A local radio host said, "Now we know God loves Michigan best. He wanted to watch this game with Bo."

We will miss him.

Thanks to Rosemary C. for this. Author unknown.

**********

The Land of Sandra Dee

Long ago and far away
In a land that time forgot,
Before the days of Dylan
Or the dawn of Camelot,
There lived a race of innocents,
And they were you and me.
Long ago and far away
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

Oh, there was truth and goodness
In that land where we were born,
Where navels were for oranges,
And Peyton Place was porn.
For Ike was in the White House,
And Hoss was on TV,
And God was in his heaven
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We learned to gut a muffler.
We washed our hair at dawn.
We spread our crinolines to dry
In circles on the lawn.
And they could hear us coming
All the way to Tennessee,
All starched and sprayed and rumbling
in the Land of Sandra Dee.

We longed for love and romance,
And waited for the prince.
Ol' Eddie Fisher married Liz,
And no one's seen him since.
We danced to "Little Darlin',"
And sang to "Stagger Lee,"
And cried for Buddy Holly
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

Only girls wore earrings then,
And three was one too many.
And only boys wore flat-top cuts,
Except for Jean McKinney.
And only in our wildest dreams
Did we expect to see
A boy named George with Lipstick
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We fell for Frankie Avalon.
Annette was oh, so nice.
And when they made a movie,
They never made it twice.
We didn't have a Star Trek Five,
Or Psycho Two and Three,
Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold,
And Chester had a limp,
And Reagan was a Democrat
Whose co-star was a chimp.
We had a Mr Wizard,
But not a Mr T,
And Oprah couldn't talk yet
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We had our share of heroes,
We never thought they'd go,
At least not Bobby Darin,
Or Marilyn Monroe.
For youth was still eternal,
And life was yet to be,
And Elvis was forever
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We'd never seen the rock band
That was Grateful to be Dead.
And Airplanes weren't named Jefferson,
And Zeppelins weren't Led.
And Beatles lived in gardens then,
And Monkees in a tree.
Madonna was a virgin
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We'd never heard of Microwaves,
Or telephones in cars.
And babies might be bottle-fed,
But they weren't grown in jars.
And pumping iron got wrinkles out,
And "gay" meant fancy-free,
And dorms were never coed
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We hadn't seen enough of jets
To talk about the lag,
And microchips were what was left at
The bottom of the bag.
And hardware was a box of nails,
And bytes came from a flea,
And rocket ships were fiction
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

Buicks came with portholes,
And side show came with freaks,
And bathing suits came big enough
To cover both your cheeks.
And Coke came just in bottles,
And skirts came to the knee,
And Castro came to power
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

We had no Crest with flouride.
We had no Hill Street Blues.
We all wore superstructure bras
Designed by Howard Hughes.
We had no patterned pantyhose,
Or Lipton herbal tea,
Or prime-time ads for condoms
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

There were no golden arches,
Nor Perriers to chill.
Fish were not called Wanda,
And cats were not called Bill.
And middle-aged was thirty-five
And old was forty-three,
And ancient were our parents
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

But all things have a season,
Or so we've heard them say.
So now instead of Maybelline
We swear by Retin-A.
They send us invitations
To join AARP,
We've come a long way, baby,
From the Land of Sandra Dee.

So now we face a brave new world
In slightly larger jeans,
And wonder why they're using
Smaller print in magazines.
We tell our children's children
of the way it used to be,
Long ago and far away
In the Land of Sandra Dee.

As some of you know, I'm an organizational development consultant and leadership coach. Many of my projects aim at ramping up the quality of communication between employees and their supervisors. This usually includes making sure people are aimed in the same direction (or "aligned" in biz speak), communicating clearly about expectations and obstacles, and how to evaluate performance.

Bosses generally hate doing performance evaluations. Besides the natural social awkwardness of balancing clarity and tact, they're often afraid of being clumsy and getting a bad reaction from the employee. Or they play it safe and inflate the rating while softpedaling any deficiencies, after which there is a full twelve-month period in which to kick oneself for being a wimp. But it can be an excellent opportunity to do something genuinely constructive.

I was reminded of this when I came across Lisa's blog. She met with her boss for her 6-month review and, "For the first time in 6 months, I feel like a motivated person again."

A miracle? Hah. Not even rocket science. To wit: (1) He asked good questions, (2) she answered honestly, (3) he listened to what she said, and (4) he responded with an action.

It doesn't get much better than that. I'm verklempt.

I recently helped Miriam move to North Carolina where she will begin a graduate program. When I returned, Henry, Elizabeth and I left for a wonderful week on Cape Cod. I have done my part to keep the petroleum industry afloat.

Here are the states I've been in the last two weeks:




(Plus Ontario.)

My wanderlust is assuaged for a little while.

Probably an oldie, but a goodie.

The Pope goes to New York. He is picked up at the airport by a limousine. He looks at the beautiful car and says to the driver, "You know, I hardly ever get to drive. Would you please let me?"

The driver is understandably hesistant and says, "I'm sorry, but I don't think I'm supposed to do that."

But the Pope persists, "Please?" The driver finally lets up. "Oh, all right, I can't really say no to the Pope."

So the Pope takes the wheel, and boy, is he a speed demon! He hits the gas and goes around 100 mph in a 45 zone. A policeman notices and pulls him over.

The cop walks up and asks the Pope to roll down the window. Startled and surprised, the young officer asks the Pope to wait a minute. He goes back to his patrol car and radios the chief.

Cop: Chief, I have a problem.

Chief: What sort of problem?

Cop: Well, you see, I pulled over this guy for driving way over the speed limit but it's someone really important.

Chief: Important like the mayor?

Cop: No, no, much more important than that.

Chief: Important like the governor?

Cop: Wayyyyyy more important than that.

Chief: Like the president?

Cop: More.

Chief: Who's more important than the president?

Cop: I don't know, but he's got the Pope driving for him!

For those of you who fancy yourselves to be mediocre writers at best, take heart! You are much better than you might have been, witness the award winners in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest sponsored by the English department at San Jose State University. The challenge put to the entrants is to write a remarkably bad opening sentence of an imaginary novel; the results can be snort-into-your-milk funny.

The 2006 results are out. Personally, my favorite has to be the runner-up:

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"

But it's not all about adventure and suspense, no sir. Here's an offering for fans of romance:

Her angry accusations burned Clyde like that first bite of a double cheese pizza, when the toppings slide off and sear that small elevation of the oral mucosa, just behind the front teeth, known as the incisive papilla, which is linked to the discriminatory function of the taste buds except, where Clyde was concerned, when it came to women.

Thanks to Jim Manney for the heads up.

From Think Geek.

. . . and able to verbalize what I can't . . .

I note here what is to me a mystery. It is that people with lower IQs somehow tend, in our age, to have a greater apprehension of the meaning of things and the reality of life, than do our high-IQ professionals, who often seem, in areas outside their immediate field, startlingly dim. I don't know why intellectuals--or cerebralists or eggheads or IQ hegemonists--seem to miss the most obvious things, floating on untethered by common sense. If you talk to a brilliant scholar at a fine university about social policy, chances are he will say with honest perplexity that he cannot understand--really cannot understand--why people would not want men to marry men, or women women. I wish there were a name for this, for the cluelessness of the more intellectually accomplished, the simpler but truer wisdom of those who are often less lettered and less accomplished.

. . . and considerably more humble.

It is always a delight when you're a writer not to write things you later judge to be idiotic, or, to be charitable to oneself, flawed. But last week I'd no sooner seen my column online than I disagreed not with its assertions and arguments but, I suppose, with its tone. And not only tone, but its incompleteness.

What can I say? I like her. Read the whole piece here.

It turns out the Pope is not only wise about the things of God; his discernment about sports is also without peer.

HT to Dale Price, with whose home maintenance travails I can truly sympathize.

Don't confuse your career with your life.
A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person.
Wisdom from Listen2UncleJay, HT Happy Catholic

Concerned Women for America, Feminists for Life and Focus on the Family are all terrorist organizations.
According to Planned Parenthood as cited by the Curt Jester

A figure of Darth Vader adorns the Episcopal National Cathedral.
Shrine of the Holy Whapping
N.B. I originally thought that this was an accidental resemblance, but no. Here's the story.

Pythons are pretty elastic.

Remember that song, "I'm my own Grandpa?" Click here.

Saving yourself for marriage can pay off in some unexpected ways.

Dad was right. If you stick with your math studies, it really will help you in the future. For instance, you are now able to enjoy things like this.

And finally, how many cats does it take to change a lightbulb?

Your Famous Last Words Will Be:

"I can pass this guy."

(What's really funny about this is that when I went to the results page for the quiz, I was greeted by the following:)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What will your famous last words be?

----------------------------------------------
Ads by Google

---------------------------

Your famous last words will be . . . .

Somehow, this seems to call for a witty caption, but I just can't seem to come up with the right one at this moment. Help?

From the inimitable Tom McMahon.

find your inner PIE @ stvlive.com

Sister Rosalind gets her own bobblehead doll.

Once upon a time, there was a family of Papa, Mama and their three cubs who moved into a nice four-bedroom colonial house near the children's school. It gave them bedrooms, a nice family room and a yard for cookouts and kicking a football around during halftime of Michigan games. The one drawback to the house was that it backed up onto a fairly busy street and offered no privacy for these backyard family activities, but they decided to give it a try nevertheless.

Papa Bear was full of energy and wanted to provide what was best for his family, so he began to build a fence. It was a pretty fence that zig-zagged a bit for visual interest and was set back some from the street to avoid being too imposing, yet it offered a background for plantings and created a nice area around the patio for sitting out to enjoy the fresh air and bird songs (or whatever was discernible of those over the aroma and noise of the nearby street).

Well, the local municipality decided that the fence had to go because of a Rule. Apparently any fence in a front yard was to be confined to no higher than 4 feet, and the horizontal boards would need to be spaced at least as far apart as the width of the board to prevent it from being opaque and "wall-like". Front yard, you ask? So did the kindly Bear family. They found that, in the eyes of the city, any yard that fronts a street is (aha!) a Front Yard. Papa and Mama Bear tried tearfully to convince the city that it was less than fair to force them to have two front yards and no back yard for privacy, but to no avail. They moved their fence, spaced their boards, planted some evergreens as a screen, and moved out of the house several years later.

Fast forward to 2006: As I said above, I wish we'd thought of this.

Which love language do you understand the best? Here's what they say about me.

- - - - - - - - - - -

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Physical Touch


with a secondary love language being
Quality Time.

Complete set of results

Physical Touch:		10
Quality Time:		6
Words of Affirmation:		6
Acts of Service:		5
Receiving Gifts:		3

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don't understand our partner's requirements, or even our own. We all have a "love tank" that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

Son Steve and granddaughter Lauraine.

Moneybags (such an unlikely nom de plume) over at A Catholic Life is performing an unusual service for his readers. He has oodles of saints names in a hat (whether literal or figurative I don't know) and is willing to draw a name for requesters as sort of a patron-of-the-year. I have been notified that my chosen saint, or the one who chose me, is St. Louis Bertrand. I wasn't familiar with him before, but what an intriguing person he was!

Like me, he experienced charismatic gifts, had a childhood "unattended by any of the prodigies that frequently forcast heroic sanctity," and was called to serve God in the New World. Unlike me, he was "grave, apparently without any sense of humour, yet withal possessed of a gentle and sweet disposition that greatly endeared him to those with whom he came in contact." A Dominican, he lacked most of the scholastic and preaching gifts characteristic of most of his peers, yet his quiet holiness distinguished him and led him into opportunities for great leadership, gifted evangelism and self-forgetful service.

I can learn a lot from this holy man.

It's too bad that when there's a lot going on, the consequence is that it's harder to find time to post about it. It reminds me of the fact that little tykes, who seem to generate the energy of a thousand suns, lack all responsibility or discipline to harness that vigor and put it to good use. Sometimes life is a paradox.

If you want to keep better track of what's going on in my world, check out my other blog. My time for blog cruising, flights of fancy, reflection and mental fun seems to be much more limited lately, but my deeper reflections and consideration of the things that are really important are in the ascendant and tend to show up over there.

But the short answer is: I'm getting married to a wonderful man and am caught up in wedding preparations, househunting, and (as Kate reminded me) that separate category called "marriage preparation" that is far more important than the other two. I'd appreciate your prayers. And I haven't lost my appetite for fun, so I'll be back here from time to time.

P.S. If you have any good engagement or wedding jokes, please post them here.