Free Sharkey!

Oh no! Our most recent goofball for governor candidate, Jonathan Sharkey was arrested!

"Jonathon Sharkey, 41, of Princeton, was arrested Monday night on two felony counts from Indiana, said Mike Smith, the Mille Lacs County jail administrator. One warrant was for escape, another for stalking.
...
Sharkey was arrested by police in Princeton without incident"

Normally I wouldn't let a candidate getting arrested change my plan to vote for him or her (they're all crooks, getting arrested just means they're not a very good crook), but I don't believe I'll be voting for Mr. Sharkey after this incident. Why? He was "arrested by police in Princeton without incident." Without incident?? He's a vampyre, for cripe's sake! Trying to arrest a vampyre should result in chaos, mayhem and bloodletting! What kind of weenie vampyre is this guy? Really.

Complete Story

Kids in the news...sort of...

Actually, it's their school that's in the news, in the form of an Op-Ed by Mark Dayton in Tuesday's Star Tribune.

Here's the pertinent bit:

For example, Rochester Mayo High School's 1,800 students speak 54 languages. At Eagan's Pilot Knob elementary school, 18 languages are spoken. At Austin's Community Learning School, newly arriving children learn English in one classroom, and their parents learn English in another classroom.

If you're interested, you can read the entire piece here. (Registration might be required.)

The timing on this is funny, as Emma's teacher and I just had a nice chat on Friday about the incredible diversity in their little suburban elementary and how enriching/broadening that experience seems to be, not just for our two but all the PK kids. (For example, Emma's best friend, Sofiya, is from the Ukraine--at six the little girl is fluent in English, Russian, and Ukrainian, how fabulous is that?!) Granted, the gist of Sen. Dayton's Op-Ed piece is about school funding (or the lack thereof), not nifty diversity things. But still! :)

Clue #1

Clue #1

Treasure hunters swarming amidst global warming

Make it hard to park our loot.

Look for snow and ice, enough to suffice,

To shorten your winter pursuit.

There you go. I've nothing to offer on this one. Not even a city v. county clue.

If you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, today is the first day of the Pioneer Press Winter Carnival Treasure Hunt. More details are available here. It's a modern day hunt for buried treasure, $10,000 to the victor. I'll be following it closely for the next 12 days or so.

Back to school once again

Well...classes started last week Thurs and then I had a 4-day weekend. Kind of crazy, but oh well. It's so hard to believe that I only have 3 semesters left. I know time will fly, but I can't wait to be done. I just keep telling myself, 3 more... Yesterday I came down with a nasty cold. Excellent way to start off the semester...sick as a dog. Oh well, hopefully it will go away as fast as it came on. 16 credits this semester. It's going to be a lot of work! I'm hoping I can stay on top of all my reading....I'm thinking it's nearly impossible. So I'm going to have to pick a couple classes to read in and then say forget it in a couple other classes. Last semester I started out so good, but then ended up not reading for any of my classes at all. The nurses that I work with, they tell me they didn't read much in college, so it kind of puts my mind at ease when I think of how overwhelming everything is. Hope all is well with everyone!

It's Back to the Books!

Katie left this afternoon for Spring Semester at UMD! (Now that is a hopeful name for a semester, isn't it?) I know that she was excited...and we are excited for her! She will be taking 16 credits & also hoping for a part-time job. One of her classes is one that I particularly enjoyed when I was a college student...Interpersonal Communications, much more fun than Speech 101 where you had to get up "IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY AND MAKE A FOOL OF YOURSELF!"

Best of luck, Katie, and remember to have some fun, too.

Happy January!

This is one of the funnest things I've seen lately. It's a Garfield randomizer, it takes three frames of random Garfield comics and assembles them into one sometimes incoherent but often hilarious comic. Try it yourself!

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/natetrue/gar.html

Kinda fun

So, ever wonder which celebrity you look like? MyHeritage.com has some free facial recognition software available on it's website. It's kind of fun to play with, but I'm thinking they need to work out the bugs yet. I uploaded a photo of myself and this is the list of celebrities I supposedly look like:

Eleanor Roosevelt 57%
Tom Cruise 56%
Gene Hackman 55%
Alain Prost 52%
Kimi Raikkonen 51%
Sophie Marceau 48%
Gerald Ford 47%
Dennis Quaid 46%
Barack Obama 45%
Mick Jagger 45%

If this software really worked, they would have come up with Tom Green, 100%.
Tom:

Me:

Merry Christmas

Just a quick note...wishing all of you...a very Merry Christmas! Our home came alive with lights, tree decorations, candles, and most importantly sugar, cut-out cookies...Katie has arrived!

Aaron is spending time in Grand Rapids, MI, working...& Alicia, Ryan & Kane will be home over the New Year weekend.

We are truely blessed!

Love to all!!

Dale & Lois

More about me, me, me!

I feel like I'm dominating this blog as of late. Sorry about that! But, I also got interviewed on the local radio this morning. There's an mp3 of it here under the Morning Show heading. You may need to go to the archive if you're looking at this in a day or two. I'm not sure how long they keep them out there, so if you're interested you should take a listen sooner rather than later. :)

Pete Saunders on Paul Harvey

Pete was mentioned on Paul Harvey on Monday at noon. Click on the title above and listen to the last five minutes or so. Congrats Pete!

If this is Santa's backup...We all are in trouble...

As most children dressed by their very crazy moms....Kane is all but thrilled with this outfit. I did explain to him when he was old enough to scream "no" and run faster then his mom, he would get out of these highly embarrassing photo ops!

Sledding

Here's what I did this afternoon.


View this clip on Vimeo

Repeat roughly 120 times.

Santa's Gone Cyber

I found out that our school provides web hosting, so the kids and I made a little website. The only things that are functional are the home pages for each family member and the Dear Santa pages for each family member. I just added the Fun and Hobbies categories as placeholders. Emma and Morgan each designed their own graphics and text. Don't ask me to explain Morgan's, because I can't. She was insistent that I type "I'm the store of Morgan. Eat me." I have no idea what it means. I must add that it doesn't sound nearly as offensive when coming out of the mouth of a smiling six year old. Here's the link:

Family Page

College & Finals

Just checking in with all college kids...how is everything going now that finals week is just a few days away?

I am a college lab assistant at NTC & one thing never ceases to amaze me...the way college students all of a sudden "need me," and want me to change my schedule to "help" them. My schedule has been posted since the first of September...where have they been?? Faces are strained, fists clenched, not many smiles, very tired eyes...it will all be over soon, only to start the cycle again in January.

Good luck to all college students out there! As Anna said, "It is crunch time!"

Hildur's Lefse Recipe

Okay, here's one for Randee!

Lefse

Enough potates to yield 3 c. riced potatoes
3 T. oil
1 T. sugar
2 tsp. milk
salt

1 cup flour (added in the morning)

Measure 3 c. riced potatoes with sugar, oil, milk & salt. Mix well & refrigerate overnight.
Add 1 cup flour -- a little more if dough seems too sticky. Form into soft balls with large ice cream scoop. Chill. Roll & bake. Enough for about 7-8 lefse.

(5# potatoes makes approx 8 c potatoes)
Enjoy!

Update

A great big thanks goes out to everybody who helped me with my web site yesterday. I was able to use all of your comments and reactions in my final report. Does the web site suck? Yes, it does. I could have made it a lot better if I'd started working on it when we got the assignment 3 weeks ago instead of waiting until three days before it was due. But all in all I was fairly happy with the outcome.

Don't forget, A Charlie Brown Christmas is on tonight on ABC. Check your local listings for time and channel. It's 7:00 on channel 5 locally. Grab a blanket and snuggle in with the one(s) you love. Wah-wah-wah.

Web Design

Hi all!
I made a website for school this weekend. It's due this evening, and I need a little user feedback. So if you have 5 minutes or so to help me out, I'd appreciate it. Below is the link to the site. If you're interested, please explore and e-mail me the answers to the following questions:
1. Say you wanted to buy a hat. Time yourself to see how long it takes you to complete the transaction. Send me your time along with any positive or negative feedback about the transaction process.
2. While buying, did you need to back up using the back button?
3. How long do you estimate that it takes to get from the home page to any
desired page, on average? 5 seconds? 10 seconds?
4. Any feedback in general about the site. Specifically the navigation, usability, or overall impression.

Nothing fancy, just a sentence or two will do. Send any feedback to frosti AT gmail DOT com. If you're looking at the site after Monday, you can still send me feedback but I won't be able to use it in the report. Thanks! Here's the link:

Third Wave

Christmas time

It was a nice relaxing weekend for Mandy and I. We went to the Christmas party at my work on Saturday night and enjoyed a buffet dinner (of course), chatting with friends and co-workers, wine-tasting, bingo and more.
Today, we went and got a Christmas tree and decorated it all up. We also managed to get the lights hung outside. It's good to see some snow on the ground here in St. Paul.

Getting Organized

While digging in my file cabinet at work, I came across a quote that Anna sent last year...& I saved it because I liked it. Still do...here it is:

"In life we do things; some we wish we had never done, some we wish we could replay a million times in our heads, but they make us who we are and in the end, those experiences shape every detail about us; if we were to reverse any of them, we wouldn't be at the exact place that we are today...so just live, make mistakes, and have wonderful times, but never ever second guess who you are, where you have been, and most importantly, where it is that you are going..."

I hope you like it, too.

Thanksgiving

Well....things have been very busy for me. It was so nice to have 5 days off of school. I didn't crack open a book the entire time I was home, it was so nice. I did spend quite a bit of time working, but that's ok because I love working. I miss my coworkers when I'm not there for awhile. On Thanksgiving, I worked night shift, and then went home and had breakfast with Nathan and Katie. That was nice. We sat and chatted til about 9 and then I had to go to bed. I got up around noon and drove to my grandparents for lunch. I got there and there were so many people there. My mom and I decided that everyone was there with the exception of some of my cousins. I was there for about an hour and then had to turn around and go to work again. 16 hours of holiday pay...not too shabby. The week before thanksgiving was very stressful. I had 5 tests in less than a week. I surprisingly did very well on them, so that made me happy. It was just a matter of getting through everything. From here on out, it's crunch time though. There's only about 3 weeks of classes left with lots of tests and projects due. I will be very happy once Dec. 15th rolls around. Last week Tues I observed in the OR at St. Mary's Hospital. I got to see a Heart Bypass surgery. It was really interesting and all, but it was incredibly long and tedious. So I now know that surgical nursing is not for me. It was a long 6 hours standing and watching. Oh well, it was probably a once in a lifetime experience. Hope everyone's Thanksgiving went well and happy holidays.