Random Ramblings: February 2026

Is it too much to ask for my kids to have a 5-day school week? Here's what their schedule has been over the last month plus:

January 19-23 - Off Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

January 26-30 - Snow days Monday, Tuesday, & Wednesday. Would have been snow days on Thursday and Friday, but these were already staff development / teacher workdays.

February 2-6 - Snow day on Monday. 2-hour delays the rest of the week.

February 9-13 - An actual 5-day week. It's a miracle!

February 16-20 - Presidents' Day on Monday and teacher workday on Tuesday.

February 23-27 - Another snow day on Monday.

Hopefully March will be better!

* Watching the Olympics, I realize that I miss being part of a sports team. The last time I was on a team in an organized league was playing ultimate frisbee at least 15 years ago. I've been a coach for several of my kids' teams over the years, I play pickleball with friends (when it's warm!), and I'm part of the referee "team" working soccer games. I'm on trivia teams too. None of these really count though. At this point, I'm probably too old to play on a team in any league. I mean, there might be 50+ leagues out there somewhere, but I was never very good at basketball and I haven't actually played soccer since college intramurals. Think my days playing a team sport are over.

* The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates remain legendary 65 years after winning arguably the greatest World Series in baseball history. The airing of game 7 on MLB Network was truly an event. (Watching it on social media was so much fun too!) In just the last two weeks, two members of that team passed away. Elroy Face might be the best reliever in Pirates history. In 1959, Face went 19-1 without starting any games. He finished 7th in the MVP voting. In 1960, he finished 12th in the MVP voting after leading the national league in games and games finished. The 6-time All-Star (back when there were two All-Star games per year) died on February 12th just a week shy of his 98th birthday.

Bill Mazeroski is best known for hitting the series-winning, walk-off 9th inning home run to give the Pirates a 10-9 victory in game 7 of the 1960 World Series. While that hit probably helped him become a member of the baseball Hall of Fame, Mazeroski is one of if not the best defensive 2nd basemen in baseball history with 8 Gold Gloves. Mazeroski died on February 20th at 89. 

* Today is my parents' birthday. Yes, they shared the same anniversary too! My dad has been gone for almost six years now, and my mom passed away nearly two years ago. I think about them a lot, especially regarding my kids' activities and even little things like the weather and miss them.

If A Tree Falls And No One Hears It

After a two-week winter break with a COVID close contact causing us to cancel several activities and basically spend most of the time at home, we were excited to get the kids back to school. The kids were excited to return too. And then winter happened. We got about 6-7 inches of snow on Monday morning causing schools to be closed Monday, Tuesday, and now Wednesday. Although there's been sun causing some (but not much) snow to melt, the cold temperatures at night have resulted in plenty of ice. Many neighborhood roads are still a mess, and there have been numerous power outages. Even if you're not in the DC area and living with this, you probably heard about drivers, including Senator Tim Kaine, getting stuck on I-95 for many, many hours.

I'm sure that you're thinking, Sean, why are you writing a blog post about the weather? It's January and there's snow. Not exactly covering new ground here. Well, this is certainly different.

Yes, those are downed branches from the tree in front of my house. Although several branches snapped, they didn't fall completely. Because of this, we were very fortunate that there was no damage to the car. We managed to clear the garage and squeeze the car into it, but the car wasn't going to get out. And I couldn't get out of the driver's side!

We made calls to several tree removal companies who were all celebrating the increased business from downed trees and branches in the area. Seriously, the amount of business they've had this week might fund them for the year! Several hundred dollars later, the tree is about half of its previous size, but we can get out of the driveway and not worry about falling branches.

Now if we can only get the kids back to school! (Of course, there's more snow in the forecast Thursday and Friday.)

Friday Video: Snow

It seems like almost everyday, there is some news or story that is pretty unbelievable. Things that you can’t imagine are happening. Although there are still seven months remaining this year, I’m not sure that anything will astonish me more than the fact that Snow is part of hit song in 2019.

Let’s go back to 1992 when Canadian rapper Snow had a #1 song, Informer.



At least in my world, this song was everywhere. Snow rapped so fast that you really couldn’t understand what he was saying expect for "a licky boom boom down," which didn’t make any sense but seemed cool. Then, the tide started to turn against Snow, and (at least in my mind) he was done after In Living Color (hi Jim Carrey!) did a sketch making fun of him.



Fast-forward to 2017. The biggest song in the world was Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee (not to be confused with Derek Jeter) featuring Justin Bieber. Although Daddy Yankee was a huge star in Puerto Rico and had some success on the mainland, Despacito catapulted him to nearly A-level status in the US. Now, Daddy Yankee has a song called Con Calma with Snow, who he seemingly brought out of retirement.



The song certainly had (and is having) success around the world (see below), but Daddy Yankee and Snow themselves didn't get the song massive radio airplay on most English stations. Enter Katy Perry on the remix.



Sadly, Snow did not appear on American Idol in this performance by Daddy Yankee and Perry.



Apparently, according to this fascinating Rolling Stone article, Snow can't enter the US:

Snow also appears in the video for “Con Calma,” but his part had to be filmed separately in Canada. Thanks to his past legal issues, including an assault conviction in 1995, Snow is currently unable to enter the U.S. without a waiver, which would have allowed him to apply for a work visa. “You’re supposed to renew the waiver and he didn’t,” says Farberman. “It’s a technical matter.”

I guess that's why he on American Idol. Anyway, Con Calma is currently in the top 40 in the US, and I wouldn't be surprised if it moves into the top 20 or even top 10 by the end of the summer. Meanwhile, according to Wikipedia, the song reached #1 in Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, and reached the top five in Belgium, Poland, Switzerland, and Slovenia.

Please let me know if you find a story more unbelievable than Snow being part of a top 5 song in Poland and Slovenia in 2019!

Winter Storm Jonas

If your city is going to be paralyzed by a blizzard, it might as well be an historic one. Winter Storm Jonas arrived in the DC area on Friday afternoon and finally finished its work sometime late Saturday night / early Sunday morning. While you can see the snow totals for the DC area here (my estimate is that we received about 27 inches at my home), I decided to give a thumbs up/thumbs down on the snowstorm.

Thumbs Up: Jonas. Look, I don't understand why every storm needs a name, but Jonas is fine particularly since the Jonas Brothers are probably thrilled by the extra exposure. Meanwhile, I hope that Hanson is plotting somewhere to have their own blizzard.

Thumbs Down: Snowzilla. Is this name really necessary? Why did this name make it in news stories?

Thumbs Up: My son (The Moose) helping shovel.

Thumbs Down: My street. The snow plow got stuck on Sunday morning, and I don't think it's been back since. My side of the street isn't bad but the other half is still a mess.

Thumbs Up: I found a bag of Stacy's Pita Chips. Sure the expiration date was last month, but they still taste good to me.

Thumbs Down: Sweets. I don't seem to have any here. I should have bought a bag of Hershey's kisses before the snow hit.

Thumbs Up: Me. I did an awesome job shoveling. Here are before and after pictures from Saturday morning.

Of course, we received another foot of snow after I finished, so there was much more shoveling. However, after I finished I felt like quoting Lords of the Underground. They don't understand, I'm the motherf'n man. (Some of the words in the video are NSFW.)



Thumbs Down: My car. I don't think it's ever getting out of this parking spot. My car is in the middle.

Thumbs Up: Pittsburgh Sports. Pitt won an exciting basketball game on Saturday afternoon while the Penguins defeated the Vancouver Canucks.

Thumbs Down: This was supposed to be the annual hockey road trip weekend. It didn't happen. Of course, the New York Islanders actually cancelled the game in Brooklyn, so maybe it will happen in February instead.

Thumbs Up: The Washington Post. The Capital Weather Gang provided great information over the past few days.

Thumbs Down: The Washington Post. I'm a Sunday subscriber, and while I didn't expect to receive the Sunday paper, I liked getting the circular on Friday. Unfortunately, instead of including the Comics, Travel and Arts sections, all I got was the weekly ads. Heaven forbid we don't know the sale prices at Kohl's and Target!

Manic Sunday

As I'm typing this on Sunday evening, the Federal Government and every school in the DC area announced that they are closed on Monday even though it is calm outside right now. With the pending ice and snowstorm, Sunday was its usual pre-panic day around here. Although we were already stocked up toilet paper, milk and BBQ Fritos, I decided that I needed to run a few errands. Therefore, I took my son for a trip around Northern Virginia.

Stop 1: My office. Figuring that the office would be closed Monday, I needed to pick up some work to do from home. A successful trip except that right as I was leaving, I thought that maybe I should check on my son's diaper before we went back into the car.

Me: Do you have a poop?

Him: Yes

The answer to this question is generally no even when he has a dirty diaper. Sure enough, I needed to change the diaper, and of course, there are no changing tables in the building's restrooms. Not a big deal, but I hope that someone empties the trash in the men's restroom before Tuesday morning.

Stop 2: The bank. Sure, the bank is closed on Sundays, but the ATM was open. I needed to deposit some checks and wanted to make sure that the checks cleared ASAP. Naturally, the ATM rejected one of the checks twice before it finally worked.

Stop 3: The gas station. Disaster. I've seen news footage of gas shortages from the late 1970s. I waited in a line for way too long only to get to a pump that moved slower than Casey Hampton in a 5K race.



Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for everyone else, it was just my pump (Station? Bay? I don't know the proper term for this) that moved slowly. Three cars filled up and left before I finally gave up after reaching 9 gallons.

So now, I'll wait for the snow and get ready to start shoveling.

Life Is a Highway: Canadian Pop Music in the 90s (A Review)

Those of you who have read my blog over the years know that I’m a big fan of pop music including any type of music countdown or retrospective (please see every VH1 show – such as Behind the Music and Top 40 one-hit Wonders of the 1990s – that doesn’t involve Wives, Basketball & Mob). Therefore, when I learned that there was a documentary about Canadian pop music in the ’90s, I had to see it. Sure, I may be an American but I once created a list of the greatest Canadian musicians. Plus, I’ve visited the Hockey Hall of Fame, attended a Habs game, and narrowly preceded President Obama and Hilary Duff in Ottawa, so that has to count for something, right?

Here’s the synopsis of this two-hour documentary premiering on CBC Television tonight (Thursday, Sept. 15 at 8:00 PM Eastern time) and concluding next Thursday, September 22nd:

LIFE IS A HIGHWAY: Canadian Pop Music in the ’90s looks at the explosive decade when Canada’s superstar divas and rock gods shared the charts with DIY indie bands, Celtic virtuosos, worldbeat ensembles and hip-hop heroes.

The press release I received touts “thrilling performance footage and candid interviews with such major stars as Sarah McLachlan, Tom Cochrane, kd lang, Barenaked Ladies, Jann Arden and The Tragically Hip, as well as alternative music groups like Rheostatics, Sloan and Dream Warriors.” I wouldn’t necessarily call the performance footage, many from Saturday Night Live appearances or Juno Award shows (Canada’s version of the Grammys), thrilling, but they were a nice touch. I also appreciated seeing the perspective of so many Canadian artists; however, you get the feeling that the filmmakers were unable to land the major, major stars like Céline Dion, Alanis Morissette and Shania Twain.



After a brief introduction, the documentary starts as it should...with Bryan Adams. Adams had a very successful run in the 1980s with hits like Summer of ’69; Run to You; Somebody; and Heat of the Night. Then, instead of Bryan Adams, rocker, he became Bryan Adams, sappy singer to start the 90s as evidenced by (Everything I Do) I Do It for You, which became the #1 song in the world. In the documentary, Jann Arden refers to Bryan Adams as “our rock god.” Really? You have Neil Young, Rush and Joni Mitchell and Bryan Adams is your rock god?



The documentary goes from Adams to the Crash Test Dummies (that’s quite a drop-off!), to kd lang to Tom Cochrane. The underlying theme seemed to be showing the investment made by the Canadian music industry in selling Canadian artists in Canada. This sounds rather obvious, but apparently, the industry folks focused their attention on the American market and worked back up instead of the other way around. Consequently, the money and investment went to America. This may also explain why the Toronto Blue Jays didn’t win the World Series until the 1990s.

The remaining portion of the first hour discussed the Celtic music movement, independent scene and a street alternative revolution. I hadn’t heard of most of the artists featured, so while interesting, wasn’t my favorite part of the film. However, it is amazing the success many Canadian artists had simply by starting busking on the streets.

I enjoyed the second hour much more since I was more familiar with many of the artists discussed (Twain, Dion, Morissette, McLachlan & Snow). The portion on Canada’s “urban stars” was fascinating since I didn’t know of any Canadian hip-hop scene other than Snow’s classic hit Informer.



Here are a few items from the documentary that I found interesting:
- Sarah McLachlan refers to Bryan Adams as a taskmaster.

- Brad Roberts, lead singer of Crash Test Dummies, reveals that he couldn’t think up any words for the chorus of Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm. He was planning on writing words, but it didn’t happen.

- The documentary states that Barenaked Ladies became successful in America by constant touring. Doesn’t Jason Priestley deserve some credit? (Seriously, look at Jason Priestley’s Wikipedia page)

- There’s a video of Natalie MacMaster, someone I had never heard of prior to watching this documentary, performing while wearing Seinfeld’s pirate shirt.

- Several artists refer to the indy Halifax scene as the “new Seattle.” There were also mentions of a Montreal scene and Vancouver scene. Was there no Regina scene or Saskatoon scene? I feel like Saskatchewan was grossly under-represented!

Whether or not this was an intentional overriding message of the documentary, the filmmakers expressed the legacy of Canadian musicians helping each other and the spirit of collaboration. Many of the smaller acts that never made it in America talked about opening for Shania or BNL or Céline. Apparently, there were no rivalries as everyone got along and supported one another. I feel like we should all get together and sing O Canada!

For more information about Life Is a Highway, visit the CBC website and/or check out this article in the Toronto Sun.