Adam Lambert Rocks!!!

Bottled Water Facts

This is why I use a commercial water-filter pitcher (like Pur and Brita) to clean my tap water instead of buying bottled water. (I found this article on Digg.com) The arsenic is reported to be a little high in my city's water system, or I wouldn't even use the pitcher.

Presented by Online Education

I'm Just an Avatar in God's Online Game

Well, friends, now that we have the internet and online role-playing games, many of us have been asked to choose our Avatar (cartoon-like self). My Avatar on Farm Town has blue hair, brown eyes and wears overalls. Maybe when I was born in real life, somebody "up there" chose my real-life self as the beginning of their own "online game". Now that's some thought-provoking stuff, isn't it?

That's all.

My Kids Got Me Playing Farm Town on Facebook!

I'm addicted to Farm Town. My daughter and two grandsons kept sending me "friend requests", which finally caused me to start building my own farm on this very popular Facebook application, just to shut them up! At first it seemed routine and boring, but since my kids were doing it, I thought "why not?". So I kept at it. And then, it happened...I couldn't stop! As much as I told myself I'd had enough, I kept going well beyond a reasonable limit. I felt high with anticipation at each opportunity to add a bigger and better house to my farm. Then, when I was actually allowed by Farm Town to add rivers and lakes, I thought I would ride the high forever! Oh, I knew that the inevitable hangover would make me sorry I ever started Farm Town, but it seemed worth the energy at the time. I could build, and work, and plan, and work, and all my dreams could come true. I could be a billionaire farming magnate, the employer of thousands, sleeping the day away in my own hammock by the lake, surrounded by farm animals that were constantly bleating and mooing me as background noise to a blissful nap, with all the bountiful fruit trees I could ever want just waiting for me to pick their fruity goodness.

I could live in that world! But then, the reality came crashing down. There was a limit to this ever-expanding, rich simulated existence! Farm Town ends at Level 34, and the farm itself only expands to 22 x 22! And then what? The cravings for more and more stuff would have to be unsatisfied. Could I endure the depression of turning on the computer and not being able to expand my farm life? Stay tuned, folks, because I am approaching the dreaded "Level 34"...the end of this madness?? Or will I be forced to try the real hard stuff -- FarmVille!

Climate Change and My Snow Boots

It's "Blog Action Day" sponsored by http://www.blogactionday.org. In this article, I'm not going to quote very many facts or data, or quote a lot of research on the fact that the world's climate is changing. I've read enough to know that climate change is "real" and it's here; here and now. I'm just going to share a story.

Winters were fierce. There was no sidewalk on my street and, in fact, my street was a dirt road that the city snow plows never noticed. I grew up in Salt Lake City in the 50's and early 60's. I remember struggling home from the school bus stop through 3-4 ft. snow drifts, and when I got home one of my favorite things to experience was to have my mother take off my cold, frozen snow boots and place my feet in a bucket of warm water. She put the snow boots on a special towel placed by the front door, for use the next school day. It was the kind of motherly attention that warmed my heart, as much as my feet.

Fast forward to winter in the 2000 decade. Where are the snow drifts? I have asked a few "old" friends from the northern part of the United States what the winter weather was like in their childhood days, and their experiences were the same..lots of snow in the winter. They also wonder where the snow went? Now it only snows a foot or two and then melts, generally.

Yes, there are studies about vegetation that blooms earlier now, or not at all. Crops know these things. Crops know that climate change is here, do human beings?

Of course I don't wish children of today to have to struggle home through snow drifts. In fact, today's Salt Lake City teenagers will sometimes go without a coat in the cold winter, just to be "cool", much less wear "uncool" rubber snow boots! (If they wear snow boots at all, it's usually expensive brand-name boots used to make a fashion statement.) I guess children's regular rubber snow boot sales have dropped off since the 60's, eh?