Go Fishing!

What do you do when you get a “fishing” email. You know, the kind asking for your account number, credit card number, account name, etc because there “may have been a ________ issue with your account” or other fake email topics? What do I do? I spam ‘ em back. I click on their link and type in expletives over and over and over again. Fill out the form, send, click back, REPEAT. REPEAT. REPEAT. I’m hoping that I can clog their emails with results of ID = “f*ckyou” password = “get a life asswipe”. (prounounced azzweeeepay of course). I don’t do it all the time, but once in a while, I’m inspired to give back to my community. I encourage you to do the same.

Easy Cheese

I was walking through the cracker aisle at the grocery store when I spotted a little bit of childhood: Easy Cheese!

I have fond memories of this while on our month-long motor-home excursions around the good old USA (and Canada, too!). We’d get a little Ritz, squeeze the cheese and yum! A perfect road food! There was the traditional can variety Easy Cheese and I also remember some sort of tube cheese with a little hole in the center from which the gooey goodness was dispensed. I’m not sure what was going on in the 70s to make it so easy cheese friendly, but you know if you grew up during that time, you had some Easy Cheese, too! And it was good.

 

Recommend

I don’t recommend too many things on here, do I? I hope not. I don’t want to make it seem like I’m advertising rather than honest-to-goodness recommending.

Anyway.... I heartily recommend the magazine BUST (http://www.bust.com/). It’s girl-centric, alternative, edgy, crafty, sexy, sew-y, fat friendly, music-y and well written. I don’t really consider myself a “feminist” per se (I’m much more of a humanist), but much of the writing in the magazine might be considered ‘feminist’, so be forewarned if that bothers you. I happen to find it refreshing. Another side warning: the edginess means that there’s a lot of frank talk, “swear words”, sexuality and the like. Again, if your sensibilities are delicate, you may want to stick with a more mainstream mag. The articles themselves are interesting, but at the back of every issue, there are tons of alternative shopping resources all with fun, kitschy or koool websites – a great way to kill an afternoon! So, yeah, I’m just sayin...

Landfill = RESOURCE!

Am I the only one that views landfills as the future's mines? Can't you just see it? Let's say that aluminum or iron ore becomes scarce in the natural deposits around 2500 a.d. Wouldn't you think you think that at some point they'd turn to old capped landfills to retrieve valuable resources? Most definitely they will. I completely believe that individuals should recycle what they can, but on the other hand, don't beat yourself up if you throw away a Coke can from time to time. It will have its day in the sun again!

Fall Colors

What a good little resource for identifying trees and their various leaf shapes and fall colorations. Kudos to StarTribune.com! Oh, it is kind of Minnesota specific for locations, but a lot of the tree types featured are all over the country. Especially good for those of us who confuse aspens and birch. :-0

Deep Thoughts About Sunflowers

I was removing seeds from giant sunflower heads and it just got me thinkin'...

>> The person who invented barcodes must have been doing the same thing at some point. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of variations in the lines in sunflowers. Some even have no lines. Does it indicate a difference in the genetic code? Maybe.

>> 8 foot tall flowers have an amazing structure. The stalk is nearly as hard as wood, yet the growth of these beasts is so much faster than a tree. Weeks, rather than years. The heads easily weigh a few pounds, so there has to be some major structure inside to keep it up, but if you look inside, the major support is a whole lotta cotton-candy fibre. Very odd.

>> The thousands of flowers and seeds on the head are in very strict rows. A very orderly flower, yet every once in a while you find a seed pod without a seed. Why was that particular flower overlooked by the insects? Did they somehow know it was going to produce a bad seed or did they simply miss it by accident...a matter of random misses? Or did the insect do its job only to have the seed aborted? Hmmm..

>> There are heads which are whiter than the others yet they seem to happily coexist with the ones that have more dark stripes. Hmmm... a world lesson to be learned?

>>I found a recipe to make salted/roasted sunflower seeds. It's pretty easy and tasty. It takes me back to childhood, really. A pretty healthy snack food! Simply soak the seeds overnight in a bowl of salted water (1/2 cup to 2 qt of water). Bake in the oven until dry roasted. The time will vary depending upon how many you're bakin'. With four heads, I get enough to fill the largest bowl that Tupperware makes. LOTS of seeds! I may try experimenting with flavors. Watch out "David" , I may beat you at your own game.

As promised...

A look at the new residents!

The bottom photo is a of the elusive baby llama. It's really not a "baby", but more a "yearling". Contrary to popular opinion, we didn't get spit on! From all that I've read on the creatures, they usually only spit at each other or if someone bottle fed a cria (baby llama), that one grown up may spit at you thinkin' you're just part of the family. I haven't heard any of the humming communication that they do, but hope to soon.

LlamaDammaDingDong!

We're getting llamas! Five llamas will be comin' to our farmy yard tonight to take up permanent residence. We got a great deal on the curious beasts o' burden when buying some new painted desert sheep. Apparently they wanted out of their llama ownership. Their loss is our gain! Luckily llamas work well with sheep, so we're fortifying the fences 'round the farm and planning for a freakin' petting zoo in our backyard. Not really, but I'm betting the neighbor kids will be wanting to stop by more often. Gosh, I hope the new yard guests like tomatoes. We've got a lot of those to offer! Pictures of the new tenants will be posted soon.