There are 380 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 27 of 38).
I woke up from a fitful night of sleep at 3 AM and never fully went back to sleep. I’ve thus felt like a zombie all day, especially this evening when I had to help coach Travis’s basketball team.
It’s now book time and then bedtime for me. ‘Night all!
This year marked a few milestones for my humble blog: my 5,000th post as well as ten years of owning my domain, markturner.net! The official ten-year anniversary of my first blog post happens next week, so that doesn’t count towards a 2011 highlight.
I’m proud to say that I’ve since blown past my 5,000th post. This entry marks my 5,289th, which means that at this rate sometime in 2013 I will reach my 6,000th post.
A few of my fellow bloggers have said that their blogs are dead or dying. While my blog’s visitor count may have already peaked, I don’t really care. I write it because I love to write it, not because I expect anyone to gain any value from it. I’m not obsessed with the page counts or anything like that. It is what it is.
Certainly there are other distractions out there and each has its appeal, but I don’t see myself ever giving up blogging. I love the fact that this is my voice on the web and that I own it 100%. I love that it’s open to anyone who wants to visit, not just to “subscribers.” I also love that I have nearly unlimited space to express my thoughts, rather than being limited to 140 characters or some other arbitrary limit. I believe in an open and free exchange of information.
Thanks for joining me in the conversation!
The kids watched the very first episode of the dolphin-pet TV show Flipper on NetFlix today. I used to love watching the show as a kid, so I was sorry to see that it didn’t hold up too well 35 years later. At least the first episode didn’t hold up well.
In this episode (called “300 Feet Below”), Ranger Porter Ricks and his son Bud get a distress call from a shark-bitten boater whose boat is 12 miles offshore. For some reason the Coast Guard is of no use so Porter and son decide to rescue him themselves. They pick up the boater’s girlfriend to lead them to the boat.
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How does this get me a job?
Y’all knew it wouldn’t take long for me to bring up politics in my Highlights list, didn’t y’all? This year had me doing more at the General Assembly, mostly fighting an old battle but also jumping into a new one.
My long-running efforts to protect broadband competition continued in 2011, though this time my luck ran out when the NCGA (with Perdue’s help) passed a law to block other municipalities from providing their own Internet services to their citizens. Some otherwise good legislators like Sen. Josh Stein and Rep. Rosa Gill bought into the pro-business hype and voted for the ban, to my disappointment. I think many supporters of the ban simply didn’t realize what was at stake, in spite of the opinion piece I got published in the News and Observer. (Note: I neglected to add my op-ed to my blog until now).
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It was a big year for the family, full of growth for all of us.
This time last year, Travis was still in kindergarten. He had been put through a few aptitude tests at Kelly and my insistence, as we knew he wasn’t being challenged by the coursework. Then one afternoon last December, we got called in to meet with the school staff to review Travis’s results.
We’d been told again and again that grade promotion was extremely rare and not to get our hopes up, so Kelly and I weren’t fully expecting a change. Instead, we heard from wide-eyed teachers that Travis was not only performing above a first grade level, he was even above-average for second grade! I don’t know who was more astonished, them or us!
After much serious thought and discussion, Kelly and I decided it was best for Travis to advance a grade. Thus, Travis started kindergarten in the fall of 2010 and jumped into the second half of first grade in January 2011. He had a little adjusting to do but he caught on quickly and is now thriving in his new grade!
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The Acorn drops in Raleigh on New Years Eve 2011 at 7 PM
I’ve heard some saying “good riddance” to 2011, calling it a “tough year,” but I don’t see it that way. The way I see it, any year in which you make it to the end is a good year.
I wish you peace, prosperity, and happiness in 2012!
It hit me harder than I expected when our next-door neighbors the McNultys moved away earlier this month. They’d been here to welcome us when we moved in and now they’re in St. Louis.
Whenever their daughter Lily was out in their driveway my kids would almost always drop what they were doing to go play with her. It was really sweet to watch. When the grownups needed time away from the kids we would trade nights of kid-sitting. And we would gather around their chimnea to roast marshmallows on occasion.
Being the last house on a dead-end street definitely makes it tougher when your next-door neighbor moves away. I wish them well in their new city, though, and hope they visit here again soon.
I would never thought an event lasting 15 seconds would become a highlight of the year, but this year’s earthquake made a big impression on me!
Sure, my West Coast friends doubled over with laughter at the panic the quake caused on the East Coast. The truth is, though, that we don’t get earthquakes as strong as this, and certainly we don’t build our buildings to withstand them. When the photos came back of the damage at Mineral, Virginia there were a number of buildings that became rubble.
As I write this, word comes that a minor earthquake measuring 4.0 rocked the state of Ohio. I wonder if we’ll be seeing more of these with all the fracking that’s now going on.
We could be in for a bumpy ride.
This was the year I finally indulged in a hobby I’ve long wanted to try: satellite reception! In January, as a birthday present, I answered a Craigslist ad for a few Free-To-Air (FTA) satellite receivers and dishes that were being sold. I got a few used receivers and dishes for a great price and went right to work figuring out how to get everything connected.
What resulted was an opening to a world I had only imagined before. So many TV and radio stations were available to me, many of them from distant lands. I became obsessed with finding new signals and perfecting my reception. I even planted two dishes instead of just one, working around the trees in my yard as best I could.
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Orlando with his ambitious daughter, Leah
As division mates we went through a lot together, including a few questionable division officers and division chiefs. You get to know people really well when you’re around them almost constantly for three years. He and the other shipmates in our division are like brothers to me. Always will be.
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