Happy St. Patrick’s Day To All

I Was Terribly Disappointed; Nobody Was Murdered

Here’s some George Burns jokes.  He lived to be 100 years old, proving that laughter just might truly be the best medicine.  Enjoy!

1. By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.
2. I was always taught to respect my elders. Well, I’ve finally reached the age where I don’t have to respect anybody.
3. In those days the best painkiller was ice; it wasn’t addictive and it was particularly effective if you poured some whiskey over it.
4. Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere.
5. Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.
6. When asked in his late 90s if his doctor knew he still smoked, Burns said, “No … he’s dead.”
7. You’ve got to be honest; if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
8. I personally stay away from natural foods. At my age I need all the preservative I can get.
9. The secret of a good sermon is having a good beginning and a good ending. And having them as close together as possible.
10. I thought to myself, why not write a bestseller. In the first place, more people read them, you make more money, and it doesn’t take any more time to write a bestseller than it does to write a book that nobody buys.
11. From Paris we took the Orient Express to Vienna. I must say I was terribly disappointed; nobody was murdered on the train.
12. The three of us made a hasty exit, with me leading the way. I know that in case of danger it’s supposed to be ladies first, but that doesn’t count when you’re a coward.
13. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Who needs new tricks? If you play it right, the old tricks still work . . .

For more participants, be sure to visit Thursday Thirteen.  Happy Thursday!

“Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.”

 

Happy Thursday, everyone!  For more participants be sure to visit Thursday Thirteen.

Today would be Erma Bombeck’s birthday.  She was born February 21, 1927 and died April 22, 1996. The newspaper columnist made us laugh at life’s idiosyncrasies for three decades through her syndicated column and her bestselling books like “If Life Is A Bowl Of Cherries, What Am I Doing In The Pits?”

1. Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.
2. Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.
3. Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
4. Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You’re not out of it until the computer says you’re out of it.
5. Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
6. When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.
7. If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.
8. It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.
9. It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
10. On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.
11. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me”.
12. One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.
13. Seize the moment. Think of all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.

Much Ado About A Valentine Movie

I took this nifty little quiz to find out what romantic movie I am, and it came up with Much Ado About Nothing. I missed this movie when it came out in 1993, but it’s based on the Shakespearean comedy, and I love his comedies. It also has several good Hollywood veterans so how can I go wrong? I’ll just have to see this movie.

What about you? What romantic movie would you say you are?

It’s available here, if you’re interested in buying it.

What Romantic Movie Are You?

Much Ado About Nothing
Take this >quiz!

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I Am Not A Number! But Still A Prisoner At Spam Village

I’m a huge fan of “The Prisoner,” a British tele series from the late 1960s which I watched when I was a toddler. I was probably too young for that matter, as it has marked me for life. “I am not a number!” was a favorite quote of mine throughout childhood and I still use it from time to time. It came to mind as I was reading all the numbers I have been assigned by a spam e-mail which wormed its way out of the bulk mail filters and into my inbox. The nerve of these spam e-mails, really!

I have been assigned a reference number, a ticket number, a lucky number (oooh, lucky me!) and a serial number. There’s also an international number to call! But I don’t think I’ll be calling it. They want INFORMATION! INFORMATION! But who is their Number 1? That would be telling! Who is Number 2?

I AM NOT A NUMBER! I am a free woman! I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, NUMBERED OR SPAMMED!

Here’s the series introduction:

When the prisoner wakes up, he finds himself in The Village.

Here’s The Village and its architectural history as documented by “The Antiques Road Show”:

If you’re interested in the DVD boxed set of the complete 17-episode series, it’s available here.

Be seeing you! 😉

Proof Of Global Warming: Tropical Heat Wave Hits L.A., Calif.

Here’s a couple of shots of snow in the Los Angeles mountains that I took in between rainstorms, from the west end of the San Fernando Valley, in the mountains separating Los Angeles County and Ventura County. This is NOT a common sight, so if you were wondering why I was posting about the cold from Southern California, this visual is worth a thousand words as the saying goes. Our thermometers, even at the low altitude of the San Fernando Valley, were below freezing, something we are definitely not used to in these parts. And some prophets tell us that snow proves global warming! I just can’t resist laughing out loud, and often. I was glad to happen upon this palm tree: a visual juxtaposition of hot with the cold of the snow.

Adventures In Blogging — What Do We Have In Common?

I’ve been seeing this long list on a lot of blogs lately and it’s interesting to see how we have a lot in common with each other and on some blogs we have so few in common with each other. This list seems to have been started by a real adventurous person. The ones highlighted in red are the ones which apply to me. The ones in black I do not have in common with the person who created the list. How do you compare?

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with Touched wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive ride
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you’ and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris (and even lived there for 12 years)
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. . Seen the Northern Lights
14.Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Coeur Basilica in Paris
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables herbs
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run (it must have been a miracle — most of the time I can’t even hit the ball)
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day several decades
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them (a few restaurants are like that and the train too)
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs records (I haven’t been that organized for too long)
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Posed nude in front of strangers
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo The Bible says not to
81. Rafted the Snake American River
82. Been on television as a volunteer pledge drive taker an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Had a one-night stand
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a day cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone (just a toe, so that doesn’t really count, does it?)
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced (not even above the neck!)
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper (my own mug and the ones I photographed)
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Petted a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts (even built motherboards)
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

And I thought I had a boring life!

Thursday Thirteen #14 — I Spy Amtrak

Here are 13 things I spied people doing on an Amtrak ride which was running four hours late.

1. Read/study. Lots of reading books, textbooks, newspapers, comics, magazines, documents. A few books were even traded.
2. Write. I wrote this post, and a few other people were writing, too.
3. Knitting. One woman was knitting with snow white wool and dragging it all over the tables, seats and (yikes) even the floor. By the time her project is done, I think it will have become public places gray.
4. Play cards. Some Germans were having a really great time at it and laughing all the way.
5. Use laptop. Can a battery really last this long? It did for a woman applying to graduate school. Actually it turned out she had found a lone electric outlet right by her seat. How lucky!!
6. Listen to music. And recharge the iPod in the scenic car, too.
7. Sleep. From babies to seniors and every age in between, it was really tiring to wake up at the crack of dawn and be delayed by four hours due to poor weather throwing tree trunks and mud on the tracks. We had our own cleaning crew precede us all the way through the trip.
8. Talk on cell. To make new plans, to let concerned people know we were alive and well, to check on middle of the night bus and cab service, and sometimes just to vent.
9. Eat. So much waiting makes people hungry. Even those who had a sack lunch or even dinner found themselves having to make a trip to the dining car or the snack bar.
10. Play video games. The 7 to 27 crowd was armed with video games to pass the time.
11. Watch scenery. We shared the train with an Amish family who watched lots of scenery, spending most of the time in the scenic car. They spoke and laughed with each other, and they were much more polite than most people are these days. (And they were carrying/guarding the most gigantic bag of Cheetos I had ever seen — a gift???)
12. Watch DVDs. The batteries ran out, but while they lasted, a few people watched movies.
13. Talk to strangers. After several hours “in the same boat,” people didn’t think they were strangers anymore and common points of interest started being noticed all through the train.

Happy Thursday!!

Visit Thursday Thirteen for a list of more participants.

Thursday Thirteen #13 — 13 Resolutions And Why They Will Fail

Wow, 13 Thursday 13s already.

I never make New Year’s Resolutions other than resolving NOT to make resolutions! Here’s 13 reasons why the top 13 resolutions around the world fail.

1. Lose weight: Doomed from the start because it’s almost impossible to escape corn syrup. It’s in everything! Statistics show that weight gain in the United States has gone up 4000 percent since the 1970s and it correlates exactly with the 4000% increase in manufacturers’ use of corn syrup since the 1970s. Corn syrup also increases cravings!!
2. Exercise: Most people are too tired all day to exercise and when you add to the equation that you have to drive both to and from the gym (in my case it would be a 25 mile round trip to the nearest gym) it makes the whole thing futile unless you can give all of us a few more hours in the day.
3. Diet: We all have the best intentions until our ALREADY STARVED stomachs get tempted by the aroma of pizza or warm chocolate chip cookies.
4. Write to far away relatives: Tomorrow I’ll write to my aunt, but when tomorrow comes, well my dear, Scarlett said it best, “Tomorrow is another day!”
5. Be a better spouse/child/friend: If we couldn’t do it on Thanksgiving or on Christmas Day, what makes you think that we can miraculously do it by procrastinating waiting until January 1.
6. Stop procrastinating: Some people do procrastinate because they just don’t want to do something, but most of the time, people just don’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on the TO DO list. Give all of us another few more hours in the day AND the energy to do it, and I guarantee you we’ll all procrastinate a whole lot less. Until then, that resolution is guaranteed to be broken quickly.
7. Get more sleep: If you live in the city, be sure to pass a law forbidding garbage trucks to stagnate under your window and beep when they back out with a 13-point turn. While you’re at it, pass a law to forbid all traffic, all honking, all loud neighbors, all barking dogs until after you have woken up on your own and are well-rested. If you live in the country, make sure the rooster is blind and your neighbor has agreed to milk the cows and do all your morning chores. And above all, regardless of where you live, be absolutely sure that you do not have any children under the age of 50.
8. Keep a clean home: Unless you want to get rid of the dirt-tracking, slobbering dog, get rid of the germ-carrying, toy-scattering kids, maybe even the food-eating, clothe-wearing spouse, that’s going to be a tough one. Even at the Carlsbad caves in New Mexico, they have to spend thousands of volunteer hours dusting and picking dirt and lint out of the stalagmites each year and nobody even lives there. You do LIVE in your house, don’t you?
9. Quite smoking/drinking/and God-forbid taking drugs: These are all substances which affect your brain receptors. You not only have to get rid of a nasty habit, but you have to get your brain and your physiology to stop reacting. With very hard work and lots of will-power you might be able to quit, but your body will always be addicted. It would be much easier to resolve to never use and abuse these substances in the first place.
10. Reduce stress overall: LOL! LOL! When I hear people say that it reduces MY stress because it makes me laugh so much. Of course this is probably the easiest resolution to achieve. All you have to do is die and go to Heaven. That’s all. Now, be careful! Make sure you DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, commit suicide under any circumstance, because then you’ll die and go to hell!
11. Reduce stress at work: If you work with people, it’s impossible. Unless maybe if you work with French people, because I seem to recall Napoleon saying “Impossible is not French.” You can’t work with machines or robots because they are designed and programed by people. Now maybe if you want to follow in Jane Goodall’s footsteps and go to the jungle to live with animals. They say animals reduce stress — as long as they’re not trying to eat you!
12. Get out of debt: First thing is to sell your house because a mortgage is a 30-year debt. Sell your car too since you don’t want car payments. Cut up your credit cards which will of course wreck your credit score, but that’s OK since you don’t want any debt.
13. Save money: That is another way of saying join the rat race, because to save money you have to earn money with a job and you have to work your little rat wheel faster than INFLATION. Also, don’t believe all those commercials that say you can save money if you go to their stores, because what they conveniently forget to tell you is that to save that money, you have to spend money first, so you’ll have to stat in that giant rat race.

If I didn’t deter you from making resolutions, just remember that it takes at least three weeks to form a good habit, so don’t give up before then, and best of luck and Happy New Year to you and yours!

If you want to see the list of Thursday 13 participants, just click here.

USDA Approved Our Eggs

The United States Department of Agriculture agent approved the eggs I bought just moments before I picked them up. You see pictured here the USDA tag. It was a hot topic of conversation at my husband’s work, and in the decades we’ve been alive, neither of us has ever come across one of these before, nor have any of the people we spoke with. It was so unusual, in fact, that the customers at the store were all looking at the tag suspiciously and refusing to take these eggs. My husband and I grabbed them all the faster. I have no idea what it is the USDA inspects when the agents are looking at eggs, but obviously these passed the test and have the initialed tag and the #5 scribble on the carton itself to prove it. Besides, I thought it would be an interesting tidbit to share with all of my blog readers. Have you ever bought anything sampled by a USDA agent? The USDA knows eggs, because these eggs were very good indeed!