A few short items (one of them ME!)

First on the list is our friend Marty of Heard at Starbucks. His father has had a heart attack, and Marty has flown to the East coast to be with him and their family. Marty is a great guy, so I'm guessing that his Dad is all that and a bag of chips. Please say a prayer for him, and if you like, stop by and give Marty some positive thoughts.

A big thank you to Hollie of Life in a Small Town, who has given me a "Friends" award. The award states "These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbon of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight more and include the cleverly written text into the body of your awards." I don't think my blog has ever been called "exceedingly charming" before, but I kinda like it! Thank you very much, Hollie. I'm going to break with tradition and not award this to any blog in particular. If I read you, you know I'm doing so for a reason, so grab this award for yourself.

I've written before about our lake effect snow in our area. It can sometimes be an extremely narrow band of snow, and we saw a prime example of that last night. Although we got a little snow at Nutwood, it wasn't anything major, and I was able to get out and about today. But not too far to the west of us, they were getting dumped on, and the Doppler picture was one of the most dramatic examples of lake effect I've seen. If the winds have shifted just a bit to the east, we would have been the "dumpees!"

When I was out today, I stocked up on bird food. Yikes! Ken just might have a cow (if not a cowbird)! Well, I haven't bought any for a while, and I'm getting ready for the Great Backyard Bird Count next weekend. I'll write more about it next week. I bought a bag of thistle seed to put in the feeder that Ken got me for Christmas (what's the point of having a feeder if you don't fill it, right?), and MAN, that stuff is expensive. I did get a deal on suet cakes, though--if you can find a 10-pack, it's worth it, because they were about 75 cents as opposed to $1.25 or thereabouts.

Did anyone see Rod Blagojevich on Letterman last night? Ken even stayed up for it. As Dave put it, and asked Blago, "Really...why ARE you here?" Blagojevich was smarmy, seemed a little arrogant (he said that a joke Dave had just made wasn't all that funny), and ultimately, clueless. He really seems to think that he's going to get people on his side by doing all these shows, and did not seem to pick up on the bad vibes coming from Dave and from the audience. Hell, I could feel it sitting here at home! I think that for much of the interview, I was sitting here with my mouth hanging open. I've said it before...the guy has got some brass balls. He's in for a rude awakening when he goes up on federal charges.

I was pretty disappointed to hear that Tom Daschle took himself out of the HHS cabinet position, but I was more disappointed that he was stupid enough to not pay taxes. What is up with these people? I was happy to see that Pres. Obama said in an interview "I screwed up" and took responsibility for it, although he wasn't the one who wasn't paying his taxes. I hope this sends a message to all politicians out there, that such behavior will not be tolerated. As the President said, there are not separate standards for politicians and for working people. Daschle had a chance for a Cabinet position, but he screwed it up, and he can just think on that for a while.

I'm certainly not condoning such behavior, and I really hope Pres. Obama can clean things up. If any of you are thinking that all these damn libby Dems are corrupt and don't pay their taxes, your logic is faulty. Obviously, Pres. Obama is nominating more Democrats, so there is going to be a greater chance that a Democrat will be tagged, simply due to numbers. Bad behavior is not a partisan domain. Spiro Agnew had to resign as Vice-President because of tax evasion, and let's not forget those stellar examples of Republican rectitude, Ted Stevens and Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

I'm just sayin'.