The hits keep coming

Yesterday was not a fun day around this house. My 13-year old daughter's little grey striped cat Muffin died and I was the one who found her. :( We've only had her about four years.

When she got home from school and found out, she flipped out and has been crying ever since. I sent her to school this morning, but I imagine she'll be calling to come home before too much longer. She's terified now that everyone she loves is going to die soon. How can I assure her everything will be ok, when I don't believe it myself? Sometimes it really sucks to be the mommy. It was so much easier when I was the child and was protected from life's ugliness.

Can we say "Worst ever" boys and girls?

FOX News Poll: Bush 33%

FOX:

"President Bush's job approval rating slipped this week and stands at a new low of 33 percent approve, down from 36 percent two weeks ago and 39 percent in mid-March."

It's been over a month now

As of the 3rd.

Does it seem possible that our beautiful Michael has been gone that long?

I keep waiting for him to walk in the door or see him skateboarding at the park. I walk into his house and keep looking for him. At his sister's basketball games, the absence is crushing.

Easter is just around the corner. How will we be able to celebrate? In his generation, there were only two boys and eight little girls. My son was so close to him. They were always sitting together at every gathering, playing video games or just being there. I don't know how he'll handle it when it finally hits him that Michael is really gone.

T is only 11 and I don't honestly believe he understands that. How can he though? I don't and I'm much older.

Thank you to everyone who has called, emailed or messaged me.

Really neat thing about tomorrow

Stay Up Late and See Something Odd
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Tue Apr 4, 12:17 PM ET


Call it a coincidental sign of our digital times or a reason to stay up late and stare at the clock. Either way, early Wednesday morning the time and date will be 01-02-03-04-05-06.

At 1:02 a.m. and three seconds on Wednesday, April 5, 2006, it will be the first hour of the day, the second minute of the hour, the third second of that precious minute in the fourth month and the fifth day of ... uh oh. It's not really the sixth year.

It's actually 2006 — only in our shorthand is it '06.

"It just happens to be a chronological oddity," said Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory, an official world atomic clock timekeeper. "If you were to use the full year, that would screw things up completely. You do have to bend it a little if you want to make it work. That's what you call 'Finagle's Law of Best Fit'."

Even numerologists, such as Rob Ragozzine, who runs the SimplyNumbers.com web site, dismiss the 1-2-3-4-5-6 moment as merely "a neat coincidence" because of that pesky 2006 thing.

"People are interested in numbers," said Jack Horkheimer, 67-year-old host of the Star Gazer public television show and executive director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium. "Would I stay up all night waiting for it? Ten years ago, I would have had a party. Now, I will probably be deep in the arms of sleep."

There are less bleary-eyed alternatives. There's 1:02 p.m., but Horkheimer said that's really 13:02 p.m. and doesn't really count.

Chester recommends celebrating universal time, the standard scientific time, which is four hours ahead of eastern daylight time. So 01-02-03-04-05-06 can be celebrated at 9:02 p.m. EDT by calling up the U.S. Naval Observatory's "master clock" then and waiting for the universal time pronouncement, he said. That number is 202-762-1401.

The clock is also on the web at: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/what1.html.

For much of the world, especially Europe, this odd line-up of numbers doesn't really happen until next month. That's because many countries put the number of the day first, then the number of the month. So for many places, 01-02-03-04-05-06 happens at 1:02 a.m. May 4.

Not in my backyard!

KERSEY – Will Elk County soon be the final resting place of nuclear contaminated ash from the Pittsburgh region? Local municipal leaders are already gearing up for the backlash that will be released once more people are informed of it.

If all goes as the Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control Authority has planned, 12,000 cubic meters of nuclear-contaminated ash sitting in an old wastewater treatment lagoon in Allegheny Township will be relocated to the Onyx Greentree Landfill in Fox Township.

“I was riding the fence. The technical information makes it look not so bad, but until I get more information, I am generally opposed to the idea,” Fox Township Supervisor Chairman Mike Keller said. “There’s got to be a reason that it was classified as low-level nuclear waste and then they changed the interpretation. It makes me wonder why a few years ago it had to be disposed of in a low-level facility and now they say it’s safe to consider it for a municipal land fill. I have a problem with that. If somebody explains that to me, maybe I will feel better, but I doubt it.”

St. Marys City manager David Greene passed out copies of articles about the landfill found on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and the Valley News Dispatch describing what is coming during the St. Marys City Council meeting on Monday night. Green said it was given out for information only. “We made copies for Council for them to be aware of it,” Greene said. “I just thought they should know.”

According to the April 3 article, the authority received a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection in October to remove the ash that was contaminated between 1978 and 1984 by waste from the former Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., and its successor companies Atlantic Richfield and then Babcock & Wilcox. The companies processed nuclear materials in plants in Apollo and Parks until the mid-1980s.

The Kiski Valley Water Pollution Control Authority accepted wastewater from these plants, which was treated, leaving behind uranium in the sewage plant treatment lagoon ash.

Following tonight’s meeting, St. Marys City Councilman Mark Kopp said. “The way I see it is there’s none there right now, so how is it going to benefit us by having it there? It’s already a health risk or why move it? Red flags should be going up. This isn’t going to go away in 20 years. I don’t like the idea of it. If it was so safe, they would just leave it there.”

For residents with questions, the regular monthly meeting of the Fox Township Supervisors will be held at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, April 5 at the Fox Township building. A Onyx Greentree Landfill representative was invited to be present and indicated he would attend, according to Keller.