Cory's Job Search

Cory's certification test is this week. After that, he'll be gainfully employed with Florida Hospital, Kissimmee location (tentatively for now.)

'Bout Love

You know you are in love
When you see the world in her eyes,
And her eyes everywhere in the world.
(David Levesque)

To love and win is the best thing.
To love and lose, the next best.
(William M. Thackeray)

A memory of true love is like a favorite song;
No matter how many times it plays again,
You never get tired of it.

Love that remains longest in your heart is the one that is not returned.

There are a million things in the world I want, but all I need is you.

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
(Washington Irving)

Thou art to me a delicious torment.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings.
(Lisa Moriyama)

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
(Greg Anderson)

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
(Elie Wiesel)

Love is sometimes denied, sometimes lost, sometimes unrecognized, but in the end, always found with no regrets, forever valued and kept treasured.

True love is when you have to watch a friend leave, with the knowledge that you might never see him again. But you know he'll be in your mind and heart forever...

A part of you has grown in me. And so you see, it's you and me together forever; and never apart, maybe in distance, but never in heart.

We all want to fall in love. Why? Because that experience makes us feel completely alive. Where every sense is heightened, every emotion is magnified, our everyday reality is shattered and we are flying into the heavens. It may only last a moment, and hour, an afternoon. But that doesn't diminish its value. Because we are left with memories that we treasure for the rest of our lives.

You KNOW I'm NOT A Gun Person, But...

"Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws.

In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.

And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.

Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can't shoot back.

The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic "Gun-Free School Zone" laws. "

Ann Coulter and I had the same idea.

I KNEW That Garage Looked Hinky

Man performs dental work in dirty garage in Florida.

Too Daft For Words

Thousands of people have been 'fleeced' into buying neatly coiffured lambs they thought were poodles.

Guess Who

I'm not naming names here. Do the initials A. B. mean anything to you? (The face only an "animal"-lover could love.) You know I love me some monkeys, chimps, orangutans, etc.

You're Not The Lone Ranger

It wasn't just you. Here's MSN Money's Customer Service Hall of Shame.

Limbo

Blogs come and go. I haven't had the urge to blog in a week or so. The news is tragic; I can't work-up a rant about political issues. I always tell my folks, no news is good news and I truly believe that. That's the case with my family and my life in general. Doesn't make for interesting blogging, but it sure as heck beats the alternative when awful news boggles the mind and breaks the heart.

A Sad, Sad Day

I thought I'd be complaining about the reinstatement of OT or my new, less-than-desirable shift at work tonight, but today's massacre at Virginia Tech has taken the gripe right out of me.

I know the calls for gun control have already begun, but I can't help thinking that if ONE of those innocent students had a conceal-carry permit maybe there wouldn't be 32 dead. This was just so senseless and heinous.

Sunday Patty

Taking pics on Sunday morning is my dad's hobby. My mom looks great and is a good sport.

Speaker in Chief

From Mike Shelton at Townhall.com

Your Turn, Alex

Feeling a bit left out? This orangutan is for YOU!

She Started It

When a coworker approached me this afternoon to tout the virtues of Loose Change 911---no link provided, look it up if you want to be ill, I lost it. When she learned that I knew about the film and website, she asked me, "Don't you think our government COULD have planned the destruction of the World Trade Center? Don't you think it COULD have been a series of planted demolition explosives?" (Actually, she wasn't that articulate with her questions, but you get the general idea. Another thing, anyone who even remotely knows me, knows I'm a flaming conservative and by no stretch of the imagination a conspiracy theorist. I have no idea why she picked me to approach.)

My answer. I got loud. You NEVER get loud when you're arguing with someone who needs educating. (She's a typical "The View" audience member and has only read one book in her life; a book about "organic" food.) However, it had been a very long, frustrating day that included an overflowing queue and continuous systems issues at work, so apparently I wasn't in any mood to educate.

My answer was ABSOLUTELY NOT. I do NOT take the word of terrorists over my government. I don't dismiss TRUE EVIL and go looking to "blame the US first." I do NOT think a sitting president would intentionally plan the killing of 3000 innocent Americans, destroy the economic nerve-center of the world and send the US into a recession. I told her while she's looking to find someone to blame in the US, she's excusing the true murderers, who planned and executed the greatest act of mass murder in United States history.

NO, I don't believe the American government hatched a plot to kill Americans. NO, I do not. How can anyone who truly believes Al-Qaeda is a benevolent, peaceful branch of Islam, the religion of peace and that their country is the true root of everything evil in the world---continue to LIVE in the United States? How? I couldn't. (I wanted to leave Florida when they let Terry Schiavo starve to death, while people who do the same thing to dogs go to jail. I had a difficult time with that.)

"That" website, "that" film is the fair-haired child of Rosie O'Donnell and Charlie Sheen. (Rosie still thinks fire won't destroy steel. Welders? Metallurgists? Do steel girders come out of the ground shaped like that? Hello, acetylene torches CUT steel. Never mind.)

By the way, where are the people that didn't DIE on the planes? A famous Hollywood producer ("Frazier") and a famous journalist, Barbara Olson and hundreds of others are being hidden at a secluded island like "Lost" to be rescued at a later date?

The coworker hemmed and hawed and I told her I couldn't bear to discuss it further with her. I didn't tell her, but I couldn't stomach her ignorance. I had no patience. I turned around in my chair and took a call. I guess I had reached my breaking-point.

Yes, freedom of speech allows you to spout words that hurt and harm Americans who lost family, friends and fellow Americans on September 11th, 2001. I couldn't be passive and say, "Oh, everyone has their own opinions." I couldn't let it pass unchallenged.

Yes, it's easier to get along and go along, but sometimes you have to speak up. Sometimes "they" need to be called on their facts, especially when SHE started it.

Ewww...That's NOT Good

A crocodile at a zoo in the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung holds the forearm of a zoo veterinarian in between its teeth, April 11, 2007. The crocodile bit off the arm of the zoo veterinarian treating it, an official reported. Picture taken April 11, 2007. REUTERS/Frank Lin (TAIWAN)

In A World Where What You Say Matters Most

Don't you bet Don Imus is glad they released the DNA report about Anna Nicole's "baby-daddy" today?

True Enough

There was a quote last night on the television show "Brothers and Sisters" that was too good not to remember. The youngest brother was trying to hold a conversation with his dead dad's illegitimate daughter who was busy text-messaging a friend. The youngest brother (Justin, I think) said,

"You know texting on a cell phone is a lot like listening to the radio on television."

Good one. That's how Brooke feels about texting. She HATES it. I kinda like it. It's informative, yet not invasive. Rather passive. Works for me.

Storm Photos Link

This is a link to a page that has more than a hundred storm chaser homepages. Great browsing for tornado photos. Chaser Home Page.

I remember an afternoon one spring in Mustang, OK that looked just like this. We get tornadoes in Florida, but these Midwest whoppers are of a different breed altogether. The cloud-top heights are nothing comparable. Once you've seen this, it's not soon forgotten.

Another afternoon, this time in Florida, I was driving between jobs at Disney (site-selling cell phones) and the ATT Wireless store in south Orlando, when I looked out my window: I remember remarking to myself that if I was in Oklahoma, the storm over to my left (west) would look like a wall cloud. Sure enough, just then, a funnel dropped-down for a few seconds. It wasn't much of a tornado and ended as quickly as it began. I turned on the radio, typical of Florida at the time, they broadcast a warning for the little tornado about 15 minutes after it was long-gone.

Why Waste A Tantrum When No One Can See You?

Too Pretty To Hide or Eat

Easter eggs adorned in traditional Sorbian style are seen at the Sorbian Easter Egg Market in Bautzen, eastern Germany, 2006. A Croatian activist Friday completed a 24-hour stay in a chicken cage in a central square in Zagreb to urge people not to eat eggs on Easter Sunday.(AFP/File/Norbert Millauer)

An Easter Message

The Lord is risen indeed… Luke 24:34

I send greetings to Christians around the world as they gather to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus' life and teachings continue to speak to every generation, and Christians believe his miraculous Resurrection provides hope for the future and offers us the promise of new life.

Through His ministry and sacrifice, Jesus demonstrated God's unconditional love for us. He taught us the importance of helping others and loving our neighbors. His selfless devotion and mercy provide a remarkable example for all of us.

As families and friends gather to enjoy this Easter season, we celebrate God's gift of freedom and His love that conquers death.

For those who observe Easter, our faith brings confidence that good will overcome evil and that joy is everlasting.

Today, we give thanks for God's many blessings and pray for His peace in the affairs of men.

~~George W Bush, 2004~~

Which One Is A Dog?

Gibson, a Great Dane, right, and Zoie, a Chihuahua in Grass Valley, Calif. (AP Photo/Science, Deanne Fitzmaurice)

Why are small dogs small? Because they are not big?

Not That Pretty

Dr. Chris Wilson of NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Wash., holding a 38-inch ruler up to a giant shortraker rockfish. The fish, according to NOAA, was caught in mid-March when the Kodiak Enterprise was trawling at about 350 fathoms in the Pribilof Canyon at night just south of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. They estimate the rockfish was 90 to 115 years old. (AP Photo, NOAA Fisheries, Karna McKinney)

Post-Hyacinth

Pre-Hyacinth

Because It Rained

"There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, and timid policies offer a path to safety." --Winston Churchill

Tonight we got our first little taste of spring showers. The short downpour delayed my walk with Lucy and Sadie, but I got the opportunity to do a bit of reading.

In the wake of the latest developments in Iran with regard to the British hostages, I had been thinking about Winston Churchill and his difficulties with the appeasement of Adolph Hitler by European leaders before WWII.

Hitler time and again had disregarded world opinion and made it clear he'd continue his plans to conquer Europe and the free-world. Churchill said that democratic leaders didn't have the resolve to do what needed to be done because they feared the long fight and hideous ravages of war. Churchill said ignoring and appeasing Hitler seemed a more palatable solution, (I'm paraphrasing here.)

How is it possible for rational thinking people NOT to consider the radical, Islamo-fascist movement any less a threat? Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad figured he could make the UK seem smaller in the eyes of the world and by all accounts he was right. Democrats in the US Congress have announced the "War On Terrorism" is over. It's done. Too bad we're betting they are right, we're betting our freedom and the freedom of our children and the freedom of our children's children.

(BTW, Nancy Pelosi wants to know why women are not governmental representatives in countries of the Middle East based in theocracy rather than democracy? Why is that? Why aren't more women involved in government in Saudi Arabia? Oh yeah, I forgot women can't become legislators in Saudi Arabia, it's against the law.)

Back to my original thought. Here are a few quotes I find especially insightful from Winston Churchill:

"When nations are strong, they are not always just and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong."

"I never worry about action, but only about inaction."

"Nations which go down fighting rise again, those who surrender tamely are finished."

"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour! ' ”

So Much For "Baby" Sadie

Luckily, I'm Up-To-Date "Heroes"

(My favorite "Heroe"--Hiro) If you're new to this whole Heroes thing or just have a lot of time on your hands, you can watch the first 18 episodes of Heroes online for free. NBC is streaming the entire season so far with "limited interruption" from various sponsors.

For Jennifer R

Your "Office" favorite Steve Carell could totally beat-up Spiderman. (From the 20th Annual Kid’s Choice Awards)

That Reminds Me...PhotoShop'd & Borrowed

Cory Becomes A Vegetarian

I got to thinking: it's been much too long since I posted some FAMILY photos! Beware Danielle and Donnie W---you're both up next.

Uh Oh! We'll See This More Than Once

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York reacts to seeing and old friend during a campaign stop at the National Education Association New Hampshire, in Concord, N.H., Friday, March 30, 2007. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

NOT PhotoShop'd

I Couldn't Have Said It Better...Again

Jonah Goldberg is so "on-the-nosie" on Rosie.

The 'queen of nice' goes nuts.

"RENOWNED metallurgist Rosie O'Donnell proclaimed on TV on Thursday that Sept. 11, 2001, was a more significant date than most of us realized. It was, in her words, "the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel."

(This is funny stuff, Jonah!!)

This, of course, came as news to steelworkers, blacksmiths, firefighters, manufacturers of samurai swords and other fools who hadn't realized that steel is forged in magic furnaces using dragon breath and pixie dust."

Read the rest, it's worth it. It would be different if it was "informed" or "intelligent"---Rosie is neither. The truly scary part is the applause that follows her comments. Heads-up ABC/Disney, it's YOUR turn. (Would firing Rosie increase her popularity and lunacy? Probably. Yes, she has a right to her opinions, on "The View" and elsewhere. But Googling is not research and knowledge does not grow audiences or sell newspapers.)

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information,

which is proof against all argument,

and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance.

This principle is, contempt prior to examination."

~~ William Paley (1743-1805),

Predictions?? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Predictions!

Again? They predicted a "very active" 2006 hurricane season as well. The late El Nino showed them that predictions are JUST THAT: PREDICTIONS.

Your humble blogger predicts that we will always have "changing" weather. (I bet mine is as accurate as his.)

And another thing, what the dickens is the Tropical Meteorology Project doing at Colorado State anyway? It's not the same situation where the NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory is located in Norman, Oklahoma. At least Oklahoma is pretty much the central location for most things "tornadic."

Shouldn't some kind of Blizzard Center or Avalanche Warning Center or Rocky Mountain Non-Tropical Weather Center be located in Colorado instead of hurricane research? (Sorry, Vivian, I just had to get that off my chest.)

And now a word from NOAA, who is not our sponsor:

This year, NOAA celebrates 200 years of science, service, and stewardship. NSSL's contributions to Atmospheric Research play a prominent role in NOAA's legacy. At the NOAA Celebrates 200 Years web site, learn about NSSL's history of thunderstorm and tornado research, how knowledge gained from field programs and "storm chasing" helped transform Doppler radar into a powerful operational forecasting tool, and how phased array radar research will revolutionize future weather observations. NOAA cites tornado detection and warning research carried out at NSSL during the 1970's as one of its Top Ten Breakthroughs in 200 years.

Is It Working Yet?

“There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes” — Billy Connolly

That’s the closest I’ll ever come to a personal manifesto, because it’s a neat summation of a general credo by which I am trying to lead my life these days: that it’s better to deal with conditions as they are than to complain about how you wish they were better. (Note to self: It's more difficult than it sounds.)

CB UPDATE

Turns-out, cherry blossoms do not have a lovely aroma as do orange blossoms. I have it from a reliable source that the cherry blossoms are absolutely scentless. Who knew? As I quickly pointed out, cherry blossoms make-up for any lack of "scent-ly" aroma in pure loveliness. (I suppose that one more thing I can take off my "To Do" list. Whew! Down into the hundreds now...)

Finally An Old Standard For "An Old Standard"

I Have Dreamed

From "The King and I"
Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
(Published: 1951)
As Performed by Matt Munro

I have dreamed that your arms are lovely,
I have dreamed what a joy you'll be.
I have dreamed every word you whisper.
When you're close, so close to me.

How you look in the glow of evening
I have dreamed and enjoyed the view.
In these dreams I've loved you so
That by now I think I know
What it's like to be loved by you
I will love being loved by you.

In these dreams I've loved you so
That by now I think I know
What it's like being loved by you
I will love being loved by you.

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

They're BAAAAAAAAAACK!! I think our drier-than-normal late winter and early spring weather delayed my favorite time of year! This weekend I finally got my orange blossoms back. Maybe it helps that I was able to get out of my cube and renew my SuperHero skills as a SuperSmeller. I doubt if that's the case, because you can actually go right outside of the house tonight and smell the blossoms quite forcefully. When it's good, it's SO good.

We don't have monuments to go along with our blossoms here in Florida as they do in the Nation's Capitol. However, the Cherry Blossoms are a far more spectacular sight. Far more grand, far more awe-inspiring. But I wonder if the Cherry Blossoms' aroma rivals that of our Orange Blossoms? I guess that's one of those things to put on my "To Do List."

Rumors and Rumors of Rumors

I know it's April 1st and the fools are out in full-force, but the rumor about Disney/MGM becoming Disney/Pixar--I had heard long before today. Then there was one on the Disney Blog (not an authorized Disney site, but run by a fan) that Disney is set to open a fifth park in April 2010. It was supposed to be:

"The new park will be called 'DisneySeas', and will be based largely on the Tokyo DisneySea park, but this time with a healthy dose of marine life shows. There are already big water tanks backstage at Disney's Animal Kingdom where Disney is training dolphins, killer whales, and other marine life for the Disney quality shows that will become the focus for the new park.

The Fifth Gate location on the 120 acres directly adjacent to the Magic Kingdom and across the Lagoon from Wilderness Lodge. The recent construction at the Contemporary is to help handle the expected increased hotel capacity the new resort will bring. The location also takes advantage of the monorail line. Construction on a new monorail station right overhead the existing bus station has already begun. A people mover will carry guests from the station to the DisneySeas entrance. The current parking lots will be slowly converted to multi-story garages with moving walkways similar to Universal Orlando. Capacity will be approximately double the current parking lots, with space left over for expanded ticket book and transportation center (with shops and dining).

A few guests have emailed me and reported seeing 'sight-line' balloons rising from the area adjacent to the Magic Kingdom recently. This also confirms the rumor, so Disney must have decided the time was right to make the announcement. "

From what I can see from the responses to the post, this last one is a huge April Fool's Day joke. I guess we'll have to hear it from Meg to know if it's gossip, rumor or truth on the fast-track.