A blast from the past and a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Anhaga! I'm still not quite up to sitting at the computer for any length of time, but I didn't want to miss this birthday. I have a card for you, but you'll get it late, sorry about that. I hope you have a great day, treat yourself to something fun and tell us all about what you did!
We got a little snow last night, maybe 2-3" of very wet, heavy snow, but by noon it was almost gone. It was a Camelot snow, meaning it was on the grass and the trees, but not on the streets or sidewalks. My kind of snow!
We've had a slew of birds show up today. Grackles, red-winged blackbirds, and some other kind of good-sized black bird as yet unidentified. PopPop checked the bird report in the Sunday newspaper and neither the red-wings nor the grackles had been reported as being in the area yet. We started wondering when the Baltimore Orioles and Bluebirds would show up. PopPop got the binoculars and went out on the deck to try identifying some odd tracks in the snow behind the barn, when, within five minutes of saying we hadn't see a bluebird for a while, a pair arrived. I didn't get any really good photos, and I'm shooting through glass, but it was exciting to see them. We reported sighting the red-wings and the bluebirds to the MA Audubon Society. I will continue to add to the bird folder at Photobucket for anyone interested in seeing whatever photos I manage to snap.
Poor Queenee is sick with a bad cold. She was sick when she got home from Las Vegas on Friday morning, and spent most of yesterday in bed with a nasty cough. Hopefully another day of rest will sort her out.
If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, the dots will remain only one color, pink.
However if you stare at the black "+" in the center, the moving dot turns to green.
Now, concentrate on the black "+" in the center of the picture. The pink dots will slowly disappear and you will only see only a single green dot rotating around the center "+".
It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don't disappear. Here are pretty good explanations of what's happening with the color and the disappearing dots. Here are more optical illusions and explanations.
We don't always see what we think we see!
It's the first day of Spring and the feeders are loaded with birds this year. PopPop put a suet feeder outside my window in the redbud tree and the little birds pick away at it during the day. Occasionally the starlings will come and take over, but they don't stay long. Sophia, Ebony and Chubba are loving it, they sit and watch the birds by the hour.
Queenee is having a grand time in Las Vegas. She went to the Hoover Dam yesterday (and I convinced her to pick up a cheapo camera, so she took photos) and is wandering through the Luxor today. She'll be home Friday morning.
And I know someone will want to know, so let me say that I didn't bother trying to balance an egg last night.
With much discussion going into this, we have thought it over and decided what our top ten chick flicks would be. Here they are:
☻Thelma and Louise
☻Fried Green Tomatoes
☻Pretty Woman
☻Stepmom
☻Now and Then
☻The Notebook
☻16 Candles
☻Pretty in Pink
☻Mean Girls
☻A Walk to Remember
Thats all folks!
We said last month that we would tackle a Ten Favorite Chick Flicks list. I think it's worth defining, albeit loosely, what qualifies as a Chick Flick. There should be a female lead with a problem of some sort. The problem is usually romantic, so romantic comedies qualify as Chick Flicks. Much as I'd like to say the female lead should solve the problem herself, that leaves out far too many good movies saddled with a knight in shining armor. There may be more than one female lead, or even a whole passel of females.
I've not seen many of the movies that are traditionally thought to be the best Chick Flicks. Beaches is one, I've never seen it.
I'm leaving so many off my list, like Thelma and Louise, Mystic Pizza, countless classics like The Philadelphia Story and Breakfast at Tiffany's, and some stunning foreign films like Hero, but it can't be helped. And tomorrow I could probably come up with a whole new list.
How do non-natives ever learn all the nuances of English?
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP."
It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this up is confusing:
A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP .
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP , you may wind UP with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP .. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP .
One could go on & on, but I'll wrap it UP , for now my time is UP , so ....
Time to shut UP .....!
Oh...one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?
U - P
Bathroom humor aside, those of us who grew up with English have to appreciate how confusing it must be for those who learned the language through whatever means. I've seen similar emails/postings about the difficulty of English. I'm told by friends who are linguists that, in fact, English is not *the* most difficult language, but even they admit that it is a very specific language. We have a lot of words, many of which have either several meanings or inferences (see above about UP) and many which are so specific that they are used in only the most esoteric circumstance. Show of hands, how many of you know what a 'zeugma' is (not the city North of Antioch) and can demonstrate it in a sentence? My personal favorite zeugmas are in "Have Some Madiera, M'Dear" by The Limeliters. Not that you needed to know that.
Then there are the homophones:
Enough, discuss.
14 yrs ago today! He missed a phone call from BluePhan at 7am as he ate breakfast. The phone calls before school were making sure he was going today. His arrival was marked by a fanclub like setting. Did I say he smelled good? Oh yah. He'll arrive home this afternoon with cards, balloons, hugs and kisses all over. 
