26 Mar 2011

SATURDAY FUN - Odd news


Helen Staudinger, 92, wanted a kiss.

Authorities say after her 53-year-old neighbor refused, the central Florida woman aimed a semi-automatic pistol at his house and fired four times.
What a naughty neighbor !

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Bride Orders Giant Wedding Cake Shaped Like Herself
Do you take this bride, to have and to hold -- and to eat?

A wife renewing her wedding vows after 10 years of marriage ordered a cake that looks just like her.
I hope she was quiet big

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Border Agent Put His Wife on Terrorist List

Immigration officer fired after putting wife on list of terrorists to stop her flying home

An immigration officer tried to rid himself of his wife by adding her name to a list of terrorist suspects. As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after travelling to the county to visit family.
At least this man was very creative to get rid of his wife !



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Man charged with filming woman's rear end

Police in Georgia said they arrested a man who allegedly followed a woman around a Kmart store while filming her backside.
Must have been an interesting view

25 Mar 2011

FRIDAY's FAVE FIVE


more participants at Susanne at Living to tell the Story.


1. Our acqua gym teacher was on holidays so we had another girl. I think she must have been a sergeant because she counted all the time "One, two, one two, two three seven ..." in a loud military voice. When I said I feel like being in military exercise instead of an old lady friendly acqua gym, she at least didn't shout the numbers anymore, nobody amongst us was deaf. We all prefered our good Michele !

2. I went with a friend to our favourite asiatic restaurant, it's nice there, because they also have a takeaway so I always order one plate more to take home for Mr. G. Which means another cooking free evening.

3. The weather was wonderful this week, sunshine all the time, the only thing which bothered me was that in the morning you thought being at the Northpole and the afternoon in Africa. Such a big temperature difference ! you had to dress up like an onion and peel layer by layer off with the raising temperature !

4. I cleaned the gravel in front of our house from the first outcoming weeds before it started to get worse and then spread simple kitchen salt all over the gravel. That's a very efficient (and cheap) mean to keep weeds away. It's also ecofriendly and not dangerous for animals.

5.



As the weather was still nice and warm, we cleaned the patio and the garden furniture with a Kärcher water pressure washer, and removed the plastic we had on the furniture to protect them during the winter. It was quiet some work but we did it and now it looks nice and clean all the moss is gone and we can now sit outside. Hopefully we don't get any frost anymore. As the flowers are not growing yet I put some fake once in the pots, at least it looks a little colorful.

24 Mar 2011

THE MOST FAMOUS NAGGING WOMAN

Jenny Matlock
more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

Words starting with X are not easy to find ! After a brain raking of several days suddenly I found one ! Xanthippe ! The reason was because I met one lately. I remembered that women who were always jalous, arguing, and bad tempered were called "Xanthippes". I must have slept during history lesson because I only found out now thanks to this theme that she was the wife of Socrates whose name rang a bell in my mind, a little left over from school. He was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, whatever that means.

Xanthippe was a nagging, peevish, irritable, quarrelsome woman and wife. Nevertheless the couple managed to produce three sons. Apparently Socrates knew he was marrying a hag, but he did it on purpose to practice his patience ! A rather strange method in my opinion. But I am not a philosopher either.

Sokrates married Xanthippe, when he was nearly 50 years old. She was much younger than him, perhaps by as much as forty years. Apparently already at that time famous man liked to marry much younger women. Up to this date, he had avoided a marriage, and when asked someone his advice about marrying or not, he usually answered:

''Do what you want, in this or the other case, you have to repent'' or "Marry or marry not, in any case you'll regret it".

A well known anecdote about the angry Xanthippe is the one where she was so furious with her husband that she threw a bucket of washing water on him.

The philosopher then replied: after thunder comes rain.

She must have been quiet a woman that she became so famous thanks to her bad tempered character. Today to become famous you have to use other means !




My bucket would have been bigger !

22 Mar 2011

MY WORLD - Signs of Spring


more participants here

Due to my spring lethargy I didn't do any photo hunting to show you other parts of my world, but at least I have some spring pictures from my surroundings. I went over to Dominique who has a second floor and took some pictures out of the windows from above.



the world becomes green again



our little roundabout is waiting for the daffodils to come out



the thermometer shows 20 °C (68 F) in the sun but on the street you still needed warm clothes. It's so confusing ! In the morning you live at the Northpole and in the afternoon in Africa (or nearly) !






The look from from our terrace into the garden



and the cats too enjoy the first signs of spring.

20 Mar 2011

WHAT DID YOU DO THIS WEEKEND ?



Helps you to remember what you have done on the weekend of March 19. You never know if you need an alibi ! If you participate please put the little logo on the top of your post and leave your link.

I didn't feel well the whole weekend. I thought about the German expression to suffer from "Spring tiredness" but I wasn't tired, in English it's "Spring lethargy" and this is exactly my case. It also was full moon and maybe that influenced my mood too.

I am distracted and forget everything. I spend my time on looking for my glasses or lately even for my mug, which I put somewhere when I moved around and forget of course where I had put it. The same happens with my mobile, my camera etc. It's just as if I celebrate Easter already and search for "eggs".

On Saturday I realized that I didn't have any cheese and bread anymore which I also had forgotten so I had to go out and buy some which was stupid because all working people did their big shopping on a Saturday morning and the shops were fully packed.



Nevertheless I continued to wash my glass and ceramic cats and cleaned the others and put them back in the now also cleaned vitrine. My house starts to look like an intensive care station.

In the afternoon the sun was shining and once again Dominique and I walked dog Theo through the fields and streets and met a lot of other dog owners which whom we had a chat. That is really nice when you walk a dog, you make a lot of contacts with other people.



Theo is a 12 year old Golden Redriever and such a cute and friendly dog. Unfortunately on Sunday morning he went home to his owner Dominique's brother. His one week holidays with her were over. Now we are again dogless. We also noticed the first spring flowers coming out.

Sunday morning the sun was shining and it looked as if you could walk in a T-shirt, but it was very cold and windy so that I quickly returned home.

The rest of the day I took care of my lethargy and watched "Escape to the country" a series on BBC which I always record. I love to watch it not because of the beautiful houses, but they also show a lot of the UK and it's beautiful landscapes and historical places.

The only exciting event was that one cat had brought a mouse in our living room, which hid under the TV set and both cats were sitting in front waiting that the mouse would come out. Before we went to bed I left the window door a little open and also the store, so that the mouse could go out and locked the doors of the living room. Unfortunately I had locked cat Arthur also inside, I hadn't seen him, so he had the whole night to catch the mouse and Mr. G. when he sat down with his coffee found the mouse corpse between his feet. He very much appreciated this delicate attention as a nice morning greeting.





A BANK ACCOUNT MISTERY

My classmate of my painting group Michele got a letter for her husband from her bank. She was a little surprised because her husband had died 23 years ago. As he couldn't open the letter anymore she did it and found a letter informing him or in this case her, that he still had a bank account with them, and that there were around 30 € (42 $) left, which wouldn't cover the fees for the bank account in the next years. They suggested him to close the account.

Michele had had a marriage contract so that both had seperate accounts and she had no procuration to close this account. It also was technically impossible to let him come back just for closing a bank account. But the heir could, and in this case it was her daughter, who was on holidays in France.

Now to close this account there are tons of formulars to be filled in and also a tax declaration for the 30 € as inheritance. There were no interests on this account because in the 23 years it had all been deducted as bank account fee.

So don't be surprised if suddenly a bank may remember you after more than 20 years ! I am sure that if the bank account was in debit, they would have noticed it the day he died !

Some real stories are far better than fairy tales !