HEY, FEED ME.

Now, for the coffee. Oh wow, the kids have gotten to it before me– there’s only one cup left! The liquid delight fills my cup…. I eagerly scoop a bit of sugar (well, OK OK, a tablespoon and a half) and some creamer (real dairy! Yep, I live big). I stir and stir to make sure it’s all perfectly blended. As I pull the spoon from the cup, it has small specks on it…. what the?

Oh gosh. I stirred my coffee with the same spoon I’d used to scoop the cat food. YUK. I hesitate for only a quick second… then… down the hatch. Whatever.

Hey, it was the last of the coffee in the pot!

Ladies and gentlemen, THAT is a narwhal tusk.

What is a narwhal, you ask?

It’s a sea creature. It is something between a small whale and a large seal. The narwhal has a tusk. It’s actually a tooth gone wild. A front tooth grows like mad and develops into this crazy-long sword. Cartoon images of narwhals show the tusk like a horn, growing out of the creature’s head, but this is erroneous.

This tusk is at The Cloisters in Manhattan. It was on display in the Unicorn Room, a room filled with enormous tapestries of unicorns.

HOW anyone can get a unicorn from a narwhal is beyond me. I’ve heard it said that the “primitive” people got mixed up and thought a narwhal was a unicorn.

But you tell me. Would YOU get these two creatures confused?

Me neither.

So I don’t believe that the people of the past thought that narwhals were sea horses with horns on their heads. I think the unicorn idea is made up, in the imaginations of people, all by their primitive little selves.

The tapestries were lovely, though.

I used to wrangle with paper maps. And once I opened one of those things, I could NEVER fold it back up. NEVER. It was like the Rubik’s Cube to me. HOW THE HECK DO YOU DO THIS, AGAIN?!?! In frustration, I would wad up the tablecloth-sized map and toss it in the back seat. A few years later, I married and I started to have children, and they needed a place to sit, so….

So I got a GPS last year, while in Virginia. I saw my brother with one and fell in love with it. It helps me to drive at night because the display shows the curves of the roads. Oh, I am no longer so nervous driving through the big cities with the GPS!

It’s been a really great tool, until last week when I had to drive to the other side of the state. For some reason, my GPS went bananas. TWICE.

Do you know how a GPS works? You punch in your destination, and a graphic display of the map shows up. Small directional arrows point the way, while a soothing voice (I like TomTom’s “Richard”) talks you through. Well, Richard was a little loopy one day. While driving out toward Rochester, I came to an intersection. The screen showed an arrow pointing me left. Richard chimed in, “Turn right.”

:blink:

“Did you hear that??” I asked my daughter, next to me. “Did you just hear him telling me to turn right?”

Daughter: Mmhm. Yep.

Me: Well… where do I go??

So I decide to ignore the visual cue and follow Richard’s lilting voice.

Stupid man. :hmph: Why oh why did I listen to him?!

We drove on for about 3 miles. When I started to see cows dotting the landscape, I realized we were not driving toward the city.

Me, screaming: RICHARD, you dummy! I believed in you!! Do you have any idea how expensive gas is?!
:rants:

Muttering angry threats and wondering if TomTom, Inc. has investments with Citgo, Inc., I turned away from the cud-chewing cows and sped back to where we started. Lo and behold, Richard (no doubt realizing I was about to throw him out the window) directed me appropriately. OK OK, I am a forgiving person. I made amends. Richard was good and we reached our destination.

But on the way back, he did it again!!! The screen pointed me LEFT and Richard said “Turn right.”

Oh Richard, Richard…. how can you do this to me?! I lamented so loudly that some folks at the gas station turned to look at me. I trusted him! He betrayed me again!!
:whyohwhy:

My poor daughter was silent for a while, listening to me rant and rail against Richard. When I was finally quiet, she giggled and said:

Maybe he means “The Other Right,” mom.

I bust laughing at that.

But from now on, I’ll always be watching out for Richard… maybe I should scrap him and go for Bonnie or Sam…. hmmmm…

As an ardent admirer of Kathryn Kuhlman, I have heard of Smith Wigglesworth. He was a plumber in Wales, born in 1859. He was an evangelist who did AMAZING miracles of healing. I don’t know what you believe about God still doing miracles– all it takes is one or two times to logically prove that they do still happen, right?

Well, I recently purchased the “Smith Wigglesworth Devotional” book. It was compiled after his death, I believe. It is full of events and Bible teachings about believing in God for healing. The book is MIND BLOWING. You can read a quick, free sample of the book here. Pretty amazing.

Smoking Teeth

The kids are taking a health course called The Seven Pillars of Health by Dr. Dan Colbert. It’s a pretty enlightening course. This week is about “detoxifcation.” It might more accurately be called “toxification” because Dr, Colbert explains all the chemicals and toxic stuff we are exposed to on a regular basis. No wonder cancer has become the Number One cause of death of people in industrialized nations.

Of great concern is the high mercury content in amalgam dental fillings. If you think the USDA and FDA protect us, think again. Dental fillings account for FIFTY PERCENT of our toxic exposure to mercury. The FDA and other groups have been sloooooooooooooow to stop it. I found a very good video about mercury in fillings, called Smoking Teeth. I don’t always believe everything I see or hear, but just knowing that there’s 50% mercury in our dental fillings is enough to make me very concerned.

Presidential Election

While my husband is riveted to the news and stories about the presidential election, I am purposely avoiding it. It’s too stressful right now. Besides, I did my homework a long time ago and already did my homework– I know who I am voting for when the time comes. It’s not the Tooth Fairy guy from Massachusetts, it’s not the marriage-breaker guy with the white shaggy hair, it’s not even the fake conservative who is part of the Political Machine in Washington that has destroyed our country… nope. It’s the guy from Texas who insists that we abide by the Constitution, also known as Dr. No by the Congress. His last name is Paul. ;) GO RON GO!

Going to the Big Apple

It’s still a ways away, but I am slowly getting excited about my upcoming trip to New York City. I am a country girl through and through, but I like the city and its energy. It’s so full of history and things to do! I recently watched a video of how to get a MetroCard for the subway. When I lived in NYC there were no cards, you paid cash. Now, there are vending machines! The choices had me baffled and I needed to refresh myself on how to get 3 cards. Last time we were there, my credit card company froze my account because I used the card three times in a row to get 3 Metrocards (each person has to have their own). this time, I’m bringing plenty of cash!

Working Online

When I first started working online, I thought, “How easy!! Easy easy easy! I can make lots of money and it will be so easy!”

Um. NOT.

I write articles for companies, websites, advertisers. It’s pretty durn tough. For one, advertisers by nature are not the most expressive and communicative people. Their grammar is deplorable and they change their minds on a whim. It’s like trying to grasp water sometimes. So even though I work at home, there’s still tremendous pressure and the tasks are tough. At least I don’t have to wear pantyhose, though, thank God for that…..

My problem is this: I do not want to put my last name on my Google profile because I don’t want it showing up associated with my blog. Or anywhere else, for that matter, unless *I* choose to make my full name “public”. (For the sake of my own privacy I’d like to at least make a stalker WORK to figure out who I am!) But if you have a G+ account you are required to use your full name, and you have no option to show any other name but your full name across any service where your profile is displayed. (Actually, it looks like from a recent news article (linked below) that you may be able to display a nickname – BUT IT WILL STILL LINK TO YOUR REAL NAME.)

…In fact, with the recent well publicized Google privacy policy change, they can now link information across any of their services – so if you use your real name on Google+ it’s now going to be linked to everything that you do on any of their services (searches, posts, pictures, etc.)!

I always figured the Google+ service was just another social network service, akin to Facebook. I had no idea it is actually an “identity service.” Some people don’t seem to have a problem with that, but a lot of us do. I like my privacy and while I don’t mind sharing my real name or social events with some of you very dear readers, I DO Mind sharing them with Google, who keeps a dossier of everything about us and everything we do online. (According to the Forbes article, the government is too afraid to do it but they have no qualms about private businesses doing it).

All very scary.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Disclaimer (*sigh*): Just so you know, my comments here are my OPINIONS and are not reviews of any of these apps. This post is in good fun with a sprinkling of common sense mixed in. If you have no sense of humor and are offended easily, you probably want to stop right now and go visit Elmo’s website or Dora the Explorer or something. thank you.

10. Stalqer
I don’t know if this app is available anymore. I looked in the App Store and couldn’t find it. Maybe Apple removed it for, um, obvious reasons… read on…

Stalqer is an app that shows you the current location of your Facebook friends. The ADDRESS location. Like, if your buddy Henry is two blocks away, the app will display Henry’s face and report that Henry is currently at 123 Main Street right now. And the worst part? Others can track you in real time, without your specific Stalqer approval. You don’t have to approve or “opt in” to Stalqer to get on someone’s stalking list– all you need to be is friends with someone on Facebook. Stalqer tracks your location every time you check your email on your phone.

… Yeah, it’s gone. I checked the Stalqer website and the domain is up for sale.

I just have a little question about this…. Stalqer worked because it pulled location data from Facebook locations, so…. even though Stalqer is gone, why does Facebook still track us?

9. MirrorMe
As if we don’t have enough to worry about with global nuclear annihilation, global bankers taking over the world economies, and those holiday pounds we need to shed, there’s MirrorMe. This app shows you what your corpse will look like! How’s that for classy, huh? You can enter in data every day, like how many greasy bacon cheeseburgers you eat, how little sleep you get, how often you get stoned or drunk, and how much you worry about your hangnails… MirrorMe will tabulate all the data and produce an image of what you’ll look like as you age and your death image when you keel over. Some people market this as one of those “this is a good app to make you more aware of your choices.” If people need to see what their DEATH will look like before they make good choices, Lord help them. P.S. People actually paid MONEY for this app. :blink:

8. iFart
I know I really don’t need to elaborate with any explanation on this app. The name says it all: “I’m a moron.” You can choose what “type” of…. *ahem* noise you want to make (Brown Mosquito, Bombadier, and Bye Granny, and The Muffler are just a few of the classiest selections). This app is actually 99 cents in the App Store. It has 21963 Ratings. :-? Unbelievable.

7. Virtual Girlfriend
Not considerate, sensitive or friendly enough to get a real girlfriend? Why bother when there’s the Virtual Girlfriend app! I imagine that the smart guys who have to buy this app had previously purchased creepy app #8….. This app creates a hot babe, a “virtual girlfriend.” Actually, there are a whole bunch of these types of apps at the App Store. What the heck?! Anyway, this app allows you to pick and choose your girl’s best features (next best thing to plastic surgery, I guess). The image will appear on your iPhone screen. You can then place your iPhone on your pillow at night and gaze into her lifeless eyes as she “gently breathes.” JUST.TOO.WEIRD.

6. Love is Not Abuse
This app, supposedly to *help* teenagers realize the dangers of bad relationships, actually does a great job creeping you out. It’s marketed for parents and “simulates the abuse that many teens endure in their dating relationships.” All day and all night on a constant basis, you can throw a “Freaky Friday” moment on yourself and get texts, emails and phone calls from a virtual abusive boyfriend or girlfriend. Yay.

In all seriousness, I realize this app has good intentions: to make parents aware of the stressful lives that dating teens face. But I have an even better idea: don’t let your kids date! Who was the jerk who invented teen dating, anyway?! I once heard a very wise lady say that “nothing good ever comes from teen dating.” I agree. I was a teen, once, so I remember. I don’t think kids need to “practice love” before they get married. For thousands of years, parents have kept a strict watch on their kids’ friends and relationships and it’s really only been the past 40 years that teens have been allowed enormous freedoms. I haven’t seen any benefit, and as a matter of fact it appears that relationship interactions have tanked lower and lower ever since…..

5. Annoy-a-Teen
This app actually doesn’t look too bad…. I MEAN– er, terrible, terrible! This app emits very high frequency pitches at varying pulses or tempos that only teens can allegedly hear. I did hear some of the sounds. Check out the video I found and see if you can hear any of the sounds.

I could see a good use for this app, yes.

4. Creepy Dolls
If creepy app #7 doesn’t appeal to you, maybe try this one. This app allows you to create images of various girls’ dolls– you know, the “Mama” kind of Chuckie doll — and add grotesque and disgusting features like fake teeth, creepy skin coloring, and more. oooooooooooooooooooooook.

3. iVomit
Here’s another winner from the App Store, yes indeedy. You can select various “flavors” and “textures” and away you go. I wonder if there’s a bulk discount if you get this app and end up having to get creepy app #7, as they would seem to go hand in hand….

2. Creepy
Well, at least they’re honest. The app is aptly named. Creepy uses your photo data from Twitter and Flickr to pinpoint your location. Called a “geolocation information aggregator,” Creepy creates a full-fledged map history of where you’ve been. Didn’t you know that your camera harvests your location data when you snap that photo? Yes, indeed! Flickr and Twitter harvest it; Creepy just shows it. Regular digital cameras AND smartphone cameras collect the geolocation of every photo you take. Gee, it’s amazing what these nifty little devices can do, isn’t it?

1. Carrier IQ
Carrier IQ is not an app. Oh, it’s in the smartphones. Like the Hotel California, you can check in any time you want, but you can never leave. Carrier IQ is a rootkit, a secret software program that stealthily records your activity on the smartphone and uploads that data. I blogged about it on my tech blog, TheOlderGeek.com. The iPhone allows you to turn it off (so they say), but Android users are screwed. Even when you “opt out” of data logging, it never logs you out. Nobody knows who is mining all this data and what its purpose is. Now THAT’S CREEPY.

Well, folks, don’t thank me! It’s my pleasure to help you decide what apps to avoid!

My house is OK. I am slightly uphill from the creek. We have water in our basement but it’s under control. It’s a miracle, really. I love you Facebook pals for praying for us. Our yard did get flooded but it was not inundated, and definitely not as bad as the flooding of April 2011, June 2007 and July 2007!

I snapped a few photos of my local neighborhood. Roads are closed and a few bridges are out.

This is the creek. See those little silver maples there in the front? The creek usually dips down about 6 feet at that point, normally. You can tell how high the creek is now. Yikes.

Across and down the street.

We got a surprise roof leak this morning, in the attic. The flashing around the chimney is probably bad. Neither I nor the husband know how to fix it, and the roof has a very steep pitch…. it will be interesting to solve this little dilemma! For now, we rigged up a string to direct the water to a bucket. A plastic sheet covers the attic hatch hole. I stapled that sucker with a billion staples to keep the bats out. *shudder*

Thank God the flooding was not as devastating for us this time around. I am exhausted– just too much stress from all this. In one week, Upstate New York has had a tornado, an earthquake and a flood! What the heck is going on??

*takes off hat, holds hat to heart*

Photo taken from MSN news who took it from someone else who took it from someone else...

I was on my bed, typing at my laptop (I write upstairs in my room, it’s quieter).

Suddenly, I feel the bed swaying. Just a little. But it’s constant, so it gets my attention. As if someone is rocking the bed just a little bit. I call my son over, who is engrossed in his iPod game.

“Do you feel that?!” I ask him.

“What?”

“The shaking– my bed is moving!”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“Sit on the bed.”

He sits. Suddenly the swaying stops, then shudders a tiny bit again.

“There! Feel that?”

“No, Mom, I didn’t feel anything.”

For a fleeting moment, I wondered if it was my muscles. My sciatic nerve does do wacky things (like try to bend my calf and foot backwards into pretzels but I won’t get into that right now)…. was it that?

“Maybe it was a truck, outside, Mom.”

That’s a scary thought. For one, the trucks around here ARE very noisy and the drivers do clatter about in them. But what’s even scarier is the thought that my 1855 house would shudder from it. I remembered the condition of some of the studs when we renovated the downstairs….

“Maybe it was an earthquake.” I speculated. “Or maybe the house joists are swaying.”

He shrugged and went back to his game. I went back to my writing.

I checked the news about an hour later, and LO AND BEHOLD I was right! An earthquake, by golly! I exclaimed to him when I saw the headline!

Facebook was ablaze with chattering. Very heartily we jested, we joked.

“An earthquake wouldn’t have happened if Hillary was president!” (yeah, buddy, we’d be fire and brimstone by now)
“In retrospect, I resorted to cannibalism rather fast after the earthquake.”
“If you don’t go back to shopping then the earthquakes have already won.”

One conversation went:

Funny! But deep down we all know that if we were living on the left coast, we’d be toast right about now.

Frantic with entomophobia this morning, I ripped off the sheets with a flurry in an early morning search of the intruder. I found him. An earwig. YUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was hiding in the folds of my husband’s pillow, camouflaged well with the dark green pillowcase. At first, I panicked a little…. the monster was *THIS* close to the place on the pillow where my husband rested his head — close to my husband’s jugular vein! *breathe breathe breathe* … then I came to my senses in a blinding rush of sanity. Quickly, I grabbed a tissue to squish him…… and…  HE. WAS. GONE. Holy cow! How do these things move so fast?!

I ripped everything apart– pillows, pillow cases, coverlet, everything– and — Oh, HEY! I found a hairband, a few of Livvy’s toys, a couple nickels, and a few missing twins to my husband’s favorite socks in there! I’ve been wondering where they went to, gee….!

Oh, but THEN I saw him. Muahahahaha!

*pop*

Oh that wonderfully satisfying sound of an insect’s exoskeleton bursting it contents (my son is doing biology right now, and it’s sadistically satisfying to use all those technical terms to contribute to the demise of one of the most hated creatures on earth). Death, at last. I cackled with sheer victorious ecstasy — a little too loudly because one of the kids in the other room groaned and rolled over in bed.

What is it with earwigs in Central Upstate New York, anyway? I used to live near Lake Oneida, and never saw any earwigs. When I moved here, I saw them EVERYWHERE. On the clotheslines, in the patio furniture, under boards, beneath trash cans… and in beds. *shudder* Has there been some explosion in the earwig population since the 1970s? And why aren’t they considered a “federal noxious bug” by the United States Government?! I consider this much more lethal than that paltry hogweed problem. My leg is still smarting from the nasty sting, it feels like it’s on fire.

I hate earwigs. They are ugly, they move fast, and they like dark, moist places (whereas I prefer light, dry places). They inflict a very nasty sting and while Livvy and the dogs will chase after ants and houseflies and moths, they won’t go anywhere near an earwig.

I don't know about you, but my legs are suddenly Jell-o.....

Well, chalk up the entire experience as ANOTHER reason why I hate summer and love winter. In winter, there are NO BUGS. And the bugs we have here don’t grow into the size of dinner plates, like southern bugs. I love sub-zero temperatures, just LOVE them. As the thermometer drops lower and lower and all my neighbors are complaining about their blackening limbs and noses, I am relishing the fact that the bug eggs are all dying. Yes, those fruitless summertime endeavors by adult bugs — all gone in a glorious season of frigidity and snow! Yay, winter! Bring it on!

Can you hear it?! All those baby bugs screaming in algific agony?! MUAHAHHAHA!!!!

The website is GeekAlerts.com. Isn’t that such a cool name??? GeekAlerts shows the best of the best geek gadgets, but don’t think they limit themselves to stuff for geeks. Some of the gifts are very practical, and others are outright hilarious! These are some of my favorites:

This is a waterproof iPad case. It’s perfect to wrap your iPad into if you are going to the beach, hiking in the woods, etc. I love it! GeekAlerts.com also has a long list of Apple Store promo code for Apple products. I wish I’d known about this site when I got my iPad.

The site also features a whole bunch of other iPad cases. I absolutely loved this one– it’s a wall-mount case! I could definitely use it because I like to watch the weather and news in the kitchen, but I hate having the iPad on the counter (I’m a rather sloppy cook). I love this case!

OK, THIS is for the GEEK. I don’t know what it is about bloggers and bacon, but there’s some kind of running gag with bacon this and bacon that. I’ve even seen bacon-flavored chapstick and sneakers that look like bacon, etc. Very funny! How about giving the resident geek some bacon-flavored toothpaste?

These cookie cutters are SO COOL. If I had any gumption to throw a big birthday bash for my sons, I’d get these and we’d have cookies instead of cake. I’d let the boys decorate their own cookies. It would keep the little urchins busy for HOURS, muahahaha!!

This is PERFECT for Father’s Day! I can’t believe I am late in finding this site. It’s a “bulletproof” USB key ring. No pansy plastic for the DAD. This is what I’m talking ’bout!

I could go on and on about all the quirky and delightful things they showcase. I think it’s a great place to get ideas for unique gifts. GeekAlert.com also has loads of coupons, including a page for ThinkGeek coupons for the “uber geek.”

It’s fun to peruse the gadget ideas. I think I am going to get that iPad case!