...when you're checking the 'organ donor' box on your drivers' license.

Donation After Cardiac Death (Wait, I needed that!)

Donation after cardiac death (DCD) is an emerging standard in hospitals. In the past, brain-death has been the gold standard for the dead. Why does it matter? The demand for human organs in good condition for transplant is ravenous; fresh is better, and transplant doctors would rather harvest the organs as soon as possible after death.

This past June, Ottawa Hospital in Canada announced its first organ transplant in recent history from a patient who hadn't been classified as brain-dead, but whose heart had stopped (that is, "donation after cardiac death" (DCD). By switching to this definition of death for transplant purposes, doctors hope to increase the number of potential donors from which they can be harvested. Physicians at the World Transplant Congress in Boston estimated that the pool of available organs could increase by as much as twenty percent.

Long-time readers of science fiction writer Larry Niven know of a way to increase the pool of available organs by an order of magnitude - organlegging.

The doctor took him apart with exquisite care, like disassembling a flexible, fragile, tremendously complex jigsaw puzzle... If the odds broke right, if the right people came down with the right diseases at the right time, the organlegger might save more lives than he had taken...

Niven gets the early bird award for this one - the text is from his 1967 story The Jigsaw Man. If you think that the illegal harvesting of human organs for transplant can't possibly be a problem, read Real Organleggers: Human Organ Trafficking

Link

Could alien life exist in the form of DNA-shaped dust?

* 18:09 10 August 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Stephen Battersby

'Plasma crystals' that behave like life could exist in Saturn's rings, where the 'dust' would actually be fine ice grains, and the nourishing plasma would be supplied by the solar wind

'Plasma crystals' that behave like life could exist in Saturn's rings, where the 'dust' would actually be fine ice grains, and the nourishing plasma would be supplied by the solar wind.

Could alien life exist in the form of dancing specks of dust? According to a new simulation, electrically charged dust can organise itself into DNA-like double helixes that behave in many ways like living organisms, reproducing and passing on information to one another.

"This came as a bit of a surprise to us", says Gregor Morfill of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. He and colleagues have built a computer simulation to model what happens to dust immersed in an ionised gas, or plasma.

The dust grains pick up a negative charge by absorbing electrons from the plasma and then this charged 'nucleus' attracts positive ions, which form a shell around it.

It was already known that this system can produce regular arrays of dust called plasma crystals, and some experiments have even generated spiral structures. Now, Morfill's simulation suggests that the dust should sometimes form double helixes.

Like DNA, the dust spirals can store information. They do so in the scaffolding of their bodies, as they have two stable states – one with a large diameter and the other with a small one – so a spiral could carry a series of wide and narrow sections.

The specific order of these sections can be copied from one dust spiral to another, like a genetic code. The researchers aren't sure how it happens, but they think each narrow section of spiral creates a permanent vortex of moving dust outside it. So if another spiral drifts alongside it, that vortex pinches the same length into its narrow state.


Genetic code

The spirals even feed, in a sense, as they need fresh plasma to survive and grow, suggesting they may compete with one another for food. Since they are also capable of passing on their genetic code, then perhaps they could evolve into more complex structures.

But that is very speculative, says Morfill, explaining that the simulation is far too simple to include such complex processes as evolution. "It has a lot of the hallmarks for how we define life at present, but we have not simulated life," Morfill told New Scientist. "To us, they're just a special form of plasma crystal."

"It's interesting," says astrobiologist Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, US.

"Some people have argued that life is a self-organising system [that is out of equilibrium], but you could say that of a hurricane," he told New Scientist. "What these guys have done is one step up from pointing at a hurricane and saying it's a living organism. They argue there's a way this can store information, which is a central feature of life. But it's somewhat disappointing that this is only theoretical work."

"Claiming that something is (or is not) alive is almost pointless because there is no mathematically rigorous definition of life," agrees David Grier of New York University in New York City, US.


Life in Saturn's rings?

The team is now setting up an experiment to find out whether real dust spirals exist. It's tricky, because gravity will tend to disrupt the delicate dust structure, but they can get around that to some extent by compressing the dusty plasma, increasing electrical forces within it. To go much further, they will have to find another way to counteract gravity – perhaps by using magnetic fields, or by putting their experiment in free-fall on the International Space Station.

Alive or not, these dust structures could exist in nature. There are many places in space where small grains of material are immersed in a plasma.

"In our solar system, the places most likely to have the right conditions are planetary rings, especially the rings of Saturn and Uranus," says Morfill. There the "dust" would actually be fine ice grains, and the nourishing plasma would be supplied by the solar wind, channelled by planetary magnetic fields.

But Grier says the dusty spirals may be difficult to form in space, since they require grains of uniform shape and size: "I cannot imagine this will happen in space on a large enough scale to be observable."

If there are any ice-grain creatures roaming the rings of Saturn, though, the pace of life would be leisurely, because plasma-crystal processes run more than a hundred thousand times more slowly than the biochemistry of Earth. So even if they are alive, there's no need to worry about them possessing malign alien intelligence. They probably won't have had time to evolve very far.


Link

h

with a friend. We went to a friends’ new shop/deli, and we had sandwiches for lunch with some ladies from her church. It was awkward at first, but it went ok. The sandwiches were good, and so was the iced tea.

My friend took me back home, and we talked for a few minutes outside my house, and then she went to run errands. I wrote her and the pastors’ wife a “thank you” note, even though I had to ‘google’ the pastors’ address. It will go in the mail tomorrow morning.

I found out about a php script that should allow me to point a subdomain to my website host, and the script will tell the forward which file to present. I’m currently tinkering with it to get it to work. Eventually, I will have subdomains for my bookmarks, blog, writing pages, and webtools. This has been a real learning experience! Hopefully, I will be pretty much set up soon!

"Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn’t seem to be on anyone else’s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I’d better not marry the natives."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever


Many homeschoolers we know are looking for churches which make a place for them, their lifestyle, the goals they have for their families, children’s attitudes and actions, the husband/wife relationship and more. They feel a need for homeschool children for their children to interact with. And for homeschool parents for them to associate with, also. Families of like minds.

A pastor friend of ours made a very insightful statement in the course of our conversation. "Since most denominations have similar core doctrines and theology, this is not what separates one church from another," he shared. He had my attention. "What sets one church apart from another is what they value."

Whoa. The things they value sets them apart? This kicked in my analytical nature, and I began to peruse this statement from all sides.

Church A, in the middle of Everywhere, USA, might apparently not value homeschooling. They do not want to support a group of like-minded homeschooling parents who want to assemble to encourage and share with each other, with other members of their church.

Church B not only supports homeschoolers, they welcome them, and join together in prayer to ask the Lord to bring more homeschooling families into their congregation.

Church A seemingly appears to have no real use for moms at home – unless it is to serve the needs of the church while the employed moms are working for their paycheck. Their vision isn’t for moms to pour into their little ones’ lives, but to accommodate all lifestyles, and help the working moms by providing a safe place to keep their children while the moms are at work.

At Church B the pastor’s wife teaches a Bible Study on Titus 2:3-5 – older women teaching the younger women how to be keepers at home. Encouraging moms to love their children, to have a vision for raising their children "in the fear and admonition of the Lord."

Large families aren’t understood at Church A, and they just can’t comprehend why some large, homeschooling families don’t like being separated into age-groups so often, but enjoy a family Sunday School class made up of all ages.

In Church B there are families with more children per family than the norm – and even more children than that! Many couples are starting their families and have several little ones in tow. And God is adding to His church daily.

And at Church A they don’t seem to understand honoring husbands by submissive wives. When exposed to this new thought, they challenge, they mock, they watch those living it, and dismiss it. In this area, God’s word and His way are just not understood nor valued.

Church B’s pastor has a vivacious love for his wife – a strong woman in her own right – who chooses to honor her husband, asking for his input in her decisions.

The church we attend affects, not only our lives, but the lives of our children, our grandchildren, and future generations. If we attend a place where we prefer our children "not to marry the natives." Not to join themselves with those with so many differences – not in doctrine, but in values. We don’t join together with them because we just don’t value the same things. If this is how we feel, then is this really the church for us?

Is our great big God, who knows our every desire, able to bring us to a church, which – if we had the faith to put together a "shopping list" of things we would want in a church – has all the things we deem most important?

A place where we can join ourselves to the natives. Jumping in with both feet. Planning things for the teens – and their families. Opening our homes to girls to learn together the lost arts of keeping a home.

The denomination isn’t the most important difference. What separates one church from another is what they value.

From one mother to another,

Kym Wright
Sign up for the newsletter: http://kymwright.com/
Copyright 2006 - Kym Wright and alWright! Publishing

[I've added my comments to my best friend, Terri... thanks for being my friend - but then again, if you stop being my friend, I'll have to kill you; you know too much!!]

By Michelle Burford

-- "Friends are the family we choose for ourselves," writer Edna Buchanan once said.

I consider the "family" I've gathered -- with five kinds of pals I count on for completely different things -- among the wisest choices I've made. If you can find even one who embodies any of the characteristics that follow, you can consider yourself fortunate.


The Uplifter: This woman's favorite word: yes. You could tell her you're trading your six-figure income for a career in offtrack betting, and she'd barely pause before yelping "Go for it!" Don't you need someone who looks past the love handles to notice the extraordinarily gorgeous you?

[MgrofChaos: Thanks for encouraging me to "hang in there", when I felt discouraged, and to "go for it" when I was nervous about starting something new.]

The Travel Buddy: When the hotel in St. Lucia is a bust, one characteristic becomes all-important: flexibility. This agreeable companion need not be the girl you traded pinkie swears with on the playground; it's enough that she's comfortable with quiet (between gabfests) and is a teensy bit mischievous (as in tequila after midnight).

[MgrofChaos: Hurricane season in Puerto Rico; driving on a two lane highway in the mountains... 'nuff said!]

The Truth Teller: Intent is what separates the constructive from the abusive. Once you've established that the hard news is spoken in love (not in jealousy or malice), you'd be smart to seek out this woman's perspective.

[MgrofChaos: Credit freeze... again, 'nuff said.]

The Girl Who Just Wants to Have Fun: One Saturday a pal and I -- and yes, we're both over age 12 -- pored over every glitter lip gloss in a drugstore aisle for an entire 45 minutes. Forget the crisis download (for that, see the Uplifter); this partnership is about spontaneous good times.

[MgrofChaos: Paper Direct catalogs... remember those? 10 hours on the phone in the early nineties (our personal record)!]

The Unlikely Friend: "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive," Anaïs Nin wrote. My friends -- some twice my age, others half, some rich, others homeless, some black like me, others Korean, Mexican, Caucasian -- have added richness to my life that only variety can bring.

[MgrofChaos: Who knew that Algebra could truly change your life?!?]

For the dogs... a great idea!!

Link

Linebacker, 59, to Play College Ball*
Thursday, August 23, 2007 4:25 AM EDT
The Associated Press
By JAIME ARON AP Sports Writer

ALPINE, Texas (AP) — Mike Flynt was drinking beer and swapping stories
with some old football buddies a few months ago when he brought up the
biggest regret of his life: Getting kicked off the college team before
his senior year. So, one of his pals said, why not do something about it?

Most 59-year-olds would have laughed. Flynt's only concern was if he was
eligible.

Finding out he was, Flynt returned to Sul Ross State this month, 37
years after he left and six years before he goes on Medicare. His
comeback peaked Wednesday with the coach saying he's made the Division
III team's roster. He could be in action as soon as Sept. 1.

Flynt is giving new meaning to being a college senior. After all, he's a
grandfather and a card-carrying member of AARP. He's eight years older
than his coach and has two kids older than any of his teammates.

"I think it was Carl Yastrzemski who used to say, `How old would you be
if you didn't know how old you were?' I'd be in my late 20s or early
30s, because that's how I feel," said Flynt, who has made a living out
of physical fitness. "That's been my approach to this whole thing. I
feel that good. I'm just going to find out if I can perform and make a
contribution to the team."

A longtime strength and conditioning coach at Nebraska, Oregon and Texas
A&M, he's spent the last several years selling the Powerbase training
system he invented. Clients include school systems and the military. His
colorful life story includes being the son of a Battle of the Bulge
survivor and having dabbled in gold mines and oil wells — successfully.

Flynt's life was supposed to be slowing down this fall. With his
youngest child starting at the University of Tennessee, he and Eileen,
his wife of 35 years, are planning to take advantage of being
empty-nesters for the first time.

Instead, they've moved to this remote patch of West Texas so Flynt can
mend an old wound and, he hopes, inspire others.

He became emotional discussing his goal of "helping a bunch of young men
to make up for those guys that I let down." Then he laughed about the
reality that fellow Baby Boomers are getting the most out of his comeback.

"People are kind of in awe. They keep comparing me to themselves and
where they are physically," he said. "If I can help anyone out by what
I'm doing, then it's all worth it."

Flynt's position is still being determined, but he used to play
linebacker. Wherever he lines up, he'll likely become the oldest player
in college football history. Neither the NCAA or NAIA keeps such a
statistic, but research hasn't turned up anyone older than their
mid-40s. And even those are rare, for obvious reasons.

"I told him he's an idiot," said Jerry Larned, who coached Flynt at Sul
Ross in 1969 and counseled him at the start of his comeback. "I said,
`Gosh, dang, Mike, you're not 20 years old any more. You're liable to
cripple yourself.' He understands all of that. But he has a burning
desire to play. ... He is in great physical condition. He still runs a
5-flat 40 and bench presses I-don't-know-what. He's a specimen for 59
years old."

Back in the day, Flynt was quite a player.

In 1965, he was on the first state championship team at Odessa Permian,
the high school featured in "Friday Night Lights." He was offered a
partial scholarship at Arkansas when the Razorbacks were among the top
teams in the land, but instead went to Ranger Junior College.

He wound up at Sul Ross in 1969. An NAIA school then, the Lobos were in
the Lone Star Conference with East Texas State, which at the time had
future NFL stars Harvey Martin and Dwight White, and Texas A&I, which
was starting a two-year run as national champs. The highlight of Flynt's
two years at Sul Ross was sticking A&I with its only loss in '69.

Flynt was going into his senior year in 1971 when he got into a fight
that was far from his first. School officials decided they'd had enough
and threw him out of school. He earned his degree from Sul Ross by
taking his remaining classes elsewhere.

"I actually grieved for more years than I can remember the loss of that
senior year," said Flynt, who'd been a team captain and the leading
tackler as a junior. "What really got me was I felt that was MY football
team and I had let them down. ... I don't know if I ever got over it,
but I finally learned to live with it."

Then came word of a reunion of former Sul Ross students from the 1960s
and '70s. Randy Wilson, who has been best friends with Flynt since they
met as college roommates in 1969, talked a bunch of his former teammates
into using that event as an excuse to get back together.

During several days of reminiscing, Flynt's pain became fresh as ever,
especially when one of the guys said their '71 season went down the
drain without Flynt.

That's when he told them of his remorse. And, he added, "What really
gets me is that I feel like I can still play."

"You might as well give it a shot," Wilson told him. "The worst thing
that can happen is you get your head knocked off and come home."

When Flynt returned home to Franklin, Tenn., his wife wasn't as fired up
by the idea.

"I feel like I'm married to Peter Pan," she said.

It took time to accept that instead of joining their daughter at
Tennessee's home opener she would be watching her husband hit kids
one-third his age.

Eventually she came around. They've sold their suburban Nashville home
and are now living in Alpine, a town of about 6,000 residents near the
Big Bend National Park, a three-hour drive from the nearest major airport.

"I told her, for me to know that I can do it and not do it would be
worse than losing out the first time," he said.

A devout Christian, Flynt sees many religious undertones to his story.
He also believes it touts the benefits of strength training.

"People have asked me, `Mike, what is the fountain of youth?' Well, it's
strength training that builds muscle, increases bone density and burns
calories," he said. "It's the one thing you can do in your 90s and
benefit from."

Just to be clear, Flynt won't be playing football in his 90s.

He'll be out of eligibility then.

Link

It's raining again today. It is wonderful, we need the rain for the fall gardens. It has been very, very hot the past week or so; temperatures have been up in the high 90s/low 100s. So for it to be only 85 is pretty cool! 

The children are going to have their hands full with the grass; it's growing fast and high :-).

"... Do not be discouraged because the "means whereby" to bring about the accomplishment of your dreams may not be apparent. In other words, you do not have to know how this will happen. You only have to know that it will happen."
~Jack Boland

Back Row from the left: Scooby Doo, Goofy, Underdog, Astro (from the Jetsons). Front Row from the left: Snoopy, Droopy, Grimmy (from Mother Goose and Grim comic strip) and Ren (from Ren and Stimpy animated TV show).

(Not in photo: Odie, Muttley, Hong Kong Phooey, and Spike from the Tom & Jerry show.)

Professor Peabody, Pluto, and Huckleberry Hound were smart enough to get out of jury duty, lol!!

Gary Varvel is the artist. You'll find more of his work at IndyStar.com

Well, maybe my childbearing days are *not* over {smile}!

==========================

A British housewife became the world's oldest natural mother after giving birth at the age of 59, it was claimed yesterday.

Dawn Brooke had a healthy boy without any fertility treatment only 12 months before she became eligible for her old age pension, her family said.

Her husband, former company director Raymond Brooke, said the couple had kept the 1997 birth private for a decade to let their son grow up in peace.

Mr Brooke married his Londonborn wife a few weeks before their son was born by caesarean section at a Guernsey hospital on August 20, 1997.

The world record for the oldest non-IVF birth was held by Ruth Kistler, who had a daughter in Los Angeles in 1956, aged 57.

The British record for oldest birth without fertility treatment was set by Kathleen Campbell from Kimberley, Nottinghamshire, who had son Joby at 55 in 1987.

Doctors say it is extremely rare for women to have children past their mid-fifties. The average age for the menopause is 51, and it is unusual for a woman over 54 to be ovulating.

The Guinness World Records book lists the world's oldest mother as Adriana Iliescu who gave birth to a daughter in 2005 aged 66 years and 230 days.

The birth to the Romanian academic who had received fertility treatment for nine years beforehand sparked an ethical, medical and religious debate about the suitability of fertility treatment for older women.

Link

for the public schools... Man, I miss NYC. School began at a reasonable time of year, after Labor Day.

The children are excited about their new pens and pencils and paint and markers and crayons and notebooks and and and {laughing}!!

The funny thing to me is, we didn't stop learning all summer long, so it is more of the same for the rest of the year. For now, the most exciting thing is the fall garden. When we lived in NYC, the gardening season ends with the fall. Here is SC, it is warm enough to have a garden most of the year. This being our first year gardening, we are learning many valuable lessons...

The excitement of planting seeds and watching them grow,

The patience necessary to wait for the harvest to mature so that it can be gathered when it is ripe,

And, most importantly, the absolute necessity of diligence in weeding, otherwise, instead of having weeds in your garden, you have a garden in your weeds, lol!!

I for one, am looking forward to days that are simply warm; where you can enjoy the temperature and breezes blowing across your skin. I prefer warm weather to cold, but the late spring and fall weather down here is about as close to paradise as you can get :-). Many perfect temperature days stretch out ahead, where I can sit on the back deck with the children and enjoy the sunsets (HEY!! Children!! Where's that camera?!?)

"Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us. Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing--sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death--can take that love away."
~Henri Nouwen

Well, I got my hair done today.... and it mercifully held off raining until I got home. Then the sky opened up!

It seems that if I want it to rain, all I have to do is:

A) Get my hair done
B) Wash the van
C) Water the garden

Maybe next year, I can stave off any droughts, simply by following the above guidelines, LOL!!

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family.

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
eight matching plates,
wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal,
that will make her guests feel honored...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a feeling of control over her destiny.

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself.

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to quit a job,
break up with a lover,
and confront a friend without ruining the friendship...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but its over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't take it personally...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year...

And just in time to work on the next column... although, I'll have a lot of work to do to catch up. I'm looking at purchasing a Mantis tiller and furrow maker at Sears, to make the plowing easier.... one of the benefits of having triple digit temperatures, is that the fall planting must be delayed. That gives me a little more time to get everything done :-).

Dad called me today; he is having extensive dental work done, and he's really tired now. He says that the work itself wasn't too bad, but holding his mouth open for four hours (!!) has made his jaw tired. So, he's off to bed, poor baby! {{{Dad}}}

The sunsets here are absolutely fabulous... I'm going to have to fire up my digicam and start taking pictures. Glorious, beautiful, colorful sunsets. The sunrises are pretty nice as well, but I'm usually asleep for those :->!

When I was six months pregnant with my third child, my three year old
came into the room when I was just getting ready to get into
the shower. She said, "Mommy, you are getting fat!"
I replied, "Yes, honey, remember Mommy has a baby growing in her tummy."
"I know," she replied, but what's growing in your butt?"


A little girl asked her mother, "Can I go outside and play with the boys?"
Her mother replied, "No, you can't play with the boys, they're too rough."
The little girl thought about it for a few moments and asked,
"If I can find a smooth one, can I play with him?"


A little boy was doing his math homework. He said to himself,
"Two plus five, that son of a bitch is seven.
Three plus six, that son of a bitch is nine...."
His mother heard what he was saying and gasped, "What are you doing?"
The little boy answered, "I'm doing my math homework, Mom."
"And this is how your teacher taught you to do it?" the mother asked.
"Yes," he answered.

Infuriated, the mother asked the teacher the next day, "What are you teaching my son in math?"
The teacher replied, "Right now, we are learning addition."
The mother asked, "And are you teaching them to say two plus two, that son of a bitch is four?"

After the teacher stopped laughing, she answered, "What I taught them was, two plus two, THE SUM OF WHICH, is four."

"My Feet Are Off The Ground"
From Tyler Perry:
writer and actor

This morning I awoke and was so frustrated about all of the stuff that I'm dealing with in trying to get this studio open. I was about to open my mouth and start complaining when I remembered something that happened to me about a year ago.

I was walking to my car when this woman who appeared to be homeless started walking towards me. I'm ashamed to say this but I thought, "I don't feel like being hustled today." Then I got quickly convicted. I felt guilty so I
started digging in my pocket for some money. As she got closer I noticed that she had the kindest eyes that I had ever seen. As I was reaching into my pocket she started to speak. I thought, "Here goes the sales pitch". She said "Excuse me sir, I need some shoes. Can you help me?" My eyes filled with water because I remember being out on the streets and having only one pair of run over shoes. I was taken aback for a second.

I took her inside the studio and had my wardrobe people find shoes in her size. As she put the shoes on she started crying, praising God and thanking Jesus, and saying, "My feet are off the ground! My feet are off the ground!"
Several of the wardrobe people started crying. I was crying. But I never forgot those words. "My feet are off the ground!" I thought, "Wow! All she wanted was some shoes." She quickly disappeared and never asked me for a
dime. I realized that I still had the money in my hand so I went out looking for her. She was gone just that quick so I looked all around the neighborhood for her. I found her standing on a corner looking down at her shoes, still crying. I was so touched. I asked her how she had gotten
homeless. She told me that she had AIDS and that she was waiting to get into a shelter. She said that her family had turned their backs on her and that she had no place to go, but she knew that God would make a way for her.

I said to myself, "He just did!" Her faith and her praise moved me. I took her to a nearby hotel and put her up until she was able to get on her feet. I had someone that worked for me to check on her from time to time and to
make sure that she had food and clothes. After about a month or so we lost touch, but I never forgot her.

This past summer I was shooting "Daddy's Little Girls" and this woman walks up to me smiling. I didn't recognize her face, but her eyes were familiar. She had on a really nice dress and her hair was done. It was her! She told me that the little help that I had given her had changed her life. She was in a house now and doing very well.

I said all of that to say this. After I met this woman, every time I think about complaining and mumbling I remember, "My feet are off the ground!"

I wanted to share this with you just to let you know that when I say that I am thankful for you, I mean it. And when I say that you are a blessing to me, I mean it. We take so much for granted sometimes that I just wanted all
of you to know that I am grateful to God for you everyday. Thank you for being in my life.

~Tyler Perry

Helium: What is Helium - Where Knowledge Rules

Hmmm... something to check out. I wonder how long they have been up?

I'll keep you posted :-)

Well, I'm on hiatus from website creation (at least a day or two, unless I can't sleep, lol!), the school supplies are purchased, the grass is almost finished being cut (the children are finishing that today), and I'm deciding on what to make for Christmas gifts (the cards are done already). The thing that has to be done now, is to get the papers in my office filed. I *hate* filing. That's probably why I procrastinate about doing it !

Did I mention that I *hate* filing?

Oh well, there's no help for it, I suppose... I'll just put in a Star Trek video, and listen to the adventures of Kirk, Spock, and Bones while I work.

I valiantly struggle on to at least understand the intricacies of this new html ... the last time that I dealt with html code was several years ago, and I am *rusty*! The page is finally up, the domain nameservers are pointing to the right places (hooray!!), email is (almost) finished, and now I am working on content (on my computer). Amazing, how much goes on behind the scenes before the first photo is viewed.

What am I struggling with? A single space. The equivalent of a carriage return, and I just am not able to find the right code. I've looked at the code on the actual page where there were other spaces, but it does not work. Sigh... It looks as though I'm going to have to go to a html tutorial website ... something *new* to learn, lol!

I'm declaring a moratorium on this for the moment. I still have to find material for Monday's posting, my office is a mess (files need to be put away), and my brain needs to process this new information. I'll probably find that the fix is something very simple :-).

I'll write more blive (my favorite new word)!

relaxed, and pleased. Website is up, children are behaving (as they usually do, thank heavens!), vacation time is coming, and I'm feeling warm and happy for no reason at all. Should I have that checked, LOL?

There is much to do to prepare for winter, and I am not looking forward to clearing the garden for the fall planting; but I *am* looking forward to eating lots of lettuce and mesclun this winter. I am planning to try my hand at building a hoophouse over my raised beds - rubbing hands together - those yellow tomatoes that we had this summer were absolutely mouthwatering, and I want them all winter long... yummy, yummy!!

I'm learning a lot about gardening... and my lack of knowledge about indigenous plants. Have you ever noticed that, when you discover a new edible, it decides that there are better places to live? Especially when it is normally considered a "weed"? I haven't had a decent amount of dandelions grow here since I got here (smile)!

My neighbors have been both generous and gracious in teaching and helping me. Especially when, after telling me that I could cut their okra, I asked them why do they cut down such beautiful plants? It turns out that "cutting" okra is the term for "picking" okra! Fortunately, I have a rule, which is my Prime Directive: Ask before you do something. Thank heavens! Otherwise, my neighbors would have been looking for me... I would have cut down all their beautiful okra plants! LOL!

Anyway, by the time the fall garden is finished, I will have lost the last of the baby weight. It's not a lot of weight, but it keeps me from fitting comfortably into my 'tester' jeans (yes, vanity rears its ugly head :->). Right now, my eldest is wearing them. I've warned her not to get attached to them, because they are MINE, lol!!

Well, I finally bit the bullet, and got my own set of domain names. Now, I'm trying to get hosting set up. Mucking about in the bowels of my registrar's domain management site, I've managed to cancel and redirect everything... to an "error 404" site. Sigh. I've got to remember *not* to do neuron-intensive stuff late at night. This morning, with a few hours of sleep under my belt, I realized that nothing was really wrong, that I just needed some sleep and a cup of tea.

Hopefully, the domain nameservers will switch over soon, and you can see my new website.

A Montana cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a man in a Armani suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high- resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS- SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the cowboy.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"

You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government," says the cowboy.

"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required," answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows, this is a herd of sheep.

"Now give me back my dog."

Growing for Market
A Monthly Journal for Market Growers

Vegan Food Blog
*Language warning*

Birthdays in December
What to do when people you love have birthdays around Christmas?

In my email, I received a link from Krisann Blair, the Queen of Christmas Organizing. It's time to begin getting ready, those of us who make gifts!

Link

Working on my Christmas list ... thank heaven that the Christmas *card* list is done, LOL!!