Olympic Weekend

We had a crazy sports weekend, running from one athletic event to the next. Friends of ours have a superstar daughter who plays volleyball, basketball, soccer, track, etc. This weekend she had a volleyball tournament so we ran to Harrisburg to watch her play. Then Sunday both Ty and G had soccer games. I think we were just about blown to pieces during the games. I have some video of the girls that I need to edit yet but in the mean time, enjoy these pics.

And my personal favorite shot from the weekend....
"Winnie the Pooh as Goalkeep"

P.S. The cute little brunette is my niece Eeyore (a.k.a Winnie the Pooh the Goalkeep).

Who gave me this link???

This is insane. Someone (I think it was Velda) linked me to an online riddle. I'm consumed.

Click. Obsess.

Review: The Inside Man

In the Inside Man, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) has come up with the perfect bank robbery but nothing is what it seems and it's up to Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) to figure it all out before it's too late. Jodie Foster makes an appearance but wasn't in the movie quite as much as I had expected she would be.

This is what I call a "brain movie." It's not packed from one end to the other with action, but instead with intrigue. And while the movie answers all the questions I might have asked, there is still a feeling of "What happens next?" even as the credits are rolling. I believe Steve may have even said, "That's it?"

All in all, it was a good movie. We were only slightly disappointed in the ending.

Purple Turtle

Just thought these were a couple of cute pics. After I set up the first row, she followed the pattern and completed the turtle with no help from me.

Unconscious Mutterings 10/30/06

1. Costume :: Party


2. Beg :: Dog
   


3. Hottie :: E (she asks, "When am I going to be a hottie?")


4. Celebrity :: Brad Pitt


5. Saturday :: Sleep


6. Buckle :: Belt


7. Doorbell :: Ding Dong


8. Rude :: Obnoxious


9. Absence :: School
   


10. Hyper :: Active

The Peanut Comes for a Visit

Like I said in an earlier post, E has been lonely and bored so Mel and I arranged for my niece, Peanut to come for a visit. E and Peanut are the very best of friends and are always genuinely happy to see each other and so they were both very excited about the visit. I confess after working last night, I snoozed through a good bit of the morning but when their tummies woke up around noon we headed out to MickeyD's as a treat.

The Toys du Jour at McD's are ballerina Barbie figurines. This generated a lot of amusing four year old play, including the Ballet Fight. However I nearly snorted my Minute Maid Light Lemonade right through my nose when Peanut's ballerina Barbie said to E's ballerina Barbie,

He Thinks He's So Funny

Last night I had a total panic moment. G and E were outside playing with the neighbors, S3 was upstairs messing around, Ty was at the table working on his Math homework and I was in the kitchen trying to simultaneously cook dinner and Navajo Fry Bread. Suddenly I remembered SOCCER PRACTICE! As if we haven't had soccer practice every single day for nearly two months, I completely forgot. Worse than that, it was the second day in a row I forgot.

I left S3 home to keep an eye on my hot oil and drove like mad to get Ty to practice. He was late but I couldn't stay because I had both S3 and hot oil at home. So I went back home to finish the Fry Bread and realized when I got home again that I needed to turn around and go pick Ty back up. Ugh. Anyway, you can guess by the time I got done running around like a headless chicken, I was feeling a little overwhelmed.

I ended up working last night and as I left I asked Steve to please, please, please make sure Ty took the Fry Bread to school with him today because I was going to be really unhappy if I'd gone through all that just for the bag to sit on the dining room table. Of course it was the first thing I asked when I got home (the kids are all off on the bus by the time I get home in the morning). Steve looks at me with the correct amount of horror and sorrow on his face and he says, "OH NO!"

I got about two seconds into my freak-out when he started laughing and told the truth. The Fry Bread was safely in Ty's bag on it's way to HPBA. Thanks for the adrenaline rush hon.

That's It. I'm Convinced.

I had a new resident last night. Everyone warned me about this man. They said he's nasty. They said he throws punches. They said he's confused and makes no sense. They said he spaces out when you talk to him. He did none of these things for me. He was lucid, he was pleasant and he even kissed me on the cheek when I left this morning.

I'm 100% convinced now that it's all in the approach. Some of these aides treat the residents like dirt. It's horrible and sad and then they wonder why the residents get mean. Well they're never mean to me, ever. Even the really bad ones are usually pretty good for me. I think it's because I move slow and I speak to them with respect.

I know because they're so helpless that it's easy to think of them as manipulative children rather than the 80, 90 and even 100 year olds that they are. I also know that there aren't enough aides and rushing to get done is part of the job. However I usually let the resident set their own pace and I still manage to get my work finished. And I usually get a smile, a thank you and a hug for my efforts. For me, that's what makes the job worth having.

Ok, I'm off my soap box now.

Peepbol Who Need Peepbol

We've had to give up daycare for now since we decided I would work a lot less than I had been. It was never supposed to be a full time job but unfortunately in the heathcare profession there is a high turnover and even though I'm a flex worker, I found myself being called in quite often. The house and my family were suffering for all the work so we have decided to cut back. Unfortunately that means daycare has gone from being expensive to being unaffordable.

E has gotten used to a lot of activity and tons of playmates so I think sometimes she's bored here at home with me. Yesterday she expressed a desire to paint with "waterpaint" so we headed out to the Rag Shop and bought some art stuff. I think she painted for four hours straight. That has to be the best five bucks I ever spent. When it was time to clean up for dinner, I looked through her sketchbook. She wrote this all on her own. I don't know how she knew to sound out the word but it's obvious to me I need to get her a "Learn to Read" book.

Ty and the Navajo Part Two

The report was written and information for the oral report was collected so the only thing left to do on the Navajo project was to create a poster board containing at least four sections of information (transportation, home, clothes and where in the US they lived). When S3 did this project, being the first child and all, I bought a piece of chamois that he drew on and we glued handmade dolls with handmade clothes and it looked amazing. Ty being the second child got a piece of poster board and paper dolls with paper clothes. I have no idea what that means for poor G and E. Maybe by the time we get to E's Navajo project we'll just turn in air and say, "You've seen a Navajo poster board from three other sibs. Just imagine their projects combined and grade me on that."




I took this picture to prove that I didn't do the whole project by myself although if I'm going to be honest, I think this was more of a family project than any other. G colored the paper dolls, Dad made the Hogan (see below), S3 helped collect information and Auntie M explained Navajo three-ply yarn and gave us examples.





I sat down with the toilet paper roll, a handful of popsicle sticks, scissors and my glue gun and very quickly realized that making a partial three-dimension Hogan was beyond my spatial relation abilities. Dad had to take over.








So as he's walking out the door with his Navajo poster board this morning he says to me, "This is cool. I didn't have to have this part turned in until I give my oral report. Now I'm done early."


His oral report is on Friday. God save me, I am not going to survive this child.

Mr. Fix-It

Ty is Mr. Fix-It. The kid has been performing small home repairs since he was about two years old when he took his sister's doorknob off her door. I used to have to hide the screwdrivers from him. When G was born, Ty was about 18 months old. My mother came to the hospital to visit and when she sat in the rocker with G, it wouldn't move. Ty got down on his hands and knees and it took him less than 15 seconds to figure out what the problem was. He could barely talk but he fixed the rocking chair at the hospital.

So yesterday Ty and I went to my sister's house so she could demonstrate to us how clever the Navajo are in the way they spin and ply yarn (it's very cool!). I took my camera so that we could watch the video before he has to give his oral report. The theory is that it'll keep the information fresh in his brain. For the purposes of speed (she had a monkey to get back to), Mel was using a regular wheel to demonstrate rather than a drop spindle so it wasn't exactly the same way the Navajo would have done it, but we got the jist.

I managed to catch a Mr. Fix-It moment on video. Keep in mind he's never seen a spinning wheel before.


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Warning: New eBay Email Scam

Well, new to me anyway. Steve just sent me a copy of this email he received. It's a Phish
to try to get his credit card information. Be careful my friends!

Amazing News About "Dilbert"

One of the gals on my playgroup board linked me to Scott Adams' blog. He has an amazing story about losing his voice. It's longish but fascinating and well worth the read. For those that don't know, S. Adams is the creator of the office cartoon, Dilbert.

A nurse friend of mine (also on the playgroup board) said many people after having a stroke are only able to speak in rhyme and because the people around them don't understand what is going on, they think the person is just babbling. I have noticed many of the residents where I work tend to like to rhyme and some only ever rhyme. One woman I occassionally take care of has had a stroke and can still speak although she stutters sometimes in the effort to get her words out. But at the end of every sentence, she rhymes. She says things like, "I want to go to bed, head, red."

The brain is a fascinating thing.

Review: Lucky Number SLeven

Lucky Number SLeven is about a case of mistaken identity. SLeven has a very bad day culminating in finding his girlfriend in bed with another man. He contacts his friend Nick who invites SLeven to come stay with him in New York until he can get back on his feet. Unfortunately SLeven is mugged on the way to Nick's apartment and once he gets there, things just get worse. Nick's apartment is empty but some Mob thugs mistake SLeven (who now has no ID) for Nick who owes them $90,000. The mob boss agrees to erase the debt if SLeven will participate in murder.

I thought it was a great movie! Some of the plot twists are predictable but it didn't detract from the enjoyment of the movie for me. I will warn you, in typical "Mob Movie" fashion, there is a lot of graphic violence and over-usage of the Fword.

Awesome cast includes: Josh Hartnet, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Morgan Freeman and Sir Ben Kingsley.

Ty and the Navajo

Ty has a Native American report/project due Wednesday. He's had it since the beginning of the school year but has done nothing to work on it until last Friday. I did all the research, printed out the pages, highlighted and labeled the information and all he had to do for the written part of the project was read the info and write it over in his words.

Last night I looked at what he'd gotten done over the last three days. He copied the highlighted information word-for-word. I really thought I was going to have to kill him. I added "Pack bags for when they come to arrest you for murder" on my To-Do list.

So I sat at the computer, read a section of information to him and had him dictate to me what that information meant in his own words which I then typed. Today I have to work on the display board and gather the information for his oral report.

Gee, I sure hope I get an "A" on my Navajo project.

Name Change

Ok so the day I created my blog I was having a creative brain burp and "The Secret Life of an Insane Soccer Mom" was the best I could do. I gotta tell ya, it's been annoying the stink out of me that I used the word "Secret" in the title of a blog that is anything but. This morning while I was pouring my second cup of coffee it occurred to me that I could call my blog "Confessions of an Insane Soccer Mom" and it would be much more accurate.

So there you have it. "Confessions of an Insane Soccer Mom" it is.

Unconscious Mutterings 10/23/06

1. Stuff :: Junk


2. Block :: Hide


3. Ingredient :: Recipe


4. Flagrant :: Disregard


5. Dandruff :: Flake


6. Betty :: Boop


7. Tide :: Laundry


8. Judges :: Joshua


9. Take it easy :: Song


10. Chef :: Allen

God Speaks to G

Yesterday while I was pressing my skirt for church, G came in the room and started her usual chattering. On most occasions I admit I only listen with half an ear - believe me that girl can talk! - but this time she caught my full attention with a question. She wanted to know what language I thought God uses in heaven. She wondered if He speaks English or Spanish or what.

I told her that I didn't really know but that I thought maybe it was a language we may only be able to understand once we're there. Her reply?

"Maybe it's Pig Latin."

Bug Hunt Part Two

Last night S3 and I were up in the office with the hot glue gun, the bugs still in bags and the printed labels we'd made. I didn't want him to use the hot glue gun without supervision so even though I can't imagine anything worse than hot gluing dead bugs to pieces of paper, I stayed to help.

We started with the smaller bugs, the ones I felt I could handle being around like lady bugs, mosquitos and gnats. When we moved onto the bees and moths I shuddered a little but we saved the best for last. Some of those bugs did not go into the next world in a happy way. Two of them were downright juicy. Two of them were just large and gross looking.

When S3 would pull out a particularly nasty bug I would whoop and hollar and make all kinds of noise about how disgusting it was. From downstairs I started hearing an echo. Ty was sitting at the dining room table at the bottom of the stairs working on his Navajo project and making fun of me. Every time I would screetch about the nastiness of a bug I heard Ty imitate me in a falsetto, "Eww! Ugh! Oh! Yuck!" S3 was crying he was laughing so hard. I think he peed himself a little when he accidentally dropped the stick bug and I screamed, jumped 20 feet in the air and shoved the chair to the other side of the room.

But we managed to finish it and he's expecting an A.

Walk This Way

Video of my nephew - known online as "the Boy" - with a little extra energy at the soccer game today. Thank you for all the joy nephew!

Lost: Wedding Band

A lot of you who know me know that I lost a lot of weight a couple of years ago - almost 100 pounds. I didn't manage to hit my goal weight however and since then I've put some of that weight back on. Anyway one of the biggest changes that I noticed was in my wedding band. It's entirely too large for my finger now. I don't want to have it resized since I'm not to my goal weight and I don't want to have them cut the band too often. So it's been safely nestled in my jewelry box waiting for the day when I wear it again.

Today I decided that I wanted to wear it just for the day so I put it on and went on my merry way. Much, much later in the day I looked down at my hands and noticed that my ring was G.O.N.E. gone!!! I was totally freaked out because I had been to so many places today, including the hairdresser to get S3's hair cut (whole 'nuther story). I tore the house apart, pulled my pockets inside out and dumped my purse out onto the floor.

I was crying when I finally decided to pray that God would let me find my ring and then I sat down to work on a video of my nephew that I knew would cheer me up (whole 'nuther story). A little while later Steve came home and when I told him the story, Ty overheard. I was crying again and started to dump my purse out on the floor again when I heard Ty call, "I found it!" He'd done a slow, careful search up the steps and into the office while I was crying to Steve and there it was on the floor in the doorway.

Thank you God and thank you Ty!

Visit with Mamaw and Papaw

Yesterday we had a nice day visiting with Steve's grandparents, Mamaw and Papaw. They're snowbirds and early next month they'll be heading to Florida for the winter. Mamaw made Chicken N' Dumplins and Papaw pulled out the tractor and wagon. S3 was thrilled to have wheels, even if they'd only go 2 mph.

(Cell phone photo, sorry for the poor quality)

Mamaw gave me a "cheater's" version of chicken n' dumplins knowing that I am not much of a cook. I'll share it with you:

First take chicken on the bone and boil it in just enough water (you can also use broth) to cover the chicken. Once it's cooked (about 30 minutes usually), take the chicken out of the water but don't throw away all the water. When you drain some of the water out, try to keep the fatty parts. Debone the chicken and dice it up into chunks. I make them bite sized since I still have little kids. Keeps me from having to cut them up later at dinner time. Throw the diced up chicken back into the pot and then make dumplins. Now Mamaw doesn't make bisquick dumplins but she knows I don't cook so she decided this would be easiest and be the most like what she makes.

Bisquick Dumplins:
3/4 cup milk
2 cups Bisquick

Mix milk and Bisquick thoroughly with fork. Drop by spoonsful onto chicken. Cook over low heat for 10 minutes or until dumplins are fluffy. The starch in the dumplins thickens the water in the chicken into gravy. You can also add potatoes but I prefer them without. Season to taste.

I Heart Wolverine

Hurrah! I've just read that Hugh Jackman is planning a solo Wolverine movie. It's to be a prequel to the X-Men movies. One article quoted Jackman as saying, “I don’t want this to feel like X-Men 4. I want this movie to be different in feel. I don’t want it to feel like we’re just flogging a dead horse.”

Read more about the Wolverine movie on VH1.com and Comicbookmovie.com.

Personally, I'm guessing it'll be a bomb since these things usually are (e.g. The Scorpion King, Catwoman, Speed 2 just to name a few) but it won't keep me from watching it. Especially if we get to see Hugh without his shirt again. Whoa baby!

Mirabilia's South Sea Mermaid

Mirabilia has released a new mermaid. I didn't post this on the cross stitch board because I know a lot of people are big fans of Mira (frankly so am I) and I didn't want to get flamed. However much I like Mira's I can't resist this comment.

Doesn't she look like she's sniffing to see if her deodorant is working? (click the pic to see her larger)

Fuzzy Wuzzy Was A Bear

This morning I was still in my nightgown sitting in my rocking chair, drinking coffee and watching for the school bus while everyone scrambled around getting their things ready. E was hovering around me looking a little indecisive. Since it looked to me a little bit like she'd like to sit on my lap and rock with me I asked her, "Do you want me to pick you up?"

She replied, "No thank you. You're too prickly."

Project Runway Finale!

Well, what did you think???

Personally I wasn't surprised at all, especially not after seeing their entire collections.

Click here to see Jeffrey's collection.

Click here to see Laura's collection.

Click here to see Uli's collection.

Click here to see Michael's collection.

Really if you think about their collections and you think about what the judges were looking for, you wouldn't be shocked either.

First of all, Michael just totally bombed. I don't know what he was thinking. On another blog I was reading someone sardonically commented that his gold lame bathing suit looked like a yeast infection waiting to happen. I was very disappointed with his collection but after seeing Daniel V do something very similar last season, I wasn't completely shocked. I think as a designer both Daniel V and Michael just need a little time to come into their own.

Uli and Laura fall into the same category for me: beautiful clothes that any woman would want to own and wear. Will they make it as designers? Absolutely. I can see an exclusive department store or boutique carrying their lines. But is that what the judges were looking for? Obviously not.

Jeffrey was a total jerk throughout the show. He said nasty things and he behaved poorly. For that we don't like him. However his personality can not sway the critique of his abilities as a designer. Think of him this way... He is an artist, not a clothing maker. His canvases are his clothing. His clothes, while they weren't something that might be worn by the average woman, they were new, they were unique, and they were well made. Everything the judges were looking for in a Project Runway winner.

Congratulations Jeffrey! I was cheering for you all along.

Review: Le Papillon & The Lake House

Le Papillon (the Butterfly) is a story about an old man, Julien who collects butterflies and a child who is neglected by her mother. Else, the little girl, stows away in Julien's car and they end up bonding while hunting the rare Isabella butterfly across the French countryside. I was nervous at times when the story would flash back to the mother because she and the police felt that Else had been abducted and I worried that Julien would end up in trouble once they returned home. Without giving anything away, the story ended leaving me feeling satisfied and happy. It is in French with English subtitles which I know is off-putting to some people but it really was such a genuinely sweet movie, it's worth putting up with the subtitles. Hollywood doesn't seem to know how to make a flim like this.



Now The Lake House. This movie made me think of a mixture of Love Letters and The Butterfly Effect. It's the story of a couple who meet across the span of time - two years to be exact - through their letters that are left in the mailbox at the lake house where they've both lived at some point. I figured out pretty early on what was going on and I worried that I was watching a movie with a lousy ending but yet again without giving anything away the story left me feeling satisfied and happy. I'm sure there are people out there who could pick the reality of the story to pieces, finding flaws and contradictions everywhere but really it's a nice romantic story and well worth the two hours.

Super S Cubed

Last night we came home to a quiet, dark house. I set the kids to getting their school things together including packing their lunch for the next day. Ty called to me from the kitchen, "Um Mom, we have a problem!"

As it turns out, we managed to catch a mouse while we were out. I didn't even know there was a trap set. My first thought was that we were going to be doing a lot of eating out because NO WAY was I going in that kitchen with the dead mouse.

But then I asked S3 if he thought he could handle the disposal if he scooped it up in a plastic grocery bag. He replied, full of confidence, "No problem." And sure enough, he managed to get rid of the dead mouse easily. My Hero! Moments like that make me so glad to have a pre-teen boy.

Speaking of pre-teens, I was marveling to myself when I got the mail today. We've lived in this house for about eight years now, since S3 was three years old. Wayne has been our mailman ever since day one. We used to get Nick Jr. Magazine then it was the Lego Magazine. Now we get Game Informer and CCS. I wonder sometimes if Wayne looks at what he's delivering and marvels at the growing up being done in our house. I know I sure do!

The Great Shoe Hunt

G wears a dress as her uniform for school so I like to put a little dressier shoe on her. The first year I bought a rubber soled Mary Jane thinking she could wear it for gym also. I know I spent a pretty penny making sure they were good sturdy shoes only to find out they wouldn't let her wear them - something about her ankle. So ever since I have been on a hunt to find a sneaker that doesn't look so stupid with a dress. The Mennonite (Amish-like religion) girls in this area wear sneakers with their dresses and I detest the way it looks. Tonight I found out the girls are allowed to wear Crocks for gym class. This to me is a total load of BS. I am just beside myself that they can wear an open back piece of plastic crap on their feet for gym but not a sturdy rubber-soled shoe.

I digress.

Tonight we found a Sketcher that was kinda cute and I thought it might work. So I find a sales guy and I could tell from my first look at him that we were about to have an experience. The guy looked pretty normal but I just got that freak vibe from him.

I handed him the shoe and told him that I didn't know what size G would need and I asked him if he would measure her foot. His response?

"It won't do any good."

I was like...

So he says, "I can measure her foot but these things can be off by an entire size so it won't do any good."

I'm thinking, ok Loser if you say so. I won't mention that this has been the accepted way to measure a foot at least since I was a kid and I'm sure a lot longer than that. But I didn't say that. Instead I said, "Ok if you want to bring out this shoe in every size, that's fine but I don't know what size shoe she wears."

So he commences the foot measurer thingie hunt. He hunts and hunts and hunts. Finally I cried uncle and I had G take off her soccer cleat and look inside. "Look, it's a 1.5. Let's just start there."

With a massive look of relief on his face, he runs to the back with the shoe to find our starting size. In the mean time S3 looks under the chair he's sitting in and pulls out the measurer thingie. Ty walks to the chairs across from us and pulls out a second one. Doh.

After a few minutes the guy comes back out and says, "Do you have a backup plan?"

Again I was like...

He says, "This shoe only starts at a 2.5. Do you have a backup plan?"

I'm thinking, yes to get the heck out of here Loser but instead I said, "No, thank you." We walked to the other end of the mall where there is a Sears and bought the exact shoe in G's size.

Bike Ride

The other day I let the boys ride their bikes down to my grandfather's place. I was a nervous wreck the whole time but it not only went without a hitch, they also really enjoyed visiting with Gramps (and all the other residents). So when "The Boy" was over yesterday I sent the three of them down to visit again. I'm not sure if it's the being spoiled by all the grandmas and grandpas or if it's the bike ride they like better. Anyway Ty took his camera and other than a few silly pics of the gutter, they took these two nice photos.

Fall Soccer 2006

This is the definition of an insane soccer mom. I spent hours making this. It's about four minutes long.

Highlight from G's Sunday Game

I thought G must have been cold on Sunday because she is usually a tearin' up the field, non-stop, pushing, shoving, ball hog, aggressive girl but yesterday she was way more sluggish than usual. All that aside, my girl can take a hit. Check her out.

Being a girl ROCKS!

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Popsicle Ty

Today it was obvious to Eileen the bus driver that I'm not usually in charge of getting the kids off to school. Really I'm usually still at work at this point and even when I'm home I'm not up. Today the bus came. S3 was down practicing grinds on the sidewalk so he wasn't ready. G's fingernail polish was still wet so she couldn't carry any of her things and Ty, well, Ty was doing what Ty does best. Hiding.

The bus pulled up and we did the frantic "BUS!" scramble but still Ty did not show up. I was running around the house yelling, "Ty! Ty!" until finally he came running down the stairs, grabbed his lunch and bag and started running down the front step to the bus.

With no jacket.

In 36° weather.

I yelled at him to get his jacket and also in typical Ty fashion, he started his lovely screechy whine, "But I don't know where it iiiiiiiisssssss......" I hunted for it until I saw Eileen closing the bus doors and I told him he was just going to have to go.

Recess is not going to be fun today for Popsicle Ty.

S3 vs. Calvary

Had another game out inTimbuktu tonight. The boys ended up losing 2 -1 in the 37th minute (keep in mind they play 25 minute halves). It was tied most of the game but lost due to a penalty kick. The kid from Calvary had a beautiful shot. Unfortunately my camera batteries gave out around the 30th minute. G & E's bladders gave out around the 23rd minute.

Only one more game and S3's season is over. He tells me he has signed up for basketball.











On the ride home, someone asked for the light to be turned on. In the rear view mirror out of the corner of my eye I saw E coming up with a very handy little trick to reach the overhead light.














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Monk-E-Mail

Check out the email my son sent me tonight after I showed him the Weird Al video:


Monk-E-Mail

Weird Al's "White and Nerdy"

Ah, for all the dorks in my life...

The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize Winners

From the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
PO Box 380853, Cambridge, MA 02238 USA
617-491-4437 FAX:617-661-0927

Here are the new Ig Nobel Prize winners. Nearly all the winners came to the ceremony. Seven Nobel Laureates handed out the Ig Nobel Prizes.
For details, see:

• The winners (and references)
• The ceremony
• Video of same

ORNITHOLOGY-------------
Ivan R. Schwab, of University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don't get headaches.

NUTRITION-------------
Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority, for showing that dung beetles are finicky eaters.

PEACE-------------
Howard Stapleton of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, for inventing an electromechanical teenager repellant -- a device that makes annoying noise designed to be audible to teenagers but not to adults; and for later using that same technology to make telephone ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not to their teachers.

ACOUSTICS-------------
D. Lynn Halpern (of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, and Brandeis University, and Northwestern University), Randolph Blake (of Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University) and James Hillenbrand (of Western Michigan University and Northwestern
University) for conducting experiments to learn why people dislike the sound of fingernails scraping on a blackboard.

MATHEMATICS-------------
Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.

LITERATURE-------------
Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University for his report "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of
Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly."

MEDICINE-------------
Francis M. Fesmire of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, for his medical case report "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage"; and Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan, and Arie Oliven of Bnai Zion Medical Center, Haifa, Israel, for their subsequent medical case report also titled "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage."

PHYSICS-------------
Basile Audoly and Sebastien Neukirch of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris, for their insights into why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.

CHEMISTRY-------------
Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito and José Bon of the University of Valencia, Spain, and Carmen Rosselló of the University of Illes Balears, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for their study "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature."

BIOLOGY-------------
Bart Knols (of Wageningen Agricultural University, in Wageningen, the Netherlands; and of the National Institute for Medical Research, in Ifakara Centre, Tanzania, and of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna Austria) and Ruurd de Jong (of Wageningen Agricultural University and of Santa Maria degli Angeli, Italy) for showing that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.

Pink Seed Bead Necklace

This was a new technique to me and one that I basically taught myself. It's really very sparkly in person. I guess I'll have to find something to wear with it. I don't think it's going to go with a tshirt.

Bug Hunt

My eldest child, a handsome boy of 12 years, has a particularly nasty school project coming due here soon. A bug collection. 25 bugs. At first I was flabbergasted that there even are twenty-five different bugs (keep in mind that a moth only counts once even if they're different kinds of moths) but now I realize that there are bugs everywhere. Ok, I have to stop thinking about it now.

Anyway, whenever I see a bug, I try to be brave for my child's sake and capture the creature to later be stored in my freezer (oh what a joy to go for some ice cream and have frozen bugs in ziplocs cascade out toward you). Last night at work I found a large black bug skittering down the hallway. I grabbed a plastic cup from the med cart and dropped it on the bug. Later the med nurse handed me a lid and I managed to swallow down my bile and scoop up the nasty little bugger. The med nurse said to me, "It's always interesting working with you Sara." Well I tried to keep this bug cup stored inconspicuously back behind the nurses' station but everyone at some point noticed and commented.

The family of one of our residents brought in a delicious Amish Friendship Breadfor the caregivers on 11 - 7 (which was incredibly thoughtful because we are the most forgotten shift) and I was shocked as every single one of my coworkers stated that they did not know what Amish Friendship Bread is. Shocked I tell you. For pity's sake, most of them grew up around Amish country. So I explained that it is a type of bread batter that is kept in a baggie or a bowl and it is fed every so often. After a few weeks, the bread batter is divided into three - one part to keep, one part to bake and one part to give to a friend. My friend C laughed and said, "You feed it? What on earth do you feed bread?"

Straight faced I answered, "Bugs. Why did you think I wanted to collect that one over there?"

Ah, the first post

Jumping on the blog bandwagon here. This isn't my first blog and most likely it won't be my last. I will probably quit blogging after a few posts just like I did on the other blog. I have been posting daily on a private message board with about 20 other people who all have the same age babies for nearly five years. I tell them everything therefore sometimes to me blogging is repetitious.

Anyway, if you're familiar with Stephen King then I don't need to tell you how I came up with my screen name. Bag of Bones has to be by far my favorite of his novels. Now if only I could sing a few raunchy little ditties for your entertainment. Unfortunately I can only blog. And I think singing a raunchy little ditty might be a better way to pass your time...