The Things I think I Would Do If I Weren't Working

Did I evern mention that I reallllllllllllllllly despise Sunday evenings?? It's the fact that Monday is right around the corner, meaning that another work week is here. Not that I totally dislike my job or anything, but I'd much rather be at home doing something a bit more fun with my time other than watering someone's plants or reconciling their corporate credit card statement. Yes - I know eventually this will change, once I finish up my college studies & hopefully find a better job.

So this morning I was trying to figure out what types of things I would do during the course of the week if I wasn't working (other than ordinary household chores, & shuttling the kids back and forth to work & soccer practice/games). I came up with the following random list of 7 things I'd like to do if I weren't working:

• I would spend a day eating Maryland Hardshell Crabs - ok, maybe not the whole day, but I'd at least spend a good part of it either eating the crabs, picking them to eat, preparing to eat them, or cleaning up after eating them. Of course I don't think that would be a wise idea, as my stomach would probably go into a massive protest.
• I would spend a day with my son, wit the soul purpose of determing how many questions he asks in one day. I'm thinking it's over 50. *grin*
• I would spend an entire day eating 3 or 4 bags of individual Dove Milk Chocolate candies (the ones with the random phrases on the inside of the wrappers), flattening out & saving the wrappers. I'd then take all the wrappers & record how many times each phrase was repeated and determine the ADP ratio (Averge Dove Phrase ratio). If I had enough time left in the day, and if I wasn't completely sick to my stomach I'd eat a few bags of the Dove Cark Chocolate candies & catalog those wrappers as well. I'm convinced that the results would be different...
• I would spend a day disassembling the 12,876 afghans that I've only partially completed - and I'd create a massive yarnball
• I would sit outside on my patio & count the number of wild rabbits that are stalking my back yard
• I would drive to the nearest amusement park and get on the biggest, baddest roller coaster - once the ride was done and before I got off I'd say to the attendant "Uhhh - I think I had an accident - do you have any clean clothes?"
• I would shadow my husband the entire day & count how many times he invented new words simply by inserting curse words in the beginning, middle or end of non-curse words. I'm willing to bet it would be a high number

Darn - now I really don't want to go to work tomorrow

Before I finish today's blog - I though I would share an interestesing fact that I learned today:

Turkeys often look up during a rainstorm. Unforatunately some have been known to drown as a result...

Missing mosquito...

I think I made it at least fairly clear in my last post, that I really am not overly fond of mosquitos - over the past few weeks I've been bitten up pretty badly, I suspect due to the drainage ditch that backs up to our backyard that always seems to have at least some type of water in it, making it an ideal mosquito breeding area.

Anyway the night before last, I was out in the garage with my husband & son, exercising (contrary to popular belief I actually do exercise) on the weight machine that we bought recently and got bit by mosquitos about 3-4 times. As I ran inside to grab the "Off" spray, a huge mosquito somehow followed me inside. I opened up the door hoping it would fly out, but instead it lingered up near the ceiling in our basement. I was going to get my husband to come inside & kill it, but I ended up back outside exercising & forgot about it - that is until yesterday morning.

As my daughter was getting ready for work yesterday I heard a very shrill scream emitting from her bathroom (her bathroom is in the basement right inside the door leading out of the garage into the house). I ran downstairs to see what was wrong (thinking surely she was screaming because she didn't have any clean towels in her bathroom) and saw her pointing towards the bathroom sink with a look of absoulte horror on her face. I looked in the sink, andt saw that the huge mosquito that had followed me inside the night before was laying in the sink, face up on his back - completely motionless. I told her not to worry about it, the mosquito was dead & I'd clean it up when I got back from dropping her off at work.

After returning from dropping her off at work, I was on my way up the stairs from the basement and thought "Oh crap, I probably ought to clean that mosquito up..." As I went to turn around something caught my attention - I looked down and there at the side of the stairway on one of the steps was a huge mosquito on its back, looking more dead than the one in the bathroom sink. I swatted at it with my sandal, until it stopped moving & ran upstairs to get a few paper towels to pick both that mosquito up and the one in the bathroom sink.

When I came back downstairs with paper towels - both mosquitos were missing. Great - that means either 1 of 2 things - either one of my animals got them, or they had been faking death & were hiding out somewhere and when I least expected it - they would launch into attack mode on me. Now I'm wondering if the one on the stairs was really a 2nd mosquito - maybe the 1st one had somehow made it out of the bathroom sink & crawled or flew up onto the stairway only to meet it's fate at the hands of one of my animals. Oh well, I guess I'll never know - but at least I made it through 1 day without getting bit up!

On another note...

Today is "Take Your Houseplant For A Walk Day"...not sure if that means that you should take your houseplant(s) for a walk outside or inside or where exactly you should be walking them - as their doesn't seem to be much specifics available regarding this "holiday". Regardless, I decided to honor the holiday today by moving one of my houseplants from the sun room to the kitchen - I guess that counts as my contribution for the day.

Darn mosquitos

Is it just me or are the mosquitos especially pesky this year? Over the weekend I was outside doing yardwork and over the course of maybe 20 minutes I was bitten 489,765 times! Ok - slight exaggeration - I was bitten 12 times. 8 bites Friday night (my own fault - I forgot to put mosquito repellent on) and 4 bites Saturday afternoon (even after I practically bathed in "OFF"). What's the deal with that? My niece was also bit several times, as was my son. I suspect the culprit may be the drainage ditch that is behind our back yard. When it rains, the water runs off into the drainage ditch & then eventually drains out. With all the rain we've been getting lately, I'm sure it's a breeding ground for mosquitos.

Which got me to thinking - what is it about some people that make them more attractive to mosquitos than other people. My husband and daughter very rarely get bit. They bathe every day just like I do, but regardless my son and I are usually the ones that bear the brunt of the bites. I decided to do a bit of research on the internet and learned some interesting things. One website that I found is the "Amerian Mosquito Control Association Website" - www.mosquito.org

Following are mosquito facts taken from the AMCA website:

• There are about 2,700 species of mosquito.
• There are 176 species in the United States.
• The average mosquito weighs about 2.5 milligrams.
• The average mosquito takes in about 5-millionths of a liter of blood during feeding. (I suspect at least half of this is my blood!)
• Mosquitoes find hosts by sight (they observe movement); by detecting infra-red radiation emitted by warm bodies; and by chemical signals (mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide and lactic acid, among other chemicals) at distances of 25 to 35 meters.
• Mosquitoes fly an estimated 1 to 1.5 miles per hour.
• Women are usually more attractive to mosquitoes than men because of the difference in hormones produced by the sexes.
• Blondes tend to be more attractive to msoquitoes than brunettes.
• Smelly feet are attractive to mosquitoes – as is Limburger Cheese.
• Dark clothing attracts mosquitoes.
• Movement increased mosquito biting up to 50% in some research tests.
• A full moon increased mosquito activity 500% in one study

Hmmm - let's think about this - maybe I should a) stay inside during a full moon; b) when I am outside, move very slowly - although faster than 1.5 miles per hour so I can beat the mosquito; c) make sure my feet don't smell bed; d) don't eat Limburger Cheese and e) have a sex change so I'll be less attractive to the mosquitos.

On another note - don't forget today is "National Drive-Thru Day". If you're going out to eat or to the bank, etc.make sure you use the drive thru!

Which celebrity do you resemble the most?

Do you see the resemblance between the 2 picture above aside from the obnoxiously huge glasses.?

Yesterday, a friend made me aware of a website (www.myheritage.com) that matches photos of "every day" people to those of celebrities. You simply upload a photo and the website, using face detection technology, scans the picture and detects faces in the photo. The website then matches the face, based on facial features, against the faces of celebrities that they have on file. Often times you are matched with a handful of celebrities both male & female.

Hmmm - sounded interesting to me, so after searching a while on my computer to find a picture of me that looked half way decent, I submitted a photo of my daughter and myself. I was very curious to see who my "celebrity" match was. Is there a celebrity that I actuall resemble??

Indeed there was - I was only given one match - SNOOP DOG! What the heck is that about? It has to be the glasses... I thought I would test the website further and submitted the pictures of several family members, including my husband, my kids, a couple of my nieces and my sister and they all matched up to at least semi-respectable celebrities. My husband and son supposedly resemble Leonardo D'Caprio. My sister resembled a handful of very attractive female celebrities (and one or two not so bad looking male celebrities *grin*). But my match - SNOOP DOG?

Hmmm...maybe we're twins separated at birth. For some reason, I'm thinking that would explain a whole lot in my life...

Random Wild Rabbit Facts

Anyone that knows me knows how much I dislike wild rabbits - sure they're cute & pretty much harmless - but I've had an ongoing battle with wild rabbits now for a few years as they seem to wander into my yard every year, nesting in my garden, destroying some of my plants along the way.

However, being that this is "Rabbit Week", I thought I would post a few random facts about wild rabbits taken from the "Pleasebekind.com" website:

• Rabbits are not rodents but belong to their own order called lagomorphs. The evolutionary split between rabbits and other living mammals probably occurred about thirty million years ago.
• There are twelve species of rabbits in the United States with the eastern cottontail being the most widely distributed.
• Famous for their reproductive abilities, cottontails breed from February through September. Gestation is about 28 days. Three or four litters of four or five young known as kittens are born each year. Young are born helpless in a shallow depression lined with grass and mother’s fur, but they grow rapidly and are weaned when less than half the size of the adult.
• Many mortality factors affect rabbit populations. Weather is a major factor in nest mortality as ground nests are susceptible to flooding in heavy rains.

Ok, so the reproduction of wild rabbits troubles me. If there are 8-10 wild rabbits in my neighbor's yard, 2 doors down and another 4-6 rabbits in my next door neighbor's yard (on the other side) that's 12-16 wild rabbits. If only 3 of these 12-16 are females & they all have 4 litters of let's say 4 "kittens" each year for two years that's 96 more rabbits in 2 years! If out of these 48, 12 females all have 4 litters of 4 "kittens" each year for two years that's another 384 rabbits. Now I know, many of these rabbits won't survive long enough to breed, but still the fact that they breed so fast & so often is a bit troubling!

Moody or just plain mean?

From Merriam Webster's Dictionary:

moody: Pronunciation: 'mü-dE
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): mood·i·er; -est
1 : subject to depression : GLOOMY2 : subject to moods : TEMPERAMENTAL
3 : expressive of a mood

Okay - is it just me, or do some people really thrive on being "moody"? I mean, come on, everyone has their problems, everyone has been dealt their share of difficulties and hardships - but is any problem so bad that you find it necessary to snap at anyone that comes within 50 feet of you?

Perhaps these "moody" people aren't really in a bad mood, maybe their life has just been so hard & terrible that they don't know how to do anything else but to be miserable and mean. It's very hard for me, at best, to understand the mentality of this as I don't think I'm moody at all - although I'm the first to admit that I can get in a terribly bad mood pretty quickly - but usually when I find myself in a bad mood, I tend to bury myself in a book or magazine.

Maybe I just have a different perspective on life, to me life is just too short to waste your time being in a bad mood. I'd rather keep my bad mood to myself then to walk around grouchy and irritable and upset the people around me and in essence alienate them from me. The last thing I want is people "tip toeing" around me/

When it's time for me to leave this world, I don't want people saying "Gosh, she was really moody...", or "Well she certainly had one hell of a mean streak in her..." Instead, I want people to remember me for being a good wife, a good mother, a good daughter, a good sister, a good aunt, a good friend & a good neighbor. I want to be remembered for laughing & smiling despite the hardships in my life. I want people to remember my love for seafood & chocolate & telling jokes and carrying out random pranks.

Ok - done with my rant for the day....

It's a holiday!

Just in case you didn't realize it, today is "National Get Out Of The Dog House Day" - what this means exactly, I'm not sure. Does this mean all canines are free from their dog houses for the day? Or does it mean that those of us who are "in the dog house" so to speak, are automatically pardoned? If so, then are we free to do those things that will put us in the dog house, knowing that since it's National Get Out Of The Dog House Day, we'll get out right away anyway? OR - does it mean that those currently in the Dog House better figure out how to get out of the dog house today??

Not only is it "National Get Out Of The Dog House Day", but it's also "Rabbit Week" (July 15-21). I guess this means I should be nice to the wild rabbits in my back yard that have decided it's ok to nest in the middle of my flower garden...Ok - ok, I'll be nice, but tomorrow - IT"S ON!

My first attempt

This is my first attempt at creating & maintaining an actual "blog" - yeah, sure - I have a "myspace", and a "friendster" account - I'm pretty sure I also have a livejournal page as well, I just never can remember my password or username and I thought maybe I would try again & use this as a medium to convey my thoughts and feelings - although that may not always be a good idea...

Some things about me:

I'm a 42 year old, married mother of 2 teenagers - my daughter is 17 & my son is 14. My daughter recently graduated from high school & my son will be entering 10th grade in the fall. We live in Frederick, MD - where we just bought a single family home a few months ago. I work as a secretary at a local firm, where I've worked for 5 years. I have 3 older brothers who all live here in Maryland, and a younger sister who lives near Boston (grrrr...why does she have to live so far away from me???). My mother also lives here in Frederick.

I just recently started taking college courses again, with hopes of earning at least a degree in something, as I'm tired of being a secretary. Don't take me the wrong way, there's nothing wrong with being a secretary - in fact, I make a pretty good living - but I just dont' feel "challenged" enough. I feel like there has to be a better way that I could contribute to the world, other than preparing trip itineraries, arranging traveling & registering people for a conference - hopefully I'll get that sorted out real soon!

I spend alot of my "free time" either at home, doing work around the house, shopping with my daughter or watching my son play soccer. I love to read - you name it, I'll read it - whether it's a newspaper, news magazine, romance novel, murder mystery, biography or what have you - I love reading anything & everything. I've been told that I can be quite humorous at times, although personally, I think I can be incredibly boring. I tend to be a bit on the shy side, until I feel comfortable and then I can be reallllllllllllllly long winded. I've also been told that I'm incredibly random - but that may just be an extension of my long windedness (is that really a word?).

Well enough about me already...

Today's subject is: The Heat! What in the world is going on? Yes, I know it's summer. Yes, I know we have the whole global warming thing going on, but really does it need to be this hot? The only way I'd want to be outside in this kind of heat for an extended period of time would be if most of my body was submerged underwater in a pool, lake, etc. It's too hot to work in the yard; it's too hot to sit out on my patio and eat dinner (let alone any meal); it's too hot to shoot baskets with my son; and it's too hot to do much of anything!

I guess I shouldn't complain really - if it were January or February right now, we could be experiencing sub freezing temperatures and blizzard like conditions - and who wants that? Which brings up something that's annoyed me the last several years - when there's a blizzard & we're buried in 2-3 feet of snow, occasionally my employer will decide maybe it's a better idea if we all take the day off as a "snow day". Why can't we do that in the summer? I mean really - if it's stinking hot outside, why can't we just have a "heat day"....