The ***Official*** Weekend Singles Thread - Labor Day Weekend(Sept. 1-4)

DollyCali and All of the Singles & their FRiends | September 1, 2006 | DollyCali

[DollyCali]

Labor Day, a national legal holiday over 100 years old has Over the years evolved from a purely labor union celebration into a general "last fling of summer" festival.

It grew out of a celebration and parade in honor of the working class by the Knights of Labor in New York. In 1884, the Knights held a large parade in New York City celebrating the working class. The parade was held on the first Monday in September. The Knights passed a resolution to hold all future parades on the same day, designated by them as Labor Day.

The Socialist Party held a similar celebration of the working class on May 1. This date eventually became known as May Day, and was celebrated by Socialists and Communists in commemoration of the working man. In the U.S., the first Monday in September was selected to reject any identification with Communism. Then in 1894, Congress passed a law recognizing Labor Day as an official national holiday.

It has come to be recognized in the U.S. not only as a celebration of the working class, but even more so as the unofficial end of the summer season. In the northern half of the U.S. at least, the summer vacation season begins with Memorial Day and ends with Labor Day. Many colleges and some secondary and elementary schools begin classes immediately after Labor Day.

State parks, swimming pools, and campgrounds are all quite busy on Labor Day, as vacationers take one last advantage of the waning hot season. September is the month that marks the beginning of autumn. And, because of that, the average daytime maximum temperatures take a plunge during the month in most of the U.S.

Labor Day "Linky Links"


U.S. Department of Labor- Bureau of Labor Statistics

Labor Day Greeting Cards

Knights of Labor

Labor Day Recipes

Labor Union Information

U.S. Department of Labor- Bureau of Labor Statistics



JOBS ~~ WORK ~~ PROFESSIONS


Tell us about your work/career..Past/Present

DollyCali shares her "past"

Well..maybe a LITTLE bit! I am currently working harder NOW than ever in my life. The pay monetarily is ZIP. but I know there are other rewards. I am care giving my invalid mom & living with her in HER home & taking care of her home, yards, pets as well as her.

My first “jobs” were in junior high school. I did modeling and taught dance lessons.. Continued this until I graduated from college & then began a teaching career(Biology & Physical Education) of about 10 years in many geographical areas at the junior high, high school and college level.

While I was teaching in NC, I began my real estate career that started at a large firm in residential sales & ended in my own commercial business that dealt with Development, rehabs, and 1031 Exchanging. A lot of money was there and a lot of ego strokes, but deep down something was missing.

Following grad school I began a career in Hospital chaplaincy working with Cancer/AIDS/Hospice patients. Essentially, ALL of my patients died & it was my job to get them and their families ready for that transition. But this was the most rewarding career I had and it has helped me help others – even now – as I am officially “unemployed”.

Now it is YOUR TURN

Please join me and the other “Singles & their Friends” and as you visit this thread over the next fourr days(yes, we will have a ping on Monday also for anyone who wants to visit) to chat, visit and see what is going on with your FRiends, do take a few minutes to share a little about yourself & your work over the years.

[DollyCali]

Hi there Sunshine!

I love Caribbean 2.. saw it 3 times on big screen so far

[DollyCali]

talk on jobs or not.. is okay either way.. these are just ideas of things to share & get to know each other...


most of the time the theme of the thread is not addressed or acknowledged

[DollyCali]

howdy..

is all the electrical problems okay now? what was the problem?

I did NOT get a ping again.. but did find your thread this afternoon.. been too covered up to respond.. got a kick out of the field trip toons.. as a former biology teacher, I dragged my kids out into the boonies more than they would have liked..

but it is the golden rule..

He who has the gold(position)... makes the rules

[DollyCali]

sounds like you are a WHOLE LOT MORE prepared than I am..

good work

[WFTR]

On Sunday, I'll be 43.

[DollyCali]

looking at your photos again .. and recalling the couple you sent me the links to..

you remind me of a Hollywood personality.. for the life of me, my aging brain cannot think of the name.. but It hit me like a 2 by 4 the other day & again now

[DollyCali]

well, we are going to have a party! invite the belly dancers, single freepers, snakes - near & far & anyone else!

43.. wow.. young but wise.. good years to embrace.

[DollyCali]

a drive by hello *and mucho hugs* back.

can you tell us how it all went?

[DollyCali]

well, lookie you.. being vamped by a wonderful woman with a boat! can it get better?

[DollyCali]

You still around Jack?

[WFTR]

It's funny, but I never made it to Boy Scouts. However, I've retained a great deal of that "Be Prepared" mentality from just a few years of Cub Scouts and whatever they called that thing between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I also think that my mentality comes from not being particularly good socially. I assume that I'll have to deal with things on my own, so I try to have as much as I need in terms of equipment.

Sadly, the one "engineering" trait that I never acquired was being particularly handy. I can often go into a lab and scrounge the stuff I need to do an experiment. I can't go into the garage and make something that I need around the house. I guess I'd be really dangerous if I could. I'd have all of the tools plus enough generators to rebuild my own house if it sustained damage.

Bill

[Rca2000]

Can I ask you a question about that snake::

What would you do, if all of the sudden that snake around your neck started to give you a "little squeeze", if you know what I mean?? You could NEVER pull it off yourself!!

Something like that happened recently, and was talked about on the radio. a 100lb. albino python , a pet of some woman, suddenly, without warning, BIT her hand, started to SWALLOW it, and started to give her the "big squeeze". It took FOUR firemen, to free her from the snake's grip, and get her hand free!!

[Rca2000]

I'm here, for a bit longer. Listening to our Reds attempt to eke out a win--the first in SEVEN games!!

[DollyCali]

when I read your post it brought to mind a story I read once about shipwrecked people who made a distilling apparatus for water with Tupperware.. WHAT????

NOW... I die & they have the know how.

The engineering person is organized to a fault, prepared, thorough, detail oriented. They are NOT always capable of success in the field but have the knowledge to do it.

The rest of us.. well, laugh on...

[DollyCali]

Oh, I love the Reds.. I lived in Cinti during the era of the Big Red Machine.. Johnny Bench, Pete Rose etc.

The Indians won tonight.. (but the Browns lost a pre-season game last night). Cleveland is cursed to never win anything it seems.

Oh, forgive me.. I forgot.. we WON the distinction of being the POOREST big city in the nation.

gloat, gloat, gloat

[WFTR]

I don't know Hollywood well enough to think of anyone that I might resemble. Back in the 80's, there was a movie about a Jesuit priest who went to South America to bring the gospel to the natives. I believe that the actor who played the priest was Jeremy Irons. For the movie, he had a beard and wore his hair straight down instead of in a part of any kind. His hair length was about what mine was at the time, and our beards were somewhat similar. All of my friends kept talking about how much I looked like this guy. At the time, it wasn't a bad comparison because he was the hero of the movie. Since that time, I've never looked like that actor in anything else.

Otherwise, no one's ever said that I looked like anyone famous, but occasionally people mistake me for all sorts of guys "down the street" or something.

Bill

[ThomasThomas]

To prepare for y2k I bought a hand crank can opener. Today I went through cupboard and threw out some cans of food that I bought with the can opener. I kept the can opener.

[Rca2000]

As for the job scene--My current jobs are the best I have ever had. I rarely have "bad days" anymore at work, and the pay is better than ever before(AND consistent!!)

My first job was a nightmare. I have spoken about it before. A courtesy clerk at a grocery/department store. I was hated there by most early on, and by nearly all before I left. I had to "eat" tums/roladis, EVERY day, several times a day, just to "pacify" my nerves enough to be able to survive there.

[WFTR]

What would you do, if all of the sudden that snake around your neck started to give you a "little squeeze", if you know what I mean?? You could NEVER pull it off yourself!!

Actually, my girls are small enough that I can easily remove them. In fact, both are still small enough that I can tighten my neck muscles to the point that they can't even disturb my breathing. I have an 18 inch neck, mostly fat but a few muscles, and they still aren't big enough to get a good grip.

The secret to removing a coiled snake is to work from the tail. When my girls get a little bigger, they should be strong enough that I might not be able to uncoil them if I started with their heads. However, I could uncoil them by grabbing the tail and just moving it around until they no longer have a grip.

As my girls get bigger, I'll probably not let them go around my neck. Right now, my other ball python is most comfortable wrapping around my wrist and forearm. That's not a bad place from my perspective, but she tends to take a little jostling when I'm trying to type. For some reason, she's just not happy around my neck and shoulder area. As she gets a little more size, I'm hoping that she'll become comfortable on my bicep. She'll have a place to coil, but I won't jostle her as much when I type (or turning pages if I'm reading a book). This girl is more active, and I'm not sure whether she'll find a comfortable place to just sit. One problem with her being at neck level is that she tends to reach up and knock my glasses off. The long term position for her may be over one shoulder and under the opposite arm.

None of my snakes will reach 100 pounds. At most, I see them hitting six or seven pounds if I'm lucky. The heavy snakes are those that get very long. The rule of thumb with snakes is that there should be one person for every six feet of snake being handled. In other words, if the snake is 12 feet long, two people should be together when working with it. If the snake is 13 feet long, then three people are needed. All of the ones I keep will stay under six feet in length so that I can handle them alone.

Many of these stories that you hear about on the radio are drastically exaggerated. In some cases, they are the result of ignorant, unthinking people who are trying to keep a snake for which they don't have the skill or intelligence. Even good keepers can have a problem occasionally, but I'm skeptical of much that I hear. Occasionally, snakes will do something "without warning," but most bites come from making a simple mistake in how one deals with the snake. Feeding mistakes are the most common cause of bites. If I had to guess, I'd say that this woman made a mistake while trying to feed this snake. She was probably also trying to do the feeding alone. When things went wrong, she ended up with four firemen who didn't really know how to help her.

I've heard of only one case of a ball python killing an adult. In that case, the guy was so drunk that he passed out, but for some reason, he had gotten his snake out of its cage. The snake wasn't trying to eat him. It was just coiling around a warm spot. Unfortunately, the warm spot was his neck, and he was too drunk to wake up and remove the poor thing.

Bill

[WFTR]

To prepare for y2k I bought a hand crank can opener. Today I went through cupboard and threw out some cans of food that I bought with the can opener. I kept the can opener.

That's a good start. To be honest, I've never had an electric can opener.