Yello!

If any of you who are reading this happen to be family members, you may want to check out http://www.whiddenfarm.com/genealogy/. Jesse has utilized some web-based genealogy software to allow us to record family ancestry on a secure site.  When you get to the site, you can request permission to login and Jesse will respond via e-mail.  We have quite a bit up on the site already and once you login you can begin adding information about your own immediate family as well as take a look at our ancestors for many generations back.  I tried it out yesterday and was able to maneuver around the site easily.

One of my extracurricular duties is to run the school concession stand at every football, volleyball and basketball game.  Of course, students also work at the concession stand as does my husband, who is mostly in charge of the popcorn popper.  I was very surprised when the following review came out in Lincoln Arneal’s sports column yesterday in the Columbus Telegram as one of the Items of the Week: “Working Halftime: St. Edward concession stand.  One way to make an average concession stand into a great one is to have one crock pot of chili and another of nacho cheese and adding those toppings onto hot dogs and nachos.  Props to the St. Edward stand for offering those selections plus some great popcorn.”  Can you guess where I was when I heard about the press coverage last night?  You guessed it, of course… the concession stand!!!  🙂

A friend sent me this link http://www.extremeinstability.com/06-12-31.htm to some absolutely amazing photographs of the recent ice storm that devastated much of Nebraska a couple of weeks ago. These photos seem to be mostly in the south central part of the state where some are still without electrical power two weeks later. Incredible!

Even though we were only without power for five days, that was enough. More than one person asked us if it wasn’t sort of fun to “rough” it without power for those days. Ummmm… the answer was a resounding no. It just was not a word that came to my mind to describe it. It’s one thing to make the best of a bad situation, but I doubt that those who are still without power would describe the last two weeks as fun. Going fishing is fun, riding a motorcycle is fun, being with family is fun, sometimes even grading papers can be fun! Living in a cold house with no water, tv, or lights is not fun.   If you ask a farmer, he would probably tell you that trying to care for livestock without water and other electrically-powered equipment is not much fun either.

You may have heard about the ice storm that hit our state on Saturday, December 30. A cold, icy rain came down for several hours and temperatures hovering around the lower 30’s allowed 2-4 inches of ice to coat everything it landed on. Unfortunately, that included our electrical lines which, in turn, caused big electrical poles to snap off and drop the wires to the ground. When our power went out on Saturday night, we joined the approximately 29,000 homes across the state who lost power due to the storm. It was just restored a few hours ago today (Wednesday). It wasn’t fun, but we survived without heat, television, running water, refrigeration, and all the other conveniences we take for granted that depend on electrical power. With the generosity of good friends and neighbors we were still able to shower, wash clothes, water the livestock, celebrate New Year’s Eve, and watch the Cotton Bowl. We even took some time a couple of days ago to take some photos of some icy spectacles we hope we don’t see again for quite some time. Still, we were very, very glad when repairs were made and the lights and heat came back on this afternoon!

Having a bit of free time over Christmas vacation has given me the opportunity to see a couple of good movies. One is We Are Marshall, the story of the airplane crash in the early 70’s that took the lives of 75 football players, coaches and fans from a small college in West Virginia. What a good movie! You could feel the pain of the town as they struggled to rebuild the football team and their lives following such a devastating loss. Another good movie is The Holiday about two women who traded houses for the holidays finding themselves and love in the process. Yes, it’s definitely a chick-flick, but probably a movie that men might like as well. I especially liked the setting in the English countryside and loved the four main talented actors/actresses. A couple of other movies on my “hope to see list” include In Pursuit of Happyness and A Night At the Museum. I got The DaVinci Code for Christmas and can hardly wait to see it too! Does anyone have any opinions about these movies or others?

Yesterday I returned from a 5-day adventure to Atlanta where I attended a teacher’s meeting. The speakers were great and the people were among the friendliest of any city I’ve visited. I’ve attached some photos to this post to help tell the story of the sights I saw while in Georgia. We took a tour of CNN, visited the Carter Presidential Library, stopped by the Coke Museum, watched the Christmas Parade, and cheered on the Huskers via television in the company of the Atlanta UNL Alumni Association. The main speaker at our meeting was Chris Gardner, a man who was homeless on the streets of San Francisco for a year with his young son before making his fortune in the stock market. A movie of his life’s story is coming out in theaters soon starring Will Smith. We sampled some great southern food while we were there and enjoyed seeing all the football fans from Arkansas and Florida who were in town for the SEC football championship game. To top it all off, I was excited to visit the new aquarium with my nephew and his family who live near Atlanta. All in all, Atlanta was awesome!

The turkey is in the oven, the pies are cooling, and other assorted traditional Thanksgiving dinner dishes are in various stages of preparation. I thought this would be a good time to take a few moments to count my blessings and post them here in cyberspace for all eternity! 🙂 So on Thanksgiving Day 2006, these are some of the things I am thankful for:

• -a husband who is my best friend
• -three kids who continue to make me proud of them as begin to make their way through life as adults
• -extended family and friends that I genuinely enjoy
• -good health
• -my country and my faith
• -opportunities I have had to travel, see new places and have new experiences
• -and…the Harley, the hot tub, the laptop and wireless Internet 🙂

It’s been quite a while since I posted on here and I guess my excuse is, well, I’ve been busy! This past week was filled with football mania at school since we hosted a semi-final game in the state playoffs. Unfortunately, our team lost the game after coming back from a regular season 3-5 record and then getting three wins in the state playoffs making it to the semifinal round. Hosting the game meant that I got to prepare for and run the concession stand that served approximately 1,000 people! It made for a long and tiring night! The other part of my week involved taking kids to the State Student Council Convention in McCook on Friday. The meeting was fun and we heard some great speakers. We had a somewhat sobering experience on the way home though, when we were one of the first vehicles to come upon a head-on crash between a car and a pick-up. I spent 14 minutes on the cell phone with the 911 operator until help arrived. The front ends of both vehicles were pretty much gone and there was debris all over the road. The investigating officer called me last night to get any more information that I could give him about what I saw. He told me that the man in the car was dead at the scene and the woman driving the pick-up was arrested for second-offense DWI and possible involuntary manslaughter. Wow – what a tragedy for the man who was just driving down the road, like I was, and suddenly his life was ended by a person who chose to drive drunk! His life is over. I arrived at the scene just a minute or so later and…my life goes on.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t get carried away with political issues on this blog, but Rush Limbaugh made such an insensitive and stupid comment today – that I could hardly let it pass without commenting. If you hadn’t heard, Michael J. Fox recently made a commercial supporting a Missouri senatorial candidate who supports stem-cell research. Fox is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and was visibly shaking due to the effects of his disease. Research done with increased accessibility to stem-cells could possibly improve the chances of treating horrible diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Rush Limbaugh, in his infinite lack of wisdom, made the statement that Michael J. Fox was exaggerating his symptoms and doing a good job of “acting”. What an idiot! I’m glad that Fox is joining Nancy Reagan and others who have spoken out against the current administration’s backward stance on limiting federally-funded research in this country to a handful of existing stem-cell lines. A few years ago Jesse was invited by our state legislator to testify in favor of stem-cell research at UNO’s Med Center. He did speak out at the legislative hearing and referred to Grandma Agnes’ decade-long decline due to Alzheimer’s disease. In my opinion, stem-cell research should be given a chance to help those who suffer from these devasting illnesses while, at the same time, giving some meaning, worth and honor to the existance of abandoned frozen embryos that would otherwise be destroyed. One thing stem-cell research cannot do though is to cure the big mouth and stupid comments of narrow-minded people like Mr. Limbuagh!

Since I posted a picture of one of our kittens, I thought I should put a picture up of the most distinctive cat on the farm – a cat we call the Watching Cat. Although he’s not nearly as cute as the kittens, he does have quite a personality. Several years ago as a young tom cat, he had the very annoying habit of “marking” just about everything. That included our back door, the bottom of the grill, and…well, yeah, you can probably see how that got annoying. When we were enclosing our front porch to make what is now our sunroom, the carpenters were working with the new decorative header that was to go above our two front French doors. They needed something that they left in town, so they left for about 15-20 minutes. When they came back, sure enough, the smell told them that Watching Cat had been there…and left his mark on the new wooden header! So that got Francis to thinking that something needed to be done. To make a long story short, Francis used some little rubber bands that helped to turn the Watching Cat into a more well-mannered, but less masculine, tom cat. Let’s just say that he never really knew what happened to him.

Now our Watching Cat just sort of monitors everything that happens here on the farm by, well…watching us! The picture below shows him as I found him this morning when I got up…peering through the front door just to see what we were going to be doing today. He basically watches us 24-7. He has figured out how to perch on just about every window sill and sometimes even hangs from the screen so that he can spy on us. We have joked about outfitting him with a tiny camera attached to the top of his head – it might be interested to see ourselves from his vantage point.

This past summer I went into town one day for an hour or so, leaving the television on in the living room. When I returned I was surprised to see that the Watching Cat had somehow let himself into the house and was lying contentedly in my recliner – watching The Price Is Right! What a cat!

A few weeks ago we got up earlier than usual on a Saturday morning and were rushing around the house getting ready to go someplace. Francis heard a commotion at the bathroom window as he was shaving and turned to see the Watching Cat clinging to the screen peeking in on him. A few minutes later Watching Cat was on the deck by the patio door meowing loudly seemingly trying to get my attention. I mentioned it to Francis and he said “Oops! I forgot to feed the cats!”. We think Watching Cat surveyed the situation, saw that we were hurrying around more than usual, and thought he’d better get our attention or he wasn’t going to get his breakfast! What a cat!