Random 5 for March 1, 2026 – Memories, animals, social media, SEO, snow

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Goodbye sweet Neil Sedaka – He reminds me of my school days. He wasn’t a heartthrob, but I loved his music. Aside from listening to his tunes after school, my alarm clock woke me up to music rather than an annoying buzz that would put in in a bad mood all day. The one song I remember as a favorite was Calendar Girl. Sweet memories of my youth!

A line in the sand – I read a story about a couple where the boyfriend was abusing the woman’s dog (unknown to her). It had a happy ending (she kicked the boyfriend to the curb), but it made me think back to my dating years. Love of animals was a prerequisite to dating and especially cats. I went out with a guy once (it only took once!). He had lived in Japan for a few years on an assignment and was very “worldly” interesting until we got to furniture. He had bought and brought back lacquered pieces. I casually mentioned that I’d worry about my cats (yes I already had more than one) scratching them. He informed me he’d break their neck. Whoops! Sayonara baby! Valuing furniture more than life doesn’t work for me. It isn’t only cats that can damage furniture. Kids can too. Do you break their neck too? Cage them? Keep them in the basement? Perhaps those pieces belong in a museum. I had a lacquered jewelry box as a young girl. It was beautiful and was impervious to anything I did to it.

“Next door” is a local social media group. — The purpose is to let people know of things going on in the neighborhood; help in finding workmen; and other “helpful” things. Lately it’s been a whining ground of tragedies, each one a full-scale soap opera maybe even a telenovela! I’m still intrigued to visit occasionally even if it’s just for the bizarre comments. Hey, we must get entertainment where we can.

For bloggers – I get emails from WordPress (my blogging platform) about “wonderful” SEO plugins. From a bird’s eye view I know what that is but I’m not sure it would be helpful to a blogger who doesn’t monetize their site or use it for publicity. I don’t want to get left behind technology-wise but I also don’t want to waste brain cells (and time) on something that has no benefit. If anyone can give me a clue, I’m all ears.

Shame on you Mother Nature – Yesterday we hit 60 degrees (15 Celsius). Warmest day since December (or so they say). Right now, it’s snowing. Boogers.

So how was your week?

 

71 thoughts on “Random 5 for March 1, 2026 – Memories, animals, social media, SEO, snow”

  1. LOL, we were in the mid 60’s on Sunday and Monday and had snow all day today. Crazy, crazy weather! We use to have NextDoor for our neighborhood in Anchorage – there was comedy and drama all day everyday there too 🙂

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  2. If you blog for pure joy then you don’t need SEO plugins. Those are for people who want to get their info recognized by search results. Love your dating story 🙂

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  3. Sorry about the yo-yo weather. Nature just can’t seem to make up her mind as to which way she wants to swing.

    I was up in the middle of the night and heard the story about Neil Sedaka’s passing on the BBC. So sad. I always enjoyed his music. I hadn’t realized he wrote Love Will Keep Us Together for the Captain & Tennille. Those were some good times musically.

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  4. I quit “Next Door” only a day after signing up. It’s awful. Tons of infighting on mine. Mostly over politics. Sometimes I go onto the local facebook pages for my area. They can get nasty too, but the moderator shuts off comments when that happens. I only go to fb locals if I need recommends for something in my area.

    Starting tomorrow we’re supposed to be 50s for the rest of the week, but the caveat……rain for the next 5 days. Some might think rain is better than snow, but rain chills me to the bone in cold temps. I can dress better for snow than rain-in-the-cold. This is the time of year weather gets wonky with lots of ups and downs. Stay warm. ☕

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    • I have found some interesting information on Next Door but there is a lot of crap too. Tomorrow is a mixed precipitation day. Not exactly sure how that will play out but after that, we should see a warming trend.

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  5. I’ve just been reading a similar story on Facebook. As a state prosecutor specialising in domestic violence cases, it quickly became very clear to me that the abuse of animals was a good pre-indicator of future spousal abuse. And, let’s not forget – many psychopathic killers started off as children, abusing animals.

    I, too, shall miss Neil Zedaka.

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  6. I agree, animals and love of animals comes first. Don’t even talk to me if you don’t love animals. Yep, I was hoping someone would explain the SEO things. I don’t have ads and have nothing to publicize, so I ignore all that stuff. But I really have no idea if it would still be useful or not.

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  7. A prerequisite to assess any human is a love of all sentient beings – all creatures. Even if some you would not wish to touch, they all are as equally valuable and certainly more so than lacquered wood.

    Have a lovely week

    ERin

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    • Hear, hear! I had a cousin who liked to pull out the wings on flies. If you don’t like them, just kill them. Don’t torture. I always thought he was weird. He died very young. I think lacquer is a very strong finish.

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  8. How about “Breakin’ Up is Hard to Do”? “Dum doobie do dum dum” Neil Sedaka made breaking up fun.

    When she was in high school, my sister dated a boy who was tall and muscular but maybe not so bright. They were up in the attic one day, and he stepped off the center part that had a floor onto the edge that wasn’t made for walking and fell through into the living room. My dad never talked about “breaking his neck.” In fact, he laughed and then repaired the ceiling.

    WORDPRESS didn’t say anything to me about SEO plugins.

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    • Your dad was one in a million! You may get the email eventually. I’m not convinced that Neil Sedaka made breaking up fun but he did make getting up for school fun! I liked school and with that send off, I was always in a good mood.

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  9. Our FB neighborhood has two forums: one for residential miscellaneous and the other for crimes. Most of the “crimes” are about lost or found fur babies, but occasionally it is interesting reading about what happens in our 5-mile square city, especially after dark. I think I may be the only person in the City without a Ring camera as I see lots of videos of crazy drivers, people lifting holiday decorations and hanging baskets. Not all neighborhoods – thankfully not mine, although my neighbor had his car broken into a few years ago. I’m glad my car is in the garage and my pole light lights up the front yard.

    I got an e-mail from WP if I want to upgrade my site for more AI. I haven’t opened it yet as I won’t do it, although I have used the occasional AI pic which I’ve identified as such. I don’t use any plug-ins and only access my site on my laptop. I can’t imagine monetizing my site – nothing there to monetize. We had that same silly weather as you. We had 55 Friday, 45 Saturday and 25 today. The promised snow passed me by – yay, but we have freezing rain Tuesday and regular rain the rest of the week.

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    • We are having the same weather. Usually you are a day or two ahead of us. Another commenter said SEO (and most other upgrades) are not useful unless you monetize your blog. My only upgrades are ad free and I have my own domain. WordPress seems to be moving more toward business blogs.

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      • That makes sense to me. That’s the same upgrades I have and I actually took out a second domain name a few years ago. I got the name “Walking and Whatnot” in case I am old and gray and no longer go on long walks with the camera, I will have an ace-in-the-hole name. 🙂 A few photography bloggers I know ran out of space for their blogs and they were forced to go to a business blog platform. It used to be you could just pay to add on more space to your existing blog, but no more. They had to redo their blog, a different theme when they upgraded to business. I resize all my photos, so even though I use a lot of photos, after 13 years of blogging, I’m just at 1.6 GB of 13 GB as of now.

        I forgot to mention Neil Sadaka in my comment. I liked him too and liked “Calendar Girl”. I follow CNN’s Anderson Cooper on social media and the day Neil Sadaka died, he did a tribute to him. Anderson Cooper went to school with Neil Sadaka’s kids and knew them all well.

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          • I thought so too. I know one day I’ll have to tweak my theme as it’s pretty basic and Twenty-Ten, the easiest theme available when I started my blog. Anderson Cooper was tearing up in the report while remembering Neil Sedaka and having known the whole family for years. I saw it on Twitter/X and could not find the video on YouTube last night – too bad, you would have liked it.

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            • I’ve looked at different themes over the years but I love mine. It’s 2011 and does what I want. Some of the newer themes have posts in blogs. Not a fan of that. I find it confusing. I also like the ability to have rotating pictures for the header. I keep all the cats, alive and gone, in the rotation.

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              • When I went on your site last night to read about Hazel, the Flying Wallenda, I thought it looked the same as my site, except you have a blog roll. I have a gallery of 50 favorite Council Point Park pictures where you have the blogroll, but they are really old pictures from when I first started taking photos there. I don’t like clutter either and some sites it is difficult to find the most-current post. I will keep my theme until they decide to stop using it.

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  11. I agree that pets are more important than the furniture. So sad about Neil Sedaka. I liked his music. Today I had the window open because the temps were mild, but two days ago it was cold and snowing.

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  13. He was a very good singer and will be missed. My condolences to all who knew and loved him.

    I have a hard time even being friends with people who don’t like animals, although I try to be polite to everyone.

    I check Nextdoor once a day and that’s about all I can stand.

    I know nothing about WordPress blogs as mine is just a placeholder so I can comment on other WordPress blogs. Even so, WordPress doesn’t like me and often puts my comments, from my WordPress account, into spam folders.

    It’s probably much harder to change seasons than to do a lot of other things, so I just go with what’s sent each day and hope for the best.

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  14. During lockdown, Neil Sedaka was the most productive of all the musicians who posted short performance videos. He had one nearly every day, which I thought was amazing. I always loved his sixties songs, but that comeback with Elton John in the seventies was fantastic.

    I once went to a local WordPress gathering and was literally the only blogger there. Everyone else had sites for money-making ventures. I left early. 😆

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    • Wow! that is so cool. Wish I would have known about the videos. I’ve been blogging for 15 years. When I started, WordPress was geared towards people like me. In the past nearly decade they seem to be leaning towards monetized blogs. I never check my stats. This is cheap therapy for me! 🙂

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  16. I remember crying when i was 16 over a guy named Johnny Moretti to Neil Sedaks’s Breaking up is hard to do. I thought i’d never get over Johnny. Now I’m in love with a cool cat named Gus. Who would’a thought. 🙂

    Humor Kate, keeps us young.

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  17. I liked Laughter in the Rain best.

    Breaking up is hard to do . . . UNLESS they are animal abusers. Then it’s easy peasy.

    I joined Next Door in Bradenton, saw that it was a hotbed of negativity, and shut that door pronto! Life is too short.

    We had a gorgeous day on Thursday ~ visited Week Wachee Springs to see the Mermaids and Homasassa Springs to wander the wildlife trail. Then we had rain for Friday, clouds for Saturday, and SUN today!

    Mother Nature is keeping us guessing!

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  18. I had a huge crush on Neil Sedaka🤭 Before we left St. Louis in the 80s or 90s—I can’t remember when— we saw him at the Fabulous Fox Theatre and he was amazing. Sad to see him pass.
    If a man or woman does not like cats we do not maintain a serious friendship with them. Respecting cats and dogs is a barometer of kindness for me.
    Florida is back in the swing of Florida heat and humidity. I am actually happy with that! Sorry you have snow, Kate.
    Our week was twisty turny but we are straightened out now☺️

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    • A person doesn’t have to actually have pets but they have to like animals for a good connection. For me, I know there is kindness. Sorry about the twisty turny. Had too many of those myself and not a fan. In another week, we should see warmer temps (so they say). I never saw Sedaka. I saw many of his contemporaries so perhaps he didn’t have a concert locally or I missed it. Loved his stuff. It’s “sing worthy.”

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      • Neil Sedaka was at the Fairgrounds. I happen to be at the right place at the right time! In the gate he came! Stopped to chat with us. I remember he was incredibly nice and I was simply staring stuck! One of my favorite teenage memories.

        Many years ago when I would interview someone for a job, I always asked if they had a pet. If they said no, I asked why not. If it was I just don’t like animals….well, sayonara !

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  21. OH gosh, it is almost Spring here and suddenly…not gradually.

    I enjoyed your blog. I agree that it is a complete and non -negotiable deal breaker when a boy friend or even a girl friend assuming then, the you are a cat daddy somewhere out there….when the object of your interest dislikes animals so much they will even say such things as your wrote here. I had dogs until marriage then just cats. Had someone ugly to both dog and cats but that lasted as log as it took me to register extreme dislike of the speaker.

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  22. Saturday was glorious, perfect dog walking weather. Today we are cold again here, and will be for a couple days, and then warm again. My body and brain can’t manage this back and forth nonsense.

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  23. I agree that Sedaka wasn’t a heartthrob kind of guy but those songs – my favorite was “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”…..great memories. So many singers, bands, stars, familiar faces have left us – it’s just a reminder to me that I’m no longer a Spring chicken myself! We actually have a day this coming week with a “supposed to be” high of 72. I’ll believe it when I see/feel it. Meanwhile, snow and sleet coming tomorrow afternoon and overnight into Tuesday. WHAT????? This back and forth stuff is not nice!

    Hugs, Pam

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  24. IMHO, don’t waste your time (or money) on SEO plugins if you don’t monetize your blog or need more traffic to justify higher ad revenue. It’s all about the benjamins, baby, specifically, yours eventually becoming theirs.

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