Those Were The Days

Rating: NSS
I’m not close to retirement age yet, but I still find myself bugging my students with “back-in-the-day” reminisces. Of course, they remind me of my age sometime. Just try singing “California Girls” to a bunch of 5th and 6th graders. A plethora of blank looks (and not because of my singing, mind you).
The other day Radio Heartland’s blog “Trial Balloon” had a post on TV and its humble beginnings. I don’t remember when television was new, but I vaguely remember getting a color set. I remember having 5 channels from which to choose—ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and one independent. Most of the time the independent station and ABC came in clearest. The other three, not so much.
This got me reminiscing some more about the time I was in elementary school. Lutheran Schools have and have not changed a whole lot over the past 20(!) years. The school I went to is now down to about 5% of the student population it was in my day. Still, the education was good, and my teachers taught me much more about the Lutheran faith than I realized they were.
Technology has changed, but the struggle for Lutheran schools to keep up hasn’t changed. Our school had purchased two computers—Apple 2Es—and put them on carts so that they could be rolled around to classrooms. We could use them during free time. Our favorite game was “Oregon Trail.” The point of the game was to get from Independence, MO, to Oregon without dying or starving. There were no graphics; a player actually had to read the screen to figure out their progress. To hunt, one had to type the word given. It’s amazing how quickly I learned to type “blam.” Ah, the good old days.I’m not close to retirement age yet, but I still find myself bugging my students with “back-in-the-day” reminisces. Of course, they remind me of my age sometime. Just try singing “California Girls” to a bunch of 5th and 6th graders. A plethora of blank looks (and not because of my singing, mind you).
The other day Radio Heartland’s blog “Trial Balloon” had a post on TV and its humble beginnings. I don’t remember when television was new, but I vaguely remember getting a color set. I remember having 5 channels from which to choose—ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and one independent. Most of the time the independent station and ABC came in clearest. The other three, not so much.
This got me reminiscing some more about the time I was in elementary school. Lutheran Schools have and have not changed a whole lot over the past 20(!) years. The school I went to is now down to about 5% of the student population it was in my day. Still, the education was good, and my teachers taught me much more about the Lutheran faith than I realized they were.
Technology has changed, but the struggle for Lutheran schools to keep up hasn’t changed. Our school had purchased two computers—Apple 2Es—and put them on carts so that they could be rolled around to classrooms. We could use them during free time. Our favorite game was “Oregon Trail.” The point of the game was to get from Independence, MO, to Oregon without dying or starving. There were no graphics; a player actually had to read the screen to figure out their progress. To hunt, one had to type the word given. It’s amazing how quickly I learned to type “blam.” Ah, the good old days.

Important Notice

Rating: CNS

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog to inform you that one of the ads on my email today was for a french fry Spam casserole. Out of curiousity, I looked at the recipe, which included the following ingredients: frozen french fries, cream of chicken soup, cubed Spam, and crushed corn flakes. Don't get me wrong, I like all of those ingredients, but I can't picture them concerrently as a casserole. Sounds like an excerpt from the Jeff Foxworthy cookbook. . .

How Did It Get To This?

Rating: MS
So I've been trying to lose weight. I've done pretty well, so far, but I've found that now that I'm down to where people notice and I feel rather impressed with myself, the motivation starts to slip. I've blamed it on the holidays (see previous post); I've blamed it on the weather. Who wants to get up and exercise that early in the morning when the choice is a cold house or a warm bed? It's a classic battle of will power. Which will win? Laziness or Fitness? I'm rooting for fitness, mostly because I like the way I look and I gave away all the other clothes!