deep down

From my Tickle.com Ultimate Personality Test:

If there is a change in the air, Thinker, nobody is more aware of it than you. You have an unusually refined sensitivity to subtle changes in your environment and from time to time, this can manifest as a fear that the worst is going to happen. You may have a tendency to be constantly on guard because you ultimately are working to prevent a perceived catastrophe from happening.

More than three million Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests are administered each year in the U.S.: more than four million people have taken Tickle's Ultimate Personality Test.

good song rhyme

From "Coal Miner's Daughter":

"The work we done was hard
At night we'd sleep, 'cause we were tired."

The last word pronounced as you'd expect from Butcher Holler.

vulnerability

My areas of greatest vulnerability, apparently:

Your greatest vulnerability is that your senses are on overdrive, soaking in anything and everything from the environment. Things that others might not notice sometimes can send you reeling. The reason this makes you vulnerable is that it can affect your ability to cope with the world effectively. Although your sensitivity is a wonderful asset, it can be scary knowing that you could be distracted at any time. If someone wants to push your buttons, they can go after this, because there's not much you can do to protect yourself from your own sensitivity. Be your best: Buffering yourself with quiet and calm situations will help, and recognizing and choosing friends and associates who respect your boundaries will also make things easier.

Scottish turkey?

my hero, the Bumble

Though I was scared of him when I was a youngster!

"Prison Break" question

Seems as if it would make good sense, after breaking out of prison, to change one's looks...and I'm not just suggesting putting on a baseball hat. If I had hair, I shave it. If I were clean shaven, I'd quickly grow a beard, etc. But noooo...not on television. That'd make it too difficult to identify escapees in a nanosecond or less. Just sayin' ...

Matilda pic

Here's a picture of her half on the floor and half on a pad...doesn't look comfortable to me, but it's not my bed.

Tickle personality test

Here's the results of an online personality test I took on Tickle.com in May:


Relaxed or Apprehensive


Self-Doubt or Confidence


Safety-Seeking or Risk-Taking


Internal Experience or External Appearance

Matilda progress

This is her first day at home along. We'll see what happens! I imagine she'll just sleep herself happily through the time. Going to her first vet appointment here tomorrow afternoon. We're going to get her all fixed up and in ship shape!!

Matilda on her way home from Exeter, Rhode Island!

Is a 1000 bucks worth a picture?

Nope...much more.

An art collector has paid about $2.3 million for a $1,000 bill printed in 1890, according to the auction house that brokered the transaction between two anonymous private collectors.

"This $1,000 bill is one of only two known of its type; the other surviving example is in the museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco," Greg Rohan, president of Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, said Friday.

Rohan said that type of bank note is known to collectors as a "Grand Watermelon" because the green-striped zeros in the denomination "1,000" printed on the back of the bill look like the fruit.

"Only two Grand Watermelon examples are known with red-color Treasury Department seals printed on the front; the half-dozen other surviving Grand Watermelon notes have brown seals," he said in a news release.

The $2,255,000 price is more than double the previous record for an 1890 Grand Watermelon note. The previous record for any bank note was $2.1 million, according to the Heritage Auction Galleries.

Rohan said the buyer was "a very advanced and sophisticated East Coast collector of art and rare currency."

all my schooling

1. Episcopal nursery school, Columbia, TN
2. Westminster Presbyterian kindergarten, Columbia, TN
3. J. R. Baker Elementary School, Columbia, TN
4. Waverly Junior High School, Waverly, TN
5. St. Patrick's Catholic School, McEwen, TN
6. American School, Tampico, MX
7. Waverly Junior High School, Waverly, TN
8. Springer Junior High School, Wilmington, DE
9. Fernwood Junior High School, Biloxi, MS
10. Biloxi Senior High, Biloxi, MS
11. University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS
12. University of Mississippi Medical School, Jackson, MS
13. University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS

miscellaney

• I think a Rusty Nail drink (Scotch whisky and Drambuie liqueur) tastes awful when cold. Well, still drinkable, but weird.
• I know I'm old when I remember that my seventh-grade year (1977) was going to be the first year in Tennessee that women played full-court basketball, instead of the half-court basketball my mother played while growing up.
• Why is it that football teams, like the University of Southern Mississippi and the New Orleans Saints, do really well against tough teams, like Florida State and the Dallas Cowboys, but then crap out against less-successfull teams like Southeast Louisiana State University and the Washingston Redskins, for example?
  

Matilda's day 2

Matilda is the most guileless animal I've ever encountered! Hmm, but she doesn't like dill pickles, so so much for that as a potential snack for her. Matilda doesn't eat a lot, particularly, or beg for food, so I imagine she's gotten used to eating low-quality, high-calorie food. With better food and more exercise we're hoping to have her in fighting trim before too terribly long! A trim in the next couple of days to a local veterinarian will get her and us working together on whatever plan is necessary to make her elderly years as pleasant and comfortable as possible!

Hey, and the New Orleans Saints won the NFC South division. Way to go!

Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest

Did I blog about "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest?" Surely I must have. It bit the big one, without a doubt. It was a silly, long-winded mish-mash, which ended up being no more than a tw0-and-a-half hour commercial for the sequal.

(I just saw an ad on television for the DVD. That's what prompted this diatribe!)

Matilda

Good God Almighty, Matilda's as sweet as sugar, gooder 'n gold, nice as can be, cute as a bug or bean, happy as a clam, and on and on and on. She's one big simile!!! I'm glad to be able to give her an easy life from now on...a healthy one (her left hip seems to hurt), a happy one, and everything else she wants. Matilda's a purebred bulldog who has had numerous Caesarean sections, from her breeding years. She even still has her stitches from being spayed, and that was at the beginning of July. Jerry and I are going to take her to a vet and get her going on a healthier, happier lifestyle. She deserves it!!!

bad news for smokers

You can't quit halfway:

When you quit smoking, it's all or nothing, says Scientific American. In a Norwegian study of 51,000 people over a 20-year period, researchers found that just cutting back on cigarettes didn't reduce the risk of death. Those who quit completely significantly boosted their long-term health. But those who cut their pack-a-day habit by half suffered the same consequences as those who still smoke the whole pack. Both groups suffered impaired cardiovascular health and serious heart and lung damage.

While you're quitting, it's okay to start off by cutting back so that withdrawal symptoms are not severe, says Dr. Kjell Bjartveit, who led the study. But to reap the health benefits, stop smoking altogether, says Bjartveit. "You can't give your health a better present."

interesting facts

With its declining population and persisting squalor 15 months after Hurricane Katrina, New Oreleans now has the nation's highest murder rate--73.5 murders per 100,000 residents, surpassing Compton, California, which has 67 murders per 100,00 last year.

• USA Today

Counterfeit alcohol kills about 42,000 Russians annually. The phony booze, usually sold in bottles marked "vodka," contains such lethal substances as cleaning fluid, rust removers, and window de-icers.

• Associated Press

Polonium 210, the isotope used to assassinate former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, is 5,000 times as radioactive as radium. A lethal dose would weigh only 0.2 millionth of a gram, and be no bigger than a couple of grains of salt.

• The Wall Street Journal

two good quotes

"A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow."

• Charlotte Bronte, quote in The Montreal Gazette

"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quetly and safely insane every night of our lives."

• Sleep expert William Dement, quote in Salon.com

preparations for Matilda

Jerry and I spend about $350 yesterday (good thing he got a $750 Christmas bonus from his kind employers), to get supplies for Matilda: we got her a sleeping crate, towels, food bowls, a 44-pound bag of Royal Canin Bulldog 24, toys, a leash, books about bulldogs, etc., etc.!

I'm glad I called yesterday morning about Matilda. Apparently 4 people called after I did, asking about adopting her. I called earlier this morning, too, to say that I was still very serious about coming down to adopt Matilda, and that Jerry and I would be there tomorrow, for sure.

1893 Chicago World's Fair

Columbia

World's Columbian Exposition: Chicago World's Fair of 1893

Taking a virtual tour of that year's fair, held in front of the University of Chicago, on the Midway Plaisance, makes me appreciate just how low-class-looking the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans was!