Happy Valentine's Day To All

Happy valentines day to everyone! This has been a very fun and busy day. We had our monthly FHC staff meeting this morning. At the meeting, I made a presentation that seemed to go well. Since it was valentines day we did something that we ordinarily don't do which was to have punch and cookies after the meeting.

Every Valentine's Day the barbershop quartet that I sing with goes out to deliver singing Valentines around the community. I had them come as our meeting was closing. Thy said that they had been asked to come sing, but that they only had three members of their quartet, and that they needed a baritone. They ask if someone at the center could fill in with the baritone part. They stated that it is a very simple part and you don't even have to know how to sing if you are a baritone. I was "volunteered" to sing, the baritone part, and we sang a few love songs for the staff and patrons that were at the center. Of course, after awhile, most people realized that I was actually a part of the quartet. I did get even with the tenor who made the comment about baritones not needing to know how to sing. I shared with the group that it had always been my goal to sing the tenor part, but that I had never been good at it, because I could never learn how to sing half note flat.


This is a very old picture of our quartet, and not a very good one at that. We looked much better today in our black tuxedos with metallic red cummerbunds and red bow ties. We did almost a dozen "gigs", delivering some beautiful flowers, having fun and bringing tears to a few of the ladies we sang to. Some of the ladies were very touched by our singing. ( on second thought, maybe they were crying because of our singing. Not because of the sentiments generated by the words.)

Since one of the places where we sang was close to home, we dropped by the house and sang a couple of of love songs to my sweetheart. That was the best gig of the day in my book. It was fun to bring some happy feelings into some of the homes, offices, business places and even at a university class with about 200 students. We love to sing in that class each year, which is taught by the wife of one of our quartet members. The wife gets a little embarrassed, but the student's hoot and holler and clap and stomp their feet. It was interesting to note how many of the students were photographing us with their telephones. (and at other places throughout the day) A really fun day!

From "dummy" to "expert"

It is past time for me to be making an entry in my blog, so here it is. It is interesting how in just a very short time, I have gone from knowing nothing about blogging to teaching a class on - - - believe it or not - - - blogging. A while back, I was talking to the Director of training at our local FHC, and mentioned blogging to her. She said "oh wonderful if you know something about it, let's have you teach a class."

We discussed her suggestion for a while, and for some crazy reason, I thought it would be fun. Some of you responded to my cry for help, and with the ideas I picked up, I put together a class outline. I recently taught that that first class, and really enjoyed it. There were about 10 in the class. We looked a little bit at the history of blogging, what it is, some of the pros and cons and some of the things to be careful about. Because of some of the blocks that are on our server, we could not access a site so that everyone could create their own blog on their own class computer, but I managed a way to bypass the server on one computer and was able to project the monitor images on the screen, so everyone could see how it was done. One of the students went through the process of creating a blog, making links, inserting photos, and other similar tasks, and the others were able to observe how it was done. The feedback after the class was very positive. And since that time, I have heard from several of the students who have set up their blog.

One of the students set up his blog and then linked to another site where he has placed all of his photo albums. He was quite excited about being able to share his photos and blogging with all of his family members. Teaching the class was a good experience for me because I found it necessary to really explore blogging. I got into the "help" section, and did enough research to do what I felt was a fairly decent job of teaching. I am still learning new things. I am far from being an "expert". In fact, it has always been my opinion that to understand the word "expert" you had to break it into two parts. One part being "ex" and the other part being "spurt". When you realize that an "ex" is just a has been, and that the spurt is just a drip under pressure, it becomes more understandable why I could talk about going from dummy to expert.

It was, all things considered, a delightful experience.