Around town: March 2009 Archives

All of the third-graders at Norman A. Trimmer Elementary this year had to do two hours of community service, preferably with their families.

Many of the kids in our neighborhood took the fundraising route - making snack mix or brownies and selling them in baggies, door to door. (Which was yummy, and which we decided to partake of several times!)

Sarah, though, wanted to do something a little different. Since we're such big fans of the county's parks, as evidenced by our many summer hikes, we talked to her and came up with the idea of picking up litter in the parks.

You wouldn't believe what we found! Lots of socks. Some condom wrappers - eww! An abandoned fishing tackle box (pictured below) at Pinchot Park in Warrington Township.

Also, enough empty soda bottles and soda bottle lids - and a few full soda and water bottles - to keep the recycling center busy for a while.

The bag below was collected in about 20 minutes at Dunedin Park in West Manchester Township.

On behalf of my daughter, myself, Hubby and all those who use the parks - BE NICE! PICK UP YOUR LITTER (or someone's else's, if you see it.) If my little girl can do it, so can you!

Yesterday's sudden hail storm and possible tornado were among our biggest stories online this weekend. I was off for the day, celebrating Sarah's birthday with family at a game-playing party, and we couldn't believe it when the hail suddenly started falling.

That's Chris with a handful of hail.

The interesting thing here is, this is LESS THAN A MINUTE after it started hailing!

Thankfully, we avoided the major damage faced by many people around York County.

Here are some of the stories, if you want to read more:
· Several people report seeing funnel cloud during storms
· Check out storm photos form your neighbors

The Star Barn is just outside York County, in Lower Swatara Township, Dauphin County. It's a landmark I remember driving past often as a kid, while taking my dad to the Harrisburg airport for business trips and things.

Well, now the barn will move - piece by piece, plank by plank - to another side of York County, to East Hanover Township, Lebanon County, where it will be the centerpiece of an agrarian education center. You can read more about it here, in a story we did in the Weekly Record last week, and here and here on the York Town Square blog, in which historian Jim McClure shares stories about the barn's move.

I'm definitely supportive of anything that not only preserves a historic landmark, but also a piece of our agricultural heritage. Anyone else agree?

One of the other great happenings of the past two weeks: The addition of two new felines to our household.

As a review, our pets as of the end of February were:
Coby (big, fluffy, black Goldendoodle)
Salem (fat tuxedo cat)
Huggles (small, all-black cat)
Zack (fat goldfish)

Things our pets have in common: For the most part, they're large. For another, they're basically black.

So if we had to adopt more pets, wouldn't you think we'd mix it up a little?

Nah.

To make a long story short, the plan was to adopt Stormy, an all-black female cat, from the SPCA. She'd been on display at PetSmart, and we loved her. My mom took Sarah to look at her, they filled out an application on a whim, they took it to the SPCA, where they approved us immediately since we'd adopted Huggles from them in the not-too-distant past.

However. In earshot of my daughter, one of the workers piped up, "Did you know that if you buy one, you get one free?" Hence the coming of not one, but two cats, the second affectionately dubbed our Clearance Cat.

Guess what? He's black too. His name is Mr. Bill, and he's THE BEST cat ever. Very sweet; very friendly; very social. (Stormy has been a bit timid so far, but she seems nice too.)

Mr. Bill, though, is bad. Here he is:

On the counter...

Mr. Bill and Stormy on the sofa:

Stormy:

A collection of hard-to-tell-apart cats:

And that's the biggest problem. We can't tell half of them apart! You have to do process of elimination... well, it's too skinny to be Salem. It's too chummy to be Stormy... And so on.

But, two fewer cats at the SPCA, which is good, right? (And, they gave my mom a senior citizen discount, so we got two cats for $30. Total bargain cat acquisition.)