Three ladies in a sauna.

THREE WOMEN, TWO YOUNGER, AND ONE SENIOR CITIZEN, WERE SITTING NAKED IN A SAUNA. SUDDENLY THERE WAS A BEEPING SOUND. THE YOUNG WOMAN PRESSED HER FOREARM AND

THE BEEP STOPPED. THE OTHERS LOOKED AT HER QUESTIONINGLY.
'THAT WAS MY PAGER,' SHE SAID. I HAVE A MICROCHIP UNDER THE SKIN OF MY ARM.

A FEW MINUTES LATER, A PHONE RANG.
THE SECOND YOUNG WOMAN LIFTED HER PALM TO HER EAR. WHEN SHE FINISHED, SHE EXPLAINED, 'THAT WAS MY MOBILE PHONE. I HAVE A MICROCHIP IN MY HAND.'

THE OLDER WOMAN FELT VERY LOW -TECH.
NOT TO BE OUT DONE, SHE DECIDED SHE HAD TO DO SOMETHING JUST AS IMPRESSIVE.
SHE STEPPED OUT OF THE SAUNA AND WENT TO THE BATHROOM. SHE RETURNED WITH A PIECE OF TOILET PAPER HANGING FROM HER REAR END.

THE OTHERS RAISED THEIR EYEBROWS AND STARED AT HER.

THE OLDER WOMAN FINALLY SAID.........
WELL, WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT....I'M GETTING A FAX!!

Ok I'm just a little punchy tonight - and here I am reading my office emails and I get this one .... I guess it was someone's way of adding a little levity into the season.

Letter to IRS

Oh how I can see more and more and more of these coming down the "pike". I think this will be the new "reason" for not paying your taxes or only paying them when you get "caught". Somehow that saying ringing in my ears ..... you make your bed, you lay in it .... fits .

I am sorry to inform you that I will not be able to pay taxes owed April 15, but all is not lost.

I have paid these taxes: accounts receivable tax, building permit tax, CDL tax, cigarette tax, corporate income tax, dog license tax, federal income tax, unemployment tax, gasoline tax, hunting license tax, fishing license tax, waterfowl stamp tax, inheritance tax, inventory tax, liquor tax, luxury tax, Medicare tax, city, school and county property tax (up 33 percent last 4 years), real estate tax, social security tax, road usage tax, toll road tax, state and city sales tax, recreational vehicle tax, state franchise tax, state unemployment tax, telephone federal excise tax, telephone federal state and local surcharge tax, telephone minimum usage surcharge tax, telephone state and local tax, utility tax, vehicle license registration tax, capitol gains tax, lease severance tax, oil and gas assessment tax, Colorado property tax, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma and New Mexico sales tax, and many more that I can't recall but I have run out of space and money.

When you do not receive my check April 15, just know that it is an honest mistake.

Please treat me the same way you treated Congressmen Charles Rangel, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and ex-Congressman Tom Daschle and, of course, your bossTimothy Geithner. (And locally Ben Swan) No penalties and no interest.

P.S. I will make at least a partial payment as soon as I get my stimulus check.

Ed B

Wichita Falls

If you seem to be missing followers .....

A Nut in a Nutshell has SOLVED the mystery! No you have NOT offended anyone. No you really haven't lost any followers - you just can't see them. Read the results of "nuts" research.

Blogger Has Gone Crazy Unfollowing People

I think we've all noticed things going crazy with Blogger Followers today. I found this status update over at Blogger.

(To fix it: go to your dashboard. You'll see a list that's titled 'Blogs I'm Following'. Scroll down, click on manage and then in the drop down menu on the right side, change everything from anonymous back to public.)

You may have noticed that the count of your public Followers has decreased over the last few hours. We are in the process of integrating with Google Friend Connect.

There are a few users that already use both Blogger Following and Google Friend Connect. To avoid linking the profiles of Blogger and Friend Connect users without their permission, we have set these users to "anonymous". They are still following privately and will able to make themselves public again.

After the official launch of the Friend Connect integration, we will communicate with the affected users and instruct them how to reset their relationship to public. To reiterate: the number of Followers has not changed, and we believe that the launch will improve the visibility of your blog and community. We will post more details on Blogger Buzz as the launch approaches.

A SPRING Giveaway!

Now doesn't that sound wonderful! Spring and Giveaway ........ just sounds so fantastic. I'm entered but I wanted to give you all a chance to join in too. If ya could ........ tell Annie I sentcha!

Annie at Writers and Witches and Words Oh My is going to CELEBRATE Spring with a Giveaway of 13 Essential things - which of course are her favorite things. I'm willing to bet they are pretty interesting and will be your "Essential Spring" things too.

Ok jump on over and check out Annie's spot. Remember to tell her you saw it here!
Annie's Essential things for Spring!

Since I seemed to have screwed up the link above and can't figure out how to fix it .............

http://anniekelleher.blogspot.com/2009/02/saturday-summing-up.html

The wisdom of an email.

Life's journey is not to

arrive safely at the Grave

in a well preserved body,

but rather

to skid in sideways,

totally worn out,
shouting

Holy Shit . . . . What a Ride!

Revelations 3:8

When God leads you to the edge of the cliff,
trust Him fully and let go,
only 1 of 2 things will happen,
either He'll catch you when you fall,
or
He'll teach you how to fly!

'The power of one sentence!
God is going to shift things around for you today
and let things work in your favor.

God closes doors no man can open
and
God opens doors no man can close.

GIRLS IN MY CIRCLE

	When I was little, I used to believe in the concept of one best friend, And then I started to become a woman. And then I found out that if you allow your heart to open up,God would show you the best in many friends.

One friend is needed when you're going through things with your man.
Another friend is needed when you're going through things with your mom.
Another will sit beside you in the bleachers as you delight in your children and their activities.
Another when you want to shop, share, heal, hurt, joke, or just be.
One friend will say, 'Let's cry together,'
Another , 'Let's fight together,'
Another , 'Let's walk away together.'

One friend will meet your spiritual need,
Another your shoe fetish,
Another your love for movies,
Another will be with you in your season of confusion,
Another will be your clarifier,
Another the wind beneath your wings.

But whatever their assignment in your life,
On whatever the occasion, on whatever the day,
Or wherever you need them to meet you with their gym shoes on and hair pulled back,
Or to hold you back from making a complete fool of yourself .
Those are your best friends.

It may all be wrapped up in one woman, But for many, it's wrapped up in several..

One from 7th grade,
One from high school,
Several from the college years,
A couple from old jobs,
On some days your mother,
On some days your neighbor,
On others, your sisters,
And on some days, your daughters.

So whether they've been your friend for 20 minutes or 20 years,
AND ONLY IF YOU'D LIKE TO,
Pass this on to the women that God has placed in your life
To make a difference.

Pasta with MEGA fiber

Ok I know that people love pasta - at least almost everyone I know does - and it can be a diet killer. That is until you try this product.

I have had a few of these already, and absolutely LOVE them. I just ordered 6 boxes from netrition.com - I buy LOTS of stuff here to keep with my lower GI diet. Well another site I visit regularly, has a link for trying this pasta at a discount. I'm thinking I really want to get more at this price, eventhough I have so much in the cabinet already.

The only thing I do differently - is that I cook the pasta as directed on the package and then taste it to make sure it isn't too al dente - remember I have "picky" adult kids. So sometimes I end up cooking it a bit longer than it says. But to be honest NOT ONE of my eaters have realized that it isn't "regular" pasta. It has almost 1/2 the calories and 18 grams (or in this special) 20 grams of fiber in a 2 oz serving. I'm telling you - it is great pasta.

Now I can hear you now 2 oz? that's nothing. Well just because I made some for lunch - and did the "measure thing". I got out my food scale and measured out 2 oz of dried fettuccini. And then cooked it ..... I'm telling you 2 oz is a lot more than you would think. Try it.

Now they are calling this deal "seconds" - but from what I read its because it has a little more fiber than the "normal" variety (20 vs 18 grams) that was found doing warehouse inventory and was produced in 2008 (hello that was at most 12 months ago and dried pasta lasts forever) . They have some great varieties other than the fettuccini but its a steal at this price if you want to try it.

Short cut fettuccini on sale for $2/bag...$20/case'

fibergourmet.com

$5.99 to ship any size order.

if you enter fiber5 at checkout, you can get 5% off your order.

A walmart giveaway!

Check out $5 Dinner Mom - she has just gotten her Walmart Gift Cards that she won recently. I love her recipes too. Anyway as part of her post she has a fantastic giveaway for 2 $25 Walmart Gift Cards. Now who couldn't use a gift card to get whatever you want from Walmart? We have a few in the area here (sometimes I think they grew up like weeds), one of which has a great pantry area. Obviously food costs are unbelievably high right now - so I'd use it for that, but you could use it for anything.

Jump on over and see if you could be one of those lucky two ..... come on jump here - walmart giveaway

Oh Mr. Electric, where did you go?

Well, hopefully I am back again. I can't believe how much we rely on electricity. Well I can, but it really hit home yesterday.

When I left for work, we had electricity. I had put dinner in the crock pot so it would be waiting for us when I got home. (I love my crock pot this time of year) I got home around 5, since there wasn't too much to do yet (tax season always starts out slow) thinking I would have everything ready when the "troops" came walking in the door. Well I was in for a bit of a surprise, the house was dark! I mean really dark.

As I walked into the house, out of habit more than anything else, I flipped on the lights - nothing happened. Silly me thinks oh the bulbs must have burned out. WRONG. Then I thought ok we must have had an quick flash of outage and back on. WRONG again. The microwave had no time, the coffee pot had no time, the crock pot was NOT on warm.

So I call the electric company - and go through their long idiotic process of confirming who I was and that I had a total loss of power - and THEN they tell me there is an outage in my area. Now it use to be that the outage in your area was played first and that it was "already reported" so you didn't need to go through all the hoops to report your outage. They tell me that they "hope" to have the electric back by 8PM but it could go until 10AM tomorrow. Then I finally got a representative so that I could ask questions. I'm told that the first report "in the area" was at 10:55AM YESTERDAY ....... so of course I knew they had stupid information to give, and then they repeated the hope to have it back by ......... dissertation.

So I'm texting my son who had a class at 7 last night to see what he wanted to do. Dinner was "done" but wasn't overly hot, but was still hot. I said I could probably heat it on the stove (I use propane to cook, even inside) He says to me - I'll eat when I get home, and heat it up in the microwave. So I text him back "electric??". Then I get "uh yeah forgot".

We're still no sure what happened - but 2 days ago the winds were just so bad that it knocked down a tree about a half mile from us (but still basically on our road) that took out 4 (yes 4) electric poles. Now is this what they say was the cause - of course not - but I'm sure it had something to do with it.

So this morning I do have electric again (came back on last night) so I can check back at all the blogs I follow......and maybe post one of two here as well. At least that's the plan for today - as well as getting my "roots covered" and my hair cut, and getting some laundry done and vaccuming the downstairs ..... Oh please Mr. Electric don't go out again - I have too much to do today.

Quote of the Day

Since this is my 100th post I wanted something that would be "deep". Yeah I know "what is she thinking"? Or even " where's the 100th post giveaway"? Well that one needs to wait until AFTER tax season since my blogging time will be limited. BUT this is a wonderful quote that when we think about it - tells us to STOP worrying about tomorrow, it will be here before we know it.

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday

Now WHAT were you worried about ?? Did all your worrying change anything or just make you more anxious? Hopefully today turned out to be pretty darned good no matter how long you worried about it. Is it the best it could be? Probably not. Is it the worst it could be? Lets not ask that - because you KNOW what that could bring.

Embrace today for what it was. Thank God for giving you one more day. I hope you made the most of it. If not ........ well there is still time in today to change that. When you get up tomorrow - remember this saying ....... and make the most of each breath.

14 LESSONS TO KEEP IN MIND

Read Each One Carefully &
Think About It a Second or Two

1. I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you..

2. No man or woman is worth your tears, & the one who is, won't make you cry.

3. Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.

4. A true friend is someone who reaches for your hand & touches your heart.

5. The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them knowing you can' t have them

6. Never frown, even when you are sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.

7. To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

8. Don't waste your time on someone, who isn't willing to waste their time on you.

9. Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the person, we will know how to be grateful.

10. Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened.

11. There's always going to be people that hurt you so what you have to do is keep on trusting & just be more careful about who you trust next time around..

12.. Make yourself a better person & know who you are before you try & know someone else & expect them to know you.

13. Don't try so hard, the best things come when you least expect them to.

REMEMBER:
WHATEVER HAPPENS,
HAPPENS FOR A REASON.

Links for some free stuff.

I found these links when I was reading my email this morning.

I believe the Dr Pepper has already been posted on some blogs - but just in case you missed it I've reposted it here.

www.quakertruedelights.com/

www.drpepper.com/

If I find anymore I'll post them quickly.

I'm so sorry

I really have no excuse. I can't believe its been almost a week since I posted here. I did try - for some reason it kept giving me an error when I tried to publish the post. After 3 tries, I gave up. I'm sorry. I should have kept trying - or tried on a different day - but somehow the days just seemed to get away from me.

I was reading the blogs I follow and found a post by Yaya that listed me as one of her blogs to check out daily or almost daily. celebrity-bloggers No, I'm nowhere near a Celebrity Blogger - maybe one day I could be "better known" but somehow I don't think I could get to that status. BUT seeing my blog listed there, made me feel so terrible about not showing a posting here - well I had to come in to say I'm sorry.

Here's a "Just Because" - it's a picture of the snow and ice from our "latest" winter event, on Tuesday, I'm so very glad we were only suppose to have 1-3 max. This one is looking out my deck door - at the oldest tree on our property, an apple tree that has to be at least 80 years old. And yes it does still produce apples, sort of.


This one, is looking out my front door. Yes the street was plowed (surprisingly) and it is still clear (even more surprising) - it's just my driveway that is the "snow and ice slick". Our project for this year (among others) will be to have it paved. I am so tired of cracked stone ....
Between the huge evergreen (another 80 year old tree) and the rhododendron (full of snow on right) run my electric/phone/cable lines, that are lined in ice. Winter wonderland.


Now since we haven't had any more "events" since Tuesday - you would like to think that everything would be done. Well I'm hoping that it will be gone next week. We have had temperatures in the 20s or below since Tuesday - so melting has been at a minimum, unless its in direct sun. Next week (or this week as the case may be) we could actually have a day in the high 40s or maybe even low 50s before it starts getting cold again.

This years weather makes absolutely NO sense to me at all. Its been bitter cold for days and then a 40 or 50 degree day sneaks in. No rhyme or reason. I'm not surprised when I hear of so many people being sick. Its the weather - I'm convinced of it.

Coffee filters ..who knew!

And you can buy 1,000 at the Dollar Tree for almost nothing. They're Not just for making coffee...

1. Cover bowls or dishes when cooking in the microwave. Coffee filters make excellent covers.

2. Clean windows and mirrors. Coffee filters are lint-free so they'll leave windows sparkling.

3. Protect China. Separate your good dishes by putting a coffee filter between each dish.

4. Filter broken cork from wine. If you break the cork when opening a wine bottle, filter the wine through a coffee filter.

5. Protect a cast-iron skillet. Place a coffee filter in the skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust.

6. Apply shoe polish. Ball up a lint-free coffee filter.

7. Recycle frying oil. After frying, strain oil through a sieve lined with a coffee filter.

8. Weigh chopped foods. Place chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a kitchen scale.

9. Hold tacos. Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for messy foods.

10. Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot. Line a plant pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going through the drainage holes.

11. Prevent a Popsicle from dripping. Poke one or two holes as needed in a coffee filter.

12. Do you think we used expensive strips to wax eyebrows? Use strips of coffee filters.

13. Put a few in a plate and put your fried bacon, French fries, chicken fingers, etc on them. Soaks out all the grease.

14. Keep in the bathroom. They make great "razor nick fixers."