A little worse for the wear, but still hanging around downtown, this snowman has been loitering on Kickapoo Street northwest of the courthouse since last week.  If he's there much longer, he'll need a name!

From one of those files making the rounds on the Internet:

"Handy Engineering Conversions"

• Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter:  Eskimo pi
• 1 millionth of a mouthwash:  1 microscope
• Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement:  1
  bananosecond
• Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour: 
  knot-furlong
• 1,000 aches:  1 kilohurtz
• Basic unit of laryngitis:  1 hoarsepower
• 1 millionth of a fish: 1 microfiche

Notes in a text file indicated where to place pictures:

****** Picture of Postville in its underware here

****** Picture of Postville in full dress

"My mom doesn't feel right unless she's feeding me 10,000 calories a day!"

— post-Thanksgiving report from a co-worker

An LDN writer found out some news from a board president after another reporter had already left the meeting. Two area newspapers besides LDN did get the story for the next day, but the LDN editor said our writer "felt honored to be the leader of the pack." It was an interesting choice of words because the writer had recently prepared an article with information about coyotes.

"Like wolves," she wrote, "they have a social ‘pecking order.’ The alpha male and alpha female, the dominant coyotes in the group, eat first. The others wait…until their turn comes. When the alphas have finished, the other coyotes are allowed to eat."

I guess she was the alpha newshound that time.

Listings from the county courthouse included a Johnston-Johnson couple.

(It might come in handy sometime if you want to sound knowledgeable about the subject.)

"European corn borer overwintering population potentials"

Editor Jan Youngquist said that topic stood out in a list sent by John Fulton.

Great Dane

If you want something big and friendly, this is your dog! A stray, he hopped into a small car with a guy who stopped for gas. They drove to the Animal Control, and the dog would not get out.

— from an "Animals for adoption" caption

A woman’s first husband was named Harris; her second, Harry.

One morning four versions of information for an obituary arrived by fax within an hour:  at 11:02, 11:10, 11:29 and 11:53. The 11:29 version had eight changes, including adjustments to the visitation and burial times. The 11:53 transmission reversed one change. The person had apparently lost an hour of life at one point, dying earlier than originally stated, but regained the hour in the end.

An office worker reminded me that such information is important if the person is suspected of a crime.

According to the time stated on mail transmissions, someone forwarded a file to another computer three minutes before I sent the file to her.

Other pairs of machines allow for even more speedy action. In September, a writer indicated that, according to the times stated, I sent a message to confirm receiving two files an hour and a half before her computer sent them to me.

On a snowy morning LDN posted a list of schools dismissing students early — in most cases at 1:30 p.m. Adding a church cancellation later on, I noticed that I had a couple of 10:30 p.m. "early" dismissals on the school list.

The subject line of a message about a last-minute correction said "Speeling error."

A news release mentioned a mural by "framed artist Lloyd Ostendorf." Someone wondered how much work he had done since he was framed.

The managing editor said she was going to help at the Habitat for Humanity house on a Monday afternoon. The next day I asked what she had done at the house. She said, "Got plastered!" A worker had to pour water from a jug over her hands to get a thick covering of joint compound off them. "It took nearly the whole gallon," she said. "I enjoyed myself."

"It is so perfectly gloomy out there."

— comment in the office, Nov. 9

"The third game of the season is where it all started to come together for us. We took a 7-24 deficit into the locker room at halftime…We made an amazing comeback and went on to win 43-34. That was one of the most exciting comebacks that I have ever been a part of! It just seemed like every time we got the ball that we would score. It was absolutely incredible!"

"I loved playing in Lincoln! I know we weren’t that successful, but I always had a lot of fun playing. I think that the losses taught me quite a bit. We won our first game this year, and every win just seems so great to me, while other guys act like they’ve done it a hundred times before."

— from an interview with John Allison, a football player with the Illinois College Blueboys

A game report added after the interview indicated that Allison’s team "pulled the game out of the fire 40-39" by scoring a touchdown and a 2-point conversion in the last minute of play.

With another kind of contest on the line, a co-worker asked one morning if I knew when the Florida election results would be available. That was back on Nov. 8.