St. Redneckerless

I'm still getting email Christmas Cards, and this animated Story of St. Redneckerless from Dee is a doozie! (Make sure the sound is turned on so you can hear the story, no music I promise!)

And why in the hell is Blogrolling still not updating? I thought they fixed the darn thing, I miss knowing when my favorite blogs have new entries.

BTW: The Ping-O-Matic link really works; I love being to update my blog on lots of search engines with one click! Until someone fixes all the glitches with Blogrolling and New Blogger it's the best way I know to have people know you've posted recently.

CASA JUNEBUGG CHRISTMAS

We had a good Christmas here at Casa Junebugg. Sweet Thang gave me a beautiful cherry wood jewelry chest that stands 4' high and has dozens of drawers and hidey holes to store my shiny baubles and doodads. Son Chane gave me a combo DVD/VCR player to drag me kicking and screaming into the modern video age without losing the ability to watch my vast collection of old VCR movies. My bestest friend Karen gave me a Celtic knot necklace, telling me that the Celtic knot stood for eternal life and she also meant it to represent eternal friendship! All this and we haven't even had our extended family Christmas yet. {{{sigh}}} I'm blessed with people who care about me.

Here are just a few pictures of the day. Chane is camera shy, so I don't have many of him but Drennon is a ham who loves to get his picture taken.

When I was sending a gift to Hawaii, Stinky jumped into the box and refused to get out! Do you think she wanted to go on vacation?

I believe Rufus is trying to figure out which package is his!

This is the only time I got Chane on camera and I thought he was gonna have a fit when he found out I got a picture of him.

Drennon in the paper ripping mode.

Sister Teresa gave Drennon this 'boggin. 'Bama fans start young here.

Boxes get ripped too. Drennon doesn't have the patience to open stuff neatly.

This RoboReptile surprised us with what all it could do! It runs, jumps, bites, hunts, feeds, roars and snarls. It also has sensors that let it "see" and "hear". If it hears a sound, it stops and turns it's head from side to side until it locates the source, then gives chase. The same goes for it's sight, if a moving object crosses it's path it attacks. In free-roam mode it actually saw and gave chase to the kitten. I think the darn thing is smarter than the cats! I tried to get a picture of the cat/robot battle but the action was too fast. Maybe another time.......

We burned all the boxes and wrapping paper because there was too much to wait for garbage day.



Drennon as one of the Three Wise Men in the Christmas play.

I hope all of my blogbuddies have as good a Christmas as I did. Merry Christmas and best wishes to all of you.

CHRISTMAS FLU BUG

Our family Christmas has been postponed due to several of my siblings/nieces coming down with the flu. I've been doing mercy runs with chicken soup, crackers, Gatorade and anti-nausea medicine. It feels like I should be doing more than brewing tea, heating soup and offering words of comfort; for all the good they do it's not making life any easier for the sick folks.

Baby sister Lana is so weak she's passed out a time or two (nearly giving me a heart attack in the process, I thought she was having a seizure!) and is under a doctor's care. She lives alone and we sisters are the only ones around to check and make sure she's OK. Brittany, Tina's 11 year old daughter, is down with the nasty virus as well.

So far we've been lucky and the bug hasn't hit my house yet. I've been careful not to stay long, washing my hands often and as much as I would like to not giving her a hug of sisterly affection and comfort.

Chane, Drennon and I will have our own little Christmas party today; Drennon has to go home to celebrate with his Mom and see what Santa brought. His cousin Quin has been trying his best to convince Drennon that there's no such thing as Santa, but so far Drennon is rock steady in his faith in the Fat Man In The Red Suite. Drennon's the ripe old age of 7, I hope he can hold on to his innocence and childhood just a little longer. Life goes fast enough without someone busting the Saint Nick bubble for ya.


Here's wishing ya'll a
MERRY CHRISTMAS
from the Heart of Dixie
and hope that the flu bug
stays away from your door.

BONUS: Donna has posted a picture of me at the Christmas parade. I cropped out a lot of the sky and such to make a close-up. Volia!! Junebugg in the flesh.

CHRITSMAS TAG

I was tagged by Carina at DogMuse.

The Rules:The player of this game starts with "3 things he/she would love to get for Christmas" and also has to list "3 things he/she definitely does not want to get for Christmas". Then he/she tags 5 friends and list their names. The ones who get tagged need to write on their blogs about their Christmas wishes, as well as state this rule clearly, then tag 5 more victims. And the one who tags need to leave a comment that says "you've been Christmas tagged!" in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

WANTS:
1. I would love for all my sisters to get along and for us to continue being a loving family even though our parents are gone.
2. This awful war to be resolved and all our service people to come home to their loved ones.
3. For my son to get his life straight and start acting like a responsible adult instead of a 32 year old child. I'm tired of picking up after him and bailing him out of trouble.

DON'T WANTS:
1. Useless dust catching knick-knacks
2. Any more critters, I'm going broke buying feed for the ones that I've got now
3. Any more overtime for a long, long time!

TAGGED: Tina, Donna, Brenda, Becky, & Lady K.

FOR JACKIE SUE

This post is for Jackie Sue. When I called her from work the other day and attempted to explain to her what it was like here in the big wide wonderful world of paper mills (yeah right) I don't think I got the idea across. So, as in the old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words", I thought I'd provide a few visual aids. (as always, click on the picture for a larger view)

I work as a control room operator in the boiler house/power plant/water & waste treatment part of one of the largest mills in the USA (the mill covers more than 60 acres, none of it forestland). We provide all the electricity, steam, water and sewage treatment for the entire place.

Yeah, that's me with my feet propped up, talking on the phone. But I'm working, really truly cross my heart I am. See all those monitors? I'm constantly scanning and watching for problems, tweaking set points and making adjustments so the damn place don't go "BOOM" (high pressure boilers tend to do that sometimes). It's like an air traffic controller, the job is more about preventing problems than manual labor. Believe me, I felt better when I went home back in the day when I was shoveling bark and handling heavy equipment. We don't have scheduled breaks or lunch periods. Someone has to be here all the time, you eat at your station and if you have to go to first aid or whatever someone has to cover for you. A little stressful, bad on your back but hey, I'm told I'm fairly good at it. Nice to know I'm good for something!

This is our mill on the Tennessee River.The steam you see going up from those stacks in the middle is where I'm at most of the time. If I'm not there, I'm where the stacks closest to the river are. The two tallest buildings are our 2 boiler houses.

Just to give you an idea of how big we are: your light bill is measured in watts. A kilowatt is a thousand watts. A megawatt is a million watts. We have the capacity to make 60 megawatts an hour here, more than the city of Huntsville, AL uses. We also process more than 55 million gallons of river water a day; cleaning it up to drinking standards, then take the resulting waste and clean it up enough to win environmental awards before returning it to the Tennessee river.

So there you have it. Not very interesting but now you know what I do for a living.

YEAH!

PUBLISHED!!!!

I'm in the local paper! Although right now I'm stuck here at work, the inner mini-me is doing a tail-shaking happy dance of "OH YEAH BABY" joy. What can I say, it doesn't take much to make me happy.

Well....... I didn't physically get in the paper (damn I bet getting shoved through the printing press would have hurt!) but something I wrote did. Actually, I didn't even get all my writing published, they paraphrased it....... deleted and edited and changed it around....... But still....... it's in print!

I submitted an earlier post for the Decatur Daily's Christmas Memories section at the urging of my Aunt Pat (BTW: Thank You for the support and encouragement, Aunt Pat) . They shortened it up and published it as HANDMADE DECORATIONS.

I didn't get paid this time (I made $50 the last time I got something published in several national papers. If you want to submit a story of your own and see if they'll pay you, go check out The Front Porch) but it's still nice to see your name in print!

FOGGY

I’ve tried several times to write about my drive into work this morning. I played around with poetic metaphors of cotton wool and The Twilight Zone but it never came out right, so I’m just gonna tell it like it was.

I walked out the door and couldn’t see past the edges of my carport. When I backed onto the road and started forward, tendrils of fog swirled around and over the hood as if I was driving under water. Signs and intersections appeared and disappeared like ghosts in a bad dream.

Hunched over the steering wheel, peering ahead like a female version of Mr. Magoo, I drove right past the same turnoff that I’ve been taking for almost 30 years and had to turn around in a parking lot. The visibility was almost zero and I felt as if I was lost driving in the same area where I’ve lived my whole life.

I got behind a log truck driving 30 MPH down twisty highway 33 and all I could think about was getting rear-ended by another car. Visions of logs punching through my windshield and into my body (me getting squished like a bug with blood and gore all over the place) kept flickering through my mind, so I turned on my hazard flashers. You know, just in case.

On the way, I witnessed several almost-wrecks. Cars slammed on their brakes to avoid hitting other drivers who suddenly appeared out of the gloom, spinning around in the center of the highway while horns blared and other vehicles dodged around them, hoping all the while that someone else wasn’t approaching unseen in the fog.

It was bad, people! You couldn’t see red lights or the glow of vapor lights until you were right under them. There was no way to know if anyone else was on the road until their headlights jumped out of the murkiness right in front of you. Even through you were on familiar roads, you couldn't tell where you were and just had to guess when a stop sign or intersection was coming up. What made it so bad was the idiots who still drove 70 and 80 MPH; you never knew they were around until you saw blur of head-lights as they sped by.

I made it in with a 45 minute drive instead of my usual 20. The fog has burned off, but I bet it’ll be the same white-out tomorrow morning. I think I’ll just leave early and hope the fast-driving morons oversleep..................

EXTRA: Ya'll go visit Donna, she needs cheering up after she HOOVERED A POT-BELLIED PIG TO DEATH!

STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT

Tonight you ought to bundle up and spend some time with a hot-blooded someone out under the stars. That's right, I said under the stars!

It's time for the annual Geminid meteor shower (the biggest meteor shower of the year!)which scientists claim should produce up to 120 meteors per hour, and believe me it's usually worth braving the cold! If you haven't watched this spectacular display of Mother Nature's fireworks before, check out this article, Year's Best Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight , at Space.com.

I missed the show last year because of rain and this year I'll have to get some sleep, but hopefully I'll catch a few shooting stars on the way to work at 4 AM in the morning. If I'm awake enough I might even try to take the camera with me in case I find a good place to attempt to take a picture (I'm not in the camera-phone league yet).

Don't forget to take the libation of your choice to fight off the chill. Hot cocoa, coffee, or maybe something a little stronger. Just don't make yourself sick and have a good time.

"diet soda may make you gain weight"

Stop where you are. Stay calm and, very slowly now, put down the can of diet soda. A study at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio has reached a stunning conclusion: Diet soft drinks don't help you lose weight — they may actually promote weight gain. Researchers analyzed 8 years of data on 1,550 people. Participants who drank one diet soda per day were 65 percent more likely to become overweight during the next 7 to 8 years and 41 percent more likely to become obese than non-diet-soda drinkers. "Some studies suggest that diet drinks stimulate appetite," says study coauthor SharonP. Fowler. One theory is that diet sodas tease taste buds with the promise of sugar but then don't deliver real sweetness, causing drinkers to look for the missed calories elsewhere. For a low-calorie alternative, brew some iced tea and add a spoonful of honey (about 25 calories). From Women's Health Magazine

Damn, there go my Diet Mountain Dews, right to my hips! It seems that I can't win for losing gaining. Wish they had tea in the vending machines at work........

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT TILL IT'S GONE

The other night we five sisters sorted through the debris of Mom’s half a century of married Christmases, witnessed by her vast collection of ornaments, figurines and do-dads. Christmas was Mom’s favorite holiday of the year; she had full size, decorated trees in every room of the house. We all contributed to her Ho-Ho Mania by gifting her with anything that we thought she didn’t already have or might want, resulting in a huge storage shed overflowing with Christmas trash and treasure.

The booty was divided up, including armless Nutcrackers, hatless Santas, broken ceramics and mangled fake greenery that none of us really wanted, but didn’t have the heart to throw away because it belonged to Mom. Each faded, lovingly used bit of decoration invoked memories of Christmas past, with shared tales family misadventures under the flashing lights adorning Mom’s numerous Christmas trees. Laughter was highlighted with teary eyes; its sad when the only thing left of your parents is their left-behind material possessions and the genetics shared among siblings.
One of my favorite memories of Mom is her crocheted snowflakes. She worked on them all year, even when her aging hands had trouble holding the tiny hook and yarn. Mom always had a tree decorated with her handiwork in the living room; sporting nothing but dainty starched snowflakes, white pearl strands and clear flashing lights. That tree was the most beautiful of them all every year, I wish now I had taken the time to take pictures of it.

Actually, I wish I had taken more time to just be with Mom and Dad both. I guess when I was younger, I always thought that they’d be around. When they got older work and life limited the time available to spend with them and now they’re gone. No matter how many hours you spend with a loved one, it’s never enough.

So hug your parents and kids and loved ones today, right now. Tell them you love them, just as they are, not when they do better or want to do something that YOU want to do. Take the time to listen to them, you never know how long it will be before they’re gone; either passed away or moved to the other side of the country. Go on, do it before it’s too late like in the song: "You Don't Know What You've Got Till It’s Gone".

REINDEER POOP

Woke up in the dark this morning. I know, you always wake up in the dark when the alarm goes off at 3:30 AM; but this morning it stayed dark. Yep, the power was out; thank goodness for gas heat and battery-back-up alarm clocks.

After stumbling around with a candle, trying to find clean clothes and not trip over the stupid cats rubbing against my ankles, I started driving to work and almost hit a kamikaze deer (I swear I heard her holler "Banzai" as she leaped right in front of the car!).

It's gonna be one of those days! To try and get us all in the Christmas spirit, I'll leave you with this:

Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice, so what does he leave for naughty little girls and boys? Reindeer Poop! To make this silly stocking stuffer, place a handful of malted milk balls in a zipper food storage bag. Seal and label with the following poem:

I woke up with such a scare when I heard Santa call...
"Now dash away, dash away, dash away all!"
I ran to the lawn, and in the snowy white drifts,
Those nasty reindeer had left "little gifts".
I got an old shovel and started to scoop
Neat little piles of "reindeer poop."
But to throw them away seemed such a waste,
So I saved them, thinking you might like a taste!
As I finished my task, which took quite a while,
Old Santa passed by and he sheepishly smiled.
And I heard him exclaim as he rose to the sky,
"Well, they're not potty trained, but at least they can fly!"

SANTA CLAUS: AN ENGINEER'S PERSPECTIVE

Most of us either work with, or know, at least one engineer. I got to work this morning and found this memo from one of the engineers that I work with.

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false,but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound.

For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them-Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas.

Then I found this on the Internet (seems that the engineer in question was indulging in a little plagiarism!)

Santa Claus: An Engineering Analysis REBUTTAL
To understand this joke, click here to see the original joke, Santa Claus: An Engineering Analysis
If people are going to attempt to apply science to the question of Santa, the least they can do is to get it right. The so-called "Engineer" that wrote the paper suggesting that Santa Claus is dead had it all wrong.

A) In paragraph 5, the Engineer states that "600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance." Assuming that this true, it may well be that the reindeer are protected by some sort of heat shield, which is the basis of the "red nose" legend. More to the point, the "air resistance" theory is a vast oversimplification, and a sloppy one at that. In comparing a parachute to a javelin, one can see that there is no simple, direct, predictable relationship between the weight of an object and its air resistance. The air resistance theory completely ignores many possible configurations of Santa's team that could greatly reduce air resistance.

Paragraph 5 is invalidated all the more when one considers paragraph 1, which states that most of the 300,000 unclassified species on the earth are insects and microorganisms. This suggests that it is overwhelmingly probable that any unknown species (such as flying reindeer) is extremely small (possibly even microscopic), with correspondingly low air resistance.
Also, note that various small species (e.g. bumblebee) have been known to accomplish feats of aviation that have proven quite difficult for science to explain. Furthermore, many small species (e.g. ants) possess strength that is immense proportional to their size. Also note that every known species has a body structure capable of withstanding whatever stresses are created at the top speed at which the creature is capable of traveling.

Therefore, contrary to the Engineer's conclusion, the possible existence of unknown, very small, very strong, flying creatures is indicated, and all of the Engineer's statistics on the mass, speed, capacity, and durability of standard Reindeer are therefore irrelevant.

B) If we accept the notion that Santa moves from East to West (an assumption that the Engineer makes in Paragraph 3) then we must also assume that he is moving in a vaguely North-South traversing path as he works his way West. This implies that, if he chose to, he could make several stops at the Pole to re-load the sleigh, and therefore it is not necessary for him to carry the entire payload all at once as described by the Engineer.

The reader may raise the objection that most depictions of Santa's procedures include a single annual departure from the Pole. However, one must also consider that these same depictions contain many other omissions and simplifications, such as the implication that Santa spends several minutes on each delivery. Even using unrealistically favorable figures, this is mathematically impossible. This and other examples force us to consider these depictions to be strictly allegorical. This makes sense, since a documentary would not be much fun for the target audience.

C) Consider that most chimneys are too small to accommodate an average-sized man, let alone a 250 (plus) pound man. This implies that Santa has a way of entering and exiting dwellings through access paths much smaller than those that would otherwise be required. If the same technique that Santa uses to transport himself and the gifts past locked doors also decreases mass (or makes it irrelevant), then the payload problem is completely solved. (Note that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.)

D) If we accept the notion that Santa's intelligence gathering is good enough for him to determine who is bad/good, sleeping/awake etc., then it stands to reason that Santa also knows enough about health problems, travel plans, hurricanes, floods, drive-by shootings, fires, volcanoes, earthquakes, bus crashes, burglaries, etc. etc. etc. to be able to defer or advance some of his deliveries for days or even weeks, thus considerably extending the 31 hour time limit (as mentioned by the Engineer in paragraph 3) for perhaps 3 to 5 percent of children.

E) In paragraph 3, the Engineer admits to the assumption that Christian homes are randomly distributed over the entire surface of the planet. In reality, a majority of the earth's surface is covered by the oceans, and a great portion of what is left is covered by mountains, deserts, forests, jungles, glaciers, smaller bodies of water, and other natural and man-made features that render the space uninhabitable by humans -- or at least extremely sparsely populated by Christians, who largely tend to live in communities with homes placed in neat rows on level ground, or in densely populated vertical blocks in urban areas.

Also, many families tend to gather for the Holidays, thus decreasing the number of Christian dwellings that are actually occupied on December 24-25. Therefore, the aforementioned assumption leads to an *staggering* overestimate of the number of times Santa must travel distances exceeding 60 feet. Also note that this more realistic model includes trans-oceanic voyages during which Santa could take a "bathroom break."

F) In paragraph 3, the Engineer says that Santa has a very short time in which to "park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. "In the previous paragraph, I dispensed with the notion that Santa must actually park and exit the sleigh, enter and exit the dwelling, and then enter and drive the sleigh for each delivery. As far as the snacks go, it is clear that between the households where the parents eat the snacks prior to Santa's arrival and the households that don't leave snacks at all, Santa has to deal with a snack in only a small proportion of cases. This means that at every stop Santa must, at a minimum, fill stockings and distribute gifts. The other tasks are performed in much smaller proportions.

G) In paragraph 2, the Engineer presents the assumption that roughly 10 children out of 35 are "good." Given my personal observations, I conclude that this would lead us to overestimate of the number of Christian households containing at least one "good" child by an order of magnitude at the absolute minimum. This, more than anything else, decreases the number of stops that Santa must make.

In conclusion - all of the Engineer's calculations are based on figures that are massively skewed, always choosing the worst-case value. The distances to be traveled, the number of stops to be made, the amount of work to be performed, and the amount of cargo to be carried are all FAR smaller than the Engineer estimates.

Santa has NOT been burned to a cinder, he has NOT been squished by the acceleration of his sleigh, and (though I'm quite certain he won't be visiting that Engineer's house,) Santa Claus IS coming to town!

QUESTION OF THE DAY

Working 7-12's for weeks at a time doesn't leave much blogging time nor subjects fit to blog about, so I'm reposting an old entry that got some interesting comments. OK people, answer this:

WHAT FAMOUS PERSON, ALIVE OR DECEASED, DO YOU ADMIRE THE MOST?
My answer, hands down, would have to be Katharine Hepburn. If I could be any kind of woman that I wanted, Katharine would be my role model. I've adored her ever since I was young and will continue to do so as long as I live.

Instead of trying to tell you all the reasons why, I'm going to refer you to the article, The Devine Ms. H, written by Zadie Smith at the time of Katharine's death. Zadie gives all the right reasons to admire Kate and does so much better than I ever could.

Katharine Hepburn; beautiful until the day she died & never once did anything just because she was supposed to. She lived life on her terms, refused to change herself to suit the movie Moguls, loved whom she wanted regardless of the fact that he was married or of others opinions, and defied Hollywood or anyone else to say anything about it. What better role model could you ask for?

Now, what famous person do you admire the most?

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

This post is dedicated to Mom & Dad, who would have been married 52 years on December 25th if they were still with us.

This is what they looked like when they eloped on Christmas Day, 1954, after only knowing each other 10 days. Good looking couple, aren't they!


I tried to blow up the picture of Dad so it would have been the same size as Mom's but it got fuzzy, so y'all will just have to make-do. Donna is the family historian and she tells the story of Mom & Dad's whirlwind romance in Love Everlasting.They did something you very seldom see today; stayed married, raised 5 girls and never separated. I don't think I even saw them fuss until after I was grown and left home.

I don't have any pics of them at Christmas on the 'puter and the scanner died, so here's a few that I DO HAVE.

My son, Chane, 5 or 6 years back. Believe me folks, he's not nearly as sweet as he looks!

Grandson Drennon when he was still his Nana's baby, before he grew up and informed me that he was "a big boy and stop calling me baby!" All those white snowflake ornaments on the tree were hand crocheted by Mom.

The 5 sisters last Christmas. From the left back: Tina, Donna. From the left front: Teresa, Lana, Me


As you can see our kids & grandkids are deprived, they never get anything for Christmas, NOT! This was last year and I hope we continue to get together every year.


So many families lose touch after the loss of their parents. It's like the older generation is the only thing keeping the siblings and grandchildren together as a unit. I know after my Grandmother & Grandfather Waters passed away I lost touch with most of my cousins. Heck, there's a few of them that I don't even recognize if I meet them in town. I'm afraid that's going to happen to us now that our parents are gone, and they would have hated that. To Mom & Dad, family was everything.

So if you have relatives that you haven't seen in a while, call them. Write something in the annual Christmas card besides "Merry Christmas". Tell them that you miss them and love them. Make the first move; who knows, you might just rekindle a close relationship with someone who shares your past and genes. The worst that can happen is that they ignore your loving overture and then loss will be theirs.

Merry Christmas Mom & Dad, where ever you are.

CHRISTMAS PARADE 2006

Tonight me, 3 of my sisters, Sweet Thang and assorted inlaws & outlaws braved the cold front that's sweeping the country to watch Moulton's Christmas parade. It always circles the town square and this year an hour before the parade arrived Christmas carolers sang on one side of the square while a local church played Christian rock music & handed out free cocoa & coffee on the other side, so we had plenty of entertainment while we waited.

I didn't get to take many pictures....... well I took lots but only a few turned out. Some of them were too dark and then there were the grown women who kept jumping in front of me scrambling for candy, I got plenty of shots of the back of one of their heads. That 's what I said, GROWN WOMEN JUMPING IN FRONT OF OTHERS, STEPPING OF FOLKS TOES & CRAWLING ON THEIR HANDS AND KNEES OVER PENNY CANDY.

Some people are just deprived, I guess. Or would that be depraved? I thought seriously about booting the shameless hussy out of my way, but instead I stepped up to her face, looked her in the eye and said "Excuse Me" in one of those tones of voice. She snarled "Excuse me Hell!" but she did move down a few feet.

I was about fed up with grown folks acting like idiots, knocking little kids out of the way over a piece of candy, and it wouldn't have taken much for me to deck her. I think I could have taken her, too, and I had Donna to take care of the other candy-snatchers. I can see it now, me in jail (maybe Donna too, who knows) and calling in to work "I won't be in tomorrow, I got in a fight at the Christmas Parade." Ain't y'all proud of the way I behaved all lady-like instead of being the heathen female y'all know and love?

Donna bundling up her grandson Andrew against the cold. Why do kids hate 'boggins so much, don't they know that their ears will freeze off? At least that's what Mom always told me.......
From the back left: Donna, Tina & Lana. Front: Christopher, Brittany & her little boyfriend waiting for the parade to begin. (Brittany's 11 and she's a head taller than the poor feller, Donna told him he needed a rock to stand on!)

Some more of Donna's grandsons are riding on this firetruck (the ones in black toward the front are them), their dad Duane is a fireman.

You never have a parade without vendors. I can understand the cotton candy, but don't ask me why he's selling plastic fish at a Christmas parade!

Don't you know she's cold!

Only in Alabama would you see a bulldozer in a Christmas parade.

The Alabama Blues Brothers
(they're supposed to be the only Blues Brothers impersonators in the state and, to their knowledge, the only impersonators nationwide who are actual brothers)

The local Red Hat Society,
who are the Grande Dames of the Ladies-Who-Lunch
and who all wear
purple dresses & red hats
in honor of the poem,
"Warning" by Jenny Joseph.
(The Red Hat Society is a social organization where there is fun after
fifty for women of all walks of life)

Of course the parade finished with a kazillion horses, carts, buggies and such. It ain't a parade in Alabama unless you smell horse manure at the end. (horse-end-manure......I know, bad pun)

Well, it's in the 20s outside, I've got the gas heat kicking, my fuzzy PJs on and tomorrow's a work day so I'll say "Good Night". Hope y'all have sweet dreams and some one or something to keep you warm tonight. Sweet Thang went home but I've got a thick quilt and two cats to snuggle with, and warm thoughts of family and friends to flavor my dreams.

MEMORY LANE

See what we mean about Alabama's changing weather! 72 degrees today, down to 26 degrees Friday night and a high of 48 by Saturday. We got from short sleeved shirts to longjohns, all in in the time span of one week here in the South.

Now that I've got you searching for your warm & fuzzy PJs, go see Donna and read her memories about the home-made, hand-me-down dress that meant so much; a memory to warm up the coldest heart.

.......Christmas, she cut her wedding dress apart at the seams and ironed the resulting odd shaped pieces of material flat. Then she took a paper pattern sized to fit a small girl (me).......

I'm really enjoying reading about these memorable Christmas presents. You learn a lot about a person by what it is that they treasure most. For some it's material things, $$$, that matter but for the lucky ones it's their memories of love and hope shared with the special people in their lives.

Here's hoping that you and yours are building memories that will a lifetime.

BTW: I have another sister who has decided to try her hand at blogging. Y'all meet Tina (the redhead of the family) at Somewhere In Nowhere. Go tell Tina "HI" and help get her hit count up.

SOMETIMES LIFE SUCKS.......

Reading stuff like this makes me wanta cry.


S.Korea slaughters dogs and pigs

426 pigs and four dogs have so far been killed along with 127,200 chickens and 6.8 million eggs...................nearly 700 dogs -- bred on farms for consumption -- were to be killed...................... "It's just too cruel to indiscriminately kill other livestock when there is obviously no proof these animals can transmit the bird flu virus to humans," said 29-year-old Kim Sung-tae. "I have little puppies that are as small as my palm. How can they have the heart to kill those small things?"

FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE

Here's a few seasonal flash movies to keep you entertained. "White Trash Christmas" is a particular favorite of mine. Enjoy.

WHITE TRASH CHRISTMAS

Watch Christmas Flash Movies Here

Christmas Flash Movies

SANTA

Watch Christmas Flash Movies Here

Christmas Flash Movies

FROSTY VS. RUDOLF

Watch Christmas Flash Movies Here

Christmas Flash Movies EXTRA CHRISTMAS BONUS: Patty, over at This, That and Froghair , has posted the link to watch The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause free on the Internet. Thanks Patty.