Back to normal...blah

Maybe it's a bad thing to take a vacation. I thoroughly enjoyed my time off. My first time taking a whole week in 5 years!! I got so many things done around the house. Not only did I get the playroom set up, I got a lot of cleaning done that you just don't have time to do when working 40 hours a week. The down side to that is I really don't want to work now. If last week was bliss....this week is hell. But, work is work and it's not going to change anytime soon.
On Saturday, we cleaned out the garage of all the summer stuff so we could put the vehicles in for winter. Then we tackled the woodshed that we have been cleaning out. All the wood is in the barn now and it's the first time in about 20 years that we've seen the whole cement floor in the woodshed!! We joked that the wood was the only thing that was holding it up. Guess we were wrong because it's still standing. It's coming down anyway because we have plans to take it down and put one of those wooden play sets there for the grandkids next spring. All the kitties aren't to happy with us, they stayed in the woodshed, since they had to find places to sleep in the other barns. That reminds me, Tiger Momma is expecting again....ugh!! I'm waiting for Hubby to explode about being infested with cats! Love me, love my cats....
I surprised myself by not even turning on the TV most days. No CNN, NASCAR! I did watch my Pirates DVDs one day and when the kids were there Jack watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory over and over and over!! LOL I was so out of touch with the rest of the world. I didn't even know about hurricane Kyle until it was almost to land but I did hear about Paul Newman when I checked qualifying on Friday. He was a hell-of-a guy. I can't choose a favorite movie of his but it would be between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or The Sting. I just love those two together! Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of James Dean. It's big around here since we are less than an hour away from his birthplace. They have all kinds of festivals, car shows and such, around here for his birthday.
Once I was back at work I checked my news sites and saw that the Chaiten volcano is still making it's presence known. Check out this web cam from Chile...

http://teletrece.canal13.cl/t13/html/Chaiten/index.html

Also, Fournaise, in France, had an eruption. Check out the web cam here:

http://www.fournaise.info/webcam06.php

Just keep in mind the time difference. Daytime here is night time there ;)

How about a blast from the past? It's been awhile since I posted from the History site:

Today in History:

How many of you remember.. or ."One of these days, one of these days...POW! Right in the kisser!" or "To the moon, Alice!" No? Remember this one? "Har har, hardee har har!"

October 1, 1955

The Honeymooners debuts

The Honeymooners debuts on CBS. The TV comedy, which starred Jackie Gleason, enjoyed enduring popularity despite the fact that it aired only 39 episodes.

The show originated in 1951 as a sketch on Gleason's variety show Cavalcade of Stars. He continued the sketches when he launched a new program, The Jackie Gleason Show, in 1952. In these skits, Gleason played bus driver Ralph Kramden, and Audrey Meadows played his long-suffering wife, Alice, who deflated his get-rich-quick schemes but often saved the day. Art Carney played friend and sidekick Ed Norton, and Joyce Randolph played Ed's wife, Trixie.

By 1955, Gleason had tired of the hour-long variety-show format and wanted to try something new. He suggested creating two half-hour programs instead. One would be The Honeymooners, a sitcom, and the other would be Stage Show, a musical-variety show that Gleason would produce. Among Stage Show's many musical guests was first-time TV performer Elvis Presley, in January 1956.

In a departure from most TV shows at the time, The Honeymooners was filmed in front of a live audience and broadcast at a later date. To allow Gleason more time to pursue other producing projects, he taped two episodes a week, leaving him free for several months at the end of the season.

Unfortunately, the two shows did not do as well with audiences as Gleason had hoped, and only 39 episodes of the The Honeymooners aired. In 1956, Gleason returned to his hour-long variety format, occasionally including Honeymooners skits. In 1966, he began creating hour-long Honeymooners episodes, which he aired in lieu of his usual variety format. From 1966 to 1970, about half of Gleason's shows were these hour-long episodes. In 1971, the episodes were rebroadcast as their own series. On May 9, 1971, the final episode aired. Gleason died in 1987 at the age of 71.

October 1, 1890

Congress creates Yosemite National Park

On this day in 1890, the United States Congress decrees that about 1,500 square miles of public land in the California Sierra Nevada will be preserved forever as Yosemite National Park.

Once the home to Indians whose battle cry Yo-che-ma-te ("some among them are killers") gave the park its name, Anglo-Americans began to settle in Yosemite Valley as early as the 1850s, eventually driving out the native inhabitants. Early settlers quickly recognized the unique beauty of the narrow Yosemite Valley with the sheer-faced Half Dome Mountain looming nearly a mile above the valley floor and three stunning waterfalls. At that time other awe-inspiring natural wonders like Niagara Falls were already becoming popular American tourist destinations, and a few early settlers tried to profit from the wonders of the Yosemite Valley by charging tourists hefty fees. But thanks to the popular paintings of Albert Bierstadt and the photographs of Carlton Watkins, Americans who would never see the magnificent valley in person began to call for its preservation from crass commercial development. In June 1864, President Abraham Lincoln agreed, signing a bill that ceded the small Yosemite Valley area, along with the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees, to the state of California with the requirement that it be held as a national public trust "for all time."

But in subsequent years, the state of California proved a less than vigilant caretaker of the Yosemite, inspiring the famous naturalist John Muir to publish several widely read articles exposing the destruction of the valley by large herds of sheep that Muir called "hoofed locusts." In 1890, Muir's efforts, as well as those of the newly founded Sierra Club, convinced Congress that Yosemite would be better protected as one part of a 1,500-square-mile national park. Though later reduced in size to 540 square miles, Yosemite National Park has ever since been one of the most popular nature preserves in the world. Today the park receives more than four million visitors annually.

(here's a link to the geyser web cam http://www.nps.gov/archive/yell/oldfaithfulcam.htm ) I've never made it that far west but hope to someday. I want to see the Grand Canyon too!

Ok, I better get busy here. Until next post.....