All the above have been used to nausea over the years. Personally, my least favorite is bits and pieces.
How else do you slide into these things?
The art of the segue, I suppose, is a leftover from my broadcasting days. In radio, and to some extent television, you just don't pop right into a subject, or jump from one topic to another like someone who never heard the word focus. You go gently, smoothly. You make the seamless transition. That, at least, is what you hope to do.
At times, you get lucky. At others, you do not.
On my mind today, a number of things.
Butterflies and hummingbirds. Used to be we had an abundance of both on our property, whether resident here or just passing through. Now, we do not. Used to be that, when we put out the hummingbird feeder, we'd see hummers within a half hour. Now, we do not. Our feeder's been hanging from the deck for at least two weeks. So far, not a single hummingbird's been spotted. That photo is from at least two years ago. We've all heard of the perplexing decline of honeybees. I fear a decline of other pollinators as well. More than anything else, I hope I am wrong.
Property reassessment. I've yet to hear one county taxpayer complain about the new tax rate. What I do hear is non-stop is complaining about the new Fair Market Values of most properties. Nine out of ten people I know are absolutely convinced that what they are now being told is the market value of their little piece of paradise is nowhere near what anyone would pay to separate them from that piece. Given our new value, I've joined the absolutely convinced and do believe a lot of mistakes were made. We're now hearing the average mistake, whether over or under, is 41%.
How else do you slide into these things?
The art of the segue, I suppose, is a leftover from my broadcasting days. In radio, and to some extent television, you just don't pop right into a subject, or jump from one topic to another like someone who never heard the word focus. You go gently, smoothly. You make the seamless transition. That, at least, is what you hope to do.
At times, you get lucky. At others, you do not.
On my mind today, a number of things.
Butterflies and hummingbirds. Used to be we had an abundance of both on our property, whether resident here or just passing through. Now, we do not. Used to be that, when we put out the hummingbird feeder, we'd see hummers within a half hour. Now, we do not. Our feeder's been hanging from the deck for at least two weeks. So far, not a single hummingbird's been spotted. That photo is from at least two years ago. We've all heard of the perplexing decline of honeybees. I fear a decline of other pollinators as well. More than anything else, I hope I am wrong.
Property reassessment. I've yet to hear one county taxpayer complain about the new tax rate. What I do hear is non-stop is complaining about the new Fair Market Values of most properties. Nine out of ten people I know are absolutely convinced that what they are now being told is the market value of their little piece of paradise is nowhere near what anyone would pay to separate them from that piece. Given our new value, I've joined the absolutely convinced and do believe a lot of mistakes were made. We're now hearing the average mistake, whether over or under, is 41%.
Nothing on TV. Sweet Mother of The Universe, is there nothing can be done about the abundance of nothingness on my television? We were cable, then went to DBS, now back to cable, a story for another time. I don't know how many channels we
have. Sitting there counting them always seemed an arrogant waste of what time we are all allotted aboard this planet. But I'll go a good guess and say it is well over 200, including a dozen or more feeds of a premium(and not including music channels, of which there are too many.)I know, I know, I know. It's me, right? In many ways, yes, it is me. And it's you, too. It gets worse with age. You find less and less that floats your boat no matter where you go, what you look at, where you look. Yet, there is one glaring exception that may suggest it's not all age-related. Do you find that the one thing you stumble across that you might want to see is inevitably on one of the scant handful of channels your provider doesn't provide? Yeah, me too, it never fails. We end up watching a lot of SpongeBob.
How much for the sign? Now that the Diocese of Scranton is abandoning the former Bishop Hannon/Holy
Cross High School, what about the new sign that hangs over the entrance on Wyoming Avenue? I figure they just bought it, so what do they want for it? If they don't sell it, what happens? Do they stick it in an attic somewhere? Whoops, can't do that, the diocese is running out of attics. Did the diocese know they were going to close the school when they bought the sign? If so, what did they pay for the sign? Surely they didn't spend the bucks to buy a really good sign, right? So, how much for the sign? While we're at it, how much for the school? It is for sale, correct?Train Service...Again. The talk is back in the news one more time. This latest edition of The Train is Coming! focuses on not only service NYC to Scranton, but service NYC to Syracuse via Scranton and Binghamton. Amtrak is about to study. Or to study if they should study. Could be that's a pre-study feasibility study on studying that they have under advisement. Whatever. Hearing about it wears me out. It'll never happen.
As many like to borrow from Vonnegut "...and so it goes."
