they want money

retailers have been given permission to charge their customers who use a credit card. even though it appears many companies may not do that, at this time, don't be surprised if it happens to you at some point. in which case i will simply use cash. and then they will probably charge people for using cash.

awww, my little turtle guys

so while i was looking around etsy, i saw something about guitar pick earrings and checked it out. WHOA!  FUN! i fell in love with a number of them but one of my favorites was this pair:


little turtle guys ... aren't they darling??!!! i love them and have been wearing them the last two days. too cute! anyhow, check out etsy. life with etsy is good and it doesn't cost as much as life in the malls!!!

a great gift

i have discovered etsy!

that doesn't mean i have just discovered it .... MYS/W have told me about it for several years, but it has only been in the last few weeks that i have availed myself of its offerings. and, really, everyone should -- it's home-grown folks doing their thing and putting them up for sale. the new daughter-in-law offers her embroidery on that site.

so i recently needed a going-away gift for one of my favorite bosses and when i actually got my head together enough to think about it, there was only barely a week left. i looked on etsy to see what was there in the guitar pick line. my boss plays guitar (and has ever since high school) as well as doing motorcycle things. i don't know all that much about either, but when i decided (my spiritual guide must have directed me) to see what i could see about picks, i ran across this extraordinary item....

these are five guitar picks made out of wood, bone, and stone. and they are beautiful. my boss was very surprised and pleased with the gift and showed them around to a number of people. and it turned out to be a two-hug worthy gift.

i felt lucky that i had made a good choice. the people on etsy that i bought them from had been scheduled to go on vacation about the time i needed the order, but they somehow got them made and shipped to me to arrive on the exact day i needed them. i wrote my appreciation. and i can't help but feel it was meant to be. the stars are aligned.

from here to here to there and there ...

here are a number of very interesting pictures showing various pathways across the u.s.  neat!

two ways to look at this

oh good lord. how lazy can we get.

-or-

there's always somebody with a new way to take your money.

android users are sitting ducks

did you see where this unbelieveable company wants to make your cell phone spout ads as soon as you start to place a call??? this is too much. read this article and say bad things about this company. like other people are. thumbs down down down down down.

the dotted line

it's just so silly when you have a product that you're supposed to open by pushing in on the dotted line which has supposedly been intermittenly slit to make it easier. ha! for some ungodly reason that slitted line seems reinforced so that it can't be opened, and you end up pushing in the whole side of the container and breaking your fingernail. what, exactly, are they thinking?

and then there are those little individual pill containers which indicate you simply have to pull back the backing and extricate your pill. ha! i'm sure they weld the backing to the container edge so that the only way to get to the pill is to stab the container with your magic sword. again, what are they thinking?

hand lotion

i am very particular about my hand lotions. a lot of them are really stinky. i mean, some fruity thing or some exotic something-or-other which totally makes me gag! other lotions are too greasy or too waxy.

but my daughter-in-law gave me this one which says it's for very dry skin but it doesn't claim a fragrance. it has one though. everytime i put it on i immediately find myself sitting in the weeds behind a big old barn on a gorgeous sunny day popping a new piece of bubble gum in my mouth. and i love it!

i mean, it sounds weird. but the fragrance is so clean and woodsy and happy and child-like. and i used the last of it last night. it's just sad.

wait! hold the phone! i just read the back of the tube. they say rainmakers of shea and cocoa butter, sunflower, soybean, ginseng, aloe, gentian root, murumuru, mango, kokum butter, boise oil, palmarosa, galbanum and grapefuit.

nah ... sunshine, bubble gum and weeds.

it's in the toilet

oh good grief. men and their games.

the girlfriend and i did have a good weekend. we drove up to white rock and stayed in a really nice hotel with a view of the water and wind surfers. we walked to all the shops and ate delicious food.

in particular i enjoyed a restaurant called the Deluxe. it was soooooo excellent. if you want to check it out, it might be good to get reservations. we got lucky (twice) since we didn't have them.

another excellent place was Le Vol Au Vent and yes, it was french. and excellent.

next door to the hotel was this little sandwich shop which made an excellent omelet for mary and an excellent sandwich for me. i think it was called Look's Watts Cooking, whatever that means.

we ate at Iguana's Beach Grill and Pearl Restaurant, but honestly i don't remember them, so i would not go back to them unless i couldn't get in to a number of other places. there was one place called a something-something snug and it was run by a scotsman i believe. if there had been more time, and more room in my tummy, i would have checked it out.

it was a fun time and thank goodness it's just across the border so i can avail myself of that good food whenever i take a notion! eight minues my friends, just eight minutes to a little bite of heaven!

they always quit making the ones you like

well that sucks. i have a pair of shoes (the ebb tide slide) i wear when it rains -- they're the Mion brand -- but apparently the company is now defunct (i wonder what the story is). a website i was looking at had 5 stars on all the reviews except one, and i love them (because they're widely functional), so what happened? obviously they were popular. crap -- isn't this always the way!

gees louise....

my cousin sent me this link -- http://www.wimp.com/vegetablemarket -- and i don't want to spoil anything, but you really need to see it to realize that some people live in crowded circumstances.

oh good grief

i think it's curious that the new-and-improved versions of ms updates are crap. i've got this ms office suite 2010 and it's got that new-fangled 'ribbon' on it rather than the old-fashioned toolbar. horrible. it's for mutton-headed people. you have to click all over the place to find what you need,and it's a time-waster, especially if the old way suited you just fine. i figure these new things are for whiners who want everything handed to them, but it really burns me up that it throws the rest of us to the wolves. 'we're just making it easier and more attractive to you' -- no you're not.

i don't know how far back any of you remember, but the computer we had back in 1995 had an excellent assortment of fonts. nowadays it's mostly crap. i mean, who in the universe needs calibri (which is the default for god's sake), batang, dotum, gungsuh, iskoola pota, leelawadee, nsimsun, shruti, or traditional arabic? get that shit off my computer and give me decent fonts i can use and play with. what good does it do to have a bunch of foreign-sounding fonts that look a lot alike in their milquetoast way?

just more of the business people thinking they know what's best for us, and that makes for a very unimaginative nation of people. not good. not good at all.

another dimension

3-D without special glasses? iPad is working on it. it's kinda intriguing, but seems a little limited right now. but hey, that's always the way it is in the beginning. anyhow, check this out and see what you think. i usually watch stuff like this with the sound off, so maybe they said something important. i dunnoh.

short-sighted, greed- and ego-driven stupidity

honestly, you just have to shake your head when you read about nuclear power. obama is pushing for more nuclear plants in this country, calling them a necessity (2 new ones are soon going to be built in georgia) and yet acknowledging there are problems (e.g., storage and disposal of nuclear waste).

in light of the problems in japan the last x-days, there can't be any doubt that there are many problems with this technology. "we don't have a lot of experience with this," says one guy. well, duh. and yet, let's insist on going ahead with plans even though they have problems and are missing solutions. after all, we'll figure it out at some point, right? let's not count on it.

there's even an article which calculates the earthquake risk of u.s. plants. the one with the biggest potential for trouble isn't in california -- it's in new york.

but really, after looking back at all the times that man has tried to improve on nature and totally messed it up (like, bringing in kudzu to the u.s. to control soil erosion and having it run out of control, or bringing in a toad in australia to control the sugar cane beetle and the toad becoming a bigger, poisonous problem), how can anyone with half a brain assume that nuclear power is a good answer? only after solutions to the obvious huge problems had been found, would i consider the technology might not be suspect. but we're not there yet, guys. not by a long shot.

a different way of thinking about it

So .... do you like these?

Daddy Long Legs

A Pair of Lovers

We Were Made for Each Other

Well then, you'll like all of these!  And you can find more on his blog.

woo, hoo!!!

the daughter-in-law's book will be available tomorrow on amazon!!!

buy it!! you'll like it!! it will pull you right in to several story lines!!

look for Delivered to Eternity, An Alesta the Vampire Book by Laura Yirak.

you can't go wrong!

her book

my daughter-in-law has written a book. she's never written one before. she tried to contact an agent, but didn't have much luck, then realized she could publish online.

i'm not sure how she's going to do it, but her mom and i have given her tips, i've done some proofing on it, she has a cover and artwork, and she's decided on a title: Delivered To Eternity, an Alesta the Vampire book.

the story is great! it has several things going on and is very well written. it's hard for me to realize it's her writing. not that it's HERS, but that she's never done anything like this before and it's just very very good.

i'll let you know when it's available.

and another one

on the other hand, i could probably afford the tata pixel. its 'zero turn drive' is a kick. and it doesn't look too shabby either.

this is the one

i have just found my ideal car -- the renault captur. it is so beyond any expectations of a cool car i might have envisioned, that i can hardly stand it. the fact that it is not in production, and probably would cost more than i could possibly afford, are minor details. i am totally in love.