Totally Weird Dream
I was looking out the (window?) of my building on the ice flow (it’s a dream, it doesn’t have to make sense) and I saw huge snakes roiling in the freezing water. I stepped outside to look, and could see it was hundreds of large squid/octopus in a boiling fury of activity. I heard a yowl of terror, and saw a gold cat actually on top of one, screeching, and I knew at the same time he was a goner and I couldn’t save him. I also knew I probably was in the wrong place, that I needed to be back inside, so I slowly turned back toward the door. I felt something cold on my hand. I turned back to see what it was, and it was a polar bear; the cold was his nose. All I could think was “unless I get a miracle, I am s**t-out-of-luck” and then I told myself to “breathe.” That’s always my cue to wake up. The dream was over.
Some of it makes sense. There was a report of huge long squids recently in the news, bigger than anyone dreamed existed. I have a gold cat, and I love gold cats. And I am terrified of bear. I grew up in Alaska, and was taught early on to watch out for bear. You can’t outrun a bear. And a bear will eat you just because he’s hungry. He won’t necessarily kill you first. It’s not a good way to go. There are many people in Alaska with ugly claw marks, they are a badge of honor.
They are the lucky ones. They survived.
Where Has Your Purse Been?
I received this forward from a friend. The Shauna Lake referred to is a news anchor with KUTV in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Purse Hygiene
A friend sent me this, I really never thought about how dirty my purse could be until I read this.
Have you ever noticed gals who sit their purses on public rest room floors that then go directly back to their dining tables?
It happens a lot!
It’s not always the ‘restaurant food’ that causes stomach distress.
Sometimes “what you don’t know ‘will’ hurt you”!
Read on…
Mom got so upset when a guest came in the door and plopped their purses down on the counter where she was cooking or setting up the buffet. She always said that purses are really dirty, because of where they’ve been.
Smart Momma!!!
It’s something just about every woman carries with them. While we may know
what’s inside our purses, do you have any idea what’s on the outside?
Shauna Lake put purses to the test – for bacteria – with surprising results. You may think twice about where you put your purse next time.
Women carry purses everywhere; from the office to public rest rooms to the floor of the car.
Most women won’t be caught without their purses, but did you ever stop to think about where your purse goes during the day?
“I drive a school bus, so my purse has been on the floor of the bus a lot,” says one woman. “On the floor of my car, probably in rest rooms.” “I put my purse in grocery shopping carts, on the floor of bathroom stalls while changing a diaper,” says another woman “and of course in my home which should be clean.”
We decided to find out if purses harbour a lot of bacteria. We learned how to test them at Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake, then we set out to test the average woman’s purse.
Most women told us they didn’t stop to think about what was on the bottom of their purse.
Most said they usually set their purses on top of kitchen tables and counters where food is prepared.
Most of the ladies we talked to told us they wouldn’t be surprised if their purses were at least a little bit dirty. It turns out purses are so surprisingly dirty, even the microbiologist who tested them was shocked.
Microbiologist Amy Karren of Nelson Labs says nearly all of the purses tested were not only high in bacteria, but high in harmful kinds of bacteria. Pseudomonas can cause eye infections, staphylococcus aurous can cause serious skin infections, and salmonella and e-coli found on the purses could make people very sick. In one sampling, four of five purses tested positive for salmonella, and that’s not the worst of it.
“There is fecal contamination on the purses,” says Amy.
Leather or vinyl purses tended to be cleaner than cloth purses, and lifestyle seemed to play a role. People with kids tended to have dirtier purses than those without, with one exception.
The purse of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one of the worst contaminations of all.
“Some type of feces, or even possibly vomit or something like that,” says
Amy.
So the moral of this story – your purse won’t kill you, but it does have the potential to make you very sick if you keep it on places where you eat.
Use hooks to hang your purse at home and in rest rooms, and don’t put it on your desk, a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertop. Experts say you should think of your purse the same way you would a pair of shoes.
“If you think about putting a pair of shoes onto your countertops, that’s the same thing you’re doing when you put your purse on the countertops.”
Your purse has gone where every individual before you has spat, coughed, urinated, emptied bowels, etc.!
Do you really want to bring that home with you?
The microbiologists at Nelson also said cleaning a purse will help. Wash cloth purses and use leather cleaner to clean the bottom of leather purses.
My comments: I was shocked and disgusted reading this article. I know that when I bring groceries home, I put my purse on the counter or even (gasp) on the kitchen table. I vow, here an now, to change my ways!
Having said that, I rarely ever get sick. My theory is that I have lived and travelled in so many places with questionable hygeine that I have developed resistance to many of the bacteria that bedevil us. I would guess that eating out puts me more at risk for food borne problems than any other behavior.
While I am a sushi supporter, I have to warn my fellow aficianados that raw fish is one of the WORST carriers of bad bacteria, microbes, and parasites. Sushi eating is a risky behavior! Sushi on a buffet is even worse because it has been exposed to more microbes, sneezes, contamination. So if you choose to eat sushi, use protection! Know your sushi maker and practice safe sushi eating.;-)
1906
This was a forward I received today. I don’t know where the statistics come from, so I can’t verify. If true, it is pretty amazing what a difference 100 years can make.
The year is 1906.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes !
Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906
************************************
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47
A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa , and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California .
With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union .
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !
The average wage in the US was 22 cents per hour.
The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year .
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year,
a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year,
and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at HOME
Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION !
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as “sub-standard.”
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair
once a month,
and used borax
or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from
entering into their country for any reason.
The Five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona , Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30 !!!!
Crossword puzzles,
canned beer,
and ice tea
hadn’t been invented yet.
There was no Mother’s Day
or Father’s Day.
Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn’t read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine
were all available over
the counter
at the local corner drugstores.
Pharmacists said,
“Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”
Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders
in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !
Wherever You Go . . .
There’s an old saying: Wherever you Go, There You Are.
Seattle is a very civic minded city, a very wealthy city with a good base of commerce – a mixed base, a healthy mix of industrial manufacturing, services, information technologies. It’s a creative city, innovative, consistently moving forward. Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Google . . . it’s a stimulating and exciting place to be.
And throughout Seattle and environs last night were massive electrical outages. Unlike Kuwait, where the air conditioning required to survive the heat cause the rolling outages, most of the outages in Seattle are caused by trees falling on the electrical wires, wiping out coverage in entire areas.
The Public Utilities people have become very good at dealing with the outages and getting people back “online” in a short time. But why would a city with such a foward looking posture not bury the electrical lines?
Seattle has a high quality of life across the board, but it drives me crazy that they don’t bury the lines. My sister says the taxpayers don’t want to expend the additional funds. There seems to be a similar problem supporting the public schools; Seattle has the second largest number in the United States of children attending private schools rather than public schools (heard that on the cable televised Green Seattle meeting last night). In a city that is 80% white, 60% of the children in the public schools are children of color. Something is not right.
The electrical lines issue would be small potatoes if it were simply aesthetics – those lines are really ugly when you are trying to get a good photo. But when you stack up all the overtime hours the electrical workers have to work, all the overtime pay, I would think burying the lines would pay off within a matter of a couple years. Seattle is a city that votes democrat; where is the democracy in not supporting the public schools?
It really bugs me when short-sighted public policies hurt the citizens. Some things are just basic infrastructure – roads, clean water, an honest police force, an honest judiciary, reliable electricity, good schools, trash collection, public transportation, a trustworthy accessible health system, systematic elections – these things should be a no-brainer when it comes to public support. It’s an investment, not a luxury. Without an orderly infrastructure, the system descends into chaos.
Seattle’s Houseboat Sub-Culture
In Seattle, there is an entire sub-culture that lives on houseboats, mostly urban professionals. Unlike many parts of the world, the houseboats in Seattle are truly designed as houses, and have to meet city standards. They can only dock in designated areas, and they are solely for living, they don’t have any means of propulsion. They are not truly boats, but houses floating on the water.
I lived in one for two weeks, many years ago. I never got used to it. I worried about sinking all the time.
Seattle is quirky. Houseboats, caffeine-addiction, super-technology, fitness addicts, airplanes (home of Boeing) and one of the most literate cities in the United States. Washington state has the highest minimum wage in the nation – $7.93 per hour.
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