ANYWAY. We watched “Lawrence of Arabia” instead. Not exactly Christmasy but it’s a good, epic movie after all. It was either that or “The Incredibles” or “Drive Thru History” and as much as I love those movies, we’ve seen them a billion times and wouldn’t have met our festive mood. Then again, “Lawrence of Arabia” is not exactly a “festive” movie (rather sad at the end) but SINCE I COULDN’T FIND MY BEN HUR MOVIE IT WAS ALL I HAD! Gah! :gangpunch:

ANYWAY. How I do ramble on….

So I cooked up a nice big meal and we relaxed and I played Words With Friends, a new online game I discovered. It’s so much fun!!! If you want to play with me, look me up. I’m RebeMecomber.

I also slacked off and wasted time on Facebook and LOLCats. Which reminds me, I found some really cute and funny photos to share. I have been saving them for a special occasion and seeing that we’re all still in our pajamas and slacking off in front of the computers, I guess now is as good a time as any.

The evolution of the mailbox.

Needless to say, both my sons want one….

Uh.  :blink:

I took a screenshot of this with my phone. I was reading an e-book and found this image. Whoopsie!

P.S. They make thumb grippies in hot pink, now?

*snort* So dumb it’s funny.

Admit it, you know you do it, too.

Found this photo on my iPod. HAHA! Looks like the kids discovered the camera feature.

So how about you? Did anything funny or interesting happen to you for the holidays?

We visited Howe Caverns in Cobleskill, NY. It was fabulous.

Photo taking was tough. The place is dimly lit and my great lack of photography skills is showing….

We went on a boat ride on an underground lake!

The beautiful Schoharie Valley.

OK, enough photos, lol. I’ll be posting about the amazing Howe Caverns as well as narrating some of our usual crazy and quirky stories that always seem to be happening with us…..

Questions:

1. I really need to clean my _________?

Um… house. :duncehat:

2. What food makes you think of Christmas?

Anything cinnamon. I sometimes boil potpourri with cinnamon sticks to manufacture that nice nostalgic Christmas-y feel.

3. If you could choose to stay a certain age forever, what age would it be?

Tough one. I guess, like everyone, I’d like my 18-year old body back but I’d like to keep my 40+ wisdom, experience, and temperance. Funny how when we’re young (mid 20s) we think we are SO mature, SO experienced. Get to 40 and that’s nothing, baby. NOTHING.

4. What was your first paying job?

When I was a kid, my stepdad needed nails picked up from the driveway. He’d renovated a big barn and had scattered a ton of old nails around the property. No one wanted to do it. So my stepdad said he’d pay us a penny a nail. That was very inspirational, and me and my brothers went out to do it. The boys gave up after a day, as it was late October and bitterly, bitterly cold. I still remember that extremely painful feeling of my fingers freezing from clawing the mud for old nails. I was determined to make some cash (it was scarce and we never got allowance money back then). After a few days of my persistent digging and running into the house to thaw my hands and then running back out to dig again, my stepdad felt sorry for me and gave me a huge horseshoe-shaped magnet to collect nails. I tied a string to it and swung the magnet back and forth. I think I eventually got every bitty nail in the yard. I can’t remember how much money I got, maybe around $5.

5. Have you read the Twilight series?

Nope. I never will. Right now I’m reading a biography about William the Marshal, a medieval dude who served as regent to a few kings of England. It’s cool!

Have a great week, friends!

To celebrate my new Internet speed, I’m uploading a gadzillion photos that I’ve collected from my pals around the web, and placing them here for you to chuckle over them. Have a great weekend, my friends.

They should have these t-shirts for moms, too. Although it should say “Claw the eyes out of the first one, and word will spread.”

HOW did they DO this?

LOVE IT.

:Jawdrop: Helloooo, didn’t Christ rise from the dead and make us more than conquerors???

Sometimes words are worth a thousand pictures.

Look very closely at this photo. Now, is that cool or what?!

Amen! Woohooo!

Amen again!

On this vein (of the photo below), I never understood the popularity of the game “Guitar Hero.” Why spend thousands of dollars on a game and *pretend* to play guitar when you can get a simple instrument for $75 and PLAY THE REAL THING. Without using ANY electricity! Baffles my mind….. LOL

I own this cup. Isn’t it so totally cool?! It’s my favorite coffee mug and I got it at Fort Ticonderoga this summer.

Have fun, friends. Thanks for hanging in there while I was away.

Believe it or not, I have even MORE to show ya! I’ll have to create another post for that one. Have a great weekend, my friends!

Here’s the original image:

This is the “Albumen” effect, a method of photography from 1855 to 1890s. Notice how the clouds are almost completely washed away.

The next is “Platinum,” from 1873 to 1920. This type of photography used real sheets of platinum. It was a very expensive process, and therefore abandoned in favor of other methods. The lines are very crispy and clear, though– I like that.

This is “Box Camera,” from 1900 to 1960s, an example of the typical box cameras at that time.

The next one is “Early Color Autochrome” developed from 1904 (initially) and onward.

This is more like photos I remember from my very young years– the 1960s. Paint Shop Pro calls it “Cross Process.”

I don’t for sure which one I like. Maybe “Early Color Autochrome.” It’s grainy and has an almost tangible texture to it.

By far, my favorite photo of our trip is this image. It was taken early in the morning as we drove across the Adirondacks toward the high peaks to the east. I think it’s stunning.

I just CAN’T WAIT to go back!!!

BWAHAHAHAHA!!! That Labs photo cracked me UP! Some folks are so funny. And it disproved my theory that LOL Dogs photos are not funny. This one is the BEST.

The next photo, of a newspaper clipping, is really hard to believe that it’s true. Everyone freaks out over an Amazon box?!?

This next photo was titled “humor_evolution” but I think “devolution” is more appropriate. It’s hilarious, but it’s also pitifully sad. How civilization has fallen!

I took this next photo at a local store. It’s “Ollies” store. I don’t know if the store is unique to my area or if they are national. The place is a disaster, with products sloppily shelved everywhere, but the store itself is very personable and the prices are good. They sell everything! Well, almost everything– not picnic catering nj or picnic catering ny… but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did that, eventually. They have all sorts of really funny posters and store signs all over the walls. This one I found totally hilarious!!! Bwahahahaha!!

And this is just a neato cell phone wallpaper background that I found. I like it. :D

This is what the LORD says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.” Isaiah 18:4

Red cabbage from my garden. I am DEFINITELY quiet and looking from my dwelling place. I think we weeded the vegetable garden twice this year… :eek: I harvested most of the dregs of the cabbage already. I was surprised to see this one. It’s pretty, I think. I like the color, and the leaves are waxy. The plant shimmers in the frosty dew and morning sunshine. It’s beautiful to me.

Find more beautiful things at A Glimpse of Beautiful!

There’s a collection of 160 such photos at Metromix. Wow!!

Yes, that’s the weird humor of my kids!

I asked my daughter if she would go outside and snap some photos for my photo blog, I Love New York Travel. I have been woefully negligent in taking photos for it (it’s very time consuming). My daughter LOVES to take photos, so she enthusiastically agreed! She and the boys went outside to play in the snow, and they came up with some “action shots” for the blogs.

Ummmm….

ROFL.

The photos are a little… graphic… but at least the kids didn’t spill fake blood onto the snow or have fake body parts strewn about. We live in town, this would have been too much for the neighbors, and they think we are weird enough as it is, already. LOL.

I like her style. What do you think, should I keep her as a stand-in photographer? ;)

Click the next photo and “All Sizes” for a larger, spectacular view of the dragonfly. They are so lovely, so wonderfully made! I’ve never seen a red one before. I tried warming the critter by holding my warm mug of tea close to his body. He remained in my son’s hand. Finally, I told my son to place him in a sheltered spot in the garden.

Do dragonflies fly south for the winter? I don’t think so… chilly weather is here, so I suspect that the poor bug’s days are numbered. He was beautiful.

Dragonflies are good for the garden– they eat mosquitoes, flies, and ants. I looked up “dragonfly” at Wikipedia to learn a little more about them. This was interesting:

In Europe, dragonflies have often been seen as sinister. Some English vernacular names, such as “devil’s darning needle” and “ear cutter”, link them with evil or injury. A Romanian folk tale says that the dragonfly was once a horse possessed by the devil. Swedish folklore holds that the devil uses dragonflies to weigh people’s souls. Another Swedish legend holds that trolls use the dragonflies as spindles when weaving their clothes (hence the Swedish word for dragonfly trollslända, lit. “troll’s spindle”) as well as sending them to poke out the eyes of their enemies. The Norwegian name for dragonflies is “Øyenstikker”, which literally means Eye Poker and in Portugal they are sometimes called “Tira-olhos” (Eye snatcher).

They are often associated with snakes, as in the Welsh name gwas-y-neidr, “adder’s servant”. The Southern United States term “snake doctor” refers to a folk belief that dragonflies follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they are injured. The Lithuanian word “Laum žirgis” is a composite word meaning “the Lauma’s horse”, while in Dutch, Aeshna mixta is called “Paardenbijter” or “horse biter”. In some South American countries, dragonflies are also called matacaballo (horse killer), or caballito del diablo (devil’s little horse), since they were perceived as harmful, some species being quite large for an insect.

In East Asia and among Native Americans, dragonflies have a far better reputation, one that can also be said to have positively influenced modern day views about dragonflies in most countries, in the same vein as the insect’s namesake, the dragon, which has a positive image in the east,[citation needed] but initially had an association with evil in the west.

The bug that visited us is either the Vagrant Darter or the Common Darter. They are native to Eurasia and are “on the wing” until November or December. Autumns and winters are much colder here than in Eurasia, so I suspect his days are numbered any time now. Dragonflies are amazing! But some species can grow to be enormous– several inches. So it’s no wonder some people are afraid of them.