The Reason Why

Have you ever wondered how or when the idea of women proposing to men on leap year got started? The tradition started in the 5th century when an Irish nun named St. Bridget was sick of women having to wait for men to get around to asking them to marry. She lobbied St. Patrick to allow women to do the asking and he agreed with the stipulations that it could only be on leap year and that the women had to make their intentions know by either wearing breeches or a red petticoat. Now you know the rest of the story...but I can't help but wonder why a nun was worrying about marriage.

Careful What You Ask For

After yesterday's post today's might seem like I'm being hypocritical but today's isn't about shaming a person so much as it is about getting on someone's last nerve. A reporter in Canada stopped by a McDonald's for a breakfast bagel with extra herb and garlic cream cheese. In defense of the McDonald's employee who knows what kind of special hell they might have been through before they hit their overload and responded by really laying on the extra cream cheese. The funniest part is the reporter went back to try again the next morning and they were out of herb and garlic cream cheese!

Doomed

Does anyone else ever get the feeling society is doomed by social media? It seems like any misstep is immediately recorded and posted so people can either be shamed or in some cases defended. Today's example is a woman who stretched out on the floor at a gate in the airport so of course people had to take pictures and shame her for blocking two seats,never mind that in the background other seats are available. In my travels I've seen people,actually an entire family of five sleeping at a gate,the woman and two kids stretched out over a line of seats,another child on the floor in front of them and the man seated across from them trying to sleep. I didn't think a thing of it,though the man was terribly embarrassed and insisted on explaining how he had booked a cheap flight without realizing that it extended their travel time to two days with all the layovers. I guess a fitting adage would be "don't judge another until you have walked a mile in their shoes."
 

Demonic Disfigurement

How the times have changed since I was young and rebellious. Nowadays the younger generation instead of wearing outrageous makeup or clothes opt for lifelong disfigurement like splitting their tongues or the latest fad of having their lips injected in spots not safe to inject (according to specialists) so they can sport Devil Lips. I can't help but wonder how this got going and my best guess is it was an accident and some bold kid decided to claim it and name it.

Combo Meals

As often as food,animals and weird stuff appear in this blog I should have chosen a more appropriate name,but oh well. Today's post features a chain of eating establishments/pubs in the UK called Hungry Horse. They are know for their generous portions and quirky creations. Their latest creation is for indecisive diner who are torn between lasagna and pizza,it consist of lasagna sandwiched between two Marghertia pizzas plus an order of fries and dipping sauce in case you want to share with friends. Another one of their combos was a Black Forest Pie Cake,a cherry pie baked inside a chocolate fudge cake. I would happily try either one of these offerings!

4-7-8

I am pretty excited to try this as I don't have trouble falling asleep but I do have trouble staying asleep. According to what I read if you employ the 4-7-8 method regularly not only will it put you back to sleep it can also lower blood pressure,calm stressed minds and help manage anxiety and anger responses. 4-7-8 is a breathing method used in India by yogis practicing meditation. Simply breath in to the count 4 seconds,hold for 7 seconds and exhale for 8 seconds. It is supposed to put you to sleep within 60 seconds and the additional benefits come in the following weeks or months depending on your problems.

Sleepy Sunday

Am I the only one having a slo-mo day? not to worry I will muddle on. In hope of waking up my mind I now present some shower thoughts,one of my favorite topics.
Erasers slowly sacrifice their lives for our mistakes.
Good people get angry when you lie about them;bad people get angry when you tell the truth about them. (Remind you of anyone?)
Elvis Presley is getting a little too old to fake being dead.
It's crazy that when yo google "Apple" a phone company comes up rather than food.
Thinking a camera can steal your soul doesn't seem superstitious once you've seen Instagram.

Hot and Cheesy

Today's post is dedicated to a departed friend who believed burned cheese was what people liked most about pizza. Ripley's Believe It or Not was spurred into action on the burning cheese question when a truck hauling cheese caught fire and burned for 4 days. They went about testing many varieties of cheese finding that those with higher moisture content such as mozzarella and American resisted burning and those with higher fat and drier consistency didn't burn as well as they had expected. The burning champs turned out to be Swiss and brie with bleu cheese never really burning but making orange flames as it melted.  The cheese that burned for 4 day was a brown goat cheese called brunost and it held the key to the question of what makes cheese burn,the cheese has to have a high sugar content,now you know!

Where's the Beef?

With all the different types of diets and eating preferences it is getting increasingly difficult to figure them all out and never mind the local specialties. More than likely the new Burger King chip butty sandwich comes under the local variety and even though it is being tried in New Zealand the British claim they invented it and not Burger King. For $2 (New Zealand $) you can try a chip butty which consists of french fries,mayo,and ketchup on a bun,or for an additional $1 you can upgrade and get strips of bacon on the sandwich. I got lost at thinking about fries on a bun,though with an adequate amount of bacon on top it might work for me.

Bragging or Complaining?

I have no idea if landlords usually give housewarming gifts to their new tenants or if maybe it's just an Australia thing though I thought it was a really nice gesture. After coming up with first and last months rent and various deposits it can leave the household budget low which brings me to the core of today's post. An Australian landlord is being shamed for giving a basket full of cleaning supplies and other odds and ends to her new tenants. The detractors say the items were meant to make the renters feel they were being judged as being dirty. Seriously folks? Isn't anything above suspicion? Even if the gift may have been a little self serving because it was mostly cleaning supplies it was still things they weren't going to need to spend money on right away. Doesn't anyone try to think the best of people anymore? Does the phrase,"It's the thought that counts" mean anything today?

Frank Flees

The regular readers among you may recall around the end of January a post about Eclipse a lab mix who took herself to the dog park and back on the bus. Today's post is about a dachshund named Frank who slipped away from home,sneaked onto a bus unknown to the driver and made his way to the beach 18 miles from his home. Meanwhile his owner noticed he was missing and formed a search party of friends and neighbors and posted on social media hoping to locate Frank. A rider on the bus finally noticed Frank and asked the driver if he knew where the dog had come from. They discussed what they should do and the man said he would take him home with him then contact a vet to have him scanned for a chip the next day. Later that evening he noticed a post on Facebook pleading for information. He contacted the woman and Frank was reunited with his family later that night. Another happy ending,but when did dogs learn about riding buses? What am I missing?

Duped Again

An image of a baby platypus went viral last week because of the cuteness factor however it wasn't real or rather the image was real but not the puggle (what a baby platypus is called). The image showed a small animal being held in the palm of a person's hand but it was actually a sculpture made by a Serbian artist who has also made a lifelike baby walrus. Sorry if I broke any hearts by revealing this work of art.

Good As New

In case there's anyone still in doubt about the life of plastics the following story may be of help. A Swedish woman was visiting an art exhibit when she spotted a cassette tape she had lost on vacation over 20 years ago. The Stockholm exhibition was called Sea of Artifacts and was about plastic pollution. The tape still had the songs the woman had recorded in the 1990s for a trip to Spain with her family and all but the first couple were still playable showing how long plastics can exist in the oceans. The tape will be returned to the woman after the exhibition.

Dennis? Is that you?

Regardless of what science deniers claim the world just keeps having more devastating storms,but enough about that. One such storm has been wreaking havoc in the UK and Wales (or Whales if you happen to believe trump) in particular. So the weather reports were hurriedly put together to show the area the storm was currently beating on without much thought of anything but the storm. Needless to say people who tuned into the BBC to keep abreast of Storm Dennis found not only flooding but also a threat from a giant amber penis! Nothing like a little humor to lighten up an otherwise gloomy report.

Plan B?

Though it is interesting to know about alien life and where it might exist it begs the question what good will the information be? SETI is teaming up with Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico to scan the entire sky for both chemical signals of life,which can be detected from the smallest life forms  and signatures of technological usage. They're using 28 giant radio telescopes then feeding the data into a supercomputer. I can't help but wonder what the plan is if they do find anything since at this point there isn't any way to get people any further than Mars safely,and even at that there would be no return trip,so why not spend that effort to patch up the damages to this planet? or perhaps the idea is to lure the aliens in then steal their technology? I'm obviously becoming jaded by our planets current affairs.

Mating Rituals

With a nod to Valentine's day I found a few interesting mating rituals. Hyenas make it difficult to determine their sex since the females are not only bigger and meaner than the males they also have a pseudo penis,but wait,that isn't the weirdest part. When it's time to mate the male has to get his penis into the female's fake penis then when it is time for birth the female has to deliver through the fake penis!
When honeybees aerially mate the drone looses not only his genitals in the process but also his life. The genitals explode forcing the sperm deep inside of the queen and his phallus prevents any other drone from mating with her.
Clown fish are all born male and live in groups with one breeding male and female. When the female dies the largest male then changes his sex to female.
Here I thought humans had some weird rituals!

Unprofessional

There really isn't a valid reason to trash a rig the way this vehicle obviously was plus the way the interior is cared for is usually a pretty good indication about the general care of the car but the shop the family took it to for cleaning was out of line for posting pictures of it online and I would hesitate to use a service that doesn't respect both the customer and their privacy. Not to mention if the company found themselves with a mess that was going to take them 7 hours to clean I am willing to bet they made the task financially beneficial.