Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Pep Talks From Kindergartners and Other Random Things

 

Feeling mad, frustrated or nervous? Need words of encouragement? Then Pep Talks from Kindergartners is for you! Just call 1-707-998-8410 now!

This is actually a real thing. I called and selected from a menu. Kindergartners gave me words of encouragement and told me how to deal with being mad or frustrated or nervous. Really very cute. Brought a smile to my face. Cookies and ice cream were mentioned, but they also had some sound advice like going into your bedroom and punching your pillow instead of taking it out on other people.

This is a project of the students of West Side Elementary in Healdsburg, California. You can read more about it here.

Here are a few other random things: 

Lone Star Law – This is a reality show on Animal Planet. I’ve also seen it on the Discovery Channel on occasion and I’m sure it’s on Discovery +. This show follows Game Wardens in the state of Texas. Lots of hunting and fishing and critters of all kinds. I now know more about the hunting and fishing laws in Texas than I ever thought I would know. I’m really quite hooked on it. There’s also Northwoods Law which is Game Wardens in New Hampshire.

The rain in Spain – I’m sure you’re all familiar with “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” I’ve heard it all of my life, but not until I was 26 did I ever see it in print. All of those years I’d been visualizing this sentence completely wrong. For some reason, maybe because I grew up in the Seattle area where Boeing was king, I thought they were talking about a plane. So I always visualized a plane flying over Spain with the rain hitting it and nowhere else. Go ahead, laugh! I laughed at myself and still laugh when I think about this.

Burying the Lede – Until a couple years ago I thought the word after the in this phrase was spelled l-e-a-d. Then I wondered why it was spelled l-e-d-e. A question on Jeopardy! the other day gave me the answer. Apparently, in the time of typesetting newspapers with lead (the metal), journalists spelled the first paragraph of a story (the lead) as l-e-d-e to distinguish it from the lead used in typesetting.

Those are my random thoughts for today. Call for your words of encouragement from those kindergartners. It’s quite fun.

No comments: