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Our Daily Thread 12-5-14

Good Morning!

It’s Friday!!!

And Only 20 Days Until Christmas!

Today’s header photo is from Cheryl. And she wasn’t kidding about there being a lot of turkeys.

turkeys 2 cheryl

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On this day in 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered Hispaniola (now Haiti). 

In 1782 the first native U.S. president, Martin Van Buren, was born in Kinderhook, NY.  

In 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte left his army as they were retreating from Russia.  

And in 1932 German physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa making it possible for him to travel to the U.S. 

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Quote of the Day

“As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.”

Martin Van Buren

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 One of my favorites, from PurduePMO

Very nicely done!

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Anyone have a QoD?

42 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 12-5-14”

  2. Where is everyone?!? I’ve been awake since 4:30…Becca came down at 5:45… We enjoyed some super sweet cuddle time and then reviewed for her spelling test today. Now, she’s happily playing Minecraft…

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  3. Good morning, Ann! I’m up earlier than usual — it’s a bible study Friday for me. Off to get me some breakfast. Have a great day!

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  5. Yesterday Cheryl wondered why companies weren’t providing incentive for employees to use sick time properly. The answer is that they have. Every company I know of (except Donna’s, apparently), no longer offer sick time. Instead, they combined vacation and sick time into “paid-time-off” (PTO) that can be used however one wishes. Note, however, that when my company and my husband’s went to this plan, the total PTO was less than the sum of the previous vacation and sick time. A negative unintended consequence of this move is that now people come to work sick so that they can save their PTO for the fun stuff. I don’t care because I work from home but I hear a lot of complaints from those in the office about their neighbors sniffing, snorting, sneezing, and spreading germs.

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  6. It’s Friday. You know what that means?
    We have a VIP party at the Lions today.
    (VIP means Visually Impaired Persons)
    I have to provide transportation for a lady. We invite the visually impaired people we know of.
    Walmart provides $25.00 gift cards for us to distribute as presents The Salvation Army band plays and one of our ladies sings.
    The food is usually good.

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  7. To paraphrase MLK- Friday at last, Friday at last. Thank God it’s Friday at last!

    Re:Paid time off- Our school still differentiates between sick days and personal days. We even have to give a reason for our personal days. I put in a suggestion in the last contract negotiations that instead of 10 sick days and 2 personal days per year, they just make them all personal days and let us decide how to use them, rather than lying about sickness. I never take sick days unless I really am sick (or for family members).

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  8. I agree with Linda on the separation of vacation and sick days. Our receptionist used all of her PTO but was out sick two days this week. She came back yesterday to expose us all. Another woman in the company has gone behind her with Clorox wipes.

    The Grandpa who lives at my house is excited. It seems that in January daughter in law has to go to Austin for a big conference. Since she is nursing the baby she needs someone to go with her to take care of the baby while she is in meetings. Since her mom is staying home to keep the big brother she can’t go, that left the grandpa.

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  9. We love Fridays at our house, too, inbutnotof! Becca’s school gets out at noon every Friday, which is especially nice.

    L. awakened with another severe migraine. So, she’s in bed, hoping to be able to go after second period. We’ll see. Unfortunately, the Imitrex is sometimes ineffective if she doesn’t take it early in the migraine. It is a few days before her cycle, which is always when they happen.

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  10. The government gave us annual leave and sick leave. We could accumulate and carryover six weeks of annual leave, but after that, it was use or lose. I often took the last two weeks of the year off. We could accumulate sick leave indefinitely. If I remember correctly, unused sick leave was added to time worked for retirement purposes. I was seldom sick, but used sick leave for dental appointments, etc. We could use it in four hour increments
    It’s a good system..

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  11. Some of the women would leave sick in the middle of the day..
    I never wondered why until the subject came up yesterday.

    I once got a headache at work. I asked our secretary if she had an aspirin. She said, “No but I have a Midol.” I took it and it worked.

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  12. So, does anyone know why tom turkeys might be displaying in December? Those photos were taken yesterday. I saw them displaying maybe three months ago and I was puzzled, but when I saw them yesterday I was really mystified. The only thing that makes sense to me is that more than one flock was coming together to make a larger winter flock and all the guys need to know where they rank. But I couldn’t find anything online that talks about such a thing (other than that I did find photos of turkeys displaying with snow on the ground–but that could have been early spring, not late fall).

    There are more than 50 turkeys in the second photo (precise number uncertain, but 52 or more was my count), and there were several that weren’t in the photo, so it seemed to be a flock of roughly five dozen birds. I’ve seen flocks of 20 or maybe even 30, but never one that large. (I did read that winter flocks can number up to 300, but I wouldn’t think that a residential area could get even close to that, even out in the country–we still have roads crisscrossing the area.)

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  13. Karen O, on your question yesterday about boys. It is not necessarily his domestic situation at this time though it probably is. Any chance daughter was using or drinking while pregnant? That can have serious influence on a child and anger.

    But what can you do to help? Continue to be there to offer a home where emotions exist but are kept under control. Give him a place where he knows an adult is in charge. A lot of the anger is often due to fear that the child is the only one who can be in control because none of the adults are consistent.

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  14. Musical Advent Calendar – Day 5: This carol is also from a region in Spain, the Basque region. The Basque title is “Birjina gaztettobat zegoen”, in English “The Angel Gabriel”. As the Basque language is notoriously difficult to learn, it isn’t surprising that I couldn’t find a version sung in the original language. So here is the English one:

    The angel Gabriel from heaven came,
    With wings as drifted snow, with eyes as flame:
    “All hail to thee, O lowly maiden Mary,
    Most highly favored lady.” Gloria!
    “For know a blessed mother thou shalt be,
    All generations laud and honor thee;
    Thy son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold,
    Most highly favored lady.” Gloria!
    Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head;
    “To me be as it pleaseth God,” she said.
    “My soul shall laud and magnify God’s holy name.”
    Most highly favored lady.” Gloria!
    Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ, was born
    In Bethlehem all on a Christmas morn,
    And Christian folk through-out the world will ever say:
    “Most highly favored lady.” Gloria!

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  15. Why are the turkeys (toms) displaying?

    They are overflowing with joy that they survived another Thanksgiving!

    Karen, my son was at his worst at age 4. I had always heard of the Terrible Twos, but no one warned me about the Ferocious Fours. Not sure if I spelled that correctly, but you get the gist.

    For 6 Arrows, I am able to make stars using my Smartphone. It has two separate keyboard pads for symbols so I have a variety to choose from.

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  16. Mumsee is correct about that the four year old needs to know the adults are in control. I thing because they are bigger, they are realizing physical power for the first time mixed with an increasing vocabulary that gives verbal power. They are probably testing the new found limits to that POWER. They are definitely a force to deal with. Best wishes for determining what works best to keep him on a good path. Find those things that are important to him and remind him that the good things in life can be lost through bad behavior. And you can tell him that when he wants something in the future, he won’t get it because of not doing what you ask of him now.

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  18. We also can use our sick time for doctor/dentist appts and due to illness of immediate family members (parents, children).

    We used to get a set 10 days a year, use ’em or lose ’em. Interesting how a few folks always managed to take 10 days off sick every single year. 🙂 But then they switched it to cumulative, though we certainly don’t get paid out for them if we leave the company or retire. I wish.

    We also have thought it would be nice to allow people to use some of the days as “personal” days, not vacation or sick — but just as days when you need to take care of things in your personal life: non-medical appointments, moving, other house chores, etc.

    But being able to use the sick days for medical appointments is especially helpful (that wasn’t allowed before, you just had to make up the time missed).

    So speaking of sick time, we ran a story on our website about how this year’s flu has mutated so the shots may not be as effective.

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  21. My brother gets bereavement time, too, through his work plan.

    A long time back when a friend committed suicide I asked to use a day of comp time I had accumulated. I remember being told I could use half a day of my comp time and I had to take the rest as vacation time. You know, some bosses can be so heartless. 😦 it was nice, however, that a group of my office mates took me out to lunch to cheer me.

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  23. Janice, when my stepfather died, I checked my workplace’s bereavement leave, and saw that I got three days for the death of a parent or stepparent. Considering that Mom had married him after I was out of the house and living in a different state, it seemed a little bit like “cheating” to take them up on it. But I realized that I needed to go be with my mom for my mother’s sake, and her loss was real even though they had only been married about two years. She was an old woman who was alone again for the second time.

    The good thing, as far as timing, was that his sudden death was the day before Thanksgiving, and I already got off for Thanksgiving and the day after. Add a weekend and three days of bereavement pay, and I was able to take a full week off to be with my mom. I was the only one of us who was able to stay that long, so I did so. Also, Thanksgiving and Christmas are the cheapest days to fly, because no one wants to. So even though I got a plane ticket less than 24 hours before my flight, it was inexpensive. All around it was very good timing. (My mom and stepdad were scheduled to have Thanksgiving dinner with my brother near Chattanooga, so instead it was my mother and me. We had a standard Thanksgiving meal–the only one I ate with my mom between my leaving for college in 1989 and her death in 2003–but after it was over, it was time to move into funeral mode.)

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  24. Janice (10:45), your smartphone is smarter than my keyboard. 😉

    I don’t have a smartphone, but after seeing your comment, I decided to look at my cellphone to see which symbols it had. I had only paid attention to the twelve (very common) symbols on the first of the symbols page, not specifically noticing until today that there are two extra screens, with a total of 21 more symbols, to choose from.

    No stars, but lots of things I thought were only on my keyboard, and not on my phone, too. If I typed them all in a row here, I might very likely get a good swift kick off this blog from Mr. Administrator. 😛

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  26. Attention Bloggers
    I have e-mail from Costco telling me that my order is ready.
    I have ordered nothing from Costco.
    So I called Costco.
    It’s a scam. The sender wants personal information.
    If you receive such an e-mail, just delete it. Don’t bother to open it.
    Just delete it.

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  30. Excitement on my street today, and not the good kind. I saw police cars at the catty – corner house from mine. I just called and found out the neighbor’s door was kicked in and jewelry and laptops got stolen.
    😦
    My across the street neighbor was alert and got the burglar ‘ s tag number as the suspects have been arrested. The alert neighbor is the one who saw me trimming on my cedar tree several months back. Good for him! Good for us! It sounds like there has been a string of troubles about which I was unaware. I got caught up with the neighbor on news about what my son is doing. He couldn’t believe our son is twenty-five. He still thinks of him as a young boy.

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  31. The neighbor said their little dog seems traumatized by the house being broken into. He told me their other dogs died and they got this new little one. I need to go see it sometime. I told him about Miss Bosley. 🙂

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  32. good to keep up with the neighbors, Janice. You never know what is happening. Not sure how I feel about coming home. The missions house is rather hidden and I was burglarized when I was last there. I don’t have a plan for Christmas. Struggling to keep positive.

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  40. Wow, thanks for all the loving thoughts. It is very tempting. Peter, I can fly free standby as my son works for an airline, so this is very tempting.
    I do need time to recover from the trip and all the work I’m doing now. spent the day working on report cards.

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  41. have you all seen the beautiful full moon? so lovely
    They ended tonight’s concert with the Hallelujah chorus. I think that that is my favorite piece of music. Now I am ready for Christmas.

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