YES, I AM still here, and I am still jotting down notes for future reminders of events I consider big.
Sometime between now and the actual event I will lose the note and therefore miss the event(s).
But, just in case you also jot down coming dates, I offer these:
May 4-6, Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower, debris from Halley’s Comet.
Aug. 11-12, Perseids Meteor Shower, usually the greatest.
Dec. 13-14, the Geminids Meteor Shower.
I’ve already missed the year’s first shower — the Quadrantids, Jan. 3-4. I did go outside briefly at about 4 a.m. but it was just too durn cold to stay out very long.
Also, I was barefooted and my feet kept trying to freeze to the patio surface.
Sitting beside the patio firepit one evening, the Navigator and I saw a UFO. It had no running lights; moved real slow; and it was one bright light blinking steadily on and off. UFO for sure. Not Space Station.
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AND MARK THIS DATE. If you’re a Vietnam veteran (or even if you’re not) mark Friday, Feb. 14 — Valentine’s Day — for the 21st annual Chili Cook-off sponsored by the Texarkana Area Veterans’ Council. The event will be in the Truman Arnold Center on the campus of Texarkana College, and serving takes place between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tickets are $6 although the volunteers at the welcome table will take more. Proceeds go to buy vans to take veterans to medical appointments.
I usually go to the table with the shortest line, but I always ask if the chili is really, really spicy. Some folks can take their chili a lot hotter than I can. For instance, I learned the hard way to avoid Johnny Goodson’s chili at the annual chili/soup supper fund-raiser for the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department.
My usual companion to the Texarkana event is our retired police chief Larry Yates, an Army veteran of Vietnam.
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ANOTHER FOOD EVENT coming up is the annual pre-Super Bowl BBQ cookin’ to benefit Howard County’s great 4-H program. A terrific cause and wonderful ribs and Cornish game hens available for just a few dollars.
It will be on Saturday, Feb. 1, the day before the Super Bowl. 4-H moms and dads and boosters get together pre-dawn to cook in the lot beside the radio station on South Fourth Street in Nashville. Sometime before noon the ribs and birds are ready to be picked up.
I’ve got just one word: MMmmmmmm!
Look for the news article elsewhere in this issue of the paper.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. At the conclusion of last week’s Nashville City Council meeting, council members discussed a growing problem of roaming dogs in the city, some of them were described as vicious. The dogs, not the council members.
The mayor said he’d speak to the animal control officer.
Maybe one of our town’s newer mailcarriers, Melissa Smith, would also like to speak to the animal control officer. She had previously been a mailcarrier in Gurdon and she’d sure hate to see Nashville go to the dogs like Gurdon did.
Or go to the turkeys. Or geese.
In her time at Gurdon she says she was bitten five times by dogs.
And was attacked by a turkey. A big white one.
And a goose. It made real strange sounds, she recalls, and it was in a real foul mood(I apologize for that).
I told Melissa that my own experience as a paperboy was that the dog that will most likely bite you is a little dog that comes at you from behind and nips your ankle. The scariest were the big ones that came out of nowhere to attack the paperboy’s rattletrap bicycle.
I graciously shared with Melissa my own paperboy’s solution to a vicious dog — a water pistol full of ammonia. Most of those dogs are just vicious, not stupid. They will learn and remember that you are armed with ammonia..
Except for pitbulls. They like ammonia.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening (and believing) email: “Why do they put braille on the drive-through bank ATM machines?”
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PLEASE DON’T LAUGH at him. It only encourages my Uncle Parry Normal to do more stuff like this.
A Walmart employee, working hard to stock shelves early one morning, was taken aback when he politely told her that he needed to get something for his cell phone. “Can you tell me where the apps section is?” he asked.
She actually hee-hawed.
“What did I say that is so funny?” Uncle Parry asked.
She hee-hawed again and announced that she had to take a break.
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WORD GAMES. Another set of twins: Over and Over Again. Clones, probably.
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HE SAID: “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” Benjamin Franklin, statesman
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SHE SAID: “New Year’s Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery. Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.” Sarah Ban Breathnach, author
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
