Tragedy

If you're like me, you've seen a lot recently in the news about Barbaro. The famous racehorse that won all 6 races that it finished. Much of the world has closely followed the story of this storybook-like horse's broken foot, and attempts at making a physical comeback. People have been emotionally attached to this horse, and recently world headlines were made again when Barbaro was euthanized (put down) because the foot problems just would not go away. News agency after news agency covered the story....thousands lamented for Barbaro. Even the news of the possible site of Barbaro's final burial has hinted it will become a shrine of sorts for this horse that the world loved.

As I watched the coverage and lamenting over Barbaro the horse, I could not help to think how perverse and backwards it is that we feel remorse for the death of a horse, when thousands upon thousands of babies are killed every year. Babies who can feel the pain of their death. Whose hands are able to reach out and grab the finger of their murderer. What a tragedy. What a perverse tragedy, indeed.

How backwards the world is, in its values.

“What irony that a society confronted with plastic bags filled with the remains of aborted babies should be more concerned about the problem of recycling the plastic.” – Winifred Egan

Answer to mystery post

Click here to see the answer to the mystery post. I basically joined up (for free) and tried it out to see what the deal was.

Dirty Jobs - Mission Accomplished!

Mission Accomplished. The Trash Kennel is emptied. I took the day off of work today, and spend the hours necessary to completely clean up the area. We are already using our regular trash service again. Now maybe the Hatfields will leave the McCoys alone.

????????

Let's play a game. I was going to do a post first, but lets do it like this. Look at the picture below.

What do you think the post will be about?

Charlie Moment 1.27.07

Tonight I was at our Sunday School class' monthly outreach. We were setting up a ballroom for a fundraiser tomorrow. It is a fundraiser in honor of a girl in our church's youth group who was killed. They give the money to kids as scholarships to go on mission trips, etc. It is a dinner and then a silent auction.

Well, I was there setting up...along with a bunch of other people, and the parents of the girl who was killed. (All who know my foot in mouth disease, just said, "uh oh.")

But anyway, as I'm setting up, I start looking at some of the things out for silent auction. I see a nice office chair. Minimum bid $50...valued at $400. Well, even though the auction hadn't started yet, I didn't see any harm in putting down the first bid on the chair for $50.

Well, later, as we're setting up the dinner tables...it dawns on me that in order to bid on the items, you had to have bought a $20 dinner ticket. I of course, didn't...and so I wasn't eligible to bid on the chair.

So, feeling dumb, I sneak over to the office chair....pick up the clipboard and pen....and started scribbling out my name, phone number and bid. As I'm violently marking out the name on the list, the girl who was killed's father starts walking past me.....staring at me scribbling out someone's bid on the chair. ....neither one of us said anything. I just put the clipboard down and walked away.

doah!

This is good.

SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING?


"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right. (Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)


No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.


"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "MT". (Are you doubting this?)


Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. (Note from Charlie: This is not quite accurate...they do grow some.)


The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet. (Now, you KNOW you're going to try this out for accuracy, right?)


The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes). (Yep, I knew you were going to "do" this one.)




There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. (You're not doubting this, are you?)


There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious." (Yes, admit it, you are going to say .. A e i o u)


TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. (All you typists are going to test this out)


A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.


A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds. (Some days that's about what my memory span is)


A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.


A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.



A snail can sleep for three years. (I know some people that could do this too.)


Almonds are a member of the peach family.


An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.


Babies are born without kneecaps They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.


February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.


In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.


If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.


Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.


Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!


Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.


The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.


The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.


The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.(Good thing he did that)

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.


There are more chickens than people in the world.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.


Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Now you know everything!

Donation, please!

I was on my way home from work this afternoon, and as I was driving I looked ahead to a 4-way intersection / red-light, and saw what appeared to be shriners all over it asking for donations. I'm all about giving to charity, but I don't like people all over my car trying to guilt me into giving money. So as I'm approaching the intersection, the light is red, and so I try to slow way down ahead of time, so the light will be green by the time I get there. Unfortunately, it is a long light, and so instead...this guy (who wasn't a shriner, but was some other sort of charity collector), ...sees me slow down far away from him. And then the light was so long, I ended up having to pull all the way up, even though I think he might have known what I was trying to do.

Let's just say when I finally got there, there was a very ugly look on his face....especially since I pretended to ignore him after we looked at each other.

Dang! I'm sexy!

Timber!

I've had a couple of trees in the backyard that were starting to cause some worry. Pine beetles are ravashing my backyard and pinetrees are dying and falling left and right. I had two big ones that were dead that were really threatening the house. One of them was very massive and only about 20-30 feet from the house. I seemed like a big axe just waiting to fall on us. I can cut some trees down myself, but this one in particular was massive and since it was close to the house, I didn't want to take the chance on something going wrong and crushing my house. So I called out an arborist, and actually got him to cut 8 dead trees down for less than the price I thought it would cost to have the one massive one cut down. As I'm paying the guy, I found out that his brother is a friend of mine in our Sunday School class. Small world. Here are some pictures.

Sold.

I sold a couple of games today - Splinter Cell and NBA 2K6.

Books-A-Million

I love to peruse a bookstore. It's one of my favorite R&R activities. I think part of my liking of it, is that it allows my random mind to find mental snacks from every aisle of the literary grocery store. Today I spent some more time at Books-A-Million, and read bits from War and Peace, Sun Tsu's The Ancient Art of War, to a LIFE photos book, Skeptic Magazine (it's good to see where the enemy lives) to Biblical Archeology, to computer programming.

Sometimes I'll sit and read almost an entire periodical, sometimes I'll just catch the highlights, and sometimes, like today with War and Peace, I'm just curious to take a sample because of a book's infamy. (That particular book came to mind because I saw it again recently in a commercial about frequent flier miles and the guy in the plane on the commercial was reading it. ...I told you it was random.)

I like photo books especially. Looking back at famous people and events from the last century and a half. Presidents, holocaust, immigrants, etc.

I go through phases, like when I got the "Investing for Dummies" and read it from cover to cover. Whereas when I was going through the investing section today, I felt no draw to it at all.

It sure would stink to not be literate. You could miss out on so much. Especially the #1 book of all time - La Biblia.

Some Random Facts

• Every year, seemingly due to New Years' resolutions, sales of cigarettes drop by about 30 percent in January, but then regain half that in February, and are back to normal levels in March.

• When first introduced in 1885, Dr Pepper was colored green and billed itself as an alternative to absinthe.

• Approximately 1 in 175 children born in the United States are currently on the Department of Homeland Security's no-fly list.

• Former President George H. W. Bush won a national whistling contest in 1935 at the age of 11.

• Privately-owned nuclear weapons are legal in 47 states, though they must be registered with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the State Department.

Sleet?

I'll try to post again soon. Right now I'm hoping for sleet tonight, so I can have a day off tomorrow.

Painting our bedroom

Our previous master bedroom paint job was a wild and crazy purple thing. Light, flat purple, with a dark glossy purple sponge effect on top. We even had purple rope-lights. We decided it was time for a more normal look. So we went to Lowe's and settled on this color. I think it was called dustbunny or something. It was a neutral, earthtone. We have other renovation plans for our bedroom coming soon. Plus we will be turning our office into Micah's new big-boy room, while the new boy will inherit the nursery.






Good artist always sign their work.









End Product. (The spots you see are from the light.)