Christmas album discovered this year was the one by Chris Isaak (released in 2004). It has a lot of steel guitar and clever rephrasing of some traditional lyrics that gave it a Hawaiian feel and made offering seem light and enjoyable.
- Funniest moment (in retrospect) was my two brothers and I sitting at Mom’s dining room table playing dueling smartphones, all of a different make and model, as two of us compared a new iPhone and Droid received as Christmas gifts while the other brother showed why he was sticking with his Blackberry.
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The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department has a new fan — or at least a supporter of its program to tweet changes in road conditions online via Twitter, the 140-character messaging network, used primarily in a social manner.
My brother, Pat, who had heard that Arkansas had flooding problems before he left his home in the Dallas area on Christmas Eve, signed in to his rarely used Twitter account. He clicked on “follow” with the AHTD to have the latest in Arkansas road conditions sent to him on his Blackberry smartphone as he drove up to my parents’ house south of Little Rock.
Pat said it made a big difference in his ability to finish the trip. By the time he reached Benton, he knew that the area on Interstate 30 at the Saline County-Pulaski County line, which had been closed most of the day, had re-opened.
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A friend mentioned the other day that he had filled out some online questionnaire and noticed that among the choices were “single,” “married” and “divorced.” Other possible answers may have been included, but he said he wondered what factors were included in helping someone decide if they were “divorced” or “single.”
It is a curious question.
Does “single” mean never married? Does one change from “single” to “married” and then possibly “divorced?” Or does someone who has been through a divorce become “single” again at some point? And if that is true, what determines when that change is made?
Does one become “single” when they have recovered from the pain of the divorce and are ready to date again or just when they are tired of being associated with the former spouse, even in terms of no longer being with that person?
Is it all just in determining one’s frame of mind? Does clicking the radio button next to the word “divorced” on a computer make someone feel “damaged” or less of a person?
None of this earth-shattering stuff, unless you’re a college professor trying to write a tome on the psychology of divorce. We realize that the questionnaire actually is an attempt by advertisers to reach a more susceptible audience. But it does make you wonder what might cause someone to change the way they answer such a question.
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Patrick and his girlfriend Sarah flew to New York tonight from Fort Worth, via Atlanta.
He just texted me that they had just landed at LaGuardia airport after flying over Yankee Stadium during the bottom of the seventh inning of Game 6 of the World Series between the Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies. The Yankees were winning 7-3 at the time.
They are, if I remember correctly, staying with friends in the Bushwick part of Brooklyn, which has experienced a rebirth of sorts during the “aughts decade.” (By the way, we can start saying “twenty-ten” next year instead of the seemingly longer “two-thousand-eight” or “two-thousand-nine.”)
Anyway, the kids will be up there through the weekend. Patrick has been to NYC before; Sarah has not.
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Surfing around while watching the Yankees-Angels ALCS game at Angels Stadium in Anaheim on Tuesday night. I came across this link after chasing a Cubs blog mentioned at the bottom of one of St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Rick Ankiel’s blog posts from earlier in the 2009 season:
http://justonebadcentury.com/
It’s a Cubs fan site, but the creators seem to use the Chicago failure to win a World Series since 1908 as a way to have fun. The Web site claims it’s trying to fight bad karma. I’m sure they’ll be glad to take it down if 2010 turns out to be the Cubbies’ year.
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