Now I know you may be thinking several things at this point, some of which I probably don’t want to know about, but one of them is probably “What a barbarian! I can’t believe she just ate the whipped cream straight out of the can!” Well, I did. And I will let you in on a little secret – it wasn’t the first time. But now you are probably thinking (at least if you are still reading this – and I know all you fellow barbarians out there are) – “Why is this something that is worthy of a blog post?” Well, I will tell you…

I noticed something strange while eating the mouthful of whipped cream…. I chewed it! Yes, in fact – I really did CHEW on a mouth full of whipped cream… Chewed, not swallowed, not drank, not licked… WTH!!! Seriously? Did that really happen? Why on earth would I chew something like whipped cream? I couldn’t believe it – I also couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before. I didn’t know what to think – I was very confused and amused. I was almost laughing at myself (which I don’t recommend with a mouthful of whipped cream – but at least I was alone at the time). So, I had to try again just to be sure I had noticed what happened correctly – you know, for scientific purposes. And I’ll be darned, I did it again! Hmmm…. I have about half a can left – I think I will have to keep studying this phenomenon.

1. Once again, Women of the Underworld Series tops this list in the number one spot. I love this series, but I am seriously behind on my reading of it. I think Kelley Armstrong is a great writer and I LOVE that she keeps writing, but I seriously need her to slow down a bit so I can get caught up and then wait anxiously for the next one!
2. My next most popular post for 2011 is the 10 Uses for Your Old iPhone. This is way up in this list from 2009. I am assuming that this is in no small part due to the release of the very popular iPhone 4S. I myself, upgraded to the new 4S last year and I love it. I’m still not sure that Siri is my new best friend, but she and I are getting along okay so far.
3. Next we have Star Trek: A Movie List in the number three spot this year. The popularity of this list has improved over the years. I am glad to see that my opinion on the order of the Star Trek movies is useful to others.
4. In the number 4 spot, we have Sexy Female Professions. Over the years since I wrote that list, I have decided that I should have included Vampire Hunter, think Anna Valerious, to the list.
5. A strange one is on the list this year. It is a post titled: Hell Just Froze Over. It is a very short post from 2006 about how you can run Windows on the Mac. Not sure how it came to be on the top 10 list, but welcome!
6. Collectible VHS is new to this list as well. I’m guessing people were searching the Internet to determine whether or not they should keep any of their old VHS tapes. If it helps anyone out there in the world, then here is what I ended up doing with mine – DONATED. I donated almost every single one of my old VHS tapes to charitable organizations. I kept the ones that were really important to me and that I had no chance of ever finding in any other format. All the others went to a good cause. And you know what – I haven’t missed any of them.
7. A favorite top content list member is another list – the list of Top 10 Lip Balms. While I still no longer use any of the lip balms on the list – it still is one of the best lists (my opinion) of lip balms out there on the web.
8. This year we welcome the Weather Warden Series to the top content list. This is my second favorite book series. Living in Oklahoma makes you a little bit of a weather junkie. Since the weather is so unpredictable here, you have to check it pretty religiously and then hope the wind doesn’t blow in something unexpected before you can get home from work. So books that have weather and magic in them fit right in here (at least in my opinion).
9. From Sexy Car to Sexy Couch is next on the list. Since this post is on this list, everyone must have forgiven me for the incorrect back seat references…
10. And last, but not least, we get to Dog Helmets. Motorcycle helmets for dogs – ’nuff said.

That’s it for 2011. Hopefully, keep your fingers crossed that I will get around to posting enough to have new items on the 2012 top content list.

Almost 5 years ago I read about electronic cigarettes. I thought they were a pretty cool idea, but never really explored them. Two years ago that changed. I bought my first e-cig and starting using it off an on. I would alternate between smoking and “vaping” (using the e-cig). At first, it was more smoking than vaping, but I gradually shifted to more vaping than smoking. This month, I finally made the switch to vaping all the time!

If you think you will always be a smoker because you have always been a smoker, then you might want to watch some of vapingpoint’s YouTube videos.

Hmmm… I’m thinking I might start including flavor reviews on here in the future….

People handle situations differently and I think its great. I think it is wonderful that people comes in all sorts of flavors. I love watching people and seeing how they are in real day-to-day situations. Not in the stalker sense, but in the anthropologist type of interest.

Which brings me to my thought… Life is an adventure, live it like one!!

It is truly amazing to me how diverse we all are. People who are considered normal can have more quirks than people who are weird. Personally, I like being in the weird category, but I am probably considered pretty normal – oh well, at least it’s not for lack of trying…

Strangely enough, what inspired this post was that I overheard a conversation in a restaurant about eating peas but only if they were in a bowl of milk and I remembered that I knew someone who did that, but I couldn’t remember much else about them.

So here are just a spattering of those things that have stuck in my head over the years about people I have known:

• One girl I knew wore more jewelry than anyone I had ever met before. She had rings on every finger (including her thumbs), at least 10 earrings in each ear, and even wore a toe ring.
• I knew a guy once that would only eat cooked green beans IF they were covered in ranch dressing.
• I had an over 21, but under 30 male roommate that had a bumper sticker on his very own station wagon (he actually purchased it-it was not given to him by his parents). the bumper sticker said , “If you drink like a fish, swim don’t drive.” He did drink like a fish and he very rarely drove at all – whether he had been drinking or not.
• A former co-worker of mine was one of the tallest, broadest woman I have ever met. Her best friend was the shortest, plumpest woman I have ever known.
• A very dear friend of mine loved buttered popcorn with peanut M&M’s. She would mix them together and eat them at the same time. She said it was sweet and salty like trail mix – only better.
• An acquaintance wouldn’t open the microwave before the timer went off for fear of harmful radiation. In fact, he would scream if you opened the microwave door while it was still running. Whether this is a true fact or not I may never know, but it was oh-so-much fun to mess with this guy.
• A friend of mine only wore Converse tennis shoes no matter what the occasion. He even wore them to a fancy black tie event once. Although, after walking around all night at the same event in 4-inch heels, I couldn’t blame him for the choice of footwear.
• I had a teacher once who had really big hair. She would lean up against the chalkboard while lecturing and where her hair had been the chalk was completely erased. I wonder if she ever figured it out – cause we certainly never told her…

Does anyone else have any strange things they remember about people they have known? If so, put them in the comments.

I know there are long term political agenda items that are supposed to eventually help everyone out, but I think we can do our part to have a more immediate effect. There are tons of people out there with blogs or some sort of web publication. Almost all those people have ads or affiliate links on their site. I think we could help to stimulate the economy by clicking on the ads on the sites that we visit.

Clicking one little ad costs us nothing and helps out other people tremendously. Just one little click and you may be the one click that blogger needed to get a check that month from their advertising. That one check may be enough for them to buy a breakfast at their local diner. That one breakfast may be enough to allow the diner to give a paycheck to their part time chef. That part time chef may then have enough money to pay their rent for the month. The landlord will then be able to make the mortgage payment for the month. Which means one less foreclosure. Which means …

It’s amazing what we can do when we try to help others.

Via Great White Snark: Link

As you work your way through the game, you get to learn new spells and make potions. Once you have learned a spell, you get to use it throughout the game. You get to play different characters during the game. You can be Harry or Hermione or Ron or Hagrid (you get the idea). Most of the characters have something that is unique to them that helps you in different places within the game. These unique abilities stay pretty true to the characters as you already know them.

Looking at the game title you would think that it is a kids game. And it is true that kids can play these games without too much frustration. It is also true that the games are challenging enough for the adult player. I wouldn’t say that these games are for the hard core gamer, but they are definitely worth playing for most game playing levels.

I haven’t had a ton of time to play this since I bought it, but I did make it all the way through the first year’s story. Once I make it through the entire game, I will go back in the free play mode and collect all the extra stuff I couldn’t grab on my through the first time. This is one of the best parts of the LEGO games. You play it once for the story and then play it again to get all the good stuff and find all the hidden items. Its like a treasure hunt – so much fun!

1. Neglect, neglect, neglect: I have posted very rarely since the beginning of the year. Actually, rarely may be a bit of an understatement – what I should fess up to is the fact that this is my third post here since January. I have lots of ideas for posts – I just need to start getting them put into an actual written form. I have reviews of all kinds floating around my head. I have things to gripe about. I have funny stories (okay some of those are work related and can’t be posted here, but I still have them). I have stupid conversations to share with you all. I have actually managed to go a place or two this past year that you might like to hear about. But have I written anything about any of that – no!
2. Poorly written posts: As if it weren’t enough to have to admit that I have only posted twice this year. The things I have written are not up to my own personal standards of well anything really. I went back and read them and I was not impressed. One of them was a re-hash of old material and the other was just me griping. Definitely not the best writing to read.
3. Serious lack of images: I like pictures. I like seeing an example of what it is someone is talking about. I think digital cameras were invented for one really good reason. That is to instantaneously give us access to those moments captured in time. I could really use a few images back here. There have been no images at all on my blog since last year. And there is not a single image on any of my front page posts at all. I have a digital camera or two floating around my purse and I think it is about time I started using at least one of them again.
4. Broken promises: I clearly recall at least promising to myself that I would be a little more consistent this year about putting something worth reading out here. I have broken that promise to myself and to anyone out here that is still reading. I promise, right here and now, that I will not promise anything else… Okay, just one promise: I promise to try to do better in the second half of this year than I did in the first half. Now I know that really isn’t saying much, but it is the best I can do right now.
5. Lack of balance: My life is currently out of balance. Not that my life is bad. It is actually really good. But the balance that I used to have between work and life has really gotten out of whack. I work too much and I know it. I keep up with my family and friends via social networking sites instead of direct contact methods.

I’m not writing this as an apology or to give any excuses for my lack of writing. I am writing this to remind myself of how things are right now is not a reflection of how things need to be in the future. I know that the first step in any road to recovery is always to admit your previous mistakes. So as I work on my road to recovery of my writing space, I will look back at this post as my guide of what not to do on a blog. At worst, at least talking about all this gives me more than two posts for the year.

It seems like tv is everywhere. You go out to a semi-nice restaurant and there is a tv. You go to the mall and there are lots of tvs (ok those are for sale, but they are still there).  There are tvs in almost every room of almost every house. I’ve even seen a few tvs in bathrooms (it will be a cold day in h*ll before the tv shows up in any of our bathrooms). I keep waiting for tvs to show up in my favorite bookstore or the local museums. They are always on, even when nobody is watching them, and they are always distracting.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal, but it seems like they have replaced talking. People don’t really talk when the tv is on. They have these semi-conversations that pause and never seem to get very interesting. Now, there are times when a tv can spark a real conversation or two, but this is the exception rather than the rule. The tv isn’t just background noise like music, it is a truly distracting object that is bigger than almost anything else going on in the room.

The television itself isn’t the problem, it is the fact that it is left on while people are trying to have a conversation. I wouldn’t even bring it up here, but it is happening more and more frequently. We go out to dinner with friends and everyone starts watching one of the many tv sets that are strategically placed around a restaurant. We go over to any number of our friends houses and the tv is on (not all of our friends do this – our best friends don’t, but more do than don’t). Seriously people – turn the tv off for a couple of hours! Have a real conversation!

I’d love to see in the comments if everyone else feels the same way or if I am just completely off my rocker. Do you turn your tv off when you have company? Do you think every restaurant should have a tv? Do you have a tv in your bathroom?