Having fun, learning, and helping the world...

I'm throwing up a link in the sidebar to the website www.FreeRice.org. It's a vocabulary quiz, and everytime you get a word right the sponsers of the website donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program. I found out about this through People magazine of all places. It's pretty easy and a great way to kill some time. I heartily recommend checking it out. Just this morning I managed to donate over 5000 grains of rice and I learned some new words in the process!

Imagine the Twilight Zone theme in your head...

UPDATE: APRIL FOOLS!

It's official: we have ghosts in our new house. There have been some weird things happening lately - in particular stuff moving to different places that neither hubby nor I were doing. I thought with my own absentmindedness I was misplacing stuff, but apparently it's not me. The straw that broke the camel's back was when I got up last week and all the cupboard doors in the kitchen were open. It's bad enough I have to have a ghost, but he's so cliche. Anyway, a friend of mine from Cleveland is an expert in paranormal activities, and he came over the other day to check out the house and he did find the presence of at least one spirit. Apparently, this spirit is also fixated on my cat which explains some of her bizarre behavior. Since he's rather harmless at the moment, and not waking us up in the middle of the night or anything - we're just going to ignore him and see if he gets bored. Never a dull moment as they say!

But wait, where's Babe the Big Blue Ox?

It was a sad day at Spiderwick House yesterday. This winter was rough on our trees, and one of them uprooted itself from the very soggy ground and was leaning against the fence. We thought about pulling it back and staking it to hold it up and see if the roots would grab again, but the yard was much too soggy to hold the stakes. We're not even sure this would have saved the tree. So, we had to cut down a perfectly healthy tree. This was very sad to me and hubby, plus this tree provided lovely privacy from our neighbor, whom we've never met, but there's a lot of curious activity over there. We were also told she loves to "party (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)." Not really our thing.

Oooh, my very own Paul Bunyon - I think I'm in love

Thing #38 - Comics

I read comics I don't create them. I have enough hobbies thank you very much. I know they're there - 'nuff said.

#37 Music

Ok, did the music thing - went with Pandora - only because that's what most people seem to use and I'm lazy and don't want to try both. Since I'm in an environment where I can't play the music outloud, I can't really test this out right now. I did type in my favorite band - Flogging Molly - and checked out their recommendations. I thought it was interesting how they search on criteria such as acoustics, instruments and such. I'll check this out more when I'm elsewhere - but for now I can say it's all good.

It's always all good when I can get rowdy-Irish-punk-rock-folk music anywhere, anytime.

#36 - Photo Editing

Well, I'm back on the track of Library 2.1. I haven't done any of these little "lessons" since last November, but I thought I would try a few tonight. As I was checking out the different on line photo editing sites but I only tried a couple - the ones that don't require registrations - I don't want to register for any more websites. As I sat and waited for sites to load, I remembered trying these a while back and not being very pleased. Sure 'nough, the first one I tried was Fauxto (which I believe is now called Splashup) because it's supposed to be so fantastic - guess what - it doesn't work. At least not for me. It will not open any photo I have stored on my MightyDrive. I remembered it happening a few months back - and it happened again today.

So, I moved on to Pixenate, which I had tried before. I remember actually being able to open photos this time, but for the life of me, I can not get rid of any red eye in any photo. And isn't that one of the major reasons people want to edit their pictures? I was able to use some of the other tools with ease - but the red eye thing is pissing me off - I have a great picture of me and my cat- but I look totally demented (quiet in the peanut gallery).

I was able to resize one photo and lighten it as I had not used flash for this particular shot. Here's the before and after:











Incidentally, does anyone else notice the disturbance in the after picture? Is my cat's tail possessed?

Awesome Prank...

Check this video out. I would have loved to have been part of this prank.

http://www.maniacworld.com/frozen-in-grand-central-station.html

Social Kittyworking?

I'm not a social networker - I don't have a myspace page, or facebook or friendster, or whatever else is out there. Nor do I really want one. I'm perfectly content with my little blog. However, her highness has decided that she must be part of the networking. So, now her highness has her very own catster page! Check her out and be sure to leave her a treat.

I lost my flash drive where all her pictures were stored so hopefully she'll be willing to have a few more taken - she does hate the papparazzi, but she's just too cute not to share with the world!

The end is nigh...

I am an unapologetic television watcher. I love tv. I have shows that I like to watch almost every night and this whole writers strike has been driving me crazy. As much as I like tv, I do not like reality tv, and have been very frustrated with the lack of new shows. I have to put up with that in the summer, I shouldn't have to deal with it in the winter as well. But behold, it looks as if the writers strike is over! I am very happy for myself, as a loyal viewer, but I'm also very happy for all the people who have been put out of work by this strike. For the writers, of course, but also for all the production and behind the scenes people who are involved in putting a show together. Let's hope this contract is resolved quickly, and that everyone gets back to work - and bring on the brain-killing television.

Miles and Miles...

It seems like miles and miles - of stockinette stitch that is. I've been working on the kitty tunnel off and on for the past month. Mostly off, because it seems like as soon as I start knitting, her royal highness jumps on top of the tunnel and goes to sleep, thus preventing me from doing anything other than my best interpretation of a cat bed. This is what I've got so far - it's a few inches shy of 3 feet, so I'm almost 3/4 of the way there. If only her royal highness would understand that the sooner I finish, the sooner she has a new toy.



"My people's house is cold so I must lay in front of the only heat source available in the kitchen because I must be warm."