For my brother; a believer in all things duct tape

Norwegian accused of skin-crawling snake smuggling

Monday, October 26, 2009

(10-26) 18:24 PDT OSLO, (AP) --

A man has been arrested in Norway trying to smuggle two dozen snakes and geckos into the country by hiding them under his clothes. Customs agent Helge Breilid said Monday the 22-year-old Norwegian citizen was apprehended in the southern town of Kristiansand after getting off a ferry from Hirtshals, Denmark. He said the man had 14 royal pythons and 10 albino leopard geckos under his clothes.

Breilid said the non-venomous snakes — the smallest species in the python family — were hidden in stockings duct-taped to the man's abdomen. The geckos were in boxes taped to his thighs.

Customs officials found the reptiles, which are not endangered, Sunday during a search following the discovery of a tarantula in one of the man's bags.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/10/26/international/i081844D06.DTL#ixzz0VAD4rAAz

New funny

Life lesson #6,492

When your "stupid" 85 pound dog climbs up the ladder into the kids' treehouse, quit trying to carry him down.

He was faking.

He knows how to get down all by himself.

Just for fun!

They're mine, I say, all mine....bwahahaha!

I now totally own Target and Zappos which I claim since I read The Tao of Pooh AND The Te of Piglet in college.



From TG Daily.com:
Man claims he owns biggest US corporations

Business and Law
By Mike Magee
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 09:42

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - A man filed a case in a Southern California district court and laid right to the ownership of a stack of American companies by using Chinese divination system the I Ching. Yes, really.
Shreepriya Gopalan is suing - ready for this - Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Chase Bank, Cable TV Network, CNN, NBC, ABC. Food Network, Toon, AMC, General Electric, McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway, Yahoo, Google, Sony, Capital One, Pfizer, Novell, Nordstrom, Macys, Saks Fifth Avenue, Chipotle, Noodles and Company, Taco Bell, Olive Garden, Burger King, KFC, Wendys, Dennys, Delta Airlines, Walmart, Sears, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Hersheys, Apple, Verizon, Cigna, AT&T, Dell, IBM, Accenture, Philips, Jeromes Furniture, Harpo Productions, Warner Brothers, Time Warner Cable, Tiffany & Co, Loreal, Ritz Carlton Hotels, ZipLip Inc, Trinuc LLC, Mascon Global, Encore Capital Group, Codonics and Enterprise Business Solutions, but not Intel, on the most unusual of grounds.
Says Gopalan: "The defendants named above do not have any legal authorization or Business License to perform their business at any location in the US or internationally."
Further, he claims most of these companies do not have any executives, and the executives associated with these names don't exist.
He continues: "I declare that I am the true Business Owner of every one of these Companies named as defendants above."
And how? "These companies were I Chinged in through a metaphysical layer created and owned by me." He says all products and services sold by the companies above were invented by his creative thinking. "They got I Chinged to be sold in stores."
A poignant note adds: "Unfortunately, I do not have the necessary documents that can prove that I am indeed the Business Owner. The reason for this is a tragedy that must be reckoned with and that must be rectified by all and sundry."
He said that he is a computer engineer and invented the I Ching when he was 15 or 16 because of his "overworked and curious brain one night".


Now, please go spend some money so that I can buy a jet or something.

pepperonis, seersucker and tomatoes...a damn fine combination

Today was a little slice of parenting bliss. I think I kinda shifted the odds in my favor when I mooched Miss Janey's Cinco de Drinko recipes and made shrimp fajitas with grapefruit margaritas last night. The dh ranted and raved all night about the "best thing he's eaten in forever". In his post fajita induced euphoria, he decided to take Mother's Day up a notch.

In our home it begins with the sounds of Christmas in May...banging pots, hushed whispers of the kids trying to sneak around while I pretend to be asleep (a trick I have become quite good at especially when the 85 pound monster dog jumps on the bed to snuggle). The DH, on the other hand, tries to "sneak around" trying get the kids dressed, prepare a "surprise" breakfast which usually involves help from both kids and entails many interesting and exotic breakfast foods. This year's breakfast in bed involved a pepperoni (!), mushroom and ham omelet ("Look Mom, Dad and I made you a pizza omelet!") with a side of mandarin orange yogurt (The Princess' contribution) and a diet coke. Enhancing the presentation was a box of chocolate dipped strawberries and several homemade kid offerings for The Mom including mushy cards and a new bookmark.

After getting off to such an auspicious start, I knew this year was going to be a landmark year when NumberOneSon, after getting busted for trying to sneak into the car for church in cargo shorts, did an about face and put on his seersucker pants with nothing more than a meek "Yes Ma'am" and a straight face. Honey, that just about made me start bawlin' right there. Y'all gotta understand... that to me, nothing looks better on him than seersucker pants, white button down and dirty bucks but to Ten Year Old Boy, that is one step short of putting him in a tutu and tights. It is just a testament to how sentimental he was feeling this morning that he sacrificed himself on the throne of his momma's wishes at church this morning.

Then it got even better! Y'all, I got a nap! I actually slept for over an hour uninterrupted! The Princess then came in and had to style my hair as part of her efforts to "pamper the queen". Since it was sorta cloudy and rainy today, they took turns laying on top of me on the couch until we finally got motivated and assembled my "you've seen the infomercial a bazillion times" upside down tomato planter hanger thingy.

What an awesome day.

All in all, an exemplary Mother's Day.

Online confessional

One of the icebreaker games I use in therapy is a matching game. You know the one where you have picture cards you take turns flipping over until you find pairs that match? There's apparently no other game that can put an anxiety ridden 9 year old at ease like this. It probably had a lot to do with the fact they are playing against ME; with a mind like a steel sieve. I have amazing retention for the most insensible minutiae from 25 years ago but show me a picture of a dog in a tutu and 5 seconds later, I have no recall of where it was. Simply pathetic.

It was so bad one day a 7 year old looked at me very suspiciously and accused me of throwing the game just to make her feel better. As. If. (Of course that had NOTHING to do with the Girls Night Out the previous evening)

I guess it really isn't that surprising though when I think about it...for years I used to sing "There's a bathroom on the right". You know, the song by Creedence Clearwater Revival
(oh, my brothers, don't even start with me about that...y'all were the ones who were wearing polyester shirts and practically begging for baby sister to teach you The Hustle, which to my mind, just proves that really there is a genetic component behind it all since I was in elementary school)

My only consolation in high school was that my best friend Jenny was on the same wave length or maybe even a little worse....She used to sing "You make the Rice, I'll make the Gravy"

Things only improved slightly as I got older; in the grad school years, when people were glued to the TV on Thursdays watching "Friends", I was tagged with being the "Phoebe" of our crowd. (I stil console myself with the idea that it was because I was the closest thing we had to a blond in our group. Umm yeah.)

Later on though, I had a fancy degree to hide behind which allowed me to learn to keep my yap shut, nod knowingly, "um-hmm, tell me more about that", and then promptly use Google to figure out What In The Hell was THAT all about??!? after they left the room. (An especially effective method when working with teens and tweens of today)

A few weeks ago I took comfort that I was not all that far removed from the youth of today, despite my impending senility and Auditory Dyslexia (term coined by aforementioned friends for when your friend tells you for example "you've got Auditory Dyslexia" and what you hear is them telling you "You oughta be sexier"; which then leads to a lot of confusion and disappointment that they don't like your cute new outfit and how rude of them to mention it when they know you've been trying hard to lose those 5 extra pounds. hmph).

As I signed paperwork in our front office I heard two tweens in our waiting room talking about Canada and wondering about the "stupid traditions" behind their national anthem. One talked about how they would go swimming in partially frozen lakes in the middle of winter (a la the Polar Bear Club). The other knowingly said to the other that Canadians frequently "stood on top of their cars when it was cold out....probably because of all the snow and everything"....you know because the song says "O Canada, we stand on cars and freeze...."


Clearly this man is a Canadian.

Happy Easter!

So I gave up blogging for Lent. After complaints from my dh and the kids about my time online, I quit. Cold turkey. I still checked email and followed my favorite bloggers but I didn't draft a single post for 40 days.

At first it was kinda tough. I only post about a third of the things I write, so I had gotten into the whole journalling thing pretty big. But you know what? After about two weeks of blog detox, I didn't miss it anymore. I am not even sure whether I'll keep going.

It has been nice to keep in touch with family and friends through the page but honestly, I miss the other half of the conversation more than I enjoy blogging.

For now, I am going to enjoy the conversation.

PS. Rakka did the eggs

Wow, Mother Nature has been on a roll lately! We went from tornadoes and baseball sized hail one week to 4 inches of snow and thunder the next week.