Play Eggy Easter.
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The Important Messenger
In most ways, my husband, Adventure Man, is a very kind man. He is a big-picture kind of guy. Most of us attend to the details, but he is good at seeing how to get from A to Z, even when everyone else is saying it isn’t possible. I love that about him – most of the time he can see possibilities.
He is VERY unkind about my Arabic.
For example, I would be telling him how we learned such and such in Arabic, and he will interrupt me and correct my pronunciation.
So I would go back to my teacher and say “Adventure Man says we are supposed to say it like this!” and she would laugh and say “oh those Lebanese men say it that way but we Qatteris say it like this.”
So when he would correct me, not being as submissive as I ought to be, I would say “Oh you Lebanese men say it like that” (but he is not Lebanese) “but we Qatteri’s say it like this.” (I am not Qatteri) and I could make him fall out of his chair laughing.
But he really hurt my feelings. I was telling him about my problems on the road and how this “important man” who must have been in a big hurry was driving so rudely and he started laughing at me which totally annoyed me.
“What is so funny?” I demanded.
“I think you mean ‘rajul muuhim'” he gasped out, between spasms of laughter.
“That’s exactly what I meant and that is what I said!”
“No, you keep talking about some rude ‘important messenger'” he croaked, and rolled over on the floor because he is laughing so hard he can’t stand up.
Razool sounds a lot like rajool to me . . .
Adventure Man is SO rude. He thinks he is so rajul muhim!
Drinking Green Tea Might Prevent Absorption of Cholesterol
Found this fascinating and hopeful article on drinking green tea at E-zine articles.com.
There are many studies being conducted on the effects of drinking green tea and how it can benefit the body. Along with its possible antioxidant qualities, there are also studies pointing to the possibility that green tea can help you maintain and even lower your cholesterol levels.
Cholesterol comes in two forms, ‘good’ or HDL-cholesterol and ‘bad’ or LDL-cholesterol. Doctors are very concerned about the balance of these two types of cholesterol. Ideally, there should be more good cholesterol than bad. Also, there should only be very small amounts of the bad cholesterol in your blood.
Imbalances in your levels of cholesterol can lead to many diseases, one of which is atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a hardening of the arteries caused by damage caused by high levels of bad cholesterol and other factors.
Studies revealed that green tea consumption in rats appears to lower their levels of bad cholesterol and even prevents them from getting high cholesterol when they are on high cholesterol diets. This has significant implications for the use of green tea in humans to prevent high cholesterol and heart disease. There are still more studies and research to be done before researchers can confirm that green tea indeed has such benefits.
Now here’s the rub:
The author of this article is John Stout.
Jon M. Stout is the Chairman of the Golden Moon Tea Company.
You can read more about how the study was conducted, and the positive results it found to drinking green tea and lowering cholesterol here, and keep in mind, the author sells green tea.
Mouth Guard
Last summer, my dentist told me I needed a mouth guard to wear at night to keep me from clenching or grinding my teeth.
I’m a little cynical about what I think of as “dental fundraising”. There always seems to be something beyond teeth cleaning now that my teeth no longer develop cavities. Whitening? Special electric toothbrush? Gum treatments? Hey, lets dig out all those old fillings and replace them with gold? And then let’s replace the gold with porcelain? He is always pushing for something new.
And I think my husband would have said something if I were grinding or clenching my teeth.
But on my way down seventh ring the other day, as one guy whooshed by me doing 40 km/hr over the speed limit and the guy on my right zipped right through the RED light as if it weren’t there, and the Gucci sunglassed dame got right on my bumper even though the passing lane was clear as could be and I had a cement truck on my right, I noticed I was clenching my teeth.
For one thing, although I have not succeeded in my Lenten goal of not saying ANY swear words on the road, I am down to only about one per long trip. For example, I hardly ever swear on the way to go grocery shopping, just a short trip to the co-op.
It is only on the ring roads or the speedways that sometimes a bad word pops out before I can stop it. The exercise in NOT swearing has been good for me in that now I am very aware, even alone in the car, when a word just popped out or almost pops out. And down to one per trip and holding back the others – hey! – all this is good. The goal is still zero-defects. But I have to applaud my progress.
So I am thinking I should probably wear my mouth guard while I am driving, because that is where I am clenching my teeth. But I wish they also made one that would guard my mouth from those very bad words that want to come out.
10 Weird Things Tag
. . . or things you didn’t know about me.
1. When I was ten years old, I won a prize for getting five shots under a dime. I was a sharpshooter – at 10!
2. How many people do YOU know who are born in Alaska? I’m one.
3. My high school proms were held in the Heidelberg Castle.
4. My high school graduation was held in the Heidelberg Castle.
5. My sister was married in the Heidelberg castle.
6. I met my husband during my sister’s wedding preparations, and we eloped 6 weeks later because we wanted to be married, but neither of us like the stress and visibility of a wedding.
7. Some of my photos have won prizes.
8. I won a set of encyclopedias once by writing an essay.
9. I surprised myself by being a highly successful fund-raiser. I never thought I would be good at asking people for money, but when it was for charity, I was really really good.
10. I am an introvert who looks like an extrovert.
I tag Skunk
Kinan
1001 Nights
Little Diamond
Elijah
Tell us 10 thing weird or that we wouldn’t know about you.
TanUrEen in Fehaheel
A friend asked me if I had ever been to TanUrEen, in Fehaheel. Not only had I never been there – I had never even heard of it! When she took me there, I was astounded. I had driven by it a million times, and never even knew it was there.
TanUrEen is at its best at this time of the year, when you can sit outside in the gardens. The night we were there was very comfortable, not too cool nor too hot. This is the perfect time of year for a visit.
There are tables all through the gardens as you enter, in the “see and be seen” section, and then, off to the right, there are private cabins and to the upper right, larger family cabins, near the children’s play ground. Although any given evening there are a LOT of children, they are all behaving themselves (at least they have been when I am there) and there isn’t a lot of noise. For being near a major road, and in the middle of a city, it is a very quiet restaurant, even with lots of people, and if you get there early enough to choose a cabin, quiet AND private.
The food is Lebanese, with a concentration on mezzes and grills, but being Kuwait, they also have a good selection of fish and shrimp. I can promise you that both the grilled shrimp and the hamour are excellent. The mezzes are all freshly made, and, of course, they have their own baker, and the thin, hot, puffy bread is delivered to your table fresh from the oven. It doesn’t get any yummier.
The service is excellent, very personal, and the waiters are all in suits and ties. We find this a great place to go with friends, where we can enjoy one another’s good company and excellent conversation.
Above are the tables in the open garden area, where there is also a waterfall.
These are the cabins in the family section, open so you can keep an eye on the kids. There is another section of cabins that are more circular, more private, if you don’t have children with you.
April Fool’s Craziness
When I was a little girl, April Fool’s Day was both a lot of fun, and a day to Watch Out! One year, my mother made eggs for breakfast, but she had put cotton balls in the egg, so they were chewy and didn’t break down. We caught on as she dissolved into a puddle of laughter in the kitchen.
The Museum of Hoaxes has published a list of the top 100 April Fool’s hoaxes, ever. These are the top 10, but you can click on the blue letters above to read the rest.
#1: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in, and many called up wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To this question, the BBC diplomatically replied that they should “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.” Check out the actual broadcast archived on the BBC’s website (You need the RealVideo player installed to see it, and it usually loads very slowly).
#2: Sidd Finch
In its April 1985 edition, Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch and he could reportedly throw a baseball with startling, pinpoint accuracy at 168 mph (65 mph faster than anyone else has ever been able to throw a ball). Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the “art of the pitch” in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the “great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa.” Mets fans everywhere celebrated at their teams’s amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. But in reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the writer of the article, George Plimpton.
#3: Instant Color TV
In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station’s technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that thanks to a newly developed technology, all viewers could now quickly and easily convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen, and they would begin to see their favorite shows in color. Stensson then proceeded to demonstrate the process. Reportedly, hundreds of thousands of people, out of the population of seven million, were taken in. Actual color tv transmission only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.
#4: The Taco Liberty Bell
In 1996 the Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell from the federal government and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called up the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell is housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed that it was all a practical joke a few hours later. The best line inspired by the affair came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale, and he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold, though to a different corporation, and would now be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.
#5: San Serriffe
In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement in honor of the tenth anniversary of San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semi-colon-shaped islands. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian’s phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer’s terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that then gripped the British tabloids in the following decades.
#6: Nixon for President
In 1992 National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.” Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech. Listeners responded viscerally to the announcement, flooding the show with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the second half of the show did the host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement was a practical joke. Nixon’s voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little.
#7: Alabama Changes the Value of Pi
The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the ‘Biblical value’ of 3.0. Before long the article had made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly made its way around the world, forwarded by people in their email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.
#8: The Left-Handed Whopper
In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a “Left-Handed Whopper” specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, “many others requested their own ‘right handed’ version.”
#9: Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers
In its April 1995 issue Discover Magazine announced that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had discovered a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. “To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin,” the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.
#10: Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity
In 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth’s own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.
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