Category: Who?

Supercategory to consolidate the family groups

Posted on

Blake Still is a "Bean"…










…a jumping Bean, that is!

Dawn and Chris went on a 5-day vacation, so we took care of Blake. Since my arms could not handle the 15 lbs 12 oz of constant jumping up-and-down, we bought him a jumperoo. He loved it…spending over 30 minutes at a time non-stop jumping until he fell asleep right in it! Blake also had his 4 month check-up the day before Dawn & Chris left, so I got to start him on rice cereal (Dawn got to give him his first feeding). What a mess!

We also have a piano virtuoso on our hands (Larry, note what he is playing…you gave this keyboard to Shannon when she was little).

We had a great time with him, but I now understand why grandparents like to send the kids home…their bodies need to recoup!

Posted on

Every Day is Valentine’s Day – Redux

I’m on my MSNBC portal when I notice a sports story titled

“Refs should be whistled for traveling”

so I click on it and discover an article about how many college basketball refs are overworked. The thought immediately goes through my mind “Boy – would my map be perfect for his guy’s column?”

Sure enough – 3/4 of the way down is this paragraph.

Welmer, who generally only takes Friday off, and Shaw have called in excess of 85 games already this season. Ted Valentine has worked more than 70 and there’s even a web site called Valentine’s Day that tracks his every move.

and it includes a link to my map. 🙂

Posted on

Every Day is Valentine’s Day

It’s now official. I definitely must have too much time on my hands.

I will spare everyone the long story about how it came about but I’ve created a Google Map Mashup called “Every Day is Valentine’s Day”.

The mashup tracks NCAA basketball referee Ted Valentine presenting a map link to every game that I can find that Ted refereed this year. The short story is that someone on the PennStateHoop.com forum that I hang out on made a post about how tired the refs looked in one of our games. I responded talking about how many games some of these guys work and one thing led to another. Eventually I created a map called “Where’s Teddy?” that I later renamed to “Every Day is Valentine’s Day”.

As of 6PM on Monday Feb 11th, the map has climbed to the #4 spot on the Blooming Maps list of “The Most Popular Maps Created in the Last Week”. It is also the #5 hit you get when you search Google for “Ted Valentine basketball” (for a while last week it was #1 on the list). I’m counting on the Valentine’s Day hook that I’ve given it to give me a boost or two the next couple of days.

Posted on

Where Do Babies Come From?

Lex asked me a question the other day. He did not ask “Where do babies come from?”. I’m prepared for that question. No, he asked me, “Where do the people that have babies come from?”.

I was a little thrown, unsure of just what he was asking. I answered, “Well, we were all babies once.” He said, “I know, but where did the people that had THOSE babies come from?”.

Turns out the little guy was pondering the chicken or the egg. Or god. Or Darwin.

My answer was that nobody really knows… scientists know some stuff, creationists believe some stuff, but nobody knows for sure and everybody really wants to know.

He said that answer was good enough.

Posted on

Our "Grand-den" and Go Bears!!!!



Since Blake has been spending so much time here (we love it!) we decided to convert his mommy’s old bedroom into a room for him. We originally set up Shannon’s old crib, but then decided it was a little too worn so we invested in a new one. In order to be fair to any future grandchildren we are not calling it Blake’s room, it’s the “Grand-den”.

I’ve also attached a current picture of Blake…very close up. Looks as though he will have hazel eyes like his daddy and his reddish hair is starting to turn brown, also like his daddy. He still has a round, very round face like his mommy (and grandpa).

Hope everyone is doing well! Haven’t had any personal news on here for a while…where is everyone? Watching the Bears, I hope!!!

Love,
GrandMar

Posted on

I feel redemption

You may remember my ill fated campaign to name the local State College baseball team a couple of years ago. I nominated Sliders and my idea made the cutoff from 5000 suggestions that the team received. I was pumped and started encouraging my friends to vote for Sliders in the contest. I thought I had a pretty good chance of advancing to the final round when the list was to be shortened and a re-vote held.

Not everyone saw it that way however. A writer for the local paper (not a sports reporter by the way) published the following column where he ridiculed ALL the names on the ballot. He choose my nominee for the headline of his colunn “Race for local baseball team name slow going — a turtle!” (note: Sliders is a breed of turtles – the ones that you find in pet stores are typically Slider turtles).

When the time came for the finalists to be announced, I was devastated. Not only didn’t I make the finals but NONE of the semifinalists did. The ball club threw out all seven names and came up with five new ones. What the?

Eventually, the name Spikes won out. While I thought the name was ok, I was still a firm believer that Sliders was equally good.

Now comes my redemption. Slippery Rock PA has just announced the name of their new minor league baseball team. You guessed it – the Slippery Rock Sliders. Sliders was the winning selection picked from 92 unique entries.

Here’s their logo:

I have ordered a Slider hat from their official supplier and will be wearing it proudly around town.

Posted on

Thank You Shannon

Friday afternoon, I was down at Tony’s Big Easy for their annual customer appreciation holiday party, when the owner, Tony Sapia, called me aside. He had an envelope in his hand and told me the following story.

He said

I got a phone call the other day and this girl asked me “Do you know Uncle Larry?” My response was “Sure, everybody knows Uncle Larry”. Her answer was “Well I’m his niece”. My answer to her was “Sure” and she replied “No really. My name is Shannon and I’m his REAL niece.”.

With that Tony handed me an envelope with a gift certificate in it and said “Merry Christmas from Shannon”.

So thank you very much Shannon and Merry Christmas in return.

I hope to hear from others what they received in the Secret Santa exchange.