Ed Icionsub

Part of the adventure of growing up has to do with learning your limits and boundaries. Hopefully this will be accomplished in a controlled environment, surrounded by responsible people who care about you and your welfare. My parents taught me to drink alcohol while I was in my teens. We began by having a glass of wine with dinner every once in a while – special occasions like my parent’s anniversary, and certain holidays, like Thanksgiving. Then, we I turned 18, we would have a cold beer at baseball games or other sporting events.

I learned that I could handle one or two drinks without getting stupid drunk, and I learned from their example to never drive if I am drinking. In fact, I rarely drink alcohol in public, and any drinking that I do is always in moderation and never before driving. I feel blessed that my parents took this important life lessons so seriously and didn’t leave me to learn at the hands of my peers.

Our holiday this month is to honor the American presidents, a combination holiday that includes the dates of birth of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. This is a good day to reflect back on all of our presidents, and consider the contributions that all of these men made to our country. Some of them had to deal with very tough and stressful times, others enjoyed a brief period of national prosperity, growth and change.

I know that I did learn about each of the presidents while in school, many years ago. But to be honest, I don’t think I retained enough of that information to be able to name each president, much less in order of their service to our country. So I intend to make a visit to the public library tomorrow and find a book that will refresh my rusty memory and give me a better insight into the real history of our country and its elected leaders.

My grandson brought home his report card for the second grading period. I never got to see the first report card. My step daughter told me that he did well and was above grade level in reading and math, so I was not concerned.

But he showed me the new report card last night and let me tell you what concerns me. These people at the elementary school are grading kids on their effort. In each subject, half od their grade is based on their perceived effort.

What the hell does the effort have to do with whether or not the kid has learned the subject matter? Is this a way to let the underperforming kids get a better grade just because they “tried hard”? I don’t like this grading method at all and I’m annoyed enough to start raising some hell with the school board.

Found a list on the internet of the phonetic alphabet used by the U.S. military when sending radio messages:

A – Alpha

B – Bravo

C – Charlie

D – Delta

E – Echo

F – Foxtrot

G – Golf

H – Hotel

I – India

J – Juliet

K – Kilo

L – Lima

M – Mike

N – November

O – Oscar

P – Papa

Q – Quebec

R – Romeo

S – Sierra

T – Tango

U – Uniform

V – Victor

W – Whiskey

X – X-ray

Y – Yankee

Z – Zulu

My sister wants to get her daughter involved in gymnastics and maybe eventually into cheerleading or competitive gymnastics. My niece has a lot of talent and loves to do routines. She is incredibly graceful and has a sense of balance that we discovered when she was very young. I still cannot believe she was able to skip over riding a big wheel and went right to riding a two wheel bicycle at only 4 years old!

Since moving to the Raleigh/Durham area last year, the family has had fun discovering all the good things that area has to offer. I have to agree that the Triangle area of North Carolina is probably as close to perfect as you can get. It’s very family-friendly and there is so much for kids to do, both outdoors and indoors, depending on the season and your interests.

Gymnastics in the Triangle area is served by a great facility called Gymcarolina. I went to their web site after talking to my sister to check it out for myself. I think I will send her the money to get my niece enrolled in their gym classes and if she really likes it, we will try to find a way for her to go to their summer camp this year.

Nashville had a dusting of snow on the ground yesterday morning, so the schools were closed in just about every county in the state. We had snow flurries all day and through the night. It was still snowing this morning when I got up. I was not surprised to find that schools were closed again today.

The roads are pretty clear – especially the interstate and main highways. I’m sure most of the side roads are icey and dangerous. The traffic going into town was extremely light today. I hope that most of the parents were able to call out from work and stay home with their kids – maybe even enjoy some sledding or building a snowman.

We eat for a lot of reasons. But one of the least important reasons until recently was to eat for health. To be honest, I eat for social reasons, I eat for companionship with my family, co-workers and clients, and I eat because something smells good. Rarely do I eat because I am truly hungry and because my body needs more fuel to function properly.

My New Year’s resolution has been to change my eating habits. I want to learn more about what my body actually needs to function well and I hope to incorporate more healthy choices into an improved diet and hopefully some weight loss.

Now that my awareness is higher on healthy choices, I have been reading articles and posts on health supplements. a good source of information on fish oil is a web site that I found called omega3.org.

If you are not familiar with omega3 supplements, the omega3.org site is a good web site to learn the basics. The articles are written in plain English and are very easy for an average reader to understand.

A good start to learning about food and natural supplements is fish oil and the information on omega3.org.

We were kicking around ideas for where to take an exotic vacation in the spring. If all goes as planned, my big commission check will hit my desk sometime in March. So I have a little over 4 months to plan a great 2 week trip to someplace nice.

Carl told me to check into Antalya. That got my attention so I searched Holidays to Turkey and learned all about the “Turkish Riviera.” I’m sorry to say that until recently my whole impression of Turkey was based on some scattered news images of Istanbul. But Turkey is actually a large, beautiful country in a fantastic location. It has a long shoreline with white sand beaches that rim the Aegean Sea, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

As the story goes, Attalus, the King of Pergamon, ordered his soldiers to go out and find the most beautiful place on earth, back in the 11th century AD. The soldiers came upon the area now known as Antalya and declared that this place must be paradise.Attalus built a city on this spot and named it after itself. It is indeed a beautiful scenic harbor with beaches and culture to keep vacationing tourists happy for many days of exploration and relaxation.

The front page of Yahoo has tips and opinion pieces every day. Most of the time I don’t like the tabloid headlines that they push on me, so I don’t bother to read the articles. But every once in a while they do have something of interest and I’ll click on the link – as long as they are not linked to a video. I really don’t like watching videos, unless I am on YouTube and looking for something in particular.

The article that caught my eye today was about how to deal with bad service from waiters. There were just five so-called tips and it was mostly a fluff piece, but I think it would make a decent article if it was investigated more thoroughly and reported back with real examples of how to handle the top 10 annoying issues people encounter in restaurants.

Found a great tour site that has a classic tour of Italy as one of their tour packages. It’s a great 10 days tour that takes to you the most important cities and sights in Italy:

Day 1: Rome

Day 2: Rome – Assisi – Siena – Florence

Day 3: Florence

Day 4: Florence – Bologna – Padova – Venice

Day 5: Venice

Day 6: Venice – Montepulciano – Rome

Day 7: Rome

Day 8: Rome – Naples – Pompei – Sorrento

Day 9: Sorrento – Capri – Rome

Day 10: Rome