Plan on planning

What is it about months and the passing of time. (I know I've had this discussion before.) Here's the thing: January flies past, while February, the shortest month, drags on endlessly. Then March goes quick and April does too (and so will May). It must be all the planning we do....whether its weddings, graduations, gardens, upcoming summer vacations....all that stuff must make the spring months go by quickly. Sound right to you? Does anyone have any light to shed on this? I'm going to be putting a team of experts on this right away. I'll get back to you later, right now I have to go plan out my summer vacation.

Sprung

The bloom is on today as you can see by the photos. I'M ALREADY receiving jingles for the summer 'Jingleer' contest. Thanks and keep sending them. June 1 is the deadline. Get writing and play along. What are you waiting for? Check out the Journal to see what it's all about. NOTICED a Most Famous Intersections site on the web recently. "Most famous intersections...?" who makes up these lists anyway? I think Hollywood and Vine was probably the top. BUBBLE-TIME....coming in the June issue of the Journal see the world-famous Bubble Gallery. NEW LINK—we've added the Czech and Slovak American Genealogy Society of America link at right. CZECH FUN PHRASE—St'astnou cestu! Hint: you might be wishing someone this in the summer months.

Sky High

Anyone who can play an organ like this, well, you fill in the rest. Frankie rips it up on That's Life. He was a puppet, pirate, poet, pauper, a pawn and a king....aren't we all?

Nature 'n stuff

WITH EARTH DAY (earthday.org) coming up on April 22, I have to ask this....shouldn't all our days be about celebrating our earth in some way?! You know, stuff like recycle, don't litter, walk more, look for ways to be more 'green', get informed, be more vocal, watch the flick Inconvenient Truth....okay, you get it. Hey, speaking of our beautiful blue planet, have you been to the Ocean Channel yet? Go to http://ocean.com/ and satisfy your thirst for underwater viewscapes, in both photos and movies.



WHAT'S IN A NAME—do you like names? Can you guess the most popular boy and girl baby names? (As of the most current Social Security Administration's 2005 survey data)? Go to http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ and see how well you guessed. Fact-filled site with tons and tons of information about names all the way back to the 1880s!

SWING—Bohemian National Cemetery 130th Anniversary gala dinner, April 29, Willowbrook, Illinois. 60th CSA Bowling Congress, May 4-6, Mayflower Lanes, Redford, Michigan. Join Hands Day, May 5. Link at right has more JHD I-N-F-O. June is the month of Festival Prague in Chicago. Events are planned all over the area. More details to come. Stay tuned.

The answer to the MATCH GAME question ("name the CSA lodge located in San Mateo, CA?") is Lodge Golden Gate No. 252. Nobody took a guess.

POPPER—How many Czechs are living in the United States? BONUS—What state has the most? The least?
Don't let this keep you up at night.

PLACES TO GO, THINGS TO DO—check out these community web locales growing in popularity by the nanosecond: facebook.com, blurty.com, flickr.com.

FINAL WORD—Blogs are only a momentary puff of wind in the jet stream of tech evolution. See 'Beta' '8-track' 'vinyl records' 'televisions with knobs' --dinosaurs, my friends, dinosaurs.

Stingray and an XKE

"If you got the nerve, let's race all the way to....dead man's curve."

Hear the cheers, bring your ears

....out to Drag City.

Five-forty-five

It's so nice to be with you....eighteen months of blogging. That's about 545 days of blog fun. I'm not sure how we've gone on that long. Thanks for blogging along all this time. A big shout-out and props to you hard core bloggers (a, jp, lm, ms, jb, if, jf, ab, la, kh, kb, dz, gr, rl, bb, rt and so many more AND all you anons and newbies too). Having a fun Thursday? Planning a big weekend (or a small weekend)? Let us know what's new in your lodge. We have a new feature called Match Game on Insider today. C'mon and play. Since we're playing J&D tunes (after all it is April 12), thought I'd run that 'vette pic.





CZECH FUN PHRASE—Muzete mi prinést jídelní lístek? Hint: you wouldn't need bother asking this in a drive-thru, say, at McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts or Taco Bell.

MATCH GAME— I'll name a city and you try to name the lodge located there. City: San Mateo. Guess the lodge.
(Answer next week. Top prize: a corvette. THAT got your attention, didn't it. The corvette is the matchbox toy version. Whaddaya think, I'm MADE of money?)

New here? Use the 'Comments' below to leave a message or make your guess. It's easy. Try it.

"Hear the cheers."

Just couldn't resist

Courtesy of Darlene Love.

The punchline took 11 days

If you are in the center portion of the U.S. you can relate. On the spur of the moment I decided to trudge outside and snap this grassy eye—uh, I mean snowy eye—level view of the CSA west lawn.


...."Sleigh bells ring, are ya listening, in the lane, snow is glistening" on April 11th, go figure....



....and here is that same west lawn back on April 1st....hmmm, maybe THIS was the April Fools joke; we didn't GET IT until today!....

Mama nature, you are the funny one!

Summer Wind

A little surprise.

summer jingles are a-comin'

April 2007 front and back covers of the Journal.





JINGLEER—for the second year in a row we are asking readers to send us jingles like the ones seen on those little billboards in each issue of the Journal. (They are so very BurmaShave-esque aren't they?) Your jingle should be 18 words max. Rhyme it with humor. Deadline is June 1. We'll pick the one that makes us laugh the most. Blog it right here; or email it to: tburke@csafraternallife.org; or mail it to T. Burke, Journal Editor, 122 W. 22nd St., Oak Brook, IL 60523. Make it funny, make us giggle and you might win a small (very) prize and get your name in lights in our July/Aug issue as our Summer Jingleer.

Take a walk down the sidewalk, and if you ever find where it ends, let me know

We've wrapped up the special "Month of Music Requests". Hope you enjoyed the tunage. Hey I noticed that April 12 is the anniversary date of the infamous Jan Berry crash near dead man's curve. I think I will dig out the song of the same name and play it next week. (Apparently the song was released two years BEFORE his crash.) Kinda eerie isn't it?

Hey, hey, hey:
a new
feature
is
coming
any
day
now
to Insider.

Don't miss
it.

You'll be
sorry!

Really.

You
will.

GAMERS—is anyone still watching 'the 9'? There are lots of links and some are game-related. Check it out on yahoo.

EMAIL BAG—"I teach the Czech class for Sokol LA and more than half the students are also CSA Lodge 458 members. We use the Czech words on your Just Kids page in the Journal. Also, I gather your Czech phrases on the Insider blog for them." —K

CZECH FUN PHRASE—Dát/snést nekomu modré z nebe. Hint: this would probably be like granting wishes (or going to Disneyland, I suppose.)

Have a wonderful, windy, Wednesday; and walk somewhere once in a while instead of driving your car; it's healthy for you and it helps our planet.

Through Foggy Londontown, The Sun Was Shining Everywhere

Ella and Louie do something magical on A Foggy Day. What it is exactly I don't know but it works. This is for our Ella/jazz requests.

Give A Sprout-Out

Spring is beginning to shade the CSA Home Office grounds with greens and yellows. See photos below I shot this morning. REMINDER—don't forget the Home office is closed this Friday, April 6, for Good Friday.

BOWL-O-HAPPINESS—Hope all you Bowl-o-Rama bowlers had great fun yesterday (or March 25th). If you are sending photos in to the Journal, mail them to: T. Burke, CSA Journal, 122 W. 22nd Street, Oak Brook, Illinois 60523. Email digital images to: tburke@csafraternallife.org. Make sure to include captions so we know who is in the photos. You can tell us all about your bowling excitement right here on Insider too. Just blog to your heart's content.

GREEN DAY—April is the month of sprouting. About time to oil up the lawn mower! BTW—the April issue of the Journal is off the presses and just about ready to sprout out (mail out). Make sure to check out all of the great features this issue. Have a great bloomin' month.

POPPER—can you guess the population of the Czech Republic? How about the Slovak Republic? What is the Czech population in the United States? This is a triple threat Popper. Get one and you are good; Two and you are great; Three and....you probably googled it....dincha?