Like Pulling Teeth...

Yesterday I finally had my long anticipated appointment with the dental surgeon.
It went quite smoothly especially after the laughing gas was administered.
I've been in a semi morphine based stupor ever since..not bad.. not bad at all..
Tomorrow back to reality...

Arkansas Birding...

Rare bird enthusiasts have descended on Eastern Arkansas this weekend in search of the elusive ivory billed woodpecker. Called "birders" by conservationists and scientists these zealots each hope to be the one who spots the rare woodpecker thought for decades to be extinct until 21 months ago.
The ivory billed is the largest North American woodpecker, 30 % bigger than your run of the mill woodpecker...almost as large as a crow.
Environmental conditions in the Arkansas wetlands have prevented the hunt until now when the fall weather has reduced the overhead foliage and caused the retreat of poisonous snakes from the swamp. The best possible scenario would be for the searchers to find and record a nesting pair of these birds.
In February of 2004 a kayaker reported seeing one of these rare woodpeckers leading to the renewed interest.
The US Postal Service this year issued a $ 15.00 stamp to commemorate this bird.
It is both beautiful and magnificent. I can see why “birders” get so excited about it

Happy Thanksgiving...

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

This will be our first Thanksgiving since I was one-upped by a turkey (June 13 post).
Grandma and I will be having our basic thanksgiving feast.
Now the real Holiday Season begins. Enjoy..
God Bless..

Browser Crash!..

I had a tough day computerwise today..
Under the guise of creating a new user profile my Firefox browser on my newer upstairs computer crashed and I lost all the bookmarks I’ve created since mid July. Since I have four other working browsers all was not lost since all “favorite” sites prior to July still exist on the other browsers. Still I will have to recreate at some point:
-All the NOAA Weather radar sites on the Gulf from Key West to Brownsville Texas and my local one.
-Dozens of humor sites I’ve collected.
-Blogs that I follow that aren’t on this site’s link list.
-WEBTV stations from all over the world.
-Radio stations that I listen to.
-Sports sites that I follow for statistics etc.
I guess it’s more of a time consuming nuisance than anything else.

Redington Pirate on Winning Team..!

This family was thrilled to learn yesterday that the Stetson Law School’s Trial Team had placed first in a National Contest sponsored by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers held in Santa Fe, New Mexico November 3,4, and 5.
Our family member known in this blog as the “Redington Pirate” participated in various roles throughout the competition. The trial team was 5 and 0, undefeated in the contest which included teams representing law schools such as Georgetown, University of Florida, Alabama, Illinois, Fordham, Michigan State, and Loyola of Chicago. The “Pirate” is pictured below holding the first place plaque. His teammates in the front row of the picture left to right are Samuel Denny, Reneka Redmond, and Patricia Calhoun.
Patricia Calhoun was named the Cathy E. Bennett Best Overall Advocate in the competition. Calhoun and Stetson Law will be added to the NACDL trophy board in Washington, DC.
Competing teams argued a hypothetical death penalty case. Stetson was awarded $ 3,000 in scholarship money for its first place finish.
By winning Stetson earned an automatic invitation to the contest next year.

Congratulations Pirate...and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Losers Need to Just Shut Up!

Two Controversial American leaders have been unable to resist the opportunity to show their ignorance and stick their feet in their respective mouths after last Tuesday's elections.
The first, The Reverend Mr. Pat Robertson, who my blogging friend "Phinky" refers to as America's Radical Cleric, condemned all the voters of the greater Dover, Pennsylvania area to eternal damnation for recognizing "Intelligent Design" (a 21st century phrase fronting as "Creationism") for the nonsense that it is. God will no longer protect these people from tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, famine, pestilence and epidemics because of their transgressions at the great American ballot box suggests the founder of the "500 Club".
The other, Fox News Network's Bill O'Reilly, has suggested that the San Francisco area would make a great target for Al Qaeda terrorists and that it would be
appropriate because that community's voters chose last Tuesday to ban handguns and to no longer permit military recruiters to visit area high schools looking for manpower.
They both remind me of the type of kid we all knew as children who owned the only football in the neighborhood and when a decision in the game went against him took his pigskin and went home.
Except in these situations they are both adults and have hundreds of thousands of followers. At some point some of these true believers must peel themselves off from the mass and recognize that these two fools both are missing important parts of their brains.
They lost..they need to just shut up..!

Key Word Activity...

Today I thought I'd talk about blog key word activity. For those of you with extra technical wizardry hooked into your template you already know this means words or phrases that were used to find YOUR blog as research on the internet. Below is an example of "key word activity" which caused someone to find my blog. Mobil's Jipzee Cab is the 5th reference when you look up "Bill Cowher extramarital affair".: (For link click on post title)
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Mobil's Jipzee Cab
Grimm had recently broken off a two year affair with Ms. Coon. ... Bill Cowher, the Steeler coach and Jack Ham, a hall of fame linebacker, from the 70's ...
jipzeecab.blogspot.com/ - 153k
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I actually found this enormously amusing since there are in fact no real references derived when you google the Pittsburgh Steeler Coach's unyet determined hanky panky. I only mention Cowher once in my blog, briefly in an early post (January 12) noting simply that he had been interviewed on the radio. The word "affair" appears in the 'Life Imitates Art" post (October 13)and although the word "extramarital" doesn't appear it could have.
Because I am cheap and only track my last 100 visits (that's the "free" part) I only have three other "key word" searches at the moment.
"Snap-on Smile" and "Snap-on Dentures", (from the same post on July 30 ) and "Tiger Woods Swearing" (on August 22 although the "swearing part is in the comment section).
A week ago when oil profits were announced there were a lot of people looking at my "Screwing Exxon Mobil" post (August 26).
Obviously this is a fun byproduct of our blogging efforts.

Addendum: November 12, 2005 I am the number one reference in the world on Google if you ask the question; "Do you favor free mobil-mobil minutes on your cellphone?"
I think we've beaten this horse to death now.

Addendum: November 28, 2005 11:50 PM The Pittsburgh Steelers are losing badly to the Indianapolis Colts. I have had two Bill Cowher extramarital affair hits since the beginning of the 4th quarter. Oh, I'm now the number 1 and number 2 google references for that subject!

Winter is Coming...

Here’s a problem caused by Hurricane Katrina local officials here in Western Pennsylvania hadn’t thought about.
Whenever it snows around here in addition to plowing out the roads local communities lay down “rock salt” to melt the snow on top of the pavement. Every year the communities each buy thousands of tons of salt for this purpose. In a busy winter snow wise most of that salt gets used.
Much of the salt comes from the North American Salt Company whose main salt mine is located in Louisiana. The source of the salt was not damaged by Hurricane Katrina but the fleet of barges which carry the salt up the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers was damaged when Katrina’s storm surge swept and then deposited the barges onto the river’s levees.
The company says it can’t guarantee it will fill its orders in time for the winter driving season.