Groundhog Crazy

First of all, my apologies for being two days behind.  I was at work for almost 12 straight hours on Tuesday, and then had class for 8 straight hours on Wednesday.  My brain was a little fried.

News updates:

1. I am doing an absolutely terrible job of keeping in touch with everyone.  I am so sorry, everyone.  The upside is that I am almost done with school!  And then I will be able to be a person again!

2. I ran my first actual regressions with my data for my thesis.  The results were significant!!  This is a huge relief.  This is in spite of the fact that teachers never ever seem to want to just admit they don't like their job.  They will complain about all the individual aspects of it, but getting them to just say, "Oh and yeah, this job is overall unsatisfying" is nearly impossible.  This implies a variety of issues, but for me, who is trying to prove that administrator attitudes are linked to whether or not teachers are satified with their jobs, this is a particularly big problem.

3. We have had a weird couple days of spring time-y weather around these parts.  It's been amazing except, as I mentioned before, I've been stuck inside pretty much all day every day.  So I guess what I mean is, "I hear it's been amazing."

And now for why I titled this post about groundhogs.  I heard on CNN this morning that the famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted 6 more weeks of winter.  More interestingly, I also learned that this tradition raises millions and millions of dollars for the local town and all the hotels in the area have been completely sold out for this weekend for the past 5 months or something insane and people have traveled from all over the country to see this groundhog come out of its hole.

...

How are we in a recession?

I am never one to support austerity measures, but for the low levels at which the American public believes the economy to be improving and believes themselves to be economically healthy, we sure are willing to shell out for a groundhog.  A groundhog who is not even that accurate.  He's right 39% of the time...he would do better by random chance.

So I support all these people spending and fueling the economy of this Pennsylvania town.  But then, please don't say the President has done nothing for the economy.  You're paying a ridiculous amount of money to go see a rodent make an inaccurate prediction about weather patterns.  That's a luxury if I've ever heard one.

Or, if your wallet really is hurting, flipping a coin will actually give you a more precise reading on the future.  Plus you can keep the coin.