Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a child happy or even fascinate them.  Sometimes it even happens with the strangest and most surprising things.  This is true of the Slinky that the little girl wanted to get in Cracker Barrel over the weekend.  We figured she would become board with it in a very short time, especially since we have no stairs.  But the Slinky is still the most amazing thing that was ever invented.  She calls it her spring.  She has spent most of the day playing with it or fighting over it with her younger brother.  They stretch it out.  They fling it around.  They stick things inside of it and bounce it around.  No video game can compete with this amazing technology.  How long will this love affair with tbe Slinky last?  Hopefully she will have given it up by the time she reaches high school.

I just got back from taking the five year-old grandaughter camping.  It was all in all a decent experience with no major malfunction on her part.  We had camped in the backyard on one previous occasion to prepare her for this.  Since this is Florida and summer is loomong hot (I mean that literally) and heavy, we decided to go with the air conditioned cabin with beds rather than an unconditioned tent and sleeping on the ground.  She made a convenient excuse for doing this.  The only two problems we had with her was when she tripped on a rock while hiking and when she got a little upitty while shopping in a tourist trap.  The trip was the only time she wanted her mother.  To be fair, she had slightly fractured an arm after tripping while running through the house (that’s why you don’t run in the house) and had to wear a cast for several weeks.  The concern was mostly hers since we determined that she was having no problem using her arm or hand.  She is fine now.  The incident in the store was after a long day and she was obviously warn out and grumpy.  She had a fine weekend of swimming in the pool and playing in playgrounds and having pancakes at all hours at Cracker Barrel, watching Pinky and the Brain and other videos and having an all around good time.  It was rather amusing watching her lay down and close her eyes for barely a second and then getting up and complaining that she couldn’t sleep.  She had too much energy left so had to pace back and forth for awhile to burn it off.

Isn’t it fun working with a new phone and a different operating system?  I went from Windows to android.  Windows is definitely the the better operating system.  The problem is (and the reason I switched) is that much like the Mac computers for years, there are apps that I need that aren’t available for Windows.  It may just be the frustration of working with something new, but it does seem that there is more involved with doing everything on the android system.  Proof of this is the fact that I just had to delete this entire post because the phone wouldn’t let me get back to the point where I needed to edit something.        Touching the screen just put me way the hell somewhere else.  The good points about the phone?  It does have a better web browser and is a whole lot faster, being new.  It is a top of the line Pantech and has a huge screen.  It is almost like working with a mini-tablet, although it still fits in my pocket.  I’d just be annoyed with a tablet.  I need something a little more portable.  If I want to work on something bigger, I have a computer at home for that that works a whole lot better.  This phone also has a 12 megapixle camera.  We’ll see what kind of damage I can do with that.

OJ Simpson would like a new trial on his stealing back his sports memorabilia case.  He has, of course, already been convicted on those charges and now sits in prison doing whatever former athletes do in prison.  I don’t know if they are allowed ointments for that.  The Juice says he got bad advice from his former lawyer and wants a new trial to explain what really happened.  He was misinformed about the legality of charging into a hotel room and taking back what once belonged to him.  There is some question about whether or not there was a gun involved.  OJ is going with the I didn’t know robbery was illegal defense.  I guess one man’s robbery is another man’s finders keepers.  Well, good luck with that, OJ.

Social media is an amazing thing.  You can get in touch with family and friends that you haven’t seen in years or even some that you have never met.  And even some that think they may be related but really aren’t.  This happened to me recently.  First, some background.  Back when I was young, a member of my family did some research and found a story about three brothers with our family name with an extra e on the end who came to this country from France back in the 1600s.  At the time, we wondered if they were our ancestors, but had no definitive proof.  We have more recently discovered that these are not our ancestors.  Our first ancestor also came here in the 1600s, but under different circumstances.  Ours came from England, was most likely born in Wales under a different name and came to this country while on the run after the royal family at the time was overthrown, he being a member of the court in some capacity.  He killed a person with our current surname who had already booked passage to the new world, stole his identity and took his place on the boat.  I like to think that what he did was done out of necessity and, if not justified, at least understandable under the circumstances.  There are no reports of criminal activities after he got here and he seemed to be well respected in the community (if you don’t count his wife being convicted of witchcraft).  A while back, a teenager requested a friendship on Facebook because I have the same first name as his father (as well as the last name).  I agreed because he had the same last name and wondered if he was the offspring of one of my cousins that I haven’t seen in years.  No, he’s not.  We were trying to figure out if we might be related.  When he mentioned his ancestor who came to this country with some brothers and had that extra e tacked on the end of their name and later dropped, I knew that there was no chance that we are actually related.  The closest that we might come is that maybe the guy whose identity my predecessor assumed was a relative, but that is the best we can hope for.  I don’t have the heart to tell him this, though.  He sounds like a decent kid.  Oh well, maybe next time.

Here’s an interesting story.  An NBA star recently came out of the closet and announced that he is gay.  This isn’t the story I was talking about.  The interesting part was what an ESPN commentator had to say about this coming out.  The commentator, I believe his name was Doosh Bagge, said that he didn’t agree with homosexuality, that it was a sin, as all sex between a man and a woman outside of marriage is a sin.  Now I understand why they are so against gay marriage.  This would make sexual relations between two people of the same sex to no longer be a sin.  We couldn’t have that, now could we?  If we make sure that gay marriage is always illegal, than homosexuals will never be able to have sex with each other.  It all makes perfectly logical sense now . . . to someone out there in wonderland.  Can you see just how easy it could be to solve all of the world’s problems if we just stop living in the real world?

A musical version of the film “Rocky” is headed to Broadway. . .  What?  Yes, that’s what I said.  A musical version of the film “Rocky” is headed to Broadway.  Sure, “Rocky” was a great film, but a musical version on Broadway?  Yes, I can see Rocky mumbling and stumbling his way through a heartfelt tune, but I don’t think this show was meant to be a comedy.  And then there is the sight of two big guys dancing and singing their way through a fight scene.  That doesn’t sound any gayer than an Ultimate Fighting match, but what could.  Oh well, hopefully Sylvester Stallone will make a ton of money off of this show.  He certainly hasn’t milked enough money out of “Rocky” yet.

A terrified woman recently witnessed two kittens having sex in her yard.  After capturing the whole thing on video and posting it on the internet (just kidding), the woman proceeded to call 911 to file a complaint.  It was not known whether or not the police bothered to respond to this dangerous threat, blaming budget cuts for lengthy response times.  There is no telling how long this poor woman was forced to stare out her window in horror while watching these two cats fornicate in her front yard.  Maybe she was even forced to waste some of her own lotion while waiting for the police to arrive.  it’s not like she could just stop watching.  The cats might have gotten away while she was distracted by life and stuff.  And what might have happened if  the police did arrive?  Did they bring their own broom or were they forced to borrow one from the woman so they could chase the two miscreants away (after capturing it on video and posting it on the internet, of course)?  So many questions arise when I read stories like this.