The abducted jogger bride-to-be was found today, her wedding day, and it turns out she just had cold feet and ran away.

[sarcasm]Didn't see THAT comin'![/sarcasm]

What was going on in this woman's head? She obviously thought the wedding was a fine idea, and had no lack for words when she was sending out the 600 invitations and choosing and outfitting the -->28!<-- attendants. But now, at the last minute she somehow finds herself lacking the necessary communication skills and has to fake her own abduction rather than just asking for some time to think about all of this? Trust me, if he's worth getting married to, he'll give you the time...if not you should just call off the whole thing and be glad you found out now.

Not only did she scare the crap out of her family and community, she pulled the police and FBI off of their REAL duties, and caused the person she supposedly loves enough to at least PLAN a wedding with to be the center of a criminal investigation while they tried to sort out whether he murdered her and stashed her body somewhere. The man was out of his mind with worry, plus the cops are dragging through his house looking for evidence, and she's on a cross-country bus cutting her hair and seemingly forgetting that anyone else in the world matters.

Unless they find a tumor the size of a grapefruit in her skull, I don't think there's anything she can say that's going to make this make sense.

I will stop now. I rarely rant here, but I just couldn't help myself on this one.

.*.*.

  Check it out! Heather, Julie, and I decided to play along with the blog meme game! We started our own :-)You can play too, if you want!

Lather: What is the most embarrassing family incident YOU WERE INVOLVED IN that you can recall? It can be something done to you, or by you.
This question came from Julie, and I'm sure SHE has some specific incidents in mind that she'd like me to name. Hmmmmm. Not many things really embarrass me, and I think a lot of things that would embarrass other people just sort of give me the chuckles (like the time I cleared the entire full-size van of extended family on a road trip to New York merely by "cheesing" as Laura at "My Own Private Idaho" calls it.)

One thing that I remember as being so embarrassing that it actually nearly made me wish I was dead was the time I took the girls (before Tiernan was born) to visit my Iowa relatives. Anya, who was nearly four at the time completely freaked out because one of her great-great aunts was missing some teeth. She started screaming at the top of her tiny lungs, "Mom, she has no teef!" I quietly leaned down and whispered, "It's okay Anya, don't worry about it," while everyone graciously pretended not to hear her in my grandma's little parlor. Anya just redoubled her efforts and screamed even louder, "NO IT IS NOT OK MAMA!!!! THAT WOMAN HAS NOOOOOOO TEEEEFFFFFFF!!!!!!" I ended up leading her into the bathroom, she was in tears and I was too! I had to calm her down and tell her that Aunt Maxine really was just fine, that some people just don't have all of their teeth and that it doesn't mean anything at all, and that we were both going to wash our faces and go right back out there and it was all going to be perfectly fine. Anya was fine, but I still cringe to think about it, even though everyone else, including Aunt Maxine, thought it was OK.

Rinse: Did you have a "lovey" (special blankie, stuffed animal, etc) as a child? Where is it now?
Not really. I had a really neat Raggedy Anne doll my mom made me that I took every where with me for a short time. But her face got ruined somehow and mom had to take her away for a while to fix her and by the time I got her back I just didn't really care about her anymore, even though I cried for her when she first went away. Isn't that weird? I don't know where she is now. I wish I had her today, just because my mom made her.


 
Editing to Add:My sister found this picture of us receiving our Raggedy Anne dolls. Apparently they are a Christmas present, which I didn't remember... I don't know what's up with my goofy Hobbit face, but Julie looks cute in this one.

Repeat: Spread the blog love, what blogs have you seen lately that you think more people should be watching? Two of the blogs I watch consistently are the abovementioned My Own Private Idaho, which is always either funny or thought-provoking or both, and Shades of Pink, written by another Five in a Row mom who is kind, generous and fun to read!

.*.*.

  I found Artsy Science while "Next Blog"ging around one night checking out the blogosphere. I just think this is a magnificent example of a fun, fun blog!

He's a microscopist, and intersperses supercool photographs of highly magnified items and creatures with quotes and interesting text. Plus, he offers his profile up as a way to meet him and date him, you can't beat that!

Go check it out, I promise it will satisfy your inner geek!

.*.*.

  Appetizer-Which keys do you have on your key chain?
I have the usuals, house, cars, mailbox, etc. I have a couple of little keys that I don't know what they go to. And I have a key to our old house, which I keep intending to remove from my key chain but it looks just like the keys to the new house. Honestly, I should just go over and try them all out and see which one it is, but that's too much like work and I'm busy blogging right now.

Soup-What is the most spontaneous thing you've ever done?
I am such a complete idiot that I got a tattoo once because my car broke down in front of a tattoo parlor and I was stranded there for a couple of hours. I don't know if I just assumed that was God's way of telling me I needed to disfigure myself? Good thing my car didn't break down in front of a Moonie temple or I'd been married off in a ceremony with 14,000 others and now I'd be begging for money in an airport somewhere...

Salad-Who is the best cook in your family?
I don't know. Davin and I are both fairly decent cooks. I wish we could hire someone to cook though, because neither one of us really LIKES to cook each day. Then I could say, Oh yes "Cook" is the best cook in our family! We love "Cook's" cooking! All hail "Cook!"

Main Course-If you were to write a "how-to" book, what would the title be?
Well, we've already figured out that it wouldn't be anything about cooking... And anyone who's stopped by can tell it can't be something about cleaning, either. Or, fashion. Hmmmm, "How-to Write Blog Posts That Don't Actually Answer the Question" would probably be the best bet.

Dessert-Name a recent fad you've tried.
I've been knitting, which is remarkably good for saving your sanity. But, I say that because I'm doing easy projects. I don't know if I'd feel the same if I was doing something very difficult. But, I get to choose, so I'm sticking with the projects that help me KEEP my brain together. Because Lord knows it's spread out enough as it is!

.*.*.

  then head over to my sister's blog for a delicious 1970's fashion blast, starring herself and yours truly! You can check out the rest of her fab blog, Amkeli's World, here.

.*.*.

  at least!

I am thankful I don't live in Germany, at the moment.

.*.*.

  The kids and I were discussing the concept of the Winter Count (see previous post) and we decided that for our family this year should be called the Year of Many Repairs, and would be symbolized by various tools, including dental instruments, and also by disappearing currency.

This year we've had to fix all sorts of things on the car including replacing the transmission, we've had to re-do the garage door TWICE, everyone has had at least minor dental work culminating in my root canals , extractions, and the radicular cyst (I'll let you google that one yourself, it's NASTY), our wooden fence blew down, a woodpecker helped a family of birds take up residence in our siding, and let's not forget the dryer incident...

Yes, I believe this name is a clear winner in how we will remember this year.

.*.*.

  Check this out!

This is an online exhibit from the Smithsonian chronicling how the Lakota Sioux kept a calendar through pictures. This shows the work of several different "count keepers" and explains how they were able to sync their work up with European calendars.

One of those events, The Year the Stars Fell, was also widely known to non-Lakota people. The Smithsonian scholar Garrick Mallery recognized it as the Leonid meteor storm of November 1833, and he used this event to correlate the Lakota winter counts with the Western calendar.

Think about trying to deal with trying to remember all the stuff that's happened, even just since your kids were born, without resorting to using the numbers of the years. Then imagine trying to keep track of the history of everyone in a population going back as long as anyone can remember. Pretty mind blowing...

.*.*.

 
This was recreated using the best take-a-digital-photo-from-an-old-wallet-size-hard-copy technology available, so I apologize for the quality up front. I am posting it here in reply to the comments in the "Demented and sad, but social..." thread.

Yes, this was my actual senior photo, but for some odd reason they would not allow me to put this one in the year book. Hmmmm.

For the record, this is not a real human skull (duh), it is a glow-in-the-dark, life sized reproduction I built from a kit I purchased with my own money at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. I was very proud of my handiwork, even though I never did get the teeth quite right... His name is "Smitty" and I don't know whatever happened to him.

.*.*.

  Today's word for the Daily Haiku is "home." Here's mine:


And your little dog, too!

.*.*.

  but this has "Gonna Suck" written all over it...

.*.*.

 



Take the Which Character Am I? Quiz




Ok, I don't think I really harassed people (my sister might disagree ;-) ) but I was basically a good kid and it pretty much all did work out for me in the end. So, I guess this is pretty accurate.

.*.*.

 

Would you rather:
1. eat earthworm cake OR ladybug ice cream?
   Obviously I'd rather the eat earthworm cake. It's been baked, and after you bake something you can hide all sorts of stuff in there. We've all probably eaten earthworms and other stuff in baked goods a million times. Ladybug ice cream, on the other hand, would no doubt be rather crunchy. Plus, you'd end up with legs stuck between your teeth. That's another benefit to the earthworms, no legs!
   
2. punch your best friend in the face OR kick one of your parents in the shin?
Since more of my friends read this blog than my parents, I'm going to say kick my parents in the shin. Mom? Dad? If you're reading this here's your chance to leave a comment!

3. have your teeth turn brown OR your finger nails turn yellow?
Duh, I'd rather have my nails turn yellow, for two reasons. One, they're temporary and will grow out eventually. And two, I can paint them until they do. Teeth, as I'm learning again and again, are permanent and once you screw them up you're stuck paying a gazillion dollars to fix them and to top it off they're never really right again...

4. wear a tutu over everything OR wear a top hat all the time?
I say tutu. It seems like it would be easier to sleep in. I'm guessing a top hat would be cool for a while, but it does say "all the time," and it would get annoying at night plus it would look pretty beat up after you've sleep-drooled on it and showered in it a few times.

.*.*.

 
After seeing the scarf that I made for the birthday party a little while ago, my girls were all overcome with scarf-envy. So, here you have 2/3 of my girls, each modeling the scarf I made to her specifications.

On the left is Maya, in the "Funky" scarf, with alternating red and purple stripes in a fun fur theme. On the right is Sage, wearing the "Cardinal", featuring black and red patches and known henceforth as "Darth Maul Yarn."

Anya's is on the needles as we speak and Tiernan is begging for his own furry knitted product as well. No telling where this will all end up!

.*.*.

  I've got an extra kid, and I'm taking the horde to another mom's house to work on photo collage pages for our homeschool group's yearbook. So, there will be two of us there with eight children, sorting through a year's worth of pictures for 60 families. Pray for us?

.*.*.

  We happened to catch the first little bit of the new Little House on the Prairie miniseries last night. (BTW-Is anyone else not really impressed with how annoying the characters are?) While we were watching, part of the Ingalls family (apparently they wrote Carrie out) witnessed a large group of Native Americans being resettled. Maya and Sage were really interested in how they were carrying their things, so we built these more-than-slightly anachronistic sets of travois for the only horse-type things we had in the house. I'm sure real Native Americans would have rather died than use such goofy looking pack animals, but they did illustrate the point nicely, and show how you could carry a lot of things even without wheels...




.*.*.

 
This is what Anya, Maya and Sage made for us, it was all their idea! It's jelly sandwiches on toast, cut in the shape of a heart, and soda. And, as you can see, they picked dandelions from the yard to make it all pretty.

They make things so much fun!

.*.*.

 

.*.*.

  Here's Friday's Feast for today!

Appetizer-Name something that helps you fall asleep. I like to read before I fall asleep. I don't know if it helps me fall asleep, because when I'm ready to sleep there's no stopping me. But before bed is one of the few times during the week I'm guaranteed a little time to read.

Soup-Who brings out the best in you? My kids do. I can do anything for them. I can do big things like face their scary surgeries and hold everything together for them, and I can do little things like hold bugs (which can sometimes be harder, depending on the bug, shudder!)

Salad-What do you like to do on a rainy day? Sit by the window and watch and listen to the rain. Rain makes me very lazy.

Main Course-Complete this sentence: In our home, we never have enough... Lip balm, scissors or tape! These are things that I've just given up on keeping track of, and I've decided we just need to purchase them in bulk and strew them around the house so that at any given place you're near them. Even so, they're still never there when you need them.

Dessert-Which shoe do you put on first? The right one. Why would I put the wrong one on first?

.*.*.

  A video game based on Star Wars? AND LEGOS? Someone get me a chair, I need to sit down.

.*.*.

  Stephanie, the Yarn Harlot, gives her recently completed sweater a piece of her mind.

I, too, have had words with items I've handcrafted, but never this eloquently. Usually I'd want to keep the children (and possibly sailors) out the room during one of these fits. Bravo, Stephanie!

.*.*.

  I would not have thought that clothes intended for a three year old boy could do so much more damage than the actual boy is normally capable of himself! Especially this boy!

Tuesday, while my family was enjoying dinner at Burger King (picking up our Cadoo Games), my dryer was dying a slow, painful yet blessedly fire-free death.

Before we go any further, I want to assure you all that I do know we are never ever ever supposed to leave the house while the dryer is running. It was an emergency. I was down my last bra and we were doomed to suffer an imminent containment breach if I didn't get some laundry done FAST!

Somehow, freakishly, while we were gone, the two clasps from the shoulders of the overalls attached themselves to the insides of the dryer. One caught on the lint trap, and the other on one of the wings that carries the laundry around and around. So, the garment quickly became tangled, and trapped everything else with it. When we came home, all of the clothes were in one very tight, smelly knot in the middle of the dryer, and now the dryer sounds like when you stand too close to the speaker at a hard core punk show (if memory serves.)

Since we have 6 family members, and laundry was being created before my eyes, I ran out to Target and bought these nifty over-the-door laundry drying racks. These will hopefully save our bacon until Tuesday which is the earliest we can hope for the repair to be completed. Altogether they cost less than the 3 estimated trips to the laundromat I figured we'd need, and I don't have to carry our laundry all over town. Don't they look fabulous? (Don't worry, you can really stare at them if you want to, all of our "unmentionables" are drying on the elliptical trainer, which isn't in the picture...)




.*.*.

  Check out this post on my sister Julie's cool new blog Amkeli.

Apparently I have no distinct preference between old people and young people, or black people and white people but I do prefer gay people over straight people. Who knew?

I didn't take any of the other tests, because they were starting to make my head hurt... If you take them you'll see what I mean.

.*.*.

  On Wednesdays at Daily Haiku you are given a Word of the Day that you must work into your haiku. Today's word is "character", and here is my effort:



So profound...

.*.*.

  The Deathstarbucks.

.*.*.

  Benedict XVI, or TCFKAJR (The Cardinal Formally Known As Joseph Ratzinger).

That was fast!

.*.*.

  Wow, check this out! 10x10 is a program created to search through news media outlets all the time and see what the most common words and pictures are. Then, every hour it creates a grid of the top 100 and saves them in the site's archives. So, I can tell that for the last three days the media has been pretty fixated on the conclave to choose the next pope.

Or, for instance, on our 13th anniversary, the #1 headline was Taiwan has condemned a new Chinese law giving Beijing the legal right to use force against the island if it moves towards declaring formal independence. Yeah, those were the days! OK, I admit it, I had NO IDEA this was going on...

They have only been archiving since last November, so I'm going to keep watching this.

.*.*.

  I'm a little concerned for these people. They're charging $10,000 for the privilege of being in the delivery room while their child is born, right? Who do they think they're going to get? Most anyone who's interested in watching a child be born is just going to watch one of the million legitimate videos available. Or one of the many weekly shows where people give birth. Most folks aren't going to shell out 10K, travel to Seattle, and live with a crabby pregnant woman while they wait.

This just seems disturbing. I wonder who they'll get? I have a feeling that there are a LOT better ways to get a college fund together...

Edited to add: As of 4/19 her parents have lowered the starting bid to $5,000. Let's hope this little girl is smart enough to get a scholarship, ie smarter than her parents!!! By 2023 that $5K won't really have been worth having some nasty pervert living in their house for the last month of her mom's pregnancy...

.*.*.

  Where can you find such diverse personalities as Isaac Hayes, Relient K, Bob Geldof, Dikembe Mutumbo, Bono, The Newsboys, No Doubt, Brad Pitt, tobymac, Claudia Schiffer, and John Cusack (plus more) all together in the same place? On the ONE Campaign Declaration. Wow!

The goal of the ONE Campaign is to ask that the U.S. Government set aside an addition 1% of the budget towards helping fight poverty and addressing other related issues.

Without seeing more concrete explanations of the HOWs of the whole thing, I can't say if I think their plan will work in the way they think, or whether they even have a chance of shaking any money loose. But, I can say in complete honesty that I am excited to see a project that people from all walks of life feel comfortable getting behind together. When you've got Perry Farrell and Third Day on the same train, you've got something going on!

.*.*.

  Davin and I watched Shaun of the Dead last night. It is an absolutely hilarious, tongue-in-cheek British movie about a zombie takeover of the earth (except we're not supposed to use the "zed" word, so I'll just have to say that the dead return to feed on the living...)

At one point during the film, the main characters turn on the telly (since we're being all British here) and all of the channels are showing their "no programming" signs. I found myself wondering if the TV stations were offline, how long would it be until the rest of the infrastructure went? How long until there'd be no power to run the TV at all?

You can imagine my joy at finding that the good folks down at The Straight Dope had already done the legwork for me on this one! They addressed two different scenarios, and gave detailed answers for each, so that a person could prepare for any zombie eventuality. Whew!

Another thing I wonder about zombies is that they are essentially terrible predators in the long term. Sure, they reproduce in a flash and almost immediately become the dominant species, but then they quickly overwhelm their food supply. Not only do they search for food 24/7, but every time they feed they convert their prey into another zombie-making machine.

Vampires have a similar problem, but they tend to have at least a little class and aren't so piggy. Plus they can only hunt half the time (less in the summer, what with the longer days and all.) Even when you factor in immortality they rarely seem to make much of a dent in the population. ('Salem's Lot being a notable exception.) Werewolves can convert their prey to man-eating beasts, too, but they feed even less (only one time a month, or in the case of a blue moon, twice), plus they're so obvious that whenever they hit the scene folks immediately show up with the silver bullets. But most every movie indicates that zombies overcome the whole planet in under a week, easy. It seems that if you could hole up long enough, they would just run out of food and and start dropping dead in the streets. And then you'd be safe, albeit with a nasty biohazard problem.

Unless zombies are also cannibals, in which case you should just ignore everything I said...

.*.*.

 
This is a scarf I knitted as a present for a sleepover birthday party the girls are going to tonight. I don't normally knit, but this yarn was the birthday girl's favorite colors and it's REALLY difficult to crochet.

Note, you can tell from Anya's favorite jammies, stuff this girly rarely graces my daughters' frames.

It was fun to make. While I was looking at the Bernat website I saw that they have some really interesting other yarns, too. There was one I wanted to use, just so I could say, "I knitted this for you out of Bling Bling!" We suburban housewives so rarely have conversations about bling bling...

.*.*.

 

Appetizer-What was your first "real" job?

I went door-to-door soliciting donations for CoPirg. It didn't last long. One day I was out in the pouring rain wearing a garbage bag some nice lady gave me (I believe she also gave a dollar to the cause), waiting for the drop car to pick me up, getting door after door slammed in my face and I just started to cry. I never went back.

Soup-Where would you go if you wanted to spark your creativity?

I have four kids and I homeschool, sometimes my best and ONLY thinking gets done in the shower. That's 3 feet squared and 10 minutes of privacy, baby!

Salad-Complete this sentence: I am embarrassed when...

Almost never. I think my family wishes I had a little shame! ;-)

Main Course-What values did your parents instill in you?

To be generous with your words, that it's the thought that counts, that no matter how many establishments you can't go back to, it's still worth it to go to dinner with your family!

Dessert-Name 3 fads from your teenage years.

Big ratted bangs (even if you had no other hair!), friendship bracelets (but only if you or your actual friends made them), androgyny

Edited for math and spelling errors. See what happens when you blog before your shower?

.*.*.

  Check out what's going on at Sheri's house today. Chin up, honey! I'll say a prayer that your day gets better!

.*.*.

  Or maybe you just want to make a shorter list?

This is 43 Things. They keep track of your list of 43 things you want to do, and even cross-reference them with other people, so you can see how many other people want to read the Bible (65), get out of debt (489) or learn how to shave with a straight razor (4).

As an aside, my super-masculine husband and occasional blogging partner, Davin, is very proficient at this and shaved exclusively with a straight razor for much of the early part of our marriage. He still has a face, and a handsome one at that!

I have to wonder about this one, "run photos of people I know through forensic age-progression software." It sounds really interesting, and I could see giving it a go if I could find the time and some free software, but I have to say that some of the goals listed on this site aren't as lofty as the ones I saw in the 101 in 1001 lists. Of course that's a generalizion, because as you know there was the whole Johnnie Walker Blue thing...

.*.*.

  but after looking at this wretchedly ugly item I would change the first two letters of this magazine's name.

Don't look if you want to keep thinking highly of me...

.*.*.

 

.*.*.

  I was surfing Thicket Dweller's Blog today, and she's participating in this really neat project. It's called 101 in 1001. Here's a brief descripton from a 101 in 1001 webring.

We have all done to do lists. Some are fun lists. Some are work lists. Some are lists of daily tasks. Some are lists of feats to accomplish while on this earth. The people in this ring have made a list of 1001 Things To Do In 1001 Days. Most of the items on these lists are fun, attainable tasks. The common thread is that we've pledged to accomplish all of the tasks on our lists in 1001 days (about 2.75 years).

This just really got my brain churning. 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days? What would I do? I looked at some other folks' lists, and they ranged from the very ambitious, ie 13. Learn all Enya pieces on piano to the much much less so, for instance this person already gave herself credit for this one, 7. Open the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue that's on my dresser To her credit, the rest of the list is much more respectable, and I suppose any good list should have a few tasks on it that you can complete right away. Right on, Afsheen, you go!

So many things to think about. Watch this space!

.*.*.

  Let me start by saying that I hate shoe shopping, and I don't "get" the whole shoe fetish thing. So this isn't one of the 10 million blog posts about "I found the coolest shoes at the mall with my friend Madison, they're SOOOOOO to die for and I'm going to wear them to school tomorrow I hope Josh notices!" or whatever... I have very flat, wide, LARGE feet (think "Yabba Dabba Doo!!!!" here), the only people making sexy heels in my size are marketing to transvestites, plus I've never really been into fashion. As you can imagine I'm just not a girl who digs on the whole footwear scene.

The first time I saw Crocs, my immediate thought was, (I'll admit it) "Wow, those are ugly! Kids today will wear anything, won't they?" But, then a doula friend informed me that many of the nurses and midwives are starting to wear them now, because they're comfortable and indestructable. Well, when nurses buy shoes, I listen! Then I heard that many teachers are wearing them too, hmmm, yet another group known for being on their feet. Then I started seeing them everywhere, and they began to grow on me. And, really, it's not like the Birkenstocks I'd been wearing year round for almost 5 years are attractive per se, besides mine were far beyond hope...

I have really not been at all disappointed! They are great shoes, very comfortable, very light. I suppose someone may be looking at them thinking they're ugly, like I did when I first saw them, but that's OK. I just hope that their feet are as blissed out as mine are in whatever shoes they're wearing!

.*.*.

  I would want to be put completely under for this. Then, if at all possible, I'd like to have all record of the event erased from my memory...

.*.*.

 

Woohoo! I got 119.95! Warning, they are sometimes picky about weird things like capitalization, and some of the answers depend on which verse you're thinking of :-P

.*.*.

  Thank you so much Sheri from Shades of Pink for being so patient and helping me so much around here!

I know Sheri from the message boards at Five in a Row, and when I asked for her help (because I think her blog is so cool) she set out right away to answer a million questions and she even let me steal neat things and ideas from her!

Thanks Sheri, you're the best! :-D

.*.*.

  Our power was out for about an hour because of the blizzard. I hate that. I don't really mind that that power was out, because that isn't that big of a deal. I just hate the reminder of how dependent we are.

There Davin and I sat with our tiny little candle flames (using candles left over from our Y2K stash, plus some scented votives), reminding the kids that DARK is the perfect time to GET BACK IN BED and GO TO SLEEP, which was where they were when the power went out in the first place.

I kept trying to think of things to do, and being reminded that I couldn't do them because we had no power. I was in the middle of the laundry, but I couldn't finish. Davin was vacuuming, ditto. No TV, or computer and all the fun things you think you'd do if you had a Little House on the Prairie lifestyle don't really work without Little House on the Prairie equipment. They must have had way better lighting than our crummy (yet perfumed!) candles, because I couldn't even read, let alone have a barn dance or something...

At least the Castaways had nice weather when they had to start figuring out how to make it with "no phone, no light, no motor car, not a single luxury." But, to be fair they did have to deal with the bugs, headhunters, and the whiney Howells, so I guess I'll just grow where God planted me! ;-)

.*.*.

 
We were all wearing sandals and t-shirts yesterday!

This is Sage, Maya, Anya, Tiernan and Davin in the front yard. (I took this photo in my bare feet!) 

.*.*.

 
Yikes, our swings are buried! 

.*.*.

 
I call this one "The Roof Cornice" ~or~ "No Basketball Today" 

.*.*.

 
Genius! This clock will actually escape from the nightstand and hide after you push snooze, so you have to wake up and find it to subdue it a second time.

I wonder how long it would take determined sleepers to park it up on jacks or in a box or something. I mean, if you're the type of person who'd push snooze all day already, this is just one more function of the alarm clock to subvert... 

.*.*.

  Fametracker has completed their Fame Audit of William Shatner!

Quote (language warning):

Some celebrities think they've got this whole image thing figured out, they can have fun with it, and they can make it their bitch. Sure, we like John Malkovich, and, sure, we thought it was cool and funny when he starred in Being John Malkovich. But for William Shatner, every day is Being William Shatner. Some celebrities get it, but Shatner so thoroughly gets it that "it" no longer exists. He's consumed "it." He's crawled up inside celebrity and made it explode, the way that Neo finally crawls into Agent Smith and makes him explode. (Uh, sorry -- Matrix spoiler, for all you Amish out there.)

Which brings me to my next point. We have found the PERFECT place to renew our vows for our 15th Anniversary... I give you The Star Trek Experience! Where else can you "get married on the Bridge of the USS Enterprise, have Klingons and Ferengi witness your vows and then have an out-of-this-world reception at Quark's Bar & Restaurant," I ask you? You'll note that the wedding party sizes are limited by necessity because of space constraints on the bridge, so we can only invite a small number of people. So, I suggest if you are interested in coming that you spend the next couple of years saving money for a trip to Las Vegas, making room for some of those "Holy Rings of Betazed Breaded Onion Rings" and sucking up to Davin and I and trying to get on the list... ;-)

.*.*.

  A neat editoral on Pope John Paul II's great appeal to evangelical protestants.

Quote:

The truth is evangelicals could admire the Pope without wanting to convert to Catholicism. Sure, important differences remained between Protestants and Catholics, but John Paul II made them seem small. He was pro-life, pro-family, anti-totalitarian, and quite a lot more that conservative evangelicals identified with. Richard Land, a prominent Southern Baptist leader, once told a Catholic friend that Pope John Paul II was a "Pope who really knows how to pope." I suspect what Land meant in using "pope" as a verb was that John Paul was bold and unswerving in proclaiming salvation through belief in Jesus Christ. He did this all over the world, despite declining health and personal risk.

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  In case you haven't seen this miracle of modern science, here it IS!!!!! Ta DA!

The Hummingbird is a small, battery-powered POWER FLOSSER!!! (Ta DA!) Those of you who haven't had any teeth extracted lately may not share my enthusiasm for dental hygiene products, but I see the rest of you are listening in rapt attention. Those of you who aren't will rue the day you ignored this, mark my words! OK, probably not, but one so rarely gets to tell someone to mark her words (or use "rue the day") that I couldn't pass it up.

It was pretty cheap (under $5 at Wal-Mart), and the refills aren't too bad since I like the picks better and they seem study enough to re-use a few times. The picks have a nice, mint flavor, too. It is a pleasant, gentle vibration, so it makes your gums all tingly without feeling like you need new shocks on the car. And it did seem to dig out an inordinant amount of crud. (Plaque? Tartar? I don't know. I'm just going to think of it as MONEY, since that what it always seems to mean for me, and not in a good way.)

For those of you who'd like to hear from someone besides me, here's a review of the product by someone else on the internet. This person is kind of a killjoy, in that he/she insists that floss will do just as good of a job. I'm sure that's true, but *I* know that floss is not as easy to use, nor does it make me as happy.

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  She's been in pain for a long time, after having been diagnosed last year with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

She was always a really neat woman, a strong Christian, and a loving wife and mother. Her husband, my Uncle David, and her sons, my cousins Matthew, Adam and Douglas, provided her care through it all and displayed remarkable strength, devotion and courage. Please keep them, and the rest of her family, in your prayers?

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  I had promised my sister weeks ago after a conversation we were having that I would blog this longevity calculator, but I kept forgetting! Can you forgive me, Julie?

I'm not sure how convinced I am that this thing is accurate. I posted it on my local homeschool group list and I came out as having one of the longest projected lifespans, 93.2 years, even though I'm fat. (For the sake of clarity, I'm somewhere between "pleasingly plump" and looking for a job in the circus freakshow.) One of the other moms was projected to die at 68, and it wasn't clear why, because apparently she's in good health now.

So anyway, if you try this, let me know what it says about you and if you think it's on the right track?

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  This cracks me up. This guy went through the flags of the world, created a point system and gave them all letter grades. He explains his system, and then goes on to add snarky comments to some. For instance, for Santa Lucia he says, "Best corporate logo. Makes me want to invest money there." Zimbabwe's comment says, "Features a hawk sitting on a toilet." One of my favorites is Libya, to which he says, "Did you even try?"

I'm sure you can guess which country lost points for having too many stars, "If one is good, fifty must be just right."

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Is it just me, or is this one of the more disturbing new ad campaigns out there?

I found an article that explains their reasoning behind it, but frankly it's not working for me.

As if it wasn't bad enough that their spokesfreak is frankly quite scary, they've got him STALKING our protagonist. He's actually broken into the man's home and is waiting in his bed for him to wake up. Somehow we're supposed to find this behavior charming? I think not. Call the police, file charges, get a restraining order, go out and buy an Egg McMuffin and try and put it all behind you, that's what I say.


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We bought some cheap refrigerator magnets, and ended up making a fun little "book" of words for Tiernan. We did different body parts, ie hands, feet, teeth, etc, and some of his favorite toys. He had a blast, and was really excited to see how the different combinations of letters actually meant different things! 

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  Guilt of a Homeschool Mom.

I just needed to read this today. I have a lot of work to do, but I need to keep the right focus so I'm not just spinning my wheels.

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  while demonstrating gun safety in front of a group of kids.

As you can see in this video, he does so after insisting he is the only person in the room "professional" enough to handle a Glock. Uh-huh. To his credit, he immediately checks if everyone else is OK and goes on with his presentation, turning his misfortune into an object lesson.

Anyway, according to the Urban Legends Reference Page, this event did happen as it is represented in the video.

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