I Concluded I'd Been Dreaming

I concluded I'd been dreaming.

I had been sound asleep, and heard something that sounded similar to the tones of the Emergency Broadcast System coming from my wife's cell phone which was next to her side of the bed.  My wife didn't even hear it; she was still sound asleep.  So I got up, picked up my wife's cell phone (which was next to the digital clock that read 3:03) and looked for what the issue might be.  I saw nothing on her cell phone indicating anything except that a relative of ours had made a couple of Facebook posts several hours earlier.  We've been through a rainy period of time with sudden thunderstorms over the past 6 weeks or so around here, so I looked out the window to see if it might be storming--or at least if a storm was approaching.  The sky was clear and I could see the moon.  So I went into the living room and turned on the TV to one of the local channels that shows news--at least scrolling it on the bottom of the screen if it's something really important.  There was nothing there.  That's when I concluded that I must have been dreaming...

...Until late this afternoon when I was  at work and someone had mentioned that there had been an Amber Alert issued at 3:03am.  A number of people heard that comment, and several of them mentioned having been awakened by the alert.  I now realized I had not been dreaming.  I found it odd, though, that my wife's phone would sound that alarm, but not show anything.  People said that the Amber Alert was for someone in a town almost exactly 200 miles away.

When I got home, I mentioned it to my wife, who--as I stated before--had slept right through the alert.  She confirmed that she hadn't heard it, but said that it was on her old cell phone--the one that is no longer connected to our cell phone plan, but on which she sets the alarm clock in the event her regular cell phone alarm has a problem (something that has indeed happened a couple of times).

Odd.  Only the cell phone that is not connected to our cell phone plan received the alert (my phone did not receive the alert either), and it was for a situation 200 miles away at 3 in the morning.

As of this time, I don't know any more about the Amber Alert (I honestly haven't tried to look it up this long after it was issued).  I hope that the person has been located and is safe.  But if these Amber Alerts are going to be effective, they should generally be more localized, should have information about them at least scrolling at the bottom of local television station programming, and should be going to phones that are active--not ones that are no longer connected to any plan.

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but in all honesty, waking people up at 3:00am 200 miles away is likely to cause more resentment towards Amber Alerts--and get people to ignore them more and more--than it would by concentrating on getting the message to people who are actually awake (i.e., maybe watching TV) and who are not so far away.

A Hodgepodge Overdue? How About Pizza?

Today, the blog I set up a number of years ago came to mind.  So I looked today and found that it had been over five years since I posted anything to it.  That really surprised me; I didn't think it had been more than a year or so.

Well, I thought I'd post something today--just for the fun of it--about pizza.

Today is Sunday night.  As it happens, I have now had pizza to eat three days in a row.  This wasn't done intentionally.  We ate a fairly early dinner on Friday evening before heading out to the Dayton Dragons baseball game.  By the time we were heading home from the game, my wife and I both said we were feeling a bit hungry, so I suggested that we get a pizza--especially since our son and daughter-in-law were coming over too.  I figured a pizza would be a good thing to get for everyone to be able to have a little snack.

The next evening, we went to our other son's house for our grandson's birthday party. The main food at the party was pizza. Then today after the worship service, the person who provided lunch (we have a lite lunch every Sunday after the morning worship service) provided pizza.

You'd think I might have been burnt out on pizza, but not so! One of the great things about pizza is that one pizza can be very different than another.  Not only can different toppings make pizzas taste different, but different brands can taste very different.  Friday night it was Little Caesar's (only $5 for a large pepperoni; I splurged and paid $6 because I decided I wanted Italian sausage instead).  Saturday during the birthday party it was Pizza Hut.  Today at church it was frozen boxed pizza (I think someone said it was Tony's).  They were all completely different.

What's even better about pizza is that I personally think it often tastes better cold after having been refrigerated at least overnight.  Cold pizza tastes different than hot pizza.  Therefore, when it came time to eat something tonight, what was here to eat?  The pizza from Friday night--only cold this time.  Yep.  I had pizza again this evening.

I'll probably skip at least a day of eating pizza tomorrow.  But I guess I can say that generally speaking (unless it has too many ingredients--especially if it has mushrooms and vegetables, which I simply do not like on pizza), I like pizza.