When a girl....

From Baba's Beauty World.

It was the girl's face that attracted me to it. I saw it full-size first (click it to get the full image and be able to read the words), and the child just looks so innocent and sweet. Reading the text gets you a fairly stereotypical "forwarded email" type set of words, but it's still not too bad.

The main thing I noticed in the words, though, was the mention of "sms." Do most of you even know what that means? It's funny how it's written in "today's language"....and yet at the same time, it wouldn't necessarily reach everyone because they won't all know what it means, hehe.

There's a Hole in My Sidewalk--It's All About Choices

This is what I called blatant blog content theft....but I can't resist! After all, she stole the poem from the original author to post it anyway, right? And I'm giving her linky love, so it's okay, right? (Well, not so much, or all those splogs that link to the original blog, but whatever, I'm doing it anyway, hehe).

Pillows and Chocolate posted the poem below and I love it.

“There’s a Hole in my Sidewalk“, by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…
I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in… it's a habit.
But, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5.
I walk down another street.

A Letter That is Slower than Christmas---or 93 Christmases!!

Here's a cute news story about a letter that was sent in 1914....but just now was found. The person it was to be delivered to has since passed away, but they delivered the Christmas card to a relative anyway. No one is quite sure where it has been for the last 93 years.

The Real Santa Claus---Not a Mean Impostor

After the mean/naughty Santa who wanted to spoil Christmas for little children, I thought this was a cute picture of Santa....he even has a reindeer with him! Here's the caption:

Santa Claus waves in Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland in 2005. Christmas is hectic for all but particularly for Santa, who must live in Kyrgyzstan and make his rounds at lightning speed if he is to deliver gifts to all the world's children on time, a Swedish consultancy has concluded.

Nasty Santa Sends Mean Letters

This kind of story rather irritates me. If you're bitter with the world and you want to take your anger out somewhere, then find somewhere to do it. If you want to be mean, then fine, whatever. Nobody deserves this kind of randomness, but trying to ruin innocent children's hopes and dreams.....I'm sorry, but I don't think it's right to try to take a child's innocence, even if only in the form of a mythical elf who brings Christmas joy once a year, is just inappropriate.

So what am I talking about? Read the article. Basically, there's a program where people reply to kids' Christmas wish lists from "Santa." I don't know any more about the Canadian program that what is said in the article, but I remember the first time my little sister got a letter from Santa and it was priceless. Our own mailman/woman (they were a couple) would go through all the letters sent to the North Pole and respond personally to each. The twinkle in her eye when my mom read the letter to her was imply magical.

Someone decided to reply with nasty letters, though, and it's caused them to shut down the program until the offender is caught. There are only 8 days until Christmas.....quite unfortunate. :(

DonorsChoose.org--Helping Teachers Across the Country

Jenny's birthday is coming up and she has a unique birthday request.

Who is Jenny/Jennifer/Jen? I have no idea, lol. I ran across her on the NaBloPoMo forums where she spoke of her birthday desires. It caught my attention and I thought I'd pass it along.

Now I don't typically like asking for money and I'm not going to do it this time either. I'm going to let 'her' ask you, hehe. Basically, she found a site called DonorsChoose.org and this is how she describes it:

a site that allows teachers to submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. Individuals or companies can search through literally thousands of proposals categorized by region, subject, type of school, project cost, etc and add them to a challenge. As people donate you can track the donations and the impact those donations have on students.

Jenny has chosen a few causes that she'd like to help out....like one is asking for help raising the money to get internet access in the school and another is...and another is hoping to get a decent digital camera for daily activities/projects. If technology isn't quite your thing, some of the causes include getting new books and one is a request put in by the school's first theatre arts teacher who has no supplies at all to help teach her students.

Point being, it's not only a good cause, but it's 'several' good causes that are helping America's young people when the schools can't afford to offer them better. Each request ranges from just a couple hundred dollars to a thousand or so. Jen's birthday goal is to raise $5,000 by her birthday (December 24) and help several of these small requests (which are huge improvements in their lives). Let's see if we can help her and her causes out some.

Amerideutsch Has Left the Blogging World Without a Trace

So Amerideutsch is gone. I don't know why. I don't know what sparked it. And I don't know if she'll ever be back....but it doesn't look like it. I can't link to her because the site is completely gone....not even archives are left and the post I saw last night that briefly told that it was over and she was headed back to reality has even disappeared by this evening. I'm glad I saw it or I wouldn't know what was up and I'd just assume the site was down and would be back shortly. Sadly, that is not the case.

Here's the first time I mentioned her (and the second when I give her a shout out).....the first time I randomly linked to someone and was shocked to find them commenting on my post within days. I was kind of embarassed because I really didn't think she'd follow me back...after all, I hadn't contacted her....but I was new to blogging and she was the first blogging 'friend', of sorts, that I checked in on frequently and we often commented back and forth on each other's pages. Of course, neither of us really knew one another and we never spoke outside blog comments, but it's disheartening, nonetheless.

I suppose the most shocking part is that there was no warning. There was no post about how she wasn't sure she'd want to continue blogging. In fact, she'd just posted about how she'd signed up for NaBloPoMo....which meant she'd be posting for 30 days straight, starting in a couple weeks. And now the site is completely gone without a trace of her ever being there or a hint at what happened. This isn't just a blog that gets tossed into my hiatus blog folder to be checked back in on in a few months.....it's gone. And it's sad. Bye bye Lisa. ;-(

I've Gone Pink!! Incredibly Pink!! (Breast Cancer Awareness Month)

I don't like the color pink. At all. I don't know what it is about the color, but it tends to make me uncomfortable. If I try to wear a pink shirt, or god forbid, pink underwear, that's all I can think about all day. I become acutely aware of the fact that there is something pink attached to me and it gets weird. It's just another color and I don't care, but it happens no matter how much I try to forget about it.

This month, though, I'm breaking my own rules of comfort and changing my blog colors to pink. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and everyone's familiar with the color connection (well, it was either for this or Victoria's Secret's Pink line, but I wouldn't do that, now would I?). Most of us know someone who has been effected by breast cancer whether directly or indirectly, so why not join us? It's for a good cause.

Check out PinkforOctober.org for logos like the one I have above, some stories, and links to other sites who have gone pink. Here's the link to other places that have info about breast cancer. Remember, awareness is the whole point, so take a few minutes and educate yourself a bit more. Like....did you know that breast cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death worldwide and *third* in the United States? Exactly....go check out the facts.

What a Wonderful World-Shadow Puppets

Okay, this is the best video I've seen in a while and I don't think I've ever seen anything of this kind, so it really made me smile. It's only 2 1/2 minutes long, so take the time to watch it (make sure your sound is up) and smile along with me. :) I originally downloaded it from an email from my mom, so I viewed it full screen, but the youtube version will get you the gist of it.

Nuclear Nightmare--Chernobyl Photos

Nuclear Nightmare-20 Years Since Chernobyl

I've had this site sitting in a tab for almost 2 weeks now. Actually, I lost my tabs a couple times and hunted it down again, just so I wouldn't forget it. The thing is, I wasn't sure how to introduce it. It's rather lengthy....page after page after page of photos....and yet, it's hard to look away once you start.

Click through the first couple pages and then as you start to see photos, scroll your cursor over them for captions. Some of them seem normal....a boy jumping into a lake, men duck hunting, a family portrait, a girl sleeping....and others are too disturbing for words.

Do You Believe in Faeries?

Check out this site for some more pictures, the story, and a letter all the way at the bottom.

What a Mixed Family....

Aren't they adorable? It's been a while since I've posted a cute animal photo, but this one seems appropriate for the time being. Here's the caption:

In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a dog feeds tiger triplets and her own puppy, right, at the Paomaling Zoo in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province, Wednesday, May 16, 2007. The tiger triplets were rejected by their mother shortly after their birth. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Lu Chuanquan)

I've talked briefly about adoption before, but I want to take the chance to mention it once again. Notice how not a single one of those babies looks like the mama dog...not even her own flesh and blood puppy. She's still feeding them as her own, though, and will treat them as her own in every other way, too (until the zoo steps in here, of course). Kudos to all the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, friends of the family--and the list goes on and on--who have stepped up and taken in children that they haven't given birth to themselves.

A Moment on Earth

A Moment on Earth

Ever wonder what the earth looks like in various places all over the world at any given moment? yeah, me either, but apparently someone did, and the above link is what they created. Give it a bit to load, and then watch the flash words before clicking 'explore this mosaic' or it won't make much sense.....if you switch to another site and miss the words, just click 'refresh' and it'll start over.

There's Egg in My Egg Salad!!

(I do believe this is the longest I've gone without blogging here, so sorry guys. I was out of town the last couple weekends without much net access and I'm moving yet again this week, so busy, busy...here's a quick Easter story for you, though).

As with many traditional Easter gatherings, ours consisted of lots of hard boiled colored eggs without much of a purpose after the hunt was over. Typically for us, a few are eaten here and there and the rest are tossed out after we get tired of looking at them a week or two later.....or maybe it's the smell that forces them into the trash. Either way, we rarely end up using them beyond watching the little ones dunk them in dye and later hunting the things down.

This year, though, an aunt went ahead and whipped up some egg salad to go with the rest of our picnic-style lunch setting of sandwiches, chips, and random things like make-shift guacamole, olives, and green apples tossed in a bowl. All the little ones had been chowing down on the hard boiled eggs anyway, so they were given egg salad sandwiches first. They're on a need-to-know basis, so they weren't told what they were eating...they were just told to eat it.

Seeing as how they had been running around all morning and hadn't eaten in hours, it wasn't a surprise that they all chowed down quickly, barely taking the time to chew. As the adults finally got their food, too, the room hit patches of complete silence as we all scarfed....you'd think we hadn't eaten in days.

During one of these rare moments of silence, the four year old girl pipes up with disgust. "Ewww!! There's egg in my sandwich!!" We all looked over to see her holding up less than half of her already mangled sandwich, and couldn't help but laugh at her as she discovered that there was indeed egg in her egg salad sandwich. Poor girl. She must've assumed it was tuna salad or something, but it was a little late to complain after eating so much of it already!

Chinese Foot Binding vs. Boob Jobs

Most people have heard of feet binding in China. Most of those people likely think of it as an ancient practice that no longer occurs, too. What people tend to forget, though, is that traditions like this don't just 'go away'....even when made illegal. Here's the caption for this particular photo:

Zhou Guizhen, who is 86-years-old, shows one of her bound feet where the bones in the four small toes were broken and forced underneath the foot over a period of time, at her home in Liuyi village in China's southern Yunnan Province, February 2007. Villages in China where women with bound feet survive are increasingly rare but the millennium-old practice nevertheless took almost four decades to eradicate after it was initially banned in 1911.(AFP/File/Mark Ralston)

Fortunately, it is definitely on the decline and it is rare for a young girls to have their feet bound now...partly because it is becoming increasingly important for women to work, also, and it is nearly impossible to walk on bound feet for very long (such is one of the reasons why it was so popular....if you could afford to have your women/wives/daughters not work, then showing this by disabling them to a certain extent further showed off your wealth....another was because it was seen as beautiful/graceful)....and hopefully, part of the reason it was eventually banned is because they realize how torturous it is. (I could talk for hours just about this....did research on it a few years ago and I couldn't possibly sum up the physical facts, much less the psychological/sociological possibilities....if you want a brief history run down, check here.)

Unfortunately, however, many people who hear about this sort of thing find it absolutely horrendous.....but fail to see any of the things that our own societies do. I know I have some readers that aren't from America/Canada/England....but I'm sure they can relate to one degree or another. We have women so obsessed about their weight that they starve themselves or do horrible things to their bodies in order to reach the ideal image...that their bodies are not meant to reach. We have women who go through multiple surgeries and procedures to suck fat from some areas and put fat in others. Do you have any idea on how much an incline that breast augmentation has gone in the last decade? Hell, it may not physically compare to breaking bones in the feet and binding them pain-wise....but many girls start burning their flesh/tanning early in their teens in hopes of achieving the 'perfect' color. It's not just women, of course.....men are bombarded with ads to increase their size (ok, so the women are, too, but it's only because bots can't tell the difference between men and women by their email addresses :P). While men here are striving for more than 4 inches....women in China were striving for feet that were smaller than 4 inches.

Isn't it funny (read--'sad'), though, that as places like China put an end to practices like this....we're increasing them and it's perfectly acceptable? Oh sure, people of all generations talk about the young girls in their short mini skirts and tank tops and how bad it is. Those are usually the same people who are on their 5th diet of the year, though, and don't think anything of it. Yeah, there are exceptions to the rules and some people truly do just want to be healthy....but even many of those people don't realize that their image of 'healthy' is really the image of the 'perfect person' that society has gradually put into their heads. One side is saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and the other is saying "Barbie is perfect....why don't you look like Barbie?"

I could continue to ramble, but you all have heard this stuff before. It'll go in one ear (and some of you, like Dave, will analyze and obsess over it for a few minutes) and then it won't cross your mind again for a while. So instead, I'm off to fix lunch for the little ones, hehe.

Cuts And Gravy Pet Food Recall

And here's where I step back in with another public service announcement. Menu Foods has recalled all 'cuts and gravy' cat and dog food (produced under various brand labels) manufactured between December 2006 and March 2007. The company announced that an unknown number of cats and dogs had suffered kidney failure and another 10 have died after eating the effect food. Snopes confirms this, links to the company press release, and also gives a list of the 48 dog and 40 cat brand names (including Iams, Eukanuba, Ol'Roy, Special Kitty, and all those off brands sold by Wal-Mart, Save-A-Lot, Food Lion, etc). If you have pets and you feed them any sort of 'cuts and gravy' pet food, please check into this.

Singapore Cancer Society--Lung Ashtray

Here's an interesting way to reach out to smokers, although it's sad that those who need to quit smoking the most, will be effected by this the least. They have to really want to do it and very few are actually hit by triggers like this....but I suppose even one person who thinks twice about it next time is enough, huh?

Save Endangered Species Attempt--Slender Loris

One more for the day, I'm not sure if you'll say "awww" or "uuhhh..."

A baby Slender Loris is seen in this undated handout image released by the Zoological Society of London on January 15, 2007. Scientists launched a bid on Tuesday to save some of the world's rarest and most neglected creatures from extinction. With an initial list of just 10, including a venomous shrew-like creature, an egg-laying mammal and the world's smallest bat, the programme will give last ditch conservation aid where to date there has been little or none.

And um, notice the conservation effort here. Kudos to London Zoo (again...because they're also the people who prompted my hippo posts).

Momofuku Ando Lives On

In every college dorm room around the US (and likely other countries)....in every household pantry where a child lives....in every supermarket across the land, Momofuku Ando lives on. You may not know him by name, but as soon as I tell you that he's the guy responsible for inventing ramen noodles....and that he died on Friday....you're bound to say "awww." Born in Taiwan in 1910, he died at the age of 96, leaving behind his legacy of the cheapest meal around.

Here's a bit from an article:

In 1948, he founded the precursor to Nissin and in 1958 unveiled Chicken Ramen, the world's first instant noodle product.

Ando was inspired to develop the instant noodle after coming upon a long line of people on a cold night shortly after World War II. They were waiting to buy freshly made ramen at a black market food stall.

The experience convinced him that "peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat," according to Nissin.

In 1971, Nissin introduced the Cup Noodle featuring instant ramen in a waterproof plastic foam container. Dubbed the "Ramen King," Ando is credited with expanding Nissin into the No. 1 company in the industry and was well-known for his dedication to his work.

And here's a beautiful piece from NYTimes, that takes the time to compare the conveniences of other quick-made noodle deals....none of which compare even in the slightest to ramen noodles:

The news last Friday of the death of the ramen noodle guy surprised those of us who had never suspected that there was such an individual. It was easy to assume that instant noodle soup was a team invention, one of those depersonalized corporate miracles, like the Honda Civic, the Sony Walkman and Hello Kitty, that sprang from that ingenious consumer-product collective known as postwar Japan.

But no. Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958. His product — fried, dried and sold in little plastic-wrapped bricks or foam cups — turned the company he founded, Nissin Foods, into a global giant. According to the company’s Web site, instant ramen satisfies more than 100 million people a day. Aggregate servings of the company’s signature brand, Cup Noodles, reached 25 billion worldwide in 2006.

There are other versions of fast noodles. There is spaghetti in a can. It is sweetish and gloppy and a first cousin of dog food. Macaroni and cheese in a box is a convenience product requiring several inconvenient steps. You have to boil the macaroni, stir it to prevent sticking and determine through some previously obtained expertise when it is “done.” You must separate water from noodles using a specialized tool, a colander, and to complete the dish — such an insult — you have to measure and add the fatty deliciousness yourself, in the form of butter and milk that Kraft assumes you already have on hand. All that effort, plus the cleanup, is hardly worth it.

Ramen noodles, by contrast, are a dish of effortless purity. Like the egg, or tea, they attain a state of grace through a marriage with nothing but hot water. After three minutes in a yellow bath, the noodles soften. The pebbly peas and carrot chips turn practically lifelike. A near-weightless assemblage of plastic and foam is transformed into something any college student will recognize as food, for as little as 20 cents a serving.

There are some imperfections. The fragile cellophane around the ramen brick tends to open in a rush, spilling broken noodle bits around. The silver seasoning packet does not always tear open evenly, and bits of sodium essence can be trapped in the foil hollows, leaving you always to wonder whether the broth, rich and salty as it is, is as rich and salty as it could have been. The aggressively kinked noodles form an aesthetically pleasing nest in cup or bowl, but when slurped, their sharp bends spray droplets of broth that settle uncomfortably about the lips and leave dots on your computer screen.

But those are minor quibbles. Ramen noodles have earned Mr. Ando an eternal place in the pantheon of human progress. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don’t have to teach him anything.

Notice the last line especially....

R.I.P. Momofuku....

A Cat's Contented Sigh, and Other Pleasurable Things

(Someone else's kitty...)

Just yesterday I was signed up for a page-a-day calendar email (because I now have an actual page-a-day calendar and it came with the code to sign up for another online) that pops up in my account every morning. I hadn't planned on paying much attention to it, and I certainly didn't plan on blogging about it (ok, so maybe that's a lie....after blogging for a bit, I think everything is somewhat viewed through blogger eyes). But this morning's caught my attention. The five things to be happy about for today are:

• red grapefruit
• crisp mountain air
• moisturizing lotion
• a cat’s contented sigh
• junk food on a road trip

I think I might like this whole calendar thing after all. It reminds me of various stories......like how out of allllll the different fragrances in Bath and Body Works, one of the little ones loved the grapefruit most. Sure, she enjoyed the holiday smells like gingerbread, cinnabun, and pumpkin pie....and she liked the flowery cherry blossom, and the traditional vanilla sugar. But in the end, it was the grapefruit she fell in love with and it was the lotion that the five year old walked out of the store with, grinning with glee.

Or how about that soft, almost inaudible sigh that a cat breathes out as it's relaxing? I can picture my own kitty, curling up on the window sill, basking in the glowing sun rays, and sighing deeply as she settles in for a midday nap. Does it get any better than that?