Last week, they exhumed the body of George Gipp, aka the Gipper, and the people in the area around Laurium MI are pretty upset about it.

George Gipp was born and raised in Laurium which is in the northern most part of Michigan. Upon completing high school, he attended Notre Dame hoping to play baseball. But, instead, he was recruited to play football.

As a football player, he excelled and went on to set many records for the school. His mastery of football increased Notre Dame’s reputation as a major sports contender.

But alas, one night, at the end of the season, poor George stayed out past curfew and found that his dorm was locked for the night. Since he had no place to go, he spent the night outside in the cold. The next day, he developed pneumonia and died a short time later in December of 1920.

While few people know of his football records or even when he played football, they will never forget those words immortalized by Ronald Reagan: “win one for the Gipper.”

Now, having said all of that, why would anyone want to exhume his body 87 years later? What could they possibly be looking for? Do the suspect foul play?

Rumor has it that they are doing DNA testing on him but why? Did he father a child out of wedlock? Maybe he was part Indian and his relatives are heirs to some of the casino money. Who knows. But for the people of Laurium Michigan, this is big news! Stay tuned.

The Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012. Should we be concerned? After all, this calendar has been ticking along for about 2300 years so why does it stop on the winter solstice in 2012? Did the Mayans get bored calculating these astrological events or does something else happen? Maybe they stopped because there was no reason to continue.

Supposedly, there is a major astrological event that occurs on that day. Something about the alignment of our solar system with the milky way. I guess it happens every 26,000 years.

I suspect that there will be a bunch of sky watchers in the Yucatan on that day. After all, if people will fly all over the world just to view a total eclipse of the sun, think of what an event like this will draw. In fact, telescope prices are likely to soar in 2012 so this might be a good time to buy one.

The Mayans believed that the world gets reborn on that day. In fact, they believed that the world has been reborn 5 time already and that the rebirth that we are presently living in is the last. So, in 2012, everything ends.

When the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, the Mayan civilization was gone. Even the remnant that remained did not know about the lost city deep in the jungle. It is as if the whole Mayan civilization disappeared off the face of the earth.

Well, while I am not too concerned about 2012, I wonder if I should check into that early retirement program?

We have an employee evaluation program here at the state. Every 6 months, we pick the goals that we wish to be evaluated on for the next 6 months. Then at the end of the 6 months, we evaluate ourselves and then pick some more 6 month goals. We have had this program for several years and during that time, no one has ever given themselves a bad evaluation. Go figure.

Now, the absurdity of this program would be funny were it not for several things. First of all, the state paid good money to purchase this program. Then, there is the waste of money on the people who were hired full time to run this program. Then, there is the waste of time by the staff who have to set and evaluate their goals. But probably the saddest part of this program is that the upper management was stupid enough to buy into it in the first place.

We live across the street from a cemetery. It is a quiet place for the most part. But every now and then, we see strange activity over there at night.

Last spring, just about dusk, we noticed two women over there. They appeared to be spreading a white sheet on the ground. This seemed a little strange and I wondered if I should call the police.

Were they getting ready to perform some mystic ritual to summon the dead? Were they going to spend the night? There was a full moon that night so I kept my eye on the spot.

The next morning, the sheet was still there so I went over to inspect. Did I find a slaughtered chicken on the sheet? No. Instead, I discovered that the sheet was covering the flowers underneath to protect them from a late frost.

My hosting site for my blog, provides me with some stats about my readers and their interests.

One of the things that I get from the stats are the key words that they used to link my blog with their search.  And not only does it give me the key words, it also tells me how many times the word was used.

The two words that attracted the largest number of hits were Rachel Aldana and mustangs.

For those of you who don’t know who Rachel Aldana is, she holds the Guinness record for the largest breasts at a 32 JJ. In fact, her numbers are still growing as the hits still keep increasing.

And a mustang is a sports car made by Ford. My article on the Shelby Cobra even landed me a RSS to a mustang web site. I am surprised that I didn’t get a RSS to a horse site.

The runner up is Sears hot water heaters. I got a few RSSs off of that article as well.

So, it will be interesting to see if I get any RSSs off of this posting. We will see!

I was reading an article on Netscape about a roller coaster in Maryland that got stuck. It was the Two Faced roller coaster at 6 flags.

The Two Faced is a metal roller coaster that has the passengers suspended below the track in a seat with their legs dangling. What makes the Two Faced interesting is that seats allow two sets of riders; one set facing forward and one set facing backwards.

This forward, backward thing seems to be quite populars these days. Kings Island, a Cincinnati amusement park, had two different roller coasters that allowed for riding backwards.

I guess it took over an hour to get the passengers off of it. Fortunately, it wasn’t a very high coaster.

While I really like roller coasters, I don’t think that I could walk down from one if it got stuck.  Thankfully, I have never been faced with that problem.

The office where Kathy works, recently had a company outing. It was an evening at a White Caps game.

For those of you who are not familiar with the area, the White Caps is the name of a minor league base ball team in Grand Rapids. And as with most ball parks, the White Caps organization played games with the fans between innings.

One of the games that they played was their own version of the Price is Right. They brought a representative from the company down onto the field where he had to guess the price of a roll of paper towel. He guessed correctly and they gave him the roll of paper towels.

Then, before we realized what was happening, attendants from the ball park appeared in our section of the stands with cases of paper towels. They then started handing them out to everyone in our section.

There must have been hundreds of them. They kept bring them case after case. Soon, we were tossing rolls of paper towels like they were Nerf footballs. Eventually, we came home with three rolls but could of had more.

Maybe the next time that we go, we’ll have to guess the price of a 6 pack of beer! 😉

When I was in the grocery store the other day, I decided to buy another hair brush. I already have a hair brush but I thought it would be nice to have a second one to use in the shower with my hair conditioner.

To my surprise, they don’t make hair brushes any more. Instead, they make styling brushes and curling wands. Of course, I haven’t purchases a hair brush in 30 years so I guess things have changed.

Unlike my old hair brush, the styling brushes have sparse course bristles with special holes in the brush for use with a blow dryer. And I am sure that it works well for styling but I wanted a plain old hair brush.

The curling wand had more bristles that the styling brush but the bristles went all the way around the brush. While, it would probably work, I was concerned that my hair might get caught in it so I passed on that too.

I finally found a boars hair brush. Now, I don’t know if a boars hair brush is made with real boars hair or if that is just a style.

The package claimed that the boars hair brush would make my hair shiny.  Now, shiny hair has never been a concern of mine in the past. In fact, I had never considered shiny hair as an option. So, do I or don’t I want shiny hair? I don’t know.

The pressure of the options is to much so I decide to leave. Maybe I can find a plain old hair brush at Rite Aid.

I-496 is the Lansing business loop of the I-96 expressway which runs from Muskegon to Detroit. Most of the 8 mile length of I-496 is posted at 70 mph. But, for as long as I can remember, there has been a two mile section through downtown Lansing that is posted at 55 mph.

This two mile strip, posted at 55 mph, has been a goldmine for the city of Lansing. Lansing’s finest liked to park their cruisers just on the edge of the speed zone change where they would nab unsuspecting motorists.

Driving 70 mph in a 55 mph is 15 mph over the speed limit and that is an automatic court appearance. However, the Lansing PD is not interested in court appearances, they just want your money. So, out of the goodness of their hearts, they only write you up for 5 over the speed limit though they note the 15 over on the ticket so that you can’t fight it.

Driving 5 over the speed limit is a quick $110.00 and 1 point on your license. Thank you very much! And while I have not personally donated to the Lansing traffic fund, I know those who have.

Well, for some unexplained reason, the state changed the speed limit this summer. It is now 70 mph for the full length of I-496. So, the city can no longer grab motorist who either did not notice the speed change or who had not slowed down quickly enough. So much for their cash cow.

I wonder if they gave a speed ticket to the person in charge of the speeds on I-496?

I saw an ad the other day for a weight loss program. The program will guarantee that you can loose up to 30 pound in 30 days or your money back.

Now, the first thing that strikes me is that it doesn’t guarantee that you will loose 30 pounds in 30 days. It only say that you could loose 30 pounds in 30 days.

And the ad doesn’t say that you will loose this weigh in the first 30 days, it only say in 30 days. Everyone assumes that it is the first 30 days but in reality, you may have to take this stuff for years before you see your thirty day results.

But more to the point, it doesn’t guarantee that you will loose any weight in 30 days! Therefore, your money back guarantee is worthless.