One-year photos

9

Written on Monday, July 30, 2007 by Jessica

He's thirteen months old, but I did finally take his one-year photos. Sears portrait studio is waaaaaaaaaaaay better than Wal-Mart.



His Grandma and Grandpa made that rocking horse. His Nana and Papa got him that John Deere tractor for his birthday, which was a John Deere themed party.

Grumpy old men

3

Written on Friday, July 13, 2007 by Jessica

I saw this article and thought of Calories (a.k.a. ....a little of this and that...) -- whose blog is now password protected, by the way. What's going on, Calories? You tryin to keep me and the other riffraff out? :)

Anyhoo, Calories was bummed out one day about cranky old people. This article claims they can't help it.

Grumpy old men may not be able to help it, as age could affect their sense of humour, scientists have found.

A study by Washington University in St Louis found older people find it harder to understand jokes than students.

The authors say the finding should be taken seriously as laughing has been linked to health benefits such as boosting circulation.
Yet another argument for sudoku to keep your mind sharp. (I'm in trouble. All those numbers in sudoku make me cringe.)

Fifteen minutes of cyberfame

5

Written on Saturday, July 07, 2007 by Jessica

You may have noticed all the hubbub surrounding my post related to CNN's article about Hindu widows. For awhile, I as baffled as to how all these people found me. When I looked into it, I discovered Sphere.

Basically, if you scrolled down to the bottom of the CNN article, there was a section that said, "From the Blogs: Controversy, commentary, and debate." If you clicked on it, you found me. Sphere dynamically generates links to blogs related to the article.

I'm not there any more, but here's a screen shot of Sphere's link to that fateful post. (Scroll down to Blogs talking about this topic.)

All the discussion seemed out of place on a blog normally devoted to fluff, but there you have it. It's over now, unless someone else has decided to link to my post.

Disturbing article about Hindu widows

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Written on Thursday, July 05, 2007 by Jessica

When a Hindu woman is widowed, it's a sign of bad luck, so her family ostracizes her.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/05/damon.india.widows/index.html

Hindu widows are shunned from society when their husbands die, not for religious reasons, but because of tradition -- and because they're seen as a financial drain on their families.

They cannot remarry. They must not wear jewelry. They are forced to shave their heads and typically wear white. Even their shadows are considered bad luck.
These women are reduced to begging in the streets for food. I think I will never cease to wonder in awe at the potential for cruelty, indifference, and cold-heartedness in humanity.

Ceiling check

5

Written on Tuesday, July 03, 2007 by Jessica

No earwigs. For the moment, I'm safe.

Raining bugs

5

Written on Sunday, July 01, 2007 by Jessica

Last night, I was working on my computer when an earwig materialized on my keyboard. It fell from the ceiling. Do I really need to point out how close it came to falling into my hair? (Yes, I feel the need to point it out.)

When I think of what would've happened next... Earwigs instinctively burrow. Ugh. It gives me the heebie-jeebies to imagine trying to get one of those things out of my hair.

I've been killing a lot of earwigs lately. One was in my purse a couple of weeks ago. But I digress.

So there was the earwig perched on my keyboard, which was actually a good thing. Better on the keyboard than in my hair. I couldn't kill it before it crawled down among the keys and out of reach. I'm half expecting it to crawl out while I'm typing. Heck, there's enough food down in there for it to survive until this fall when it's time to hibernate. Then it can lay eggs and I can look forward to baby earwigs boiling out of the keyboard next spring.

Maybe I'll buy a new keyboard.