

Posts Tagged ‘geography’

Places to Go and Not to Go

picture of places you'll go

My third semester French students have been working on mastering the prepositions used in French to tell where someone or something is, is going to, or is coming from. You former students of French probably remember what a challenge this is, especially if you are already weak in geography. In French the preposition that's used depends on the type of geographical location (city, country, island, etc.) and in certain cases the gender of that location (a masculine country vs a feminine country). Thus to say you were going to the following places, you would end up with à Paris, en Italie, au Pérou, and aux États-Unis. You can see the potential for frustration, especially if you can't even remember whether a place is a city or a country, let alone what gender it is! Since, along with the prepositions, we're working on the future tense, the title of the Dr. Seuss book seemed perfect.

This past week a reader sent me a little story loaded with puns. I've tweaked it slightly and added some ideas of my own. I hope you enjoy it.

Places to Go and Not to Go

I have visited many places in my life, but I've never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you can't go there alone — you have to be in Cahoots with someone. I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there. I've often wished I could at least be in Visible. As much as I want to go, though, you'll probably never see me there. I would like to get to Conclusions, but to do so, you often have to jump — something I'm trying not to do much any more.
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Travel Destinations

picture of cloud formation

With summer officially here, thoughts turn towards a vacation trip (my apologies to those in the southern hemisphere where it's now winter ... which sounds good right now as our temps here are in the upper 90s F!) Each country has areas full of charm and also idiosyncrasies. Today's iv highlights some of those "quaint aspects" of several parts of the USA.

If you get lost traveling, how can you tell where you are?

You might be in Arizona if...
2. You've learned to open and drive your car without touching the car door or the steering wheel.
3. You can attend any function wearing shorts and a tank top.
4. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.
5 You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.
6. The 4 seasons are tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

You might be in California if...
1. You make over $250,000 a year, and you still can't afford to buy a house.
4. You sleep through earthquakes.
6. You think that you're normal and everyone else is behind the times.

You might be in Michigan if...
1. Your definition of a small town is one that doesn't have a lake.
2. The word "thumb" brings to mind first a geographical rather than anatomical significance.
3. You learned to pilot a boat before the training wheels were off your bike.
4. You expect to receive Vernors when you order ginger ale.
5. Half the coins in your pocket are Canadian.
6. You drive 80 mph on the highway and pass on the right.

You might be in New York City if...
4. You think Central Park is "nature,"
5. You've worn out a car horn.
6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

You might be in the Deep South if...

You might be in Maine if...
1. You have only three spices: salt, pepper, ketchup.
2. You design your Halloween costumes to fit over a snowsuit.
3. You have more than one recipe for moose.
4. You have more miles on your snow blower than on your car.
5. Instead of referring to two or more people as "y'all" or "all y'all," you call them "you guys," even if both of them are women.
6. The four seasons are: almost winter, winter, still winter, and Black flies.

You might be in Colorado if...
2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home, and he stops at the day care center.
3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.

You might be in the Midwest if...
4. You end sentences with a preposition, for example "Where's my coat at?"

You might be in Florida if....
3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.
4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.


We hope to go north later this summer to see family and for a much-needed "Grandma and Grandpa fix" before the new school year begins. Do you have any travel plans?

If any of you want to make a list for your home state or country or if you can add to any of the above, comment away!


"Belief affects behavior, and behavior reflects belief." - Dr. Bruce McAllister

=^..^= =^..^=

Should you trust a stockbroker who's married to a travel agent?

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Kids’ Thanksgiving Menus



Kids' Thanksgiving menus



















Pangtala - We eat bananas and milk.









1. Egypt's Great Pyramids
2. India's Taj Mahal
3. The Grand Canyon
4. Panama Canal
5. Empire State Building
6. St. Peter's Basilica
7. China's Great Wall


1. to touch
2. to taste
3. to see
4. to hear

She hesitated again and then added

5. to feel
6. to laugh
7. and to love





=^..^= =^..^=

Thanksgiving is not just a holiday - it's an attitude.

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Cool Birthday!

We celebrated our grandson Drew's first birthday this past weekend. I have way too many pictures to pick from, so I will show as much restraint as possible. Here are some of the stories and some pictures....

Grandma and Nora traveled up as planned. They got stuck in a horrible traffic backup in Tennessee, not far from the state line to Kentucky. They got off at the next exit the traffic crept up to to try to find a restroom. Several men from the DOT pulled off to see if they were OK. Becka asked the one man why the traffic was so backed up, thinking he'd say it was an accident since the southbound traffic was flowing fine. He told her that the some of the mountain had caved! Yikes! We were thankful that it had happened before they got that far. He told them that if they continued on the road at that exit, they would come to a gravel road that would eventually take them to Jellico on the other side of the place where the mountain had caved. It was after dark, but they could see well enough to know that the left side of the gravel road was a sheer drop-off! I was very relieved when they called me from Jellico!

On Friday they managed to stay ahead of the snow storm that hammered Ohio. Below is a picture of them at lunch time in Perrysburg, OH, with some of the snow from earlier last week.

What Becka and Nora didn't know was that a few weeks ago I cashed in some frequent-flyer miles to fly up for the weekend too! I was supposed to arrive in Detroit at about midnight, but because of the snow, our pilot was delayed in arriving from his flight from Toronto. So my three hour layover in Chicago O'Hare became a six hour layover! (reminiscent of the theme song of Gilligan's Island ... a three hour tour!) When I arrived in Detroit at about 3:00 a.m. my son-in-law (who was in on my surprise) was there waiting for me. It was so fun when I slipped into our bedroom, kissed Becka to wake her up, and enjoyed her complete surprise!

We all really enjoyed being together on Saturday as preparations were going on for the "friends party" at 5:30 that afternoon. Meg and Jim asked me if I would give Drew his first trim to try to reduce his "baby mullet." Here are a couple of pictures of the process....

"Hey, Grandpa, what are you doing to me?!"

A lot of preparations went on in the kitchen for the food for the party the theme of which was puppies. Nora set up a cookie factory on the kitchen table....

Here's a tray full of the finished product....

Megan made a cute cake she'd seen online....

Drew also got his own cupcake - his first taste of cake! He enjoyed the cake, but he didn't want to touch it.

Drew really enjoyed the presents....

Grandma loved being with her boy....

It's hard to remember his being such a tiny preemie a year ago - he's such a fine, upstanding boy now!

My flights home Sunday were less eventful, and the delay in Chicago O'Hare was shorter than Friday night's delay. What's kind of sad is that 10 hours of my weekend were spent at O'Hare! Yuck! Becka and Nora are driving back to South Carolina today (Tuesday). It will be great to have them home again!


My recent trip up north, where they are experiencing one of their hardest winters in a long time, reminded me of the horrors of global warming and of an e-mail I received recently about the Northern Lights and a frozen Antarctic wave.


Yellowknife, named after copper, is the the capital of Canada's Northwest Territories. Here are a few pictures of the Northern Lights over Yellowknife and living in teepees at 37 degrees below 0....

It's beyond cool!

Below are some pictures of Antarctica. In the e-mail I received, what you see below was attributed to a quick freeze of a wave in super frigid air, but according to snopes it's actually the result of melting and refreezing. Whatever the situation, that's one cold place!


"It's nice to have the things money can buy, as long as you don't lose the things money can't buy." - Kevin Johns

=^..^= =^..^=


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New License Plate Game

My wife Becka and our daughter Nora will be leaving this evening for Detroit. They plan to drive to Kentucky, spend the night in a hotel, then continue their trip Friday. Their thinking is that if they had decided to drive the whole way up on Friday, they would have arrived in Detroit right at Friday rush hour. They'll drive back here on Tuesday.

They are going up at this time to help celebrate the first birthday of our grandson Drew on Sunday. It's hard to believe that he's a year old already! There will be a friends party on Saturday afternoon and a family party on Sunday afternoon.

When our children were little, we used to pass the time on roadtrips (trying to ward off some of the squabbles) by playing that old favorite - The License Plate Game, seeing if we could see and write down a plate from each of the fifty states before the trip was over. I think the best we ever did was maybe 37 or 38 different states in one trip, surprisingly bagging Alaska and Hawaii on one trip or another!

With Becka and Nora's upcoming roadtrip to Michigan, I thought I'd give them something to do that ramps that game up to a more sophisticated level - identifying a car's home state or home town by looking at the the driver or other car features, before looking at the license plate for verification of your deductive skills. Maybe some of my readers could add comments giving other helpful tips for IDing drivers from their part of the world or tendancies they have noted in various locales....

How to identify where a driver is from...

Changing lanes or turning without using a blinker or speeding up when he sees your blinker rather than letting you change lanes, running red lights, pulling out in front of you from a side street when there's nothing behind you, waiting at a side street halfway out into your lane, driving down the middle of a street rather than in his lane: Greenville, South Carolina

Knee up against steering wheel, one hand on Tim Horton's coffee cup, cell phone in ear, accelerator to the floor, applying makeup, doing crossword puzzle in the morning Free Press, knocking down orange barrels, changing lanes without turn signals: Detroit (please pray for Becka and Nora since this is not the kind of thing they're used to here in Greenville) 😀

One hand on wheel, one hand on horn: Chicago

One hand on wheel, one hand making rude gestures out the window: New York

One hand on wheel, one hand making rude gestures out the window, cutting across all lanes of traffic: New Jersey


Foot lightly on the gas pedal (usually driving 5 or more mph under the speed limit), both hands on steering wheel, or if one hand isn't on the steering wheel the other hand holding a cup of Starbuck's coffee, seat pushed all the way up to the steering wheel, driving a Toyota Camry: Cleveland

One hand on wheel, one hand on nonfat double decaf cappuccino, cradling cell phone, brick on accelerator, and with a gun on lap: Southern California

Lowered Honda, can't see over dash, driving too fast or too slow, car sounds like a bee as it goes by: Los Angeles




One hand on a 12 oz. double shot latte, one knee on wheel, cradling cell phone, foot on brake, mind on the game on the radio, banging head on steering wheel while stuck in traffic: Seattle

No use of turn signal, or left blinker on for 26 blocks ... also cradling cheap cell phone: Dubuque, Iowa

One hand on wheel, one hand hanging out the window, hunting rifle between legs, feet alternating between both being on the accelerator and both being on the brake, keeping speed steadily at 70mph, driving down the center of the road unless coming around a blind curve, in which case they are on the left side of the road, throwing a McDonald's bag out the window: Texas male



One hand on steering wheel, the other hand waving gun out the window and firing repeatedly, keeping a careful eye out for landmarks along the way so as to be able to come back and pick up any bullets that didn't hit other motorists, so as not to litter: Colorado resident on spotting a car with Texas plate

Beat up 1983 Dodge Ram pick-up truck, right hand holding a Dunkin Donuts coffee, cigarette dangling from mouth, greasy hair shoved underneath an oil stained cap, oldies blaring from the radio: Maine




One hand on wheel, other hand reaching out window trying to catch the windshield wiper to snap the ice off the blade: Minnesota

Four wheel drive pickup truck, shotgun mounted in rear window, empty cans on floor, squirrel tails attached to antenna: West Virginia male

Junker, driven by someone who previously had a nice car and who is also now wearing a barrel instead of nice clothes: Las Vegas

One hand on the wheel the other waving at every car that passes as if it were his neighbor: North Carolina

One finger on steering wheel of a jacked up 4x4, country music blaring from speakers, dead coyote in back, hay leaves blowing out of bed while going down the highway: Montana

Both hands on wheel, chunks of rust falling off by the pound: Nebraska

Two hands gripping wheel, blue hair barely visible above window level, driving 35 in the left lane on the interstate, with the left blinker on: Florida "seasoned citizen" driver, also known as a "no-see-'em"

Both hands on the reigns: Pennsylvania


"Is the gospel good news for you, or is it just good information?" - Dr. Tim Keesee

=^..^= =^..^=

Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up, he'll never be able to edge his car out onto a freeway.

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