Tuesday, September 29, 2009

try this new recipe

When I was visiting my daughter, one of her friends brought over this treat.

Doesn't it look so delicious? I think I want to marry it. I was so enamored with it, that I got right on line and googled it. Golden Graham S'mores is what it's called. It's every bit as delightfully delicious as it looks. Maybe even better. And it's super easy to make. So if you'd like to make this sinful treat, I've added the recipe to my website. Just go to my sidebar to the right and click on my website. It's under confections.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

a pom what?

Miley is actually not 100% Pomeranian. Now if you think, "oh, she must be part some other breed of dog," no, that is not what I meant. What I meant is Miley is actually not 100% canine.

We've decided quite conclusively that she is part bat. Just look at this cute face.



Then twist the picture upside down, and don't you see a bat?

Then if you look at her a little longer, she also becomes part fox.

Pretty little fox, isn't she?

And then of course, spend a little time with her, and you realize without hesitation that she is actually in large percentage a cat. Much like a cat, she walks around and in between legs. Then she carries it a little farther by rubbing her head against your foot. She loves feet. They are her passion in life.

One time I was reading and she was at my feet. I was swishing my leg back and forth, creating that petting foot that she loves so much when it occurred to me that I could just treat her like a real dog and pick her up and pet her while I read. She could barely tolerate this for longer than five seconds. She wriggled to get free and bounced down to my feet, wrapping herself around them again. "These are for petting," was the reprimand that I'm sure I heard.


Also, if you look at her little white tail and white underbelly, suddenly she becomes part skunk. I've never actually seen a chocolate colored skunk, but maybe? And sometimes, the way she smells after she has been in the backyard eating who-knows-what, well . . . skunk sort of fits rather well.


But please don't forget that she's also part bird. A blanket that gets left on the couch is quickly converted into a nest. She scrambles around until she has herself a nice little comfy blob to lay down on. It's rather a frantic little display, but she's always so proud of herself after she has attained her goal, and she can finally plop down in the center of her nest.


So now we have bat, fox, cat, skunk, and bird. You see how her percentage of actual Pomeranian is really dropping, but we're not finished yet. She has one more thing in her mix that we certainly mustn't leave out.

The other night as I prepared to go to bed, Miley jumped up on the bed. She began her nesting procedure, but then she nuzzled under the covers, and here is where I truly wish I had the video camera on her. Dialog simply cannot do this justice, but I'm going to try. She nuzzled under the covers and then began to burrow. I'm not sure where she thought she was burrowing to. One can only conjecture: the center of the earth, China, perhaps a place where human beings have four feet (Miley heaven). She burrowed all over under the cover. I could tell by the shape under the covers that she wasn't walking around upright, she was slithering around army crawl style. It was so amusing I just stood there and laughed. It reminded me of something that I must be pulling from my memory banks of long ago, long forgotten cartoons. You know, the animal jumps down a hole, and then you see the dirt making mounds as the small underground rodent displaces the dirt upward. By the time she found a way out, I had managed to grab the camera. I snapped a couple of pictures before the gopher turned around and returned to its tunneling.


I'm not sure what the percentages are, but Miley is not 100% Pomeranian as her previous owner claimed. I am quite certain that she is bat, fox, cat, skunk, bird, gopher, and yes, I suppose, a very minute percentage Pomeranian.


Wednesday, September 23, 2009

in my defense

It's just not my fault that I keep going to visit my grandbaby. She's like a narcotic drug or something. As you might recall from a couple of posts ago, I visited my sweet granddaughter AGAIN with the excuse that I needed to use the Internet. I'm telling you she's addictive. You can't help but fall in love with her. I simply cannot get enough of her. Just take a look for yourself . . .


. . . and then try to tell me that if you were me, you wouldn't use any excuse possible to visit her.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

qwest on a quest


You know how when the power goes out, you still walk in a room and flip the lightswitch? And when the water has been turned off, you still walk over to the faucet, put your hands under the non-existent flow, and turn the water on? How about when the Internet is out, and you sit down to the computer multiple times to check something out, look at your emails, read blogs, look up a word, check the distance between two points, google something, then google something else, check your own blog to see if anyone is leaving you comments, and finally, of course, google something. Yeah. I can't seem to quite get it through my head.

In fact, as I was thinking about how I didn't have the Internet, it occurred to me that I should hurry up and email a note to my kids so they would know that I don't have Internet and thus email. Oh. Wait, Stupid! That would require the Internet! Then as I was at my daughter's using the Internet one day, we were planning a little meal at my house. We talked about a certain recipe that I needed that she had. While sitting at her computer, using the Internet because I DON"T HAVE IT, I emailed myself a recipe so I could use it at home. WAIT, DUMMY! YOU DON'T HAVE THE INTERNET! Argh! My skull is thick!

I am just so used to having my luxuries of life that, Dude, I can't get along without them. I really don't know how to live without the Internet. I'm telling you it's like living in the dark ages. But I really feel like I have to tell the story, or rather VENT the story.

One day, the Internet just decided to go on strike at our house. One second it was there, the next it was not. Now I don't pretend to be a computer guru, but I'm not a novice either. I did all I could think of to try to fix the dang thing. I jumped through all the rebooting hoops I could think of--numerous times. I couldn't get the thing to come back to life. I called a computer guru, who pronounced the modem diseased and ready for burial. I bought a new modem. Hmmm. No fix there, folks.


Here's where the story takes the turn that makes me start to murmur and basically scratch my eyes out. I finally called Qwest. Qwest, folks. Qwest. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that Qwest was who my provider WAS. Yes, Qwest. I talked on the phone . . . Oh wait, I meant to say, I listened to an automated voice and responded in a yelling voice so that it would register my voice for roughly 45 minutes.

Finally, the automated system decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it couldn't fix my problem, and it finally patched me to a human being. I mean no ethnic slurs, but I was speaking to a Spanish speaking fellow. Why do companies do this? It really irks me. I want us all to have jobs, but someone who doesn't speak English well enough to be understood on the phone, SHOULDN'T BE ON THE PHONE TO THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PUBLIC! He put me through just about the same hoops as the recording had, and once again determined, in his infinite wisdom, that he couldn't fix my problem. So he scheduled a tech to come out.

Said tech showed up late afternoon, clearly unhappy to be there, clearly under the impression that his work day should be over and it was all my fault that he wasn't at home vegging in front of the tv with a cold beverage in his hand. He wanted nothing to do with me, my computer, or my computer lines. But dutifully, and in obvious irritation, he checked the lines and reported, in his infinite wisdom, that there was nothing wrong with them. I protested, telling him the Internet was clearly not working and that meant to me that there was something wrong. He asked if I had filters on my phone lines. Filters? He nearly rolled his eyes, but managed somehow to maintain his composure. He went to his truck and brought me two filters to put on my phone lines. Then he told me he was certain it would fix the problem. For sure it would fix the problem. Did he come in and check my Internet? No. Did he care? NO. Oh, guess what? The filters did not fix the problem.

Qwest was on a quest that day to lose a customer. When I get back from using the Internet at my daughter's (if I ever actually leave), Qwest is losing my business. I've already set up the appointment. I'm going to find out how Baja Broadband treats its customers. Rumor has it that they don't have to be very awesome to beat out QWEST.


Friday, September 18, 2009

where in the world is grandma?


Can you guess where I am?

I'm at my daughter's house so I can use the Internet. Yes, my daughter that lives something like 2,000 miles away. Yes, the one who happens to be the mother of my only grandchild. WHAT?!! I just felt like I was becoming a nuisance to my local daughter. I'm just spreading the burden around a bit.

Where in the world should Grandma go next to use the Internet?


Saturday, September 12, 2009

living like a cavewoman


So, I find myself in a really weird world. For the past week or more, yeah pretty sure it's more, something like ten years it feels like, I haven't had the Internet at home. It's sort of like being a cavewoman really. So I run over to my cute daughter's house to use her Internet every couple of days and just do the bare minimum: check my emails, send an Amazon order off, look at my other cute daughter's blog. These things are important and essential. As it turns out, I'm not going to have the Internet for almost another couple of weeks. So I thought I'd just give you some random things to think about meanwhile.

Every day the average person swallows about a quart of snot.

A stalk of sugar cane can reach up to thirty feet.

The largest number of children born to one woman, a Russian peasant, is 69.

In a survey conducted in 2000 by Kimberly-Clark, it was found that men prefer to fold their toilet paper and women prefer to wad it. (Running my own survey of a total of four people, I found this survey to be accurate.)

An elephant cannot jump. (Playing basketball is out for them.)

The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com. (I checked it out. It's still there.)

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.

A duck's quack does not echo. No one knows why.

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments.

A sheep, a duck, and a rooster were the first passengers in a hot air balloon. (Which do you suppose was the pilot?)

Barbie dolls in Japan and China have their lips closed with no teeth showing. American Barbies show teeth.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

Pollsters say that 40% of dog and cat owners carry pictures of their pets in their wallets. (You may not believe it, but I am not included in that 40%. I will be remedying this shortly.)

Americans did not commonly use forks until after the civil war.

Pearls melt in vinegar.

The average four year old asks four hundred questions per day.

The sound of ET walking was created by someone squishing their hands in jello.

American novelist, Mark Twain, is the first known author to submit a typewritten manuscript. (Before typewriters, manuscripts were handwritten of course. Can you imagine?!)

Ever wonder why Hershey's kisses are called "kisses"? It's because the machine that creates them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

An octopus has three hearts. (Just think what bypass surgery would be like.)

Frank Baum created the name of "Oz" in his story Wizard of Oz when he looked over at his file cabinet and saw the letters O-Z.

The right lung of a human being is larger than the left lung. This is because of the space that the heart takes.

A starfish can turn its stomach inside out. (This could be a useful dieting tool. I'd like to learn how.)

Ten percent of the population have outie belly buttons.

Pearls are rarely found in North American oysters.

The average weight of a new born baby is 7 lbs. 6 oz. For a triplet baby, it is 3 lbs. 12 oz.

The United States and France have the most pet dogs in the world. Approximately one out of every three families has a pet dog. Switzerland and Germany have the least pet dogs, having one dog per every ten families. (We help with the statistics by having two. We do what we can to make the world a better place.)

There are roughly 100 million single adults living in the USA.

More than 90% of shark victims survive. (But I'm thinking if you're in that 10%, that amounts to 100% to you. Thus, I pretty much stay out of oceans.)

On average a person has two million sweat glands. (Pretty sure I have more.)

The little circles of paper that are cut out after a paper has been punched are called "chad."

It's possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs. (However, if anyone ever tries, please call me. I'd like to be in the audience.)

Peaches were once known as Persian apples.

In 1998, a book called "Eat a Bug Cookbook" was published. If you don't believe me, go check it out for yourself:
Eat a Bug Cookbook

The biggest bug in the world is the Goliath Beetle which can weigh up to 3.5 ounces and be 4.5 inches long. Cook that up for dinner!

A person would have to drink more than 12 cups of hot cocoa to equal the amount of caffeine found in one cup of coffee.

In just one drop of water it is possible for 50 million bacteria to be present.

Armadillos have four babies at the same time, and they are always the same sex.

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

The first toilet stall in a public restroom is the least likely to be used, which means it is also the cleanest.

and last but not least:

There are some species of snailbugs that are venomous. Their venom can be fatal to humans. I am not one of those snailbugs.