Life After Death

As further proof that I don't purposely single out areas that are weird (Florida not included in that statement) this Portland,OR man started an Instagram account for his deceased Jack Russell Terrier,Phoebe around ten years ago and has turned her into a star after her demise. The man takes the taxidermied dog on road trips then post photos of their adventures. Phoebe's star status became official on 11/20/2017 after he posted a photo of Phoebe in his car with the following sign:“Don’t worry, the dog is already dead. She’s taxidermied. Please don’t break my window.” What can I say? Everyone needs a hobby! 

Off to the Races

I'm sorry to say I missed the third annual T-Rex Races at Emerald Downs in Auburn,Washington. This is the first year they used a starting gate though it didn't add much dignity to the affair. There were 24 contestants so there were two T-Rex per space in the 12 gates. The race has somehow evolved from the first year of people running in Hawaiian shirts,the second year in togas and from there it naturally went to dinosaur suits. They've even taken to naming the contestants,names like Regular Unleaded and Rex Girlfriend. Sounds like a fun time,I will have to watch for it next year.

Tough or Immune?

The annual World Stinging Nettle championship took place in Dorset,UK yesterday. The winner in the men's division ate 58 ft consisting of the leaves off of 29 stalks of the plant. The winner in the women's category was a 67 year old retired teacher who consumed 46 ft of the stingers which she said was accomplished by dipping the leaves in her cider to make them more tender. She said her tongue was black but she felt fine. The all time record is 104 ft. I haven't a clue how anyone would manage to even pick the nettles up,let alone put it in their mouth. The way they sting it seems like your throat would swell up and that would be the end of the competition,and perhaps the competitor. After hunting for an explanation all I found that related was nettles are used for allergies along with many other medical issues,though they are usually used as a tea or taken in tablet form. So I'm clueless once again.

Depression Dress

Those wacky folks as ASOS online are at it again with the odd clothing that they try to pass off as haute couture. They are now offering a dress called Elissa Poppy Lacetex Slip Dress which looks like and onion sack. Apparently most people also noticed the resemblance because they dropped the price from $433 to $260. It puts me in mind of the old cloth flour sacks that used to come in patterns so they could be re-purposed to make clothing or used as pillow cases.

The Real Man in the Moon

Today's post is one of those pesky facts that I'm wondering if everyone but me knows,I knew there's a company that for around the price of a funeral ($10,000)  will shoot your cremains into space as was done with Gene Roddenberry but those ashes aren't actually interred on a celestial body.  Gene Shoemaker had always wanted to go the moon but medical issues kept him from becoming an astronaut. He is often credited with developing the planetary sciences field and also named many of the craters,valleys and mountains on the moon. The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was named after him for his many contributions. On July 31, 1999 the Lunar Prospector carrying a cylinder with a portion of Shoemaker's ashes hit the moon making his long awaited trip to the moon at last.

Life in the Fast Lane

A woman in Krakow,Poland has dreamed of owning an African snail as a pet since she was a little girl and there was a similar snail in her biology classroom as a school pet. Her dream finally came true when she found a badly neglected snail in a pet shop six years ago and bought him and managed to nurse him back to health. She named the snail Misiek which is Polish for teddy bear. She enjoys cuddling with Misiek and says she doesn't mind the slime at all and that because they are so slow and majestic they have a calming aura about them.

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.

After this past Tuesday's post I started grinding on the word pothole. I thought maybe the word came from the hole being like someone had taken a cooking pot out of the road leaving a hole,but soon discarded that idea in favor of looking at the etymology online. Pot was from Middle English and the meaning was a deep hole or mine often from peat digging, it also referred to geological features in glaciers and gravel beds. It wasn't until around 1909 that it was combined with hole to become the compound word we all know and dread in today speak,"pothole".

This pothole reminds me of the outline of Texas...so if you drove into it you could tell everyone you hit a pothole as big as Texas!

Sleep Catnea

A lot of people sleep with their pets and mostly it's not a big deal,however one man was repeatedly having trouble breathing during the night and was determined to find the cause of his distress. He set up a camera to record his night's sleep and when he viewed the footage the following morning he found the culprit to be his cat. The cat would come in and sit on his face,which would indeed hinder a person's ability to breath. Since I'm a light sleeper my cats are not allowed in my bedroom,that and I'm slightly allergic to them so it works better to leave the nocturnal creatures to their own devices,up to but not including me.

No Poo

The subtitle for today's post should be "From One Extreme to Another" A 24 year old Finnish woman went from washing her hair everyday to not washing it at all. It has been 2 years since she decided to give up her shampoo and conditioner for a more organic method. At first she tried baking soda and cider vinegar but after finding a group devoted to no poo she found that all she needed to do was wet it with water in the shower and let her natural oils do the cleaning and claims the only time it needs more than that is after she takes a sauna which makes her hair require a few drops of coconut oil. She said when she first quit there was a greasy hair period but she pushed through that and now has no  greasy hair problems. Nope,I'm not ready to go there.

Art Holes

A Chicago artist has an unusual canvas for his art,he fills potholes with mosaic artworks. He learned mosaic in Italy and first used it to patch a pothole in 2013. He still doesn't know if what he is doing is legal but over the years several police officers haven't had an issue with it once they knew what he was doing. The aim of his creations is to bring smiles to faces,he likes to imagine people noticing something different about a familiar place like a color where there was no color before,then realizing it was where a pothole was before and now the pothole has been replaced with art.

About the Age Thing

Time for some Sunday smiles with these quotes on aging.
I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap. Bob Hope
I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older. Then it dawned on me:they're cramming for their final exam. George Carlin
My husband's granny is eighty-seven,and she just got two new hearing aids,and cataracts removed from both eyes. I tell her we're going to fix her up just a little more and then sell her. Tina Fey
I'm getting so old my insurance company sends me half a calendar. Rodney Dangerfield
Stop whining about getting old. It's a privilege. A lot of people who are dead wish they were still alive. Amy Poehler