Today is Sunday, February 12 and there are only 285 days until Black Friday.  Now is a good time to start staking out where you are going to sleep in the parking lot.  Today we remember the birthdays of Thomas Campion, Franz Joseph Volkert and Augustin Gonzalez Acilu.  On this day in 1733 Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe, in 1878 Frederick Thayer patented the catcher’s mask and in 1964 the Beatles had their first New York City concert, at Carnegie Hall.  In Burma today is Union Day, in Georgia it is Georgia Day and in the US it is Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday and National Plum Pudding Day.

In past years, I have given lots of information regarding Valentine’s Day.  I have mentioned that none of the Saints Valentine are really associated with love.  I have discussed the giving of gifts and cards and such.  I have pretty much done the holiday to death.  What I would like to mention is how we have decided to pretty much ignore the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.  Here is a man that helped pull our nation back together when the Civil War erupted.  He emancipated slaves and worked to bring an end to slavery.  In the end he was assassinated because of his efforts.

We have chosen to ignore his birthday and fold any recognition of him into a single holiday called Presidents Day.  The only thing that anyone gets out of that is a three day weekend and fake Washingtons and Lincolns trying to sell us cars, insurance, phone plans and more.  On the other hand Valentine’s Day started being pushed on us before Presidents Day was here.  Buy jewelry, flowers, clothing, cars, etc. for the woman of you life.  It is interesting that there are never commercials for gifts for the male side of couples.  No one ever suggests buying him a nice shirt or sweater, or that special tool he has always wanted … but I digress.

I am not suggesting that they should make peanut butter cups in the shape of Lincoln’s head or anything like that, but I do think that we should at least recognize the man and his accomplishments.  I am not going to spend a lot of time on my soap box, but I do feel that we do history a disservice by ignoring him.  That’s all.

This past week, we had a snow storm.  Nothing major, just a few inches, but it had been talked about for several days.  As a result, when I went to the grocery store on Wednesday, the place was crazy.  Let me point out that I go there at least five times a week to get stuff that I forgot to get the last time I went.  So Wednesday was just another trip for me.  There were people there stocking up as if the Apocolypse was approaching.  I saw one store employee help a woman put two cases of water in her cart.  I am not sure how she was going to get them into her house, but that was not my problem.

I have always wondered about the three things that people always stock up on when storms are approaching – milk, bread and toilet paper.  I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what those three things have in common.  I know it isn’t just that they are things that you would need during a storm.  There are other things you might need like food, batteries, flashlights, etc.  That is assuming the worst will happen.  Regardless of the prediction, as soon as a storm is talked about people rush out to buy those things.

If I may, I would like to digress once again.  There is no such word as irregardless.  The word to use is regardless.  Let’s start a movement to stop using that word.  Please!

Back to the grocery store.  On Wednesday I saw people buying the three necessities, plus ice cream, frozen dinners, meat, cookies and other essentials.  I really wanted to ask them why they were buying all that stuff when the prediction was for a typical snowstorm, not a Nor’easter.  Another thing that it appears they were not taking into consideration was that if it was a bad storm they could lose power.  That would mean that the ice cream would melt, the frozen dinners would thaw and the meat and the milk would spoil.  That would leave them with only bread and cookies to eat.  While that doesn’t sound that bad, after a couple days you would probably get tired of that, too.

Last night I had an opportunity to see someone do something that I wanted to do, but he beat me to it.  I had taken my grandsons out to dinner.  While we were in the restaurant, the people in the booth behind us started a ruckus.  Apparently, one of them took another one’s phone.  The aggrieved person started saying, repeatedly, “Give me back my phone.  I want my phone back.”  He continued saying it, every so often increasing the volume.  Finally, as I was getting ready to get up, a guy across the aisle went over to them and said, “Give him his damn phone so he can shut up.”  I am guessing they did because it was very quiet there after that.  The guy’s wife told him he should have minded his own business.  He responded, “Why?  Did you want to listen to that all night?”  It’s good to see that I am not the only curmudgeon.

This week our fact tells us that the town of Idaho Falls, Idaho forbids anyone over the age of 88 to ride a motorcycle.  Frankly, if they are over 88 and can even lift a motorcycle and get on it, they should be allowed to ride it.  Besides I have seen people a lot younger who should not be allowed to ride one.