The North American Wood Frog

Here's a really interesting little video story via Ask Metafilter about the North American wood frog. It freezes solid at the first touch of an ice crystal in the winter, no heart beat, no circulation etc. In the spring when it warms up, it thaws and hops off. Sounds like a great way to spend the winter.
I sent the link off to my cousin for her science minded kids. These are the same kids I sent the two legged dog video to.
They love this stuff. We went to the Denver Zoo last week, they probably go more in a year than I have in my life. There is a great exhibit near the front gates that I had never seen before with little rodent like animals, I can't remember what they're called. Whatever Riki Tiki Tavi, from the Rudyard Kipling story was. They kill cobras. Anyway, they were really funny. Almost as good as the otters and much easier to see. Now that I think of it, very much like the antics at the dog park but more contained and viewed from above. Also, you don't have to clean up after them. Big plus.

History lesson

This neighborhood is much noisier that my last place. There is a Mexican family directly behind us who blasts the music of what sounds like a Mexican version of a German oompah band every weekend. Very heavy on the bass. I could swear it's a tuba but when I picture a Mexican band I'm sure there is no tuba player in the scene. Is there? Whatever it is creates the sort of thumping that feels like it could alter your heart beat. Rapp music does the same thing, which I guess is the point.
I'm trying to get ready to go to Alabama and not wait until the very last minute. I think this travel procrastination is a family trait. Jeanne says she's always traveling with still damp clothing. I go her one better, I have been known to bring laundry. The really sad thing is, I just know if Maryanne is doing a load of clothes when I get there, she'll ask me if there's anything I want to throw in.
Now, since I'm flying, I have to be careful of where I pack things; and how do you keep all your liquid stuff from exploding all over your suitcase anyway? Suitcase is one of those words I just grew up saying without really paying attention to what I was saying.
Suit-case. At one time I bet it was actually a case you put your suit in. Your only suit. Your marrying and burying suit. Along with your extra shirt (singular, not plural)
Like dial a phone number. Nobody actually dials a number anymore and kids who are growing up now never have. You punch? Tap? Key a number? One of my nieces was talking to a woman last week who said she was all tangled up in her phone cord. My niece had no idea what she was talking about. I guess maybe kids who've seen old TV shows or movies would know what a phone cord is but her family doesn't allow them to watch TV. Can you even get a corded phone anymore? Now that I think of it she should know about phone cords, I have an old dial phone that I've painted in brightly colored patterns that I'm pretty sure she's used. There is a sticker of the Wicked Witch of the West in the center where the phone number used to go. I could have gotten in trouble for those alterations back when that was the only kind of phone there was. The phone company, and there was only one, owned your phone. You rented it and you had to give it back when you moved. God, I'm old.
Well, I have a blog now but I'm not telling anyone. It's like wearing a skirt you made yourself. "Oh, Did you make that?" Yikes.
There are a bazillion blogs out there so it's unlikely that anyone will find mine, though I did have a woman come through who was making it her mission to go from blog to blog randomly leaving encouraging little messages at each one. Somehow, now that I have a blog it seems like a physical place. It also feels like Show and Tell. .......and this is my dog Bosco, and here's a painting I did, and a rock I found, and a postcard I like......... Maybe I'll go back and change the blog name to Show and Tell. I bet there are already at least 50 blogs named that. Now I know why website addresses are so strange. They've all been taken. Remember, you are unique. Just like everybody else.

Cubby Angels

I'm on a primitive type angel kick. I had this old side table that had doors with these panels on it so I took them off and painted angels.. I also did two on the panels of a door and one on a boarded up window by the back stairs. When I get that camera I'll try to take pictures and post them. I don't like the one in the green cloak with the candle as well as the others, I may have to do her over.

Mutter Museum of Medical Curiosities

The Mutter Museum. I was watching this show on one of the cable channels about this medical museum that started out as the Philadelphia School of Medicine. It looks interesating. Sort of like Ripleys Believe It Or Not but with real things. Lots of skulls and skelletons, old medical instruments. Sounds like my kind of place. I'm sure they have a website, I'll have to find it.
The Mutter Museum Found a link to it on roadsideamerica.com which is a site that has all those odd things that are fun to go visit like The Corn Palace. Ok, now I'm browsing around roadsideamerica.com in the Alabama section. This sounds interesting too.

Mysterious Crying tree
Old database note: Since April 12, 1981, on a narrow dirt road to Linnie Jenkins' home, a puppy-like whimper has been emanating from a huge Pecan tree. Escaping gases? [Roadside America Team, 03/24/2001] - Butler, Alabama

Haunted Agricola Cemetery
An old, supposedly haunted cemetery.....It will give you chills just to drive through....My husband wouldn't even get out of the truck! Gotta See! [McEntire, 01/26/2001]
(Haunted Agricola Cemetery: Dadeville, AL Directions: Off Hwy. 49S, take hwy. 34E about 3 miles. It will be on your left and is only marked with a small wooden (painted white) sign. ) -Dadeville, Alabama

Snake Handling Church
Old Straight Creek Church. This is a snake handling church WHICH WELCOMES CURIOUS VISITORS. The Rev. James Hatfield and his wife Joyce invited us as observers only to cone to their Revival a couple of weeks ago. They understand that many people are curious about this practice. We went, and we saw it all. Rattlesnakes handled during the service - several of them. There was a documentary filmmaker there from Atlanta who, like us, was filming the service. Because this is a religious practice indigenous to the mountainj areas of the South, it feels like a Roadside America worth-mentioning to me!! - Section, Alabama

Ooooo, lots of wierd stuff in Alabama. Probably wouldn't go way out of my way to see most of it but if I'm driving by anyway.....

Shangrala

I've just read (skimmed, really) The Shangrala Diet. It basically boils down to something that could easily be handed out on a postcard.
" Take one tablespoon unflavored oil and one tablespoon plain old sugar in a cup of hot water twice a day.
Do not eat or drink anything but plain water for an hour before and after. Eat anything you want but don't go overboard".
The author does manage to flesh that out into a twenty dollar book though. Simple, easy, worth a try, right? So the way it works, at least the way I think it works, is that it makes you pay attention to when and what you are eating. It curbs your eating patterns in that since you can't eat within an hour of taking the oil or the sugar water so everytime you toss a pistachio into your mouth or grab an apple you must start over. It's sad when you get so old you can see it coming. I'm doing it anyway because I'm willing to bet that it will work as well as anything else.

Watercolor Portrait

Found this color copy of one of two paintings I've actually sold.

The purple didn't come through as well as the yellow.

Still not doing any painting except the faux stuff around the house but I have done a sketch of Lara and Alexandra in preparation for a watercolor sketch. I will post it if I ever quit procrastinating and actually get around to painting it. Maybe in my next life.

Most unusual buildings on earth

Some very interesting buildings here. One looks like a picnic basket The recessed places in the part that looks like woven wooden strips are where the windows are.
I'm going back through all the stuff I've saved because I thought it was cool and posting it here so I don't lose it and so other people can find them.

Easy Grilled Salmon

My cousin, Joyce, says her favorite way to cook salmon on the grill is to pour maple syrup (the real stuff) on fillets and then grind some pepper on them. Cook the fillets skin side down on medium heat with the top closed for 10 minutes, no need to turn them. I Definitely want to try that soon.
I used to check this food blog called Orangette all the time but I haven't lately. There is something very appealing about it.

Grandma's Camera

I'm poking around on some websites mentioned in "An Army of Davids" and found this photo album which I love. It's called Grandma's Camera. It consists of nine photos this guy found on his Grandmother's farm taken with an old Brownie. His commentary is sweet and wistful and I like what I've seen of the rest of his blog too.
I need to go scrounge up that old photo of my maybe Great Grandparents.

Here's that link to Out of Your Mind (I was close)

Limerick

Alan Watts seems fond of using limericks to make a point:

There was a young man who said damn
for it certainly seems that I am
a creature who moves
in determinate grooves
not even a bus
but a tram

I can so relate.

Note to Self

Best to be brief in a blog.

T shirt

Now I'm watching "House" . He's wearing a T shirt with what looks like three skeletons standing around chatting. If I could lose another 50 pounds or so I could wear t shirts again and look; good? Well, OK anyway, and then I could quit blaming everything on my weight and go on to blaming everything on something else.

"Out of My Mind"

Still reading "Army of Davids" but also listening to Alan Watts in the car. I haven't thought of him in years but saw a set of CDs in a catalog and ordered them at the library. I think they're called "Out of My Mind" and were recorded at seminars held in his home on an old ferry boat in near San Francisco. (Why do I keep thinking I'd love to live on a boat? I don't know anything about boats. I get sea sick.) It's himself speaking and he has this sort of lazy, inebriated laugh and sounds like Peter O'Toole.
As I imagine him, he's slouching in an old upholstered chair, rattling ice around in a glass of scotch. And looking like Peter O'Toole.
I must have gotten a lot more out of his books than I realized. His words sound like what I've come to believe about life and death and reality over the years. He's very good. I'll go find a link for the CD's once I get access to the internet but right now I either have to sit on the back porch with the computer in my lap or go plug in downstairs in the kitchen.

Two Legged Dog

Oh m'god, I just found this video for Jocelyn of a two legged dog who walks upright. I was telling her about it last weekend when I was up there staying with my nieceletts while their parents ran a three day relay up and down mountain passes; Vail, Georgia and... well, one more I can't remember. I think I'd like to keep this link so here it is: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/twoleggeddog.html
This website (e baums world.com) has alot of interesting things on it.

Picture of Bosco in Sunglasses

Here is a picture that Joy took a couple of years ago at the dog park.
I'm learning to put pictures on here. This could be fun.

An Army of Davids

So I'm reading this book called "An Army or Davids" subtitled: "How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths by Glenn Reynolds". Here is an excerpt from it: ....The pseudonymous hacker "Johnathan Galt" appears to have set up a phony pro-terrorism site that solicited support and donations from those sympathetic to Islamic terror. After operating for several months (with, apparently, the assistance of Islamist bin-Laden sympathizers who thought it was genuine), the site became a new and improved anti-Islamic terror site sporting the legend, "We've changed our mind: Jihad is crap!"
...Internet entrepreneur "Jon David," who runs a number of Internet porn sites as his day job, has made a hobby out of hijacking pro-terror websites. Most recently he scored a coup by successfully taking over the Al Qaida website. Visitors were redirected to a mirror page operated by David, from which he harvested 27,000 IP addresses per day, along with other information he has shared with the FBI.

I imagine that by now everyone is setting up their own fake sites and feeding each other bogus information, soliciting funds and basically just muddying the waters but it was a cool idea. I think his point was that the individual citizen may be better equipped to do something about terrorism than the lumbering government structures alone. The title of the chapter is "A Pack Not a Herd.
With so many people setting up their own internet radio and even TV type programs, individual people can have a much larger effect than they could previously. I like the idea of being part of a pack better than being part of a herd. It brings to mind wolves rather than cows. Moo.
He also talks about the music business and how distressed they are about people being able to act as their own recording studios with the help of just a $300 piece of software. It's happening in the movies as well. Apparently we already have other options than the Hollywood blockbuster.
Lots and lots of people from all over the world running around with six friends, a video camera and an idea are getting their 15 minutes of fame and having a chance at even more. Taking back perceptions of right and wrong, ugly and beautiful. Perhaps we can wrest away from the media the definition of beauty and blast the narrowly defined pictures that are held up to us now of creatures like (insert the name of whichever reigning icon bugs you the most). Bringing down Al Qaida with pot shots from computer nerds. Going back to the tradition of guerilla warfare. I guess we really are in the middle of a new revolution.

One Ear Flapping

I bought a laptop computer today. I feel that it shows intent. Intent to write. So, of course, I can't think of anything interesting. I'm enjoying the computer though. It's a kick.
I went and looked at digital cameras today too (I think I've decided on this one) . I really wanted to get one to take to the Folks Fest and take pictures of the dancers but I never got around to it so I've decided to get one before for my trip. I'm going down to Alabama next month. Land of deep fried everything. I swear I will try a deep fried pickle this time just for the experience. Maybe I can get someone to split one with me. I'll probably pass on the deep fried twinkies though. I'm going down for the Fiddle Fest that we went to last year. It was fantastic and I'm hoping to get some good shots to paint from while I'm there. I hope it's as good as I thought it was last year.
There is a Coondog Cemetary I want to go to as well. I don't know exactly why, but for some reason it fascinates me, probably because I have a dog who's part coonhound. It might be a good place to take pictures too. I could put them on my blog. I'll have to get one of Bosco up as well. I've been wanting to take pictures to paint from. I hope I'll be able to get myself to actually paint something.