Daily Archives: 5/5/2012

Blogging, Domestic Bliss

Saturdayness

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Lazy day. Had to do the unthinkable, that is, go to Wal-Mart to buy some new mini-blinds. My cats hold differing opinions as to whether the blinds should be down or not. I go with ‘down’, thereby placing an obstacle in their desire to lounge on the windowsill.

They still lounge on the windowsill, but to gain access, lacking opposable thumbs, they use sharp teeth and the tugging technique. I’m glad the can’t use tools. Sometimes I think they use their charms to lull me into a sense of security while they plot the takeover of the planet.

After a couple of years of operation by cat, miniblinds start looking kind of gappish. I needed to replace some, and Wal-Mart is the place to buy them. It was everything I dread: Parking lot full, cash registers un-attended, but I survived.

Got the replacement blinds up.

Threw together pork and sausage gravy and a pot of rice for dinner. There’s enough left over to make me a meal on another day, and right now I have a small recipe of peach cobbler in the oven.

Music

Saturday Song #29

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Got this link via email from good friend George. The Ventures, one of the great instrumental bands of my youth, plays one of their great hits, “Walk Don’t Run”, not unusual, but they did it in 1998, and recovered their original drummer who left a the music world and ended up as an Air Force general. That raises the novelty factor waaaay over the bar:

History

Today in History – May 5

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1536 – King Henry VIII orders English language Bibles be placed in every church. Previously, the bible was only commonly available in Latin, making its readability rather lower, although Latin remained a language in common use in academia and the Catholic Church.

1835 – In Belgium, the first railway in continental Europe opens between Brussels and Mechelen.

1862 – Cinco de Mayo in Mexico: troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halt a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla. Beating the French makes this a Mexican holiday. Germany celebrates the days it beat the French: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.

1865 – In North Bend, Ohio (a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio), the first train robbery in the United States takes place. I thought this stuff only happened with those cowboys in the Wild West…

1886 – Coca-Cola first goes on sale in Atlanta, Georgia.

1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris. Like much that is French, it is stunningly graceful, a technological tour de force, and as useless as nipples on a lizard. But it gives a photogenic background for the German Army on occasion.

1912 – Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing. It function as an organ of communist propaganda has been recently superceded by the New York Times.

1937 – Hindenburg disaster: The German zeppelin Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people are killed. Airships end their brief foray into public transport.

1954 – Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run the mile in under four minutes.

1961 – The Mercury program: Mercury-Redstone 3 – Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space, making a sub-orbital flight of 15 minutes. This was momentous event, such that I, in the sixth grade, watched previous scrubbed attempts with my classmates on a TV brought into the classroom. This one, thought, was a Saturday, so we watched it at home.

2010 – Mass protests in Greece erupt in response to austerity measures imposed by the government as a result of the Greek debt crisis. Wait for it here!