The April election is coming up next week and there is some neighborhood disagreement regarding who should be elected to our district school board. Will was the first to put up his campaign booster signs–six of them, visible upon approaching the corner from either side.

Not to be outdone, Paul’s signs appeared across the street a few days later for three different candidates–only half as many signs as Will has, but one is much bigger than any of Will’s. Paul’s signs face two directions so they can be seen from all three approaches at the 3-way stop “T” intersection.

Paul apparently feels very strongly about his candidates. The large sign is lit from both sides at night and includes the promise of “Academics NOT Agendas.” There are seven candidates running for the school board (vote for three). Neither of our neighbors is supporting Candidate #7. Does that mean s/he’s a very bad choice or a very good one?

P.S. Paul and Will are good friends, as are all of our neighbors–they just have different political points of view.

Ted and I both attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison (lucky for us, because that’s where we met), and for an unknown and mysterious reason, I was recently thinking about our college school songs. During half-time at every football game, the UW band and cheerleaders led the sell-out crowd (±23,000 more seats than the GB Packers’ Lambeau Field at that time*) to sing “On Wisconsin,” the fight song (also the state song); “If You Want to Be a Badger,” an up-beat song; and “Varsity,” a hymn-like song of praise to UW. The internet knows everything, so I looked up the songs to find the lyrics and put my curious mind at ease.

Of course, “On, Wisconsin” is kind of obligatory–after all, it’s the University of Wisconsin in Wisconsin–but it has a good march tempo for a school song.

“If You Want to Be a Badger” is a peppy song and fun to sing. It revs up the crowd. There are four or five verses, which we usually didn’t sing at the games. Only the line–“If you want to be a Badger, just…da da da da da” changes with each verse.

The history of “Varsity” surprised me. I never heard or thought about it while I was in college, but it’s something to be appreciated.

It was a sight to behold 76,000 fans singing with the arm movements, and I do fondly remember these lyrics. The “famous arm swinging” refers to everyone raising their right arm to the left at the start of each line, then slowly moving it to the right for the last half of the first line, then slowly back to the left to begin the next line, and so on, keeping it in constant motion. The tempo is slow, and it’s actually a kind of moving thing to be there and to participate.** After that, however, it’s on with the game.

Ah, those were good days!

*Since our college days, both stadiums have been renovated to include more seating and both are still sell-outs for every football game. Lambeau Field now seats 80,978 fans, and Camp Randall now has seating for 80,321 fans.

**You can find videos of fans singing “Varsity” on YouTube, but you won’t get the in-person emotional experience of actually participating.

All four of our children and their minor children were with us to celebrate Ted’s birthday, so the event was not ignored, but with all the things we had going on from August-December 2022, Ted and I didn’t have time for our me-and-you birthday celebration for him.

Ted’s and my birthday gift to each other every year is a special dinner at a special restaurant. This year, Ted chose Annie Gunn’s–a restaurant that’s near our home, has been in business for 150 years, and where, for the 50+ years we’ve lived here, we have repeatedly said “We should go there sometime.” Wow! The food was so well-prepared and so delicious that the restaurant was immediately added to our “Top 5 Restaurants list.” (We couldn’t decide which of the five we should delete, so we decided to work toward a “Top 10 Restaurants” list.) We’ll be back at Annie Gunn’s sooner than 50 years from now!

The meal started with a complimentary glass of champagne . . .

. . . and ended with a complimentary piece of warm apple pie topped with a scoop of cinnamon-flavored ice cream beside a birthday candle. Between the pie and the champagne, there was an outstanding steak dinner with the most tender steaks we’ve ever had. If we had chosen the Kobe beef option, I can’t imagine how the meat could have been more tender.

Although Ted’s and my birthdays are three months apart, we celebrated my birthday shortly after his Annie Gunn’s evening. Ted’s family birthday party took place a week early to accommodate the kids’ availability, and mine took place a week late for the same reason. Our daughters and their families were with us for my birthday and we had a great time.

Because of the shipping costs and work schedules, we celebrated Kathy’s April birthday as well, with gifts for both of us.

And, of course, we had my traditional Vienne Torte for dessert.

For my me-and-you birthday dinner with Ted, I’ve selected Bentley’s at the Lake of the Ozarks–another of our “Top now-10 Restaurants,” but we have to wait a few weeks to go there. It’s a beautiful spring drive when the pink redbuds and the white dogwoods are blooming, but both trees are still only at the budding stage. It’s all good, though. It just means that Ted and I both have a nice, extended birthday season. Happiness abounds.

Back in January, Jeff was struggling with structuring a particular sentence to describe the rules of a new game he was developing, so he contacted me–the family English guru. It was a tricky question, but the issue was quickly solved by diagramming the sentence.

I don’t think English teachers teach sentence diagramming any more, and I doubt if many of them even know how to do it. It’s a useful lost skill that my elementary school teacher (another English guru) taught us. Diagramming provides a place for every grammatical category–parts of speech as well as sentence components–for any sentence. The most complicated sentence I ever diagrammed was the thesis for my master’s degree in Educational Administration. I was allowed one sentence to describe the entire thesis, but diagramming helped me make that long sentence clear.

Here’s the sentence I diagrammed for Jeff. See if you can read it as it should be written.

It says, “Each of your cities produces, in addition to its normal production, one metal.” The interrupting phrase could also be placed at the beginning or at the end of the sentence to read, “In addition to its normal production, each of your cities produces one metal,” or “Each of your cities produces one metal, in addition to its normal production.” In any of these variations, the diagram would be identical because of the modifiers to the subject, the verb, and the direct object.

Can you spell better than the Office Depot staff? If so, you’ll find the error.

Ted knows how much I love spring. I love it so much, that I count December 22 as the first day of spring. It’s the day after the winter solstice when the days begin getting longer.

Ted loves me so much that, to help me celebrate spring, he buys me a pot of spring bulbs as soon as they are available. He’s picky in his selection–he looks for the pot with the most closed buds so that my joy in watching them open will last as long as possible. This year, he brought me pink tulips.

❤❤❤

Today is a special day for me. (1) 🙂 (2) It’s the first day of spring (4:29 p.m. CDT), and (3) it’s a palindrome day: 32023.