Ed Icionsub

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.

Valentine’s Day sometimes sneaks up on me. If I am not in the stores buying groceries or household supplies, I don’t notice the aisles and aisles of displays of chocolates and large red cardboard hearts. I always try to buy a nice box of Godiva chocolates for my wife. She is not a big fan of chocolates, and especially forgoes cheap chocolates. But once a year I know she does appreciate a gold ballatin with a red ribbon from the Godiva store. And, of course, a Hallmark card that poetically says I love her.

Ssturdays are my busiest days. Its the day that all the errands need to be run and all the work at the house needs to be tackled. We wake up early, hit the ground running, and don’t stop until the late night news comes on at 10:00 pm.

Some nights, I am so exhausted that i cannot stay awake long enough to enjoy watching Saturday Night Live. I still love that show – I love a good comedy and the writers at SNL are always topical and hysterically funny. The bands that they feature are almost always the top tier or fast rising acts, and the guest host is always someone that is newsworthy and fun to see if they have a sense of humor as they participate in outrageous skits for an hour.

My sympathies naturally go out to the people in Washington DC and the surrounding states for the problems they are encountering as a result of two record setting snowstorms this past week. They are dealing with 3, 4 and even 5 feet of snow in an area that normally only sees 1 or 2 inches at a time.

I have family and friends scattered throughout the region and all of them are sharing stories of having lost their electricity, missing work, not being able to get their cars out of their driveways or garages, and many more nuisances and inconveniences. Thankfully, no one has suffered a life threatening emergency and no one was without electricity for longer than 36 hours.

In fact, my immediate family members are so resourceful and so well prepared for emergencies, that they all have generators, fireplaces and well stocked pantries and could ride out a storm for over a week, if needed. Most have utility vehicles with tires chains, bumper mounted winches and a trunk load of tools and equipment to make sure they can safely arrive at any destination once they get out on the roads.

My heart goes out to the people who are not able to be as well prepared. Some of them are due to complete denial and naivety, others are financially unable to prepare, and many just have no real experience with this type of weather and road conditions. They are just going to have to experience the problems for themselves and learn the hard way, which is why we have insurance and major regional hospital systems to take care of the fools and the unfortunates.

One of the benefits of living in Northern California was the close proximity to dozens of highly rated California vineyards. So I made the most of the six months out there by visiting a different vineyard every month. Every time I went to a vineyard I bought at least 3 or 4 bottles of their wines, and brought back a nice collection of wines when I came back to Tennessee.

Of course, I did not have any wine glass racks here, nor any storage system for the bottles of wine. So I had to research the different types of glass racks and figure out what would be the best solution for this house.

I looked at under cabinet mounts, wall mounts, ceiling mounts, and even free standing furniture. I decided on a wooden stemware rackthat mounts under a cabinet, and I modified the shelving in the kitchen pantry to store the wine bottles.

I wish there was a panic button on my computer keyboard. I have had a few times that something really bad was happening on the screen. I sure wish I could have pushed a panic button and had help dispatched immediately, even if it was just a phone call from a geek somewhere that could walk me through the problem and make me feel like somebody out there knew what they were doing and cared about my computer.

Wow – just saw a commercial with Eric Clapton for a cell phone. I think the phone is a T-Mobile exclusive, which actually is making me consider switching from AT&T so I can get this phone. It has a special design on the case and in the commercial, it shows Eric Clapton strumming what looks like guitar struts on the phone display. I wonder if that is a special application that lets you play the phone like a guitar? How would that even work? Not that it matter so much to me – I can’t play the guitar anyway. I just like the case design and the thought that it has a variety of cool apps that you can get for it. Plus, I’m a huge Clapton fan – from way back.

What a great Super Bowl. The game was actually better than the commercials for a change. Really glad to see the underdogs win this one. Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on a well deserved win!

There’s a lot of money on the table today as the Saints play the Colts for the NFL championship. I would not be surprised if there were bets on which team would win the coin toss, bets on how many sacks will take down Manning, how many touchdowns will be in each quarter, and all kinds of other nonsense. Office pools have been passing around sign up sheets and collecting small dollar bets for days. I can’t wait to see who cashes in the biggest on this game.

My head says to pick the Colts but my heart says to pick the Saints. This will be a good game, either way.

The Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland areas have been in the middle of a second big snow storm. The new snow is predicted to pile up and be about 30 inches deep. That’s a whole lot of snow for anyone on the East Coast!

I called my mom in Virginia to check on her and she is fine. She says the snow is beautiful, they are well supplied with groceries, and have gas on hand for the generator if they lose power. So far, their electricity is still on and they have been working on a puzzle that they got as a Christmas gift. So I’m glad all is well, and they are actually enjoying some quiet time.