SNOW

Snow is getting me down in more ways than one.  Just today I was snowed by an email I thought was legitimate but later was told it was mostly untrue.  I spent a fair bit of time trying to trace the origin of the pictures and was fooled the second time when I thought I had found the source but maybe it was fooled too.  So if you get an email about Lead, S. Dakota's snowfall it's mostly New York pictures from 2007.  At least the pictures were real and they were awesome despite the misleading information.

 The bicycle in my backyard will not be free wheeling anytime soon this year.  I read an article about the snow woes of Regina, Saskatchewan.  Due to record snowfall levels the city has to go to new lengths and height to manage it all.  Normally the city's snow storage is piled up about 20 feet high.  With more snow having fallen to this point in the winter than ever before, some of those piles are upwards of 65 feet necessitating the use of bulldozers.  Some of it will still be around in July according to the city manager.



Common Sense Starts With 'A'

I spilled candies all over the place just before I went to bed last night and said to my self 'tomorrow is another day.'  And so it was and so were the candies still on the coffee table in the morning.  Despite the loss of a few that ended up on the floor I gained a rather interesting picture don't you think?

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Over the last few days I've been thinking about getting a different vacuum cleaner and maybe one with really good candy suction might be considered!  Anyway I was looking in the Sears spring edition and went to the index which always makes it so much easier than flipping endlessly through the book thinking you will find it any minute now......Right?  Wrong!  

Whatever happened to a never-fail listing method called alphabetization??? 

Did you know that nowadays the Sears catalogue index starts with.....'W"?....okaaaay.......but I'm looking for vacuum cleaners.  Oh, of course how stupid of me......it's under 'M' for Major.....appliances that is.......I kid you not.  The catalogue list starts with 'W' and ends with 'S'.  The second last heading starts with 'P' and the one before that was again an 'S'.................their listing intelligence quotient just took a steep dive off a cliff.

Somehow wading through that onerous and formidable list of 26 letters was just too archaic or unsophiticated for the some of our educated persons who are in charge of lists.  Actually you'd only have to be slightly less than comatose and still be able to be able to use the A-Z list.  Even a 7 year old knows where the 'V' for vacuum cleaner would be in relation to the 'D' for dumb.





African Violet

I love the frilly edges of my pretty little African Violet which I bought for myself after I moved into my apartment in 2009.  It flowers nearly constantly which endears itself to me even more.  Years ago I used to have oodles of violets of every shape, size and color but the frillies were always my favorite.  So I have one violet now and have no desire for another.  Because of well meaning friends and my own lack of self control I have five plants now and they are all different.  I guess you could call them my winter garden and colorful too I might add.  Besides the violet, there is my ten year old Purple Oxalis with deep purple leaves and small lilac flowers, a geranium that gives me a red bundle of florets on a stem once in awhile,  a vine with green leaves variegated with a splash of yellow occasionally and a glossy green plant I call a Jade plant but I believe it is known by many names.

Green Works Laundry Detergent

Take a look at this because it is the last time you will see it. 

Too many times I find a product I like to use and all of a sudden it is gone never to be seen again.  I love the Green Works products by Clorox and the laundry detergent is one of the four products that I use.  Maybe I should be stocking up on their other products I use?
    The toilet bowl cleaner smells so nice I am tempted to use it more than I have to!  The only one I don't like so much is the dish detergent.  I first bought the 'original' and the chemical smell was really awful so I mixed it with Sunlight just to use it up.  I am now trying 'Water Lily' which is tolerable but I don't use products for very long that are just tolerable.  The wipes and the spray are good and don't have over-powering odors. 
   I wrote to the company which is as I told them, rare, and did my little consumer critique as well as whined slightly about the $3 coupon I'm now unable to use for my next laundry soap purchase.  Who knows maybe they will send me one that isn't about to expire in a few days and I can buy some toilet bowl cleaner instead.
Stay tuned and I'll let you know if they are willing to shell out some sympathy coupons.

Another product I miss is the Calgon bubble bath that made the water soft and luxurious.  After a series of buyouts by various companies it too is gone.  I thought companies were really serious about 'branding' but apparently not.  In this age of slim margins and cut-throat competition companies want to be mean and lean and only keep the biggest money makers.  It's a business decision; no sentiment here but a 'How To Stay In Business in the 21st Century".

Another Reason To Quit Smoking

Smoking causes gene damage in minutes

I guess there will always be smokers no matter how dire the warnings and how dangerous it is proven to be.  I can understand that because I was a smoker for many years and I quit many times.  W.C. Fields once said.........."Quitting smoking is easy, I've done it many times."  That is sadly true.  The longest I had quit smoking?  25 years.  I am not proud to say that but it may help some who have given up quitting, never quit trying.  I'm not about to go into the reason why I started up again but suffice to know that like an alcoholic, you are one drink or one cigarette away from being back where you left off.  You are always a recovering alcoholic or a recovering smoker and always in danger of falling off the proverbial wagon.  Just yesterday a plume of smoke wafted by me as I left my vehicle and it still smelled good....briefly.
  I think it is easier today to quit as it is so much less socially acceptable and places to smoke are limited.  Many a time a drink in the bar or coffee shop was my undoing, that can't happen now and that is a good thing.

If this astounding information is indeed true then the need to protect those most vulnerable, our children is ever more urgent.  Perhaps the knowledge that damage is pretty much immediate and not years away just might keep more youngsters from starting up.  I hope so.
The hardest thing I ever did in my life was to quit smoking. I had my last one on September 30, 2004 four months after I was diagnosed with cancer. 
I had tried every way there was available at the time and some more than once but I had heard that the most successful way to quit smoking was 'cold turkey'.  I picked the date about 3 weeks beforehand and just did it, finally.

Potential Virus Killing Fraser Sockeye

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/213824.php

Is it just me or is there something not quite right with this headline???

HOLY MACKERAL BATFISH do you know what that means??? Yep just what we've suspected all along...........scientific ideas can kill...........RUN ummm err... SWIM!~!

My mother used to say "It's not what I say it's what I mean." and I suppose the author of the headline likely said too.  It's an interesting article anyway.

A Winter Picture with Questionable Parentage?

I was looking through some of my folders for winter pictures and found this one that I took in November of 2009.  I thought I'd mention that because as the cursor was hovering over the picture it tells me it was taken in 2003 with my then Kodak camera.   This picture was taken with my Sony that I've had since 2007.  I couldn't even have made that folder in 2003 because this laptop wasn't purchased until 2007 as well.  Weird or what?