This 'n' That

This was a leaf that I found on the school's parking lot when I dropped off the girls for last night's football game. To my surprise, our team won last night, 21 to 14 (I left mid-4th quarter and Bookworm reports that the game went into overtime, and Goa'uld sez it was "barely overtime".)

A friend of Still Life has posted for her, letting us know that Still Life is still in the hospital, but doing better. I can hardly wait for her return.

We finished ten days of giving fluids to our cat Chatham. It has obviously helped him and he's acting more like his old self. Has helped give me many flashbacks of jabbing him with the needle. Ugh. We'll take him in next week for blood and urine tests and get numbers to, hopefully, confirm this. From now on we'll most likely be giving him fluids a couple of times a week.

Today's newspaper reports that earlier in the week, police and firefighters lined the road from Altoona to Ebensburg (about 25 miles) with fire trucks, ambulances and police cruisers to honor Altoona fire captain Robert Gallardy, who died in a training exercise at the PA State Fire Academy. That must've been quite a sight.

From now until Veteran's Day, the local Zembo Shrine has placed a "Massing of the Colors" on their property in Harrisburg. Over 2000 small flags, each with the name of every single serviceperson who has died since the USA started the operation in Iraq, is on a flag. It will be patrolled/guarded 24 hours a day until November 11. Shriners are really big in our area (and maybe elsewhere?). My high school typing teacher (and father of a classmate) is part of the Mounted Patrol. The Shriners make up about a third of our town's Memorial Day parade every year.

Our lawmakers may think that if they act as if they're going to repeal their payraise that we'll vote for them on Tuesday. They're wrong. Talkradio personality Bob Durgin hasn't let up on it, and neither has the local newspaper, The Patriot News. There are many other groups like PA Cleansweep and Young Conservatives of PA are keeping up the pressure, too. The next election isn't a general state-wide one, but we have the opportunity to say "no" to retain two PA Supreme Court justices - Newman and Nigro:

Justice Russell Nigro, despite a Supreme Court policy discouraging charges for booze, billed you $85.00 for a bottle of wine and $123.00 for three other bottles. Earlier this year he charged you $1,254.12 for four dinners and one lunch.

I have decided that I will not vote for a single incumbent (unless, of course, the newbie is a complete and utter so-and-so). Even our nice Senator Pat Vance. Sure, she didn't vote for the payraise, didn't take the payraise, but STILL didn't speak out loud and publicly and clearly against it when it happened. Oh, sure, she would tell any of us on the street (as she told me) that she didn't agree with it, but I sure didn't see her out with the rest of us when we were protesting at the capitol building in September. I view this as a case of "if you're not with us, you're against us" (never thought that I would EVER say them thar words!)


Penn State plays Wisconsin today - hope we do well!

We will be at Chapter band competitions tonight. The weather looks good for it. The band has a three hour practice this afternoon - I feel bad for the Seniors, who are taking SATs this morning and will be wiped out (and will miss part of the practice, to boot). That crazy Mr. Z! He's all tense because of Chapters. He's got what the kids call the "duck face".

Well, I've got a report for my education class to finish and too many pages still to read. An informal survey shows that no one in the class is reading as much as we should be!! Each chapter has at least 30 pages and we're supposed to read two chapters a week. I was keeping up for awhile, but fell behind. Aaargh.