'nuff said

Still unpacking, but here's some advice...

Pretty cool

I never knew this would happen...

Just for fun

I was reading over at Belle's blog (click for link)  about designing a 'Dummies' book (who found it on another blog) cover and just couldn't resist joining in!

Click this link to make yours! http://www.images-graphics-pics.com/signs/books/dummies/cover.asp?pic=no-arms&title=Going+to+NZ%3F&text=I+came+all+this+way&text3=Your+mama+never+told+you+things+would+

Thanks, Belle!

Classic Carson with Jack Webb

I got this in an email and thought I'd share it with you.


YouTube - Johnny Carson and Jack Webb by alexjonesnowondailymotion

Annual Beloit College mindset list

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. 


The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. 


The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually.






The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014

Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.

For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”

4. Al Gore has always been animated.

5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.

7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.

10. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren't afraid of immigration...unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet.

11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.

14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.

15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.

16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.

17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.

18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.

21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.

22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.

23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.

24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.

25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.

26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.

30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.

31. The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are now in a museum.

32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.

33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always offered an alternative to the hospital.

35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.

36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.

37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”

38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.

40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.

41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.

43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.

44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.

45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.

46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.

48. Someone has always gotten married in space.

49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.

50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.

51.  Food has always been irradiated.

52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.

53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?

54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.

55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.

57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.

58. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog.

59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone.

60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.

61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.

62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.

63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.

64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.

65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.

67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.

68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.

69. It seems the Post Office has always been going broke.

70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.

71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.

73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.

74. They've always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel.

75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at
Indianapolis. 

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2014.php

The harder a wife works, the cuter she looks

is the title of a fun book by Kate Parker and the Advertising Archives, here are a few favorites. My, how life has changed!

Another 'new' experience

Since I arrived in NZ, I have had many experiences that would never have been possible if I had stayed in Topeka. Some, because of the nature of a different country in a different hemisphere. Some, because of having a ready-made family. Some, simply because it never crossed my mind before.

The latest experience is a combination of reasons, and I learned some new things--like:

• squirted whipped cream smells like over-ripe yogurt when not eaten immediately
• it's nearly impossible to take good photos when you are laughing your guts out
• sometimes, it's ok to smack your dad in the forehead with a cookie
• you should wash cream-covered clothes shortly after they are taken off

Flashback time!

I would be curious to know of the vitality600 is being advertised in the US. 'They' (whoever 'they' are) say that there has been just oodles of research gone into this 'new' way to exercise. You can exercise every part of your body, apparently, as long as you can fold yourself up like a pretzel and still put some part of your anatomy onto the vibrating pad.

We have been seeing ads for this vibrating machine for a couple of week now and, every time I see it, I get a flashback to the '60s that looks something like this:



My problem with the whole thing is this: If vibrating your body without exerting any effort was such a terrific way to lose weight, why did it die in the '60s? *shakes head and walks away*

Moa

I was over at Stoneweaver reading her blog about the Kea and Moa that she encountered when I was reminded of another Moa (read more about Moas here). This one was pointed out by Chaddy, the captain of the boat, minutes before he married us out on the waters off New Plymouth.

If you look really closely, you can see him grazing on the cliff (not Chaddy, the moa). Or having a lie down.  Or maybe doing both.

3-D is not dead!!

We got a really cool blast from the past this week with the delivery of the Taranaki newspaper. It contained two pairs of 3-D glasses!

After trying to explain to the kiddos that 'way back when' some movies used to be in 3-D and you needed the 'special' glasses to see it properly, and after all the eye rolling and sideways glances, they dove into the paper and found it to be quite novel.

Being the cool kids they are, Missy and Otterboy agreed to pose for me in as 50's fashion as they could muster. (Hay, my mom told me about them! That's the only reason I know that! Yeah, right)

Manaia Bakery displays unmentionables

for breast cancer awareness

The window display at Yarrows' shop in Manaia looks more like a lingerie shop than a bakery.

It's Breast Cancer Action month and staff at the shop are hooking people in with their collection of bras, and it's growing by the day.

Three bras hanging in the window for the Think Pink display was how it all started at the beginning of the week but workers and customers alike seem to be flinging their feminine smalls at the shop.

"We even had one gentleman bring in his wife's bra. She had died of breast cancer," worker Shirley Smith said.

The number stands at 20 and the ladies are hoping to collect about 100.

They've decided that any not claimed back will be shipped to Samoa in a show of support for the tsunami victims.

And because so many have been donated by staff members the women might use them for a "guess whose" competition.

Even the lone male in the shop, Stuart Arbuckle, has been asked for his but it has not been forthcoming as yet, Shirley says, laughing.

They reckoned they even had a couple large enough to hold a cobb (large) loaf.

While they are having a laugh, breast cancer is an issue that has affected every one of the workers in some way.

Kaye Bird is one of the survivors working at the shop.

"She's part of the reason we're doing this," Michelle Koubaridis said.

"We all know someone who it has affected," Shirley added.

The brassiere collection has got everyone talking about the issue, which is what the staff wanted.

And it's not all about bras – there's pink icing galore and there are even biscuits (cookies) topped with marshmallow icing and a jaffa (orange and chocolate candy).

"You can use your imagination to work out what they are," said Michelle.

Money raised goes straight into the collection bucket, which is filling up nicely, Shirley says.

"We wanted to raise $1000 and we're more than halfway there."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/2942290/Yarrows-window-well-displayed

Brass Monkeys

It made sense to keep a good supply of cannon balls near the cannon on old war ships. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck was a major problem.  The best storage method devised was to stack them as a square based pyramid, with one ball on top, resting on four, resting on nine, which rested on sixteen.   Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon. There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate with 16 round dimples called, for reasons unknown, a Monkey. But if this plate were made of iron, the iron balls quickly rusted to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make the plates of brass - hence, Brass Monkeys. Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts more, and more rapidly than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. And all this time, you thought that it was just a vulgar expression, didn't you?

They don't know everything, but some things are obvious

I have to face the facts. I have had a lot of adjusting to do over the last three years.

My life used to be simply living alone, working my 5 days a week and rationalizing the purchase of flannel sheets with cowboys on them.

Now, my schedule is 4 days with the kids and then 4 days with just the Hubby (according to Hubby's work schedule) over and over and over. I am very content with the arrangement, but the kids still amaze me at how different they are from my younger days. They are much more mature in their thinking than I was. And they say what's on their mind more than I did but sometimes that's not quite so mature.

I mean, when I was growing up, the only thing that was spoken through the bathroom door was a pleading, "Hurry up!" Our children sing, "We know what you're do-ing!" Quite a lot. Any time I am not alone in the house, as a matter of fact. And it makes me giggle, whether it's directed at me or one of the other family members.

I try my best to imagine saying that to my father through the bathroom door, and all I can conclude is...well, suffice it to say that I would 'learn my lesson the hard way' but only after I had run away from home and come back because I was hungry.

In my old life, I would probably have considered them disrespectful or rude words, but now I just believe it shows that the kids are comfortable with their evil step-mom and I can live with that.

A touching story

Bob Hill and his new wife Betty are vacationing in Europe. As they drive their rental car along a rather deserted highway, it begins to rain. Suddenly, the car skids out of control and smashes into a tree.

After a moment, Bob shakes his head clear and looks around. He  sees that his wife is unconscious and  bleeding. Despite the rain and unfamiliar countryside, he knows he has to get her medical assistance right away. He carefully picks her up and begins trudging down the road. Soon, he sees a light coming from a large, old house and raps loudly on the door.

A small, hunched man opens the door and Bob blurts, "My name is Bob Hill, and this is Betty. We've been in a terrible accident, and my wife is seriously hurt. Can I please use your phone?"

"I'm sorry," replies the man, "but we don't have a phone. But, my master is a doctor; come in and I will get him!"

A few moments later, an older man comes down the stairs. "I'm afraid my assistant may have misled you. I am not a medical doctor; I am a scientist. However, I have had some basic medical training. Let me see what I can do."

With that, the assistant picks up Betty and carries her downstairs and places her on a table. Bob follows closely, but soon collapses from his own injuries and exhaustion.

The two men work feverishly for hours, but to no avail. 

Saddened by the loss, the master wearily climbs the steps to his conservatory, for it is here that he has always found solace. He begins to play his grand piano, and  soon a stirring, almost haunting, melody fills the house.

As the assistant is tidying up the lab, his eye catches movement. He turns to see  Betty's hand twitch, slowly at first, but then keeping time to the haunting piano music. Stunned, he watches as Bob's hand, too, begins to rise and fall. Then, they both sit up, smiling!

Unable to contain himself, the assistant dashes up the stairs. He bursts through the door and shouts: 

"Master, Master! ..... The Hills are alive with the sound of music!"

A glimpse into the male psyche

I finally found an email that explains the way a man thinks and thought I might serve womanhood by sharing it:

Because I'm a man, when I lock my keys in the car, I will fiddle witha coat hanger long after hypothermia has set in. Calling the AA is not an option. I will win.

_____________

Because I'm a man , when the car isn't running very well, I will pop the hood and stare at the engine as if I know what I'm looking at.

If another man shows up, one of us will say to the other, 'I used to be able to fix these things, but now with all these computers and everything, I wouldn't know where to start.' We will then drink a couple of beers and break wind, as a form of holy communion.

____________

Because I'm a man, when I catch a cold, I need someone to bring me soup and take care of me while I lie in bed and moan. You're a woman. You never get as sick as I do, so for you, this is no problem.

____________

Because I'm a man, I can be relied upon to purchase basic groceries at the supermarket, like beer, milk or bread. I cannot be expected to find exotic items like tampons, cumin or tofu. For all I know, these are the same thing.

____________

Because I'm a man, when one of our appliances stops working, I will insist on taking it apart, despite evidence that this will just cost me twice as much once the repair person gets here and has to put it back together.

____________

Because I'm a man, I must hold the television remote in my hand while I watch TV. If the thing has been misplaced, I may miss a whole show looking for it.....though one time I was able to survive by holding a calculator..... ( applies to engineers especially).

____________

Because I'm a man, you don't have to ask me if I liked the movie. Chances are, if you're crying at the end of it, I didn't ...and ifyou are feeling amorous afterwards....then I will certainly at least remember the name and recommend it to others.

____________

Because I'm a man, and this is, after all, the year 2009, I will share equally in the housework. You just do the laundry, the cooking,the cleaning, the vacuuming, and the dishes, and I'll do the rest...... Like wandering around in the garden with a beer wondering what to do.

Need I say more?

You want me to do what?

OK, so exercise is not my strong point.  I have many excuses for not getting up off my butt more than I do--a few (ok, one) is even legit.  But I can't ever see myself lifting weights. For some reason, it seems to me that laundry baskets and vacuum cleaners are heavy enough and I carry dishes and clothes a fair distance and in my world that constitutes lifting weight; ergo, exercise.

The other day I read about a gym in England that was trying to make weightlifting more 'interesting' and 'personal'.  So, I looked at the picture of the 'weights'.....

and all I could think of was one of their faces in mine, screaming like a drill sergeant about how I should be doing more lifting, doing it faster, doing it better.... 

On the other hand, I have to give the 'weights' credit for supplying the demand this gym has created.

And, just in case you think I made this up, here is the actual article.

A British gym is trying to add human interest to otherwise dreary workouts by replacing traditional dumbbell weights with human ones.

The Gymbox chain gym in central London says fitness enthusiasts can now swap their usual lumps of metal for human beings in a range of shapes and sizes.

According to the gym's owner Richard Hilton, it's all about visualising strength.

"Creating a mental image or intention of what you want to happen or feel is proven to improve physical and psychological performance," he said in a statement. "The human weight lifting apparatus. . . is the ultimate embodiment of visualisation theory."

The human weights range from the "Dainty Dwarf" 32-year-old Arti Shah, who weighs just 30kg, up to the "Super Human" weight of 37-year-old – and 155kg – Matt Barnard.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090122/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_gym_humans

I need to lie down.....