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Some of these reasons may or may not be true . . .

• Breastfeeding class ran much longer than anticipated
• A do-it-yourself project run a muck
• I can’t stop watching Fox News
• I got caught up filling out my NCAA brackets
• I’m busy loading Texas Stadium up with dynamite
• I just can’t stop putting the latest Glenn Beck book down – it’s a real page turner
• I’m stuck at an all you can eat buffet
• I’m still traumatized from watching birth videos
• I’m lost in IKEA and can’t find my way out
• I’m traveling to the Corey Haim funeral
• I’m helping another fellow half-Asian work on his comeback to golf

Feel free to add your own reason.

• Yesterday I had lunch with a gay pagan priest who passed out, threw up, and whom I had to drive home.
• A little context to that last sentence . . . Two of my former coworkers have just landed contracting gigs at my current place of employment and wanted to do lunch.  One them is a female, and the other is a guy that just happens to be Wiccan priest who is happens to be gay.
• All through lunch he wasn’t feeling well, clammy is how he described it, and towards the end he left the table early to catch some fresh air.  While he was sitting on some patio furniture where the outside dining is set up, he passed out as our other coworker arrived, and when he came to he vomited on the table and his leg.
• Lucky me, I drove all of us to lunch.
• As he got his bearings, I volunteered to drive him home.  I just didn’t know that I would be driving from the middle of Dallas to Fort Worth.
• Yesterday on The Ticket they mentioned in the history of  the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament that the state of Texas has sent a total of 23 teams – more than any other state and only one championship to show for it, Texas Western, which is now UTEP.  I was surprised to hear that little ol’ Hardin-Simmons has even make the tourney, and even more surprised that someone from The Ticket actually went there, that someone being Jerr, but I don’t know his full name or when he attended.
• I looked at the HSU media guide and couldn’t find when they made the tourney, but did find a picture of a former roommate on page 26.
• However, I looked at AllBrackets.com and discovered that HSU was eliminated in the first round to Santa Clara in 1953 and also eliminated to Idaho State in 1957.
• HSU’s current president was the president when I attended.  He left, came back as chancellor, and then accepted the president role again somewhat recently.  I find it amazing that he’s a Democrat in that atmosphere.  Well, at least he was a Democrat when he served in the Texas House of Representatives.
• I remember once being ticked-off at the president when I was a student, so much so I wrote him a very stern letter.  The next day I got a call from his office and asked if I could come in for a meeting with him.  At that point, I was beyond terrified, but when we met he treated me with grace and respect.
• From the media guide I also learned that total enrollment is 2,435 (1,997 undergraduate, 438 graduate) and that the student to teacher ration is 13:1.
• I love using keyboard shortcuts.
• I just met a guy whose real name is Gotham.
• I think I have only seen one Cher move – Mask.
• Yesterday was soooo busy I didn’t even have enough time to squeeze in LOST.

Yup, I’m impressed.

(hat tip, Barry)

A rural craftsman was amazed when international rock stars U2 phoned him and asked him to repair their broken Grammy award.

The trophy – awarded for the band’s 1987 album The Joshua Tree – had split into three pieces including the gramophone horn.

So the band’s managers simply searched “trophy craftsmen” online and found Stuart Allcock, who runs a small shop in Taunton, Somerset.

Mr Allcock said he felt ”dizzy” to receive the call but was disappointed to discover the award was made of cheap cast iron that was sprayed gold.

Full Article

If you ever wanted to design your own swim shorts, then here you go:  www.shortomatic.com

For these crazy times, The Daily Beast decided to rank America’s craziest cities—more specifically, the 57 largest metropolitan areas—using four criteria: psychiatrists per capita, stress, eccentricity and drinking levels.

Here’s the top ten and other Texas notables:

1. Cincinnati
2. San Francisco
3. Providence
4. Milwaukee
5. Las Vegas
6. Philadelphia
7. New York City
8. Tucson
9. San Antonio
10. New Orleans

12. Austin
38. Dallas
49. Houston
56. Fort Worth

I think Mineral Wells would have come in somewhere in the 60’s.

A collection of Bea Arthur quotes: www.thatswhatbeasaid.com

• Got the Census in the mail yesterday.
• I still have never filled out an NCAA basketball bracket and I’m not sure why.
• I haven’t tried Chatroulette, and I don’t have any desire to try it.
• Honestly, I haven’t watched any of the Terminator movies as of late, but could all the run-away Toyotas be the start of the machines starting to take over?
• I watched the first episode of The Pacific again.
• I miss being able to have a spring break.
• The Monday after the time change is a drag.
• WifeGeeding’s favorite flowers are tulips and she can’t stand carnations.
• It’s time to order her some carnations.
• I have a friend that had some damage done to his shoulder and he elected to have surgery to relieve the pain only to find out that insurance would not cover it.  He’s been fighting with insurance for about a year.
• My dad once told me that once you finish work on Monday, half the week is over.
• My lips sure have been chapped as of late.
• And my eyes have been red and itchy.
• Ahhh, the French – How not to pin an award to a lady
• An extremely beautiful picture of a Yosemite waterfall – it looks like it’s on fire.
• Theses first two pictures from The Big Picture are visually stunning.
• Time Warner is offering a super fast Internet access for a pretty good price.
• Impersonating a military hero is a low thing to do.
• She’s determined to be the world’s fattest woman
• IKEA gets creative and advertises in the subway

During a hurricane George Washington fights a tiger on a sinking boat.

Now that’s a Founding Father.

But this lamb on the otherhand, that’s a different story . . .

A homeless Gastonia man who allegedly hoisted a sign reading, “I’m thinking of a cheeseburger,” near an interstate off-ramp was charged with violating the city begging ordinance.

Michael Francis McLaughlin, 48, held the cardboard sign on the 500 block of Cox Road near I-85 Friday evening, Gastonia Police Officer J.K. Sarratt wrote on a misdemeanor criminal citation.

Gastonia City Ordinance 5-17 makes it unlawful for anyone to beg or offer to work for money or other compensation by “accosting one another or forcing oneself upon the company of another.” The citation did not state whether McLaughlin had been approaching vehicles.

McLaughlin was charged with unlawful solicitation under the city ordinance and was jailed under a $500 secured bond.

Gaston Gazette

Juice brand Tropicana wanted to highlight the fact that it played an important role in the morning ritual of millions of Canadians, to coincide with the launch of its newest juice, Tropicana Essentials, with added calcium and vitamin D.

The brand wanted to elevate its role beyond simply being a brand of orange juice and increase loyalty amongst its consumers and become Canada’s National Provider of Brighter Mornings.

In order to do this, Tropicana spent a month in Inuvik, one of the country’s northernmost towns, during the coldest and darkest days of the winter. The 3,500 residents of the Arctic town in the Northwest Territories live without a sunrise for several weeks every winter. Tropicana literally brought a brighter morning to Inuvik with a giant artificial sun that emitted 100,000 lumens of light. A team of Canadian filmmakers captured the raising of the ’sun’ in Inuvik for a series of documentary-style commercials.

The lights were affixed to a 36-foot wide helium balloon which then rose and illuminated the town. The Tropicana Brand’s ’sunrise’ coincided with Inuvik’s annual Sunrise Festival, which celebrates the return of sunlight after weeks of relative darkness.

The brand also provided 1,200 free cartons of Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice – one for every household in the community.

Full CreamGlobal.com post

A new Canadian study sheds light on why: the vast majority of Americans believe God is directly concerned with their personal affairs, with most assuming a divine reason for everything from job promotions to speeding tickets.

“In American culture — much less so in Canada — there’s a really constant flow of God-talk that references these small, personal interactions. It’s almost like a self-absorbed view of divine will,” says study author Scott Schieman, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto.

“The extent that it’s so visible, almost saturating the culture at times, makes me think it’s not just metaphor or symbolism; many, many people believe these processes are real.”

Eight in 10 Americans say they depend on God for decision-making guidance.

Seven in 10 believe that when good or bad things happen, the occurrences are part of God’s plan.

And six in 10 believe God has set the course of their lives.

The study, published in the March issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, is generating considerable buzz online — much of it linked to Schieman’s finding that a third of Americans agree with the rather defeatist statement: “There’s no sense in planning a lot because ultimately my fate is in God’s hands.”

Full Article

BARTOW — Evelyn Boyd was on a mission to pray — for her husband, her church, her city, the nation and the president.

So on Feb. 7, she locked herself in a bedroom to pray and fast. She brought water and prayer requests and told her husband not to bother her.

“This is what I have to do,” she told him.

For more than three weeks, Boyd, 55, didn’t emerge. Her family could have come to her aid if she needed help, but her husband wanted to respect her wish to be alone. He figured she’d be okay, just like the last four times she fasted.

But on the 26th day, family members forced the door open. They found her dead.

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office says it appears she died because of the fast. Deputies don’t plan to file charges because they believe she fasted willingly and her family said she was mentally sound, Sheriff Grady Judd said.

Full Article

• If there is one thing that WifeGeeding loves about being pregnant, it’s the ability to place a cup or bowl on her stomach.  In this case, she’s eating graham crackers with milk.
• Most of our weekend was spent at a “Prepared Childbirth” class at the hospital we plan on delivering at.  Overall it was very helpful and answered a lot of questions covering vaginal births, c-sections, epidurals, breastfeeding, and just about everything else that deals with the delivery of a baby and came complete with a tour of all the facilities.
• Several doctors also spoke and answered our questions.  From what I remember, a delivery
  doc, anesthesiologist, and  a pediatrician spoke.
• I don’t think I heard the word “vagina” or its variations so much in my life in such a short timespan.
• When the class gather all of us sat in chairs that were positioned in a horseshoe type fashion and as we were going through introductions and each couple stated what they were having, a boy or a girl.  Turns out, without any prior planning as we got to choose our own seats, all the expecting boy-couples sat on one side and all the expecting girl-couples sat directly opposite, so the room was divided equally.
• It’s interesting to see how people dress coming to these things.  For instance, there was this one diva you came in overly dressed when everyone else was wearing shorts, jeans, and athletic wear.  When it came time asking who was considering umbilical cord blood blanking, they were the only couple.
• One question that I thought was a little silly for some of the couples to ask was “Is this your first?”  because if you already had kids, you really didn’t need the class.  I guess I could see reasons why, but the class is designed for first time parents.
• Of all the couples in the room, only one did not have a husband or male partner, but instead had her mother attend.  From the looks of it, and I could be wrong, but it looks like she is going to be a young single mother.
• That mother was quite interesting.  She sounded like she smoked a pack of cigarettes and hour and walked in with a matching Harley-Davidson pillow and blanket.  For instance there was this one part of class that each couple was given a bag at random, and as went around one-by-one pulling the item out of the bag and discussed how we might use that item for post-delivery stuff.  During that time, HarleyMom pulled out a cold compressed and said, word for word, “Oh, this is what you need to put on your taint when you get home from the hospital.”
• You can tell most of the room was trying to keep from laughing, except for WifeGeeding, who actually had to excuse herself from the room because she was laughing so hard.
• The instructor, who was a bit older, had a puzzled look on her face, and said, “Taint . . . I don’t think I ever heard that word before.”  She even used the word a few times, as if she didn’t want HarleyMom to feel uncomfortable blurting it out.
• HarleyMom continued to use that word about four more times that day to the chagrin of her daughter.
• It was all reminiscent of this scene in the movie Baby Mama.
• One thing I really didn’t know, or even considered to think about, was that the mamma actually poos during delivery but more than likely never realizes it.  Isn’t nature beautiful.
• I noticed there is not as much hand-sanitizer as there use to be, I guess that’s because it’s no longer flu season and the swine flu is pretty much controlled.
• We finally registered for some baby stuff.
• I watched the first episode of the HBO mini-series The Pacific.  Darn fine stuff.
• I also caught Celebrity Apprentice as well, and I admit, I like it.
• Man, I had some crazy Glenn Beck comments the other day.
• Peter Graves, I loved you in Airplane!. RIP.
• Agassi and Samprass played in a celebrity tournament with Nadal and Federer as partners.  The players are mic’d, and things get a bit competitive and testy.  YouTube
• The education department is buying 27 shotguns
• Clips like this makes me want to find stuff around the house and take it to Antique Road Show.  I love her reaction when she gets the grand total . . . damn.
• Speaking of education, here’s an update on what the conservative  Texas education board decided on curriculum.
• I think my wife wants this Mario shelf
• Best Jobs in America

While she waited for an ambulance to take her unconscious husband to a hospital in the early morning hours after Thanskgiving, Tiger Woods’ wife went into their Isleworth home, retrieved two small bottles of pain pills and said he had taken some earlier.

Elin Woods also tried to ride in the ambulance to the hospital with her husband, but the crew wouldn’t let her, saying this was a case of domestic violence — although officials later were confused because they uncovered no evidence to support that.

Those are among new revelations contained in investigative records released today by the Florida Highway Patrol following a public records request by the Orlando Sentinel.

Woods was injured in a Nov. 27 crash when he tried to drive away from his south Orange County mansion about 2:30 a.m. but bounced off two curbs, ran through a row of shrubs, hit a fire hydrant then crashed into a neighbor’s tree.

FHP ticketed him for careless driving, and he paid a $164 ticket.

Today’s records were peppered with new details:

•Troopers began searching for evidence that Woods was drunk or under the influence of drugs the day of the accident.

•Officers looked for evidence of domestic violence but found none.

•Elin Woods told officers she heard her husband’s accident, jumped onto a golf cart and went looking for wreckage.

•Officers calculated the golfer’s speed at 29 to 37 mph.

Full Article