Current Dilemmas

The current dilemmas in our household:

Celebrate Hallowe'en on Saturday night, or go to the university football game? After all, Grandpa does spend a great deal providing us with season tickets. Then again, the opportunity to scare little kids in the neighborhood only comes once a year. It is also a good friend of Little Girl's birthday, so she wants to be with the friend.

Take Bigger Girl to volunteer at the Health Center tonight to help residents celebrate Hallowe'en, as her school has asked, which means picking her and Neighbor Boy up at school, bringing them all the way back home, turning around immediately and hurrying back out there with her even a further drive from our place to get her there on time. It is located in such a place that there is no convenient cross street from either the interstate or the state highway, it is an even further drive than her school, which is a 20 mile round trip from our house, and we have very little gas money. Or, Sweetie needs the van tonight to go to church band rehearsal. He had to miss last week, because of work, and they need for him to be there consistently so he can show reliability.

What to cook for dinner tonight -- beans again or figure out yet another way to cook ground beef?

Keep fighting the losing battles, or go back to bed? Since Sweetie decided to "help" this morning by pouring extra water through the coffee maker and ruining my coffee after pouring his own, bed sounds mighty nice.


Today is:

City of Riverside Founder's Day Festival, Riverside, Ohio

Folly Day

Fyribod (or Forebode) (Either way, whatever it is, it sounds forbidding)

Independence Day, Nationalist China

Milvian Bridge Day -- Christian

National Chocolate Day

National Holiday, Hungary

Ohi Day, Greece (Literally "No Day", celebrating resistance to Mussolini.)

Plush Animal Lover's Day

San Juan Capistrano Mission Pirate Festival

St. Jude's Day, (patron of desperate or hopeless cases -- the reason Danny Thomas chose this saint to invoke as patron of the hospital he helped found.)

St. Simon's Day

Time Day


Anniversaries Today:

Founding of Harvard University. 1636

Statue of Liberty dedicated, 1886


Birthdays Today:

Joaquin Phoenix, 1974
Julia Roberts, 1967
Daphne Zuniga, 1962
Bill Gates, 1955
Bruce Jenner, 1949
Dennis Franz, 1944
Charlie Daniels, 1936
Cleo Laine, 1927
Jonas Salk, 1914


Today in History:

Constantine the Great defeats Maxentius, 312
Battle of Yaunis Khan in which Turkish forces under the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha defeat the Mameluks near Gaza, 1516
Battle of Amba Sel, in which Imam Ahmad ibn Ibrihim al-Ghazi again defeats the army of Lebna Dengel, Emperor of Ethiopia; the southern part of Ethiopia falls under Imam Ahmad's control, 1531
The first university in the New World, Universidad Santo Tomas Aquino, is established in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1538
Harvard University is founded, 1636
Peruvian cities of Lima & Callao are demolished by an earthquake, 18,000 die, 1746
Eli Whitney applies for a patent on the cotton gin, 1793
The first railroad in Spain, between Barcelona and Mataro, is opened, 1848
Maimonides College in Pennsylvania is founded as the first Jewish college in the US, 1867
The Statue of Liberty is dedicated by President Grover Cleveland, and celebrated by the first ticker tape/confetti parade in NYC, 1886
An earthquake strikes Mino-Owari, Japan, kills 7,300, 1891
The St. Louis police try a new investigation method -- fingerprints, 1904
Czechoslovakia gains its independence in the break up of Austria-Hungary, 1918
The Volstead Act, passed by Congress over Wilson's veto, starts Prohibition, 1919
The first coast to coast radio broadcast of a football game, 1922