Little A update

He has discovered a bicycle. Zak is so proud.

Morbid, yes, but quite interesting regardless

This popped up on MSN, so I had to go to the source. Discover Magazine has a lot of really interesting, short articles for those who have a limited attention span (or have to pretend they're working).

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death09.01.2006
Newsflash: we're all going to die. But here are 20 things you didn't know about kicking the bucket.

by LeeAundra Temescu

1 The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

2 Never say die: There are at least 200 euphemisms for death, including "to be in Abraham's bosom," "just add maggots," and "sleep with the Tribbles" (a Star Trek favorite).

3 No American has died of old age since 1951.

4 That was the year the government eliminated that classification on death certificates.

5 The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the "agonal phase," from the Greek word agon, or contest.

6 Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.

7 So much for recycling: Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year. Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.

8 Alternatively . . . A Swedish company, Promessa, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin. They claim this "ecological burial" will decompose in 6 to 12 months.

9 Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures.

10 The vultures are now dying off after eating cattle carcasses dosed with diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory used to relieve fever in livestock.

11 Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.

12 If this doesn't work, we're trying in vitro! In Madagascar, families dig up the bones of dead relatives and parade them around the village in a ceremony called famadihana. The remains are then wrapped in a new shroud and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover the connubial bed.

13(*) During a railway expansion in Egypt in the 19th century, construction companies unearthed so many mummies that they used them as fuel for locomotives.

14 Well, yeah, there's a slight chance this could backfire: English philosopher Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, died in 1626 of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow to see if cold would preserve it.

15 For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

16 Waiting to exhale: In 1907 a Massachusetts doctor conducted an experiment with a specially designed deathbed and reported that the human body lost 21 grams upon dying. This has been widely held as fact ever since. It's not.

17 Buried alive: In 19th-century Europe there was so much anecdotal evidence that living people were mistakenly declared dead that cadavers were laid out in "hospitals for the dead" while attendants awaited signs of putrefaction.

18 Eighty percent of people in the United States die in a hospital.

19 If you can't make it here . . . More people commit suicide in New York City than are murdered.

20 It is estimated that 100 billion people have died since humans began.

My apologies to Discover Magazine for any copyright laws that I have broken by reposting this.

Ode to the Swedish Chef

Oh my Swedish Chef!

You are my favorite Muppet!

I love your gibberish and your bushy eyebrows!

The little finger puppet bearing your likeness makes me smile as I wash the dishes. (He's perched on the kitchen window sill)

Der der der.......See de moofin? Und here mit de boome shooten!

Mmm, Lunch!

I think eating is one of Little A's favorite activities. He gets so excited at meal time. The picture above is from yesterday's lunch of Hamburger and Noodle Casserole (don't worry I minced a ton of veggies and put those in there too). He has also learned to share his food with whoever is sitting next to him, which I also find rather adorable.

Since When Have Manners Gone Out of Style....

I would like to know when it became appropriate to get out of your car and scold someone in front of you for waiting for a parking space.

Today, I witnessed a grown man get out his car in the Fred Meyer parking lot and scream at the elderly handicap woman, who was waiting for a space up front. Apparently, he was in too big of a hurry to allow someone who needed to park close to the door to do so. I was horrified at the lack of manners and concern for one's fellow man.

Later on in the day, I was involved in an altercation in the library parking lot. I was waiting for a spot in the "Book Drop Off" area, so I wouldn't have to leave A in the car by himself while I ran across the street. I think I may have held up traffic for maybe a minute, when a man coming out of the library thought it was necessary to come over to my window and chew me out for "blocking his car, so he couldn't get out and holding up traffic." I told him," I have a child in the car that I can't leave unattended. I'm waiting for the van up there to completely pull out of the spot. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to wait."

In hindsight, I wish I would have told him to take a flying leap, but I decide to take the high road. Just chill, people. You'll get to where you need to go in good time. There's no need to flip out at people.

Bic Mac Sales Up!

Today was a crappy day! I let this whole stupid recession thing bring me down so much that I'm actually blogging about it.

I wish we could go back to the barter system!

Arrggghhhh,

Signed

Annoyed Scrabble Shrew

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Lil' A!

The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. Lil' A was squealing with delight.
We went on the swings for the first time this weekend. It's very apparent that he enjoys heights, which makes me a bit uneasy considering his Dad's daredevil spirit.

Enjoy the pictures! Hopefully, we'll get on the slide soon.

My Return to the Excting World of Blogging

Hello to All My Blog Readers!

I've decided to take up blogging again. Since I've deleted my MySpace and I don't have the patience for my blog software on my website, I've decided to use blogger as my medium of choice.

In other news, I almost cut my finger off last week. I was a little over zealous with the mandolin and my finger went in the line of the blade rather than the cucumber. As you can see in the photo above, it wasn't pretty by any means. Sorry if it grosses you out, but that's the gritty reality of cooking.