As we have for a number of years, Sis and I went looking at lights…
December 24, 2005, 10:44 PM
Yes, Sis and I went looking at Christmas lights once again this year, on Christmas Eve as always, and one word comes to mind for this year’s displays: lackluster.
Christmas 2005 will definitely go down as a blah year for outdoor lighting displays. Far fewer houses decorated at all this year than usual, both in our neighborhood and elsewhere. And a lot of others scaled their displays back significantly.
First of all, though, Sis and I went looking for a set of decorations that used to reside in our neighborhood. I received a lead from a coworker on where this particular family had moved, and we followed the leads. This particular house, by the way, was just awful-looking in its decor. When they were in our neighborhood, these people had Santa, a nativity scene, large wooden snowmen with the family members’ names on them, winter-themed Disney characters, VeggieTales, and certainly much more than I’m remembering at this point. And it was all lit by large, garish white lights. So you could see this display a long way away.
Continue reading…Good morning!
October 22, 2005, 4:57 AM
Good morning… I have the house to myself this weekend, and thus I will be spending it going to work and taking care of the dog. The parents are going to a wedding in New Jersey this weekend.
To get to New Jersey, they took I-81 to Carlisle, followed the road that connects I-81 to the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-76), and then took the turnpike to the Schuylkill Expressway through Philadelphia into New Jersey.
And discussing the non-connection between I-81 and the turnpike, my father still insists someone must have gotten paid off to create that, despite my insistence that it’s related to rules on use of funds at the time of construction. Basically, the rule in place at that time stated that if you’re going to use federal funds to build a direct connection serving a toll road, then the toll road must cease collecting tolls once the bonds are paid off. Otherwise, the toll authority must fund the direct connection themselves. Or, as happened here, they can simply not build a direct connection between the two highways.
This, by the way, is also the same set of rules that created the better-known non-connection west of here between the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I-70 at Breezewood.
Still, I don’t know if I’ll be able to get Dad to realize that no one was paid off in creating the non-connection at Carlisle. When I told him that it was about rules unrelated to the specific project in question, he said that it was probably the rulemakers who got paid off.
So there you go. It’s like Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Thus non-connections.
One word about the protest on Saturday
September 26, 2005, 2:46 AM
I have just one word for the September 24 protest: WOW.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many people out against the war in Iraq and the like, even counting J20 (which seemed to consist of a smaller, but very dedicated bunch). They say that more than 100,000 people attended.
I’m working on a full narrative for this trip like I did for the Million Worker March, J20, and A16. The full report for this trip will end up in Life and Times as a photo set when I’m done with it. Unlike in those other three cases, however, I’m not posting the narrative here. It will go up when I finish the entire set.
All in all, I took 391 photos and 41 movies. Of that, roughly 360 photos and 30 movies were protest-related, while another 31 photos and 11 movies were rail-geek stuff.
What a wonderful day Wednesday was…
September 8, 2005, 11:41 PM
I went down as far as Blacksburg on Wednesday. My goal was to visit two people: Sis at Virginia Tech, and my friend Amanda Mone, who I first met in December at the Roanoke Star.
But first, I had some shopping to do. Coca-Cola recently launched Vault, which is marketed as an energy drink, but is basically Surge in a new package. Currently, Coca-Cola is test-marketing it, and Roanoke is one of the areas where it’s being test-marketed. So I went down to the Wal-Mart next to Valley View Mall and got some. First I bought a 20-ounce bottle, to make sure it was really Surge in drag. It was a match! So I went and bought ten bottles of it, so that I’ll have lots of it, since I have no idea when I’ll be able to get down to Roanoke again to get some more.
I also checked out the Halloween aisles, since I was looking for a certain Halloween item that Wal-Mart sold last year that I was hoping they were going to sell again. You may recall that I mentioned in December about a mechanized black cat that reared up on its hind legs and sang a song that went like, “I’m just an alley cat, with an alley life.” I’d been unsuccessful in finding it in Waynesboro so far this year. I figured this store in Roanoke is bigger than Waynesboro, so it might be in this store. And I was right! So I bought the cat, and I’ll be figuring out all the lyrics. All I know is that I’m pretty psyched that I finally got my hands on it. I honestly thought I’d never hear that song again. And it’s catchy.
Mom got into the newspaper…
September 2, 2005, 4:38 PM
It’s an article in The News Virginian on Friday, September 2 about SOL writing testing in middle schools, and how the middle schools in Augusta County made the mark for the most part.
And here’s the picture with the caption:
Lauren Campbell and Clay Agee, sixth-graders at Stuarts Draft Middle School, read stories they wrote for a homework assignment to language arts teacher Jane Schumin. (Rosanne Viscuso/Staff)
And here’s a link to the News Virginian article: Middle schools make mark
It’s really neat seeing your mother’s name and photo in print in the newspaper. And in her room at SDMS, no less.
Categories: Family, Virginia local news
And it’s off to DC we go…
August 17, 2005, 5:26 AM
Still amazed by the success of my “Shades of Gray” photo shoot in DC on August 3, I’m heading up to DC once again to see what kind of mischief I can get into. The last time that one day’s photos became a single photo set was back in March, when I did my Life and Times set entitled If These Streets Could Talk, which was a retrospective “clip show” photo set. That shoot was when I shot all the linking material for the set.
Then the next DC trip after that was the A16 trip. This time around, I’m not going to any demonstrations (but stay tuned – something’s coming in September). So we’ll see what happens.
And today is also the day that Sis goes back to Virginia Tech. We’ll miss her very much while she’s away.
Mom brought me back fire from the Statue of Liberty
July 18, 2005, 5:12 AM
Mom, Sis, and David Temple (a friend of Sis’s) went to New York City for the weekend, and as is typical of when Mom goes to New York, she asked me if I wanted anything from up there.
Now if you’ve ever seen the movie Jungle 2 Jungle starring Tim Allen, you know that the chief of Mimi-Siku’s tribe gave him the mission of bringing back fire from the Statue of Liberty. After Mimi-Siku tried to take it literally (actually climbing the statue to physically reach the torch), in the end, he got a lighter shaped like the Statue of Liberty, where the flame comes out of the torch.
I thought that was just cool. So I asked Mom to get me something like that. She did! Look:
Fishing for dachshunds…
May 18, 2005, 10:07 AM
I just went over to Mom and Dad’s room and fished Greta out from under the bed. Today was Merry Maids day, and so they came and gave the house a cleaning. And Greta goes and hides under Mom and Dad’s bed while they’re here.
This goes back to a recurring thread with Greta. She thinks she’s a ferocious watchdog, protecting her family from intruders. But a watchdog she is not. She barks at the TV, and when the Merry Maids show up, she hides under the bed, and barks from there. She goes under the bed on one side, and crawls all the way over to the other side, and stays there. Some watchdog. And then once the Merry Maids leave, she stays there and continues to bark. Sis tried to fish her out earlier (which involves calling her to come out), with no success. So an hour or so after she tried, I successfully extracted her, picking up the dust ruffle around the bed, and calling to her to come out. She came out the same way she went in. And she still won’t shut up. Once she figures out that no one’s around, she’ll be satisfied.
Categories: Greta
I think you left your voice over in Europe…
March 12, 2005, 9:37 AM
Sis is back from Europe, and she had a lot of fun. But I think she forgot her voice over there. We’ll have to get Chris (her boyfriend who’s studying there this semester) to mail it back.
Seriously, though, she’s back, but she caught a cold while there. We hope she gets better soon. It must be a curse that comes with the second year, getting sick during spring break. One might recall that I was sick as a dog during my sophomore year spring break while at JMU. I was absolutely miserable.
But she did get a lot of cool pictures. Lots of pictures of things and people. It’s neat.
Otherwise, I spent some time yesterday redesigning my main page, which currently looks like this:
Categories: Family, Schumin Web meta
Goodness… it’s been ten days since I’ve had caffeine!
March 10, 2005, 8:23 PM
No one’s more surprised than me. The last time I had any caffeine was a Coke at AMC right after the procedure. And it wasn’t intentional, either. It just happened that way that I haven’t had any caffeine in ten days. All I have to say is that when I do have a soda again, probably after I go back to Wal-Mart, I’ll probably be bouncing off the walls.
Meanwhile, I’m itching to go somewhere. I haven’t been out since the surgery on the 28th. Considering that I’ve been working on various Washington DC photos lately, both in an “Urban Demolition” photo set that I’ve been working on (coming soon!), and all those Transit Center photos I put up last week, I’m really itching to go to Washington again. Depending on how well I’ve healed up, I want to go at the end of this month or the beginning of next month.
Otherwise, Sis comes back from Europe tomorrow! I’ll be so glad to see her again. Especially since when she came back from VT, I only saw her for 20 minutes at most. Plus I’ll be interested to see how she did with her new digital camera.
Categories: Family, Food and drink, Myself
Six days in the house thus far…
March 5, 2005, 6:34 PM
Yes, this is day #6… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and now Saturday. I have been at home recovering from this procedure. And according to Mom, it’s slowly but surely healing up. I have to ask, because the wound is not somewhere that I can see myself.
Meanwhile, it’s Spring Break at Virginia Tech, and my sister is in Europe! Her boyfriend Chris is doing a study abroad program this semester, and so Sis is going to visit him. Of course, the trip nearly didn’t happen, as there was a small snafu with the passport, as we didn’t realize that since she was under a certain age that it expired sooner than the rest of ours did. But with some scrambling, a phone call to the office of our Congressman, Bob Goodlatte, and an unexpected trip to Washington DC (vs. just Dulles Airport, where the flight was), my father managed to get the whole situation straightened out, and she’s over in Europe now. So I hope she has fun.
Meanwhile, the TV is showing nothing but wall-to-wall Martha Stewart. My exact thought is, who cares? She just happens to be a celebrity that went to jail, instead of someone less-known.
Categories: CFW, Dreams, Family, Personal health, Walmart
It’s nice to hear from people…
March 3, 2005, 10:11 AM
Since I had the procedure on Monday, it’s nice to get support from the people who care about you. I’ve gotten many kind words of support over the computer from many people, and also two cards from people from church! This one was particularly cute:
Guess who’s home…
November 21, 2004, 8:28 PM
Sis is home! Yay! She’s home for about a week, too. So while I toil away at Wally World, including on the infamous “Black Friday” day after Thanksgiving, she’ll be at home doing like whatever. Fun.
Meanwhile, this is a phrase that turned a few heads at Wally World: “This is why they give us guns around here.”
You’re thinking: What in the heck?
I’m referring to our handheld scanner guns, which are handy for ringing stuff up (oh, by the way, I got off the Service Desk recently, having had more than my fill of it – I’m now a cashier). Those things are handy for items that are impractical to put on the belt.
Meanwhile, speaking of Black Friday, I’ve officially promised to wear all-black on that day, like I did last year in Staunton.
And then on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, guess where I’m going. You guessed it. Washington DC. Metro’s newest in-fill station, New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gallaudet U opened yesterday for the first time. I’m going there, since it’s the first of what I would consider Metro’s “second generation” stations. This is quite a bit different than your typical Metro station. Four escalators (up from two), two elevators (up from one), a redesigned canopy… it’s neat.
I’m also watching CNN. There’s a thing about an NBA player going totally off in the stands. I’m just like, wow. How violent.
I need to be re-Googled so badly…
October 26, 2004, 9:57 PM
As of right now, most of my search results are bad. Specifically, at this time, it affects all pages in the Life and Times, Major Areas, Odds and Ends, and Photography sections. That’s because all my pages now end in .asp and not .htm, since the new menus require the new extension. And the aforementioned sections are the ones where the redesign has been completed. Journal, being a new section, is different because there are no old results. It just needs to be crawled for the first time.
So as a result, I can expect to see some of my site traffic dip until Google finds me again. I’ve done my part, though, and resubmitted the home pages for the changed sections, where all the links live.
Otherwise, I got out of the house for a little bit today. I actually went to Staunton Mall to get my glasses adjusted, and then went to the Staunton Wal-Mart to do a little shopping. In this case, Staunton Wal-Mart is crucial here. I don’t shop in the Waynesboro Wal-Mart on my off-days. Feels too much like going to work. So I went to Staunton. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and so that was nice. Staunton has now turned their Garden Center patio into a full-scale greenhouse like we have in Waynesboro, which I thought was cool. It definitely beats the heck out of the open-air patio that it used to be.
Categories: Family, Myself, Schumin Web meta, Shopping
Well, guess who’s home this weekend…
October 15, 2004, 11:35 PM
Yes, my sister’s home this weekend. And she brought Chris, her boyfriend, with her. And she and Chris are going to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg tomorrow for Howl-O-Scream, which is some event over there.
Me, I have no interest in theme parks. I get the same feeling of excitement railfanning the Green Line in Washington. So I have no need for rollercoasters. And I also have no need for the crowds of people and roadshow prices.
But anyway, Sis is back for the weekend. Fun. Though our paths have probably crossed for the only time this weekend. She and Chris are going to be in Williamsburg on Saturday, and I will be in Washington on Sunday. As such, when they leave for and come home from Busch Gardens, I will be sound asleep in my bed. While they’re at Busch Gardens, I’ll be at home. Then while I’m getting ready for Washington, they’ll be sound asleep. And then while I’m in Washington, the two of them will be going back to Blacksburg.