This hotel welcomes dogs!
For reasons that I’m not entirely clear about I haven’t yet settled back into my planning routine for daily posts since our Internet service was restored.
No matter!
Have no doubt this will raise a smile or two!
Category: Humour
Just a thought!
A novel Nursing Home plan.
Sent to me by dear friend, Dan Gomez, as a light-hearted diversion for the weekend. (But it did fit rather nicely as a sequel to my Lies, Damn Lies, and … from yesterday!)
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Say you are an older senior citizen and can no longer take care of yourself and the government says there is no Nursing Home care available for you. So, what do you do? You opt for Medicare Part G.
The plan gives anyone 75 or older a gun (Part G) and one bullet. You are allowed to shoot one worthless politician.
This means you will be sent to prison for the rest of your life where you will receive three meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating and air conditioning, cable TV, a library, and all the Health Care you need. Need new teeth? No problem. Need glasses? That’s great. Need a hearing aid, new hip, knees, kidney, lungs, sex change, or heart? They are all covered!
As an added bonus, your kids can come and visit you at least as often as they do now! And who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you they can’t afford for you to go into a nursing home. And you will get rid of a useless politician while you are at it. And now, because you are a prisoner, you don’t have to pay any more income taxes!
Is this a great country or what? Now that you have solved your senior financial plan, enjoy the rest of your week!
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I’ll leave the closing words to Dan: “Crazy world but compelling plan.”
Have a great weekend wherever you are.
And another Saturday smile.
As seen on a New Zealander’s blog.
News from the Scientific World: New Element Discovered
Victoria University of Wellington researchers have discovered the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact.
A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 1 to 3 years (in NZ). It does not decay, but instead undergoes a re-organisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as a critical morass. When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.
I think it is best all round if I say nothing!
Except to wish you all a very pleasant weekend.
Standing for our wolf cubs
Without our wolf pups there would be no dog pups.
Saw this featured on Howling For Justice back on March 9th, this year and today seemed a perfect time to feature it here after yesterday’s Standing for our puppies post.
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Wolf Pack Caring For Their Four Little Ones…
Time for an uplifting video of a wolf pack caring for their week old pups. They have their hands full! Momma wolf is fighting a losing battle trying to keep them in the den…lol
Enjoy!
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Video: Courtesy YouTube greenbunting
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Have a great weekend wherever you are.
Yet another Saturday smile
Just another Southwest Airlines flight, or is it?
With grateful thanks to Dan Gomez who passed it on to me.
You all travel safely out there!
Writing 101 Day Three
Practice makes perfect.
Again, here is the WordPress theme for the day:
Day Three: Commit to a Writing Practice
Today’s Prompt: Write about the three most important songs in your life — what do they mean to you?
Nailing Brahms’ Hungarian Dance Number 5 on your alto sax. Making perfect pulled pork tacos. Drawing what you see. Or, writing a novel. Each requires that you make practice a habit.
Today, try free writing. To begin, empty your mind onto the page. Don’t censor yourself; don’t think. Just let go. Let the emotions or memories connected to your three songs carry you.
Today’s twist: You’ll commit to a writing practice. The frequency and the amount of time you choose to spend today — and moving forward — are up to you, but we recommend a minimum of fifteen uninterrupted minutes per day.
The basic unit of writing practice is the timed exercise. – Natalie Goldberg
Author Natalie Goldberg says to “burn through to first thoughts, to that place where energy is unobstructed by social politeness or the internal censor.” Here are some of her rules of free writing practice from Writing Down the Bones, which we recommend you keep in mind:
- Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you’ve just written. That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying.)
- Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.)
- Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)
- Lose control.
- Don’t think. Don’t get logical.
- Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)
Jorge Luis Borges said: “Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.” So, what are you waiting for? Get writing. Fifteen minutes. Go. And then, do it again tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.
Now having written a daily post for well over five years, I’m comfortable with the concept of committing to a writing practice.
Thus I’m going to republish something that gets to the heart of more worldly matters – keeping a smile on your face in these ‘interesting’ times. It comes from a blog that I recently started following: One Regular Guy Writing about Food, Exercise and Living Longer.
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How You Can Benefit from a Positive View on Your Life – WSJ
Regular readers know that I have embraced the theory of positive psychology. I have written a number of posts on the benefits of a positive point of view. You can find an index of them at the end of this post.
Meanwhile, I was thrilled to see Elizabeth Bernstein’s piece in the Personal Journal of Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal entitled “It’s Healthy to Put a Good Spin on Your Life.“
In a study of a large number of adults in their mid to late 50’s researchers found that “when people displayed higher levels of agency, communion and redemption and lower levels of contamination, their mental health improved. They consider good mental health to be low levels of depression and high levels of life satisfaction and psychological and social well-being.”
They explained the four keys to good mental health as follows:
• Agency—Did the subjects feel able to influence and respond to events in life, or did they feel battered around by the whims of external forces?
• Communion—Are the people connected to others or disconnected?
• Redemption—Did the subjects take a negative experience and find some positive outcome?
• Contamination—Did they tell narratives of good things turning bad?
I would like to point you to a post I wrote in May of 2011 called Super Tools for Handling Stress.
In it I quoted Maggie Crowley, Psy.D., a Health Psychologist at the center for Integrative Medicine and Wellness at Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group.
Dr. Crowley listed the following as maladaptive coping strategies:
*Demand our circumstances be different
*Devalue ourselves and others
*Demean/blame ourselves and others
*When the above fail to work, do we choose another strategy?
*Or, do we double our ill-conceived efforts and feed our downward spiral.
She said that we needed something to shift our mental gears out of the stressful/fearful response that triggers that damaging cascade of negative emotion. She suggested the following activities that set off the parasympathetic approach:
*Practicing appreciation
*Making choices that are positive
*Using constructive language
*Employing our strengths and personal power.
I think that there is a great similarity between the four keys to good mental health mentioned in the Journal and the points made by Dr. Crowley in dealing with stressors.
Regarding positive psychology, I have found it answered a lot of questions for me. If you are interested you can explore it in the following posts:
What is Positive Psychology?
How to Harness Positive Psychology for You – Harvard
Breaking down 8 Barriers to Positive Thinking – Infographic
11 Ways to Become a Better, More Positive You
How to Become a Positive Thinker
7 Exercises That Train Your Brain to Stay Positive
Positive, Happy People Suffer Less Pain
Tony.
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This is such incredibly powerful and useful advice with lots of further reading to boot!
For we are bombarded with negative news from all quarters and having a healthy relationship with oneself and, thence, with the world around us is, in the end, what life is all about.
Cognitive ageing!
Or put another way: I can remember everything except the things I forget.
Like many others of my age, the short-term memory is not as sharp as it used to be (not that I can remember when that was! 😉 )
So with that in mind, and only for my dear readers who understand where I am coming from, here’s a lovely item that was sent to neighbour Dordie who then passed it on to me.
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Your Yearly Dementia Test
(only 4 questions)
Yep, it’s that time of year again for us to take our annual senior citizen test.
Exercise of the brain is as important as exercise of the muscles. As we grow older, it’s important to keep mentally alert. If you don’t use it, you lose it!
Here is a very private way to gauge how your memory compares to your last test.
Some may think it is too easy, but the ones with memory problems may have difficulty. So take this test to determine if you’re losing it or not.
The spaces below are so you don’t see the answers until you’ve made your answer.
OK, relax, clear your mind and begin.
Question One: What do you put in a toaster?
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Answer: Bread.
If you said ‘toast’, just give up now and go do something else. And, try not to hurt yourself.
If you said Bread, go to Question #2.
Question Two: Say ‘silk’ five times. Now spell ‘silk.’ What do cows drink?
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Answer: Cows drink water.
If you said ‘milk,’ don’t attempt the next question. Your brain is already over-stressed and may even overheat. Content yourself with reading more appropriate literature such as Women’s Weekly or Auto World. However, if you did say ‘water’, proceed to Question Three.
Question Three: If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a black house is made from black bricks, what is a green house made from?
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Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass.
If you said ‘green bricks’, why are you still reading this??? PLEASE, go lie down! But, if you said ‘glass,’ go on to Question #4.
Question Four: (Do not use a calculator for this):
You are driving a bus from New York City to Philadelphia.
In Staten Island, 17 people got on the bus.
In New Brunswick, 6 people get off the bus and 9 people get on.
In Windsor, 2 people get off and 4 get on.
In Trenton, 11 people get off and 16 people get on.
In Bristol, 3 people get off and 5 people get on.
And, in Camden, 6 people get off and 3 get on.
You then arrive at Philadelphia Station.
Without going back to review, how old is the bus driver?
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Answer: Oh, for crying out loud! Don’t you remember your own age?!?! It was YOU driving the bus!
If you pass this along to your friends, pray they do better than you.
But don’t be too hard on yourself: 95% of people fail most of the questions!
Another Saturday smile
Courtesy of Bob Derham.
A cabbie picks up a Nun.
She gets into the cab, and notices that the handsome cab driver won’t stop staring at her.
She asks him why he is staring.
He replies: “I have a question to ask you but I don’t want to offend you.”
She answers, “My son, you cannot offend me. When you’re as old as I am and have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and hear just about everything. I’m sure that there’s nothing you could say or ask that I would find offensive.”
“Well, I’ve always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me.”
She responds, “Well, let’s see what we can do about that: First, you have to be single, and second, you must be Catholic.”
The cab driver is very excited and says, “Yes, I’m single and Catholic!”
“OK,” the nun says. “Pull into the next alley.”
The nun fulfils his fantasy, with a kiss that would make a hooker blush.
But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.
“My dear child,” says the nun, “why are you crying?”
“Forgive me but I’ve sinned. I lied and I must confess, I’m married and I’m Jewish.”
The nun says, “That’s OK. My name is Kevin and I’m going to a Halloween party.”
(Apologies if some of you old hands have heard this before!)
Dead cats!
Our animals are so smart!
A number of things conspired to get in the way of me writing a ‘serious’ post for today. So, as I always do, I flicked through by ‘blog’ mail folder to see what might be of interest to you, dear reader.
I came across this. A month ago, Suzann included me in a list of people that she emailed with the following:
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Cat plays dead to avoid going for a walk!
Before you view this video, know that this cat was not hurt in anyway! Lucky the cat is seen being strapped into his harness before going for a walk. Once placed on the floor the pretty kitty goes limp each time they try to get him up to stand up or walk. He collapses down on the carpet and twitches his tail between his legs. The people in the video laugh but you can tell that Lucky is not seeing the humor in the situation!
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Can’t close without revealing my love for that very old dead cat joke.
A man who lived at home with his mother and pet cat went on a trip to Europe.
Before he left he told his best friend to tell him of any emergencies. A few days into his trip, his cat slipped while climbing the roof, fell off and died. His friend immediately texts him with the message: “Your cat died!” In a few hours he was back home, having cut short his trip in grief.
When he saw his friend he yelled at him, “Why didn’t you break the news to me slowly? You know how close I was to my cat! You could have sent a message ‘Your cat climbed up on the roof today’, and the next day you could’ve written, ‘Your cat fell off the roof’ and let me down gradually that he died.”
After a quick memorial service, the man left again to continue his trip.
A few days later he gets a text from his friend. It read, “Your mother climbed up on the roof today.”
I know! I’ll keep taking the pills!
Job opportunity!
Rarely does such an opportunity arise!
Don’t delay in applying! (And a vote of thanks to Bob Derham for drawing my attention to this job ad.)
Learning from Dogs 