Sanity Retention Techniques

I received this in a forward and thought it was a worthwhile collection of tips for destressing, in accordance with the prophecy:

20 Ways to maintain a healthy level of insanity

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.
3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask If They Want Fries with that.
4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label It "In".
5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.
6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Smuggling Diamonds
7. Finish All Your sentences with "In Accordance With The Prophecy."
8. Don't use any punctuation
9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk
10. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face
11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go"
12. Sing Along At The Opera
13. Go To A Poetry Recital And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme
14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play tropical Sounds All Day
15. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You're Not In The Mood
16. Have Your Co-workers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, e.g. The Rock or The Bottom
17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won!
18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking lot, Yelling "Run For Your Lives, They're Loose!!"
19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner. "Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go."
20. And The Final Way To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity Send This To Someone To Make Them Smile.
It's Called therapy.

Groundhog Day and Spring

This from an e-mail I received a few weeks ago:

This year, both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fell on the same day. As Air America Radio pointed out, "It is an ironic juxtaposition:
One involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."

March 12th - we heard the frogs down in the marsh for the first time after a weekend of 60+ degree temperatures. This is big... when we hear the frogs, we know Spring is REALLY here. By the next day, however, they dug themselves back into the mud (or wherever they go when it's cold). However, it is officially Spring and the Mountain is crawling with Robins.

Scary

Read the article from the link in the comment from Oroblanco. Scary stuff. Here's an excerpt:

"More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), based in Arlington, Virginia, was presented at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, last week."

Funny how it's ok to play God when it suits the government. We can do medical experiments on animals, (and probably people eventually)... we can kill people in a country that didn't attack us... but pull the plug on a human vegetable... oh no!!! We can't have that.

I promised Addison we could try composting with earthworms this year, so I have been doing some research into how to build a proper “vermicomposter.” It doesn’t look like it will be too difficult. However, Addison was telling me last night about some of his ideas for the “erfwormsth.” He seems to think that it’s going to be like an ant farm with a tank, plastic houses and people. He was telling me about how we can make them a village with houses, trees, people, etc. Once again, I got the look that said, Silly woman, how can you be so large and yet so excessively stupid? Don’t you know that worms love plastic houses?

I think the biggest challenge is not going to be building a worm bin that works. No, the challenge will be convincing him that worms, much like his dog, would rather roll around in their own filth, eating poop and garbage, than ride little tractors on a pristine plastic homestead. I can just imagine the arguments we will have about putting them in a box and throwing garbage on them. Then I’m sure there will be the arguments about whether or not we should play with the worms because they are his new best friends. I’m flashing back to last year when he found the poor slug next to his sandbox.

“Look at him, mommy, he yikes me!! He’s my best fwend.”

Addison held up his hand for inspection. The slug was starting to look a little dry and squished out of shape. It wasn’t so much that he liked Addison, but rather he was disoriented and holding on for dear life. Addison carried the slug through the yard, into the sandbox, onto the swing set, and through the flowerbeds, all the time yacking about how cool the slug was and what wonderful things they would be able to do together. Then we had an argument about whether or not the slug should come in for lunch…. (Like the little b@stard hadn’t already been dining on my dahlias all night, now I’m supposed to fix him a sandwich?!) I sighed, disgusted at myself for thinking that maybe he would enjoy some nice table salt for lunch. I wondered where we lose the belief that all life, no matter how vile, disgusting and annoying – is actually precious and fascinating? I finally convinced him that the slug would rather stay outside and dine on my flowers. I’m sure it was the truth. The problem was, Addison wouldn’t listen to me about putting the slug back on the flowers. Instead, he decided, Mr. Slug would rather sit on the stepping-stone, next to a little metal dragonfly.

After lunch, Addison insisted and going out to look for the slug, but all we could find was a faintly slug-shaped puddle of slime and some ants…. Go figure. “One less slug to eat the dahlias,” I thought, but I felt bad for Addison at the same time. I didn’t want to tell him that instead of having lunch, the slug became lunch. I just hope this year’s earthworms fare better than the slug. If not, I guess we can always stick Lucky in the vermicomposter.

"Maco Bullfrog" by Addison

"The outside of a Maco Bullfrog"

5 Year Plan

I was talking to a wise woman the other night (Aunt Beth) and she suggested that we come up with a plan for where we want to be in 5 years. I was talking to Jason about it and Steinbeck was laying at the foot of the bed, making sure that he gets his requisite 22 hours of daily beauty rest. Jason considered the suggestion of a 5 year plan and then asked "Can our plan be that in 5 years everyone has to send us a bunch of money?" Well, I thought, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. After throwing some ideas around he then suggested "Why don't we sell all our posessions?" At that moment Steinbeck's head snapped around and the cat shot Jason a look that said "Hey, I like to SLEEP on a few of those possessions thank you very much." Then he jumped down off the bed, tapped the door open with his paw, and walked out with a look of disgust that made me wonder if WE were anywhere in Steinbeck's 5-year plan. I think cats are probably materialists.

Canadian Geese at Middlecreek

 

Snow Geese at the Middlecreek Wildlife Conservancy 

Compost Heap on Legs

I was discussing Lucky's eating habits (see "World's Grossest Dog and Other Joys" with one of my friends the other day and she made an astute observation. "He's just doing his part by starting his own little recycling program." Yes, I guess he is recycling waste in his own way. I have personally seen him recycle aluminum, plastic and sewage on several occassions. I guess I own a four-legged compost heap. Oh, Joy. Just what I always wanted. I read Oroblanco's comments about the history of the domesticated dog, and I'd like to add my own little theory about why dogs have been around so long. I think they survived simply because they would eat stuff that no other animal in it's right mind would think about consuming. Yes, my theory is that it's vile and disgusting eating habits may have given the dog a distinct competitive advantage during a radical climate change. Think about this scenario... a meteor hits and there's only dead rotting flesh, piles of prehistoric plant garbage and maybe some animal waste around. The dinosaur looks at this and says "I may have a really small brain, but I'd rather die than eat that sh*t." Maybe the sabertooth tiger tries it and yacks it up, in typical cat fashion. So the dog comes over and eats the plant crap, plus whatever the cat yacked up, and maybe has some dinosaur sh*t for desert... because, you know, you don't want to miss anything that someone else might've eaten. Then you go befriend some humans and eat whatever they leave or crap out, and you survive. Makes perfect sense to me. Anyway, in keeping with my recent "gross bodily function" theme, here's a cute cartoon that's been circulating the internet.

Wasps in the War on Terror

This is interesting. They are now looking at training wasps - the bug not the White Anglo Saxon Protestants - to detect nerve gas and explosives. Somebody better tell Lucky he should stop eating them!
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2006/02/wasps-enlisted-in-war-on-terror.html