Ghastly...

American Idol's been on what -- 5 years? This is the 6th season and just this year I watched it for the first time.

Yes, that's how hip I am.

In the beginning, during the dreadful auditions, I was appalled by the judges, especially the whole bush baby thing in Seattle, yet I kept watching, like a car accident, unable to look away. When the show went off each evening, I'd get on the phone and rant about how the show was indicative of everything that's wrong with society and youths today.

"How can they be sooooo mean? It almost makes me cry to watch these people's dreams get dashed." yadda yadda

All the while, I'd be connecting to the Internet to see when the next show was on.

Fast forward a month and I'm now openly eager for Simon's next nasty utterance or Randy's classic "Dog, it just wasn't that good" after especially wretched performances.

"'The good news is it wasn't as ghastly as last week'. OMG, did you hear that?!"

I'm hopelessly hooked.

BTW, I think "ghastly" is really underused in day-to-day conversation. My new goal, because I have to play these silly games with myself, is to somehow weave that word into something official at work.

Trying to reminisce about the 1990 teacher strike

I don't remember much from that time period, which is a shame because I must have been terribly giddy to be out of school.

I watched the video and looked at the pictures at WSAZ, but it didn't unearth any lost memories. I just know that what went on in our county couldn't have been nearly as exciting as some of the picket lines they showed in those videos.

What I do recall of the strike is spending at least one glorious day at the local park enjoying the spring weather with some of the older kids. But even then there was gnawing at me a bit of boredom because, no matter how much I hated going to school, I had to admit that really there wasn't much else to do.

Sometimes the Weatherman is Right

Like today.

I didn't really believe it last night when I heard the forecast for a big snowstorm, hitting right during the morning commute and continuing throughout the day today. I've lived here long enough to know that there are often huge snows predicted that never materialize.

But darn if it didn't materialize today!

Today would've been the ideal day to work from home (and graze all day, as I did last time I worked from home), but no, I didn't have enough sense to do that. I instead got up and saw the little dusting of snow on the ground, figured the storm wasn't coming, and headed out as usual.

Ha - boy was I wrong! We now have about between 6 and 8 inches of heart-attack-inducing, back-breaking heavy snow.

What fun.