Things I love ...

I love my job. And my apartment. And my car.

I love my friends. They're really quite phenomenal. And they always seem to be there for me when I need them. I'd like to think that I return the favor.

I love my kids. And the relationship that I have with their mom.

I love my bed. And the black curtains in my bedroom that prevent me from having any inkling what time of day it is. It's always night there.

I love the night. I'll take a dark night over a sunny day any time.

I love my couch and my TV. Also my surround sound.

I love food. Chicken wings and pizza. Lasagna. Anything Italian, really. Oh, and Mexican. I'm not a fan of Chinese food, but I'll eat it on a special occasion.

I love my pet hedgehog, Liberty. There are some days when the only words I say out loud, I say to her. Of course, she doesn't really respond, but I'd like to think that she knows what I'm saying.

If I don't have to work and I don't leave the house, there are truly days when I don't talk. I sing. I dance. But I don't talk. Well, except to the hedgehog, like I said.

I love knowing who I am. That wasn't always true. There were years when I was trying to figure that out, with no luck.

I love living in a neighborhood where no one else knows who I am. To them, I'm just the guy with the loud music who keeps really weird hours. They don't want to talk politics. Or current events. My relationship with my neighbors stays within the neighborhood itself. We discuss potholes, new roofs and old trees.

I love a bottle of Coca Cola at just the right temperature. It reminds me of a band trip I took in 8^th grade, I think. Simpler times when I didn't have to worry about bills or the cost of new tires. I wish I knew what that perfect temperature was. Maybe one in 100 bottles is like that. So every few years I get one.

I love introducing people who are important to me to other people who are important to me. And pray that they'll love each other like I love them both.

I loved the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Buffalo this weekend. I got to do several introductions. I was in my glory.

I love the fact that I finally figured out how to work a NFTA bus route. It took me a week to figure out how to get from Delaware Avenue in Tonawanda to Delaware Avenue in Buffalo. But I finally figured it out.

I loved making friends on the bus. Single serving friends of the Tyler Durden variety.

I love the fact that some of you know who Tyler Durden is. And some of you neither know nor care, but you're still reading this.

I love lamp.

I love.

Schools just don't seem to get it

You would think that for all their college degrees and the fact that they’re teaching our children, school administrators would be an intelligent bunch.

I’m kind of wondering, though, due to the stories I’ve been reading about all the school budget workshops and meetings, if that really is the case.

The state’s education system got rocked when Gov. Andrew Cuomo told every single school district in the state that they’re getting less money due to statewide belt tightening. Every school district locally has been told that they’ll be getting less state aid next year than they did this year.

Of course, the school boards have done their obligatory whining, which I would expect. Then they dug in deep and cut programs and salaries, like they need to. Or, at least that’s what they said they’ll have to do. But not before almost every school district said they’d be digging into their reserves in order to preserve as much as possible.

This is the part that confounds me ... the digging into the district reserves, also known as the “rainy day fund.” It seems like their thought process is if they can just get through this year, everything will be OK and they can go back to taxing and spending and hire all the teachers back and restore all the programs, etc.

Except, my understanding is that this isn’t a matter of it being a rainy day. This is the way things are now. The state is not going to pony up as much money as it has been because of the dire financial straits it is in. And next year, the cuts may be deeper, even.

I know I said previously that I thought it cheap that Cuomo’s two best ideas for saving money were a property tax cap and a limit on superintendent’s salaries. That still remains true. But many of the correspondences I’ve gotten in the past week pointed out — and correctly so — that school districts are out of touch with reality.

One prime example last week came to me from a friend of mine, who happens to serve on a school board. This friend advised me that two of her school board colleagues had suggested that they jack taxes up as high as they can get away with this year, before the property tax cap becomes a mandate.
Because obviously the answer to all our prayers is higher taxes.

I pointed out that these were school board members, right? The smart ones. The ones running the show. The ones deciding how our children should be educated.

If the high taxes don’t get you, the rampant stupidity will.