Oh, Ya-All have got to Check THIS Out!!!!

I just went to a website that had me look at these moving dots, if i looked one way, they were pink, another, and they were green, yet another and they completly dissapeared.

It is a great Illusion that demostrates how the human brain works.

Click the link and try it. It's creepy good Fun!

It's that time again

Hey folks, its time for you to nominate your favorite blogs for the
2006 Web log Awards

So link on over there and vote for ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!!!!!!!

(I already cast my votes for all of you.)

Yin and Yang

Yin and Yang

The Symbol of Yin and Yang

The Chinese symbol of Yin and Yang is universal to all Eastern Philosophy. The two halves represent the dual nature of all things in the universe. The swirls depict two fish, swirling around, ever changing, one becoming the other, with each containing the seed of the other within its self. The black is the Yin, feminine, passive, soft side. The white is the active, bright, hard, male side.
The symbol of Yin and Yang illustrates the universal truths that one side is not complete without the other, and the two, together, make up The One.

Although it is human nature to resist change, it must be accepted and understood that all things exist in a constant state of transition, and each thing must be seen as both Yin and Yang, if it is to be seen in its entirety.

The circular nature of the symbol also illustrates that there is no end to the journey. The goal is not to reach the end, for any destination is a dead end, but rather to experience the journey itself.

Forever in Candyland

I've been thinking about Heaven.

Eternal bliss
No worries
No troubles
No strife
Forever and Ever and Ever and Ever

and Ever
in some place better than Here.

When I was a kid, I used to play a game called Candyland.
It was so fun and exciting
weaving my way around the board to the castle.

Ahhh, I so loved Candyland.

But eventually, I got bored with it.
It was too easy.

I moved on to more challenging things.

I do so love a challenge.
The thrill of pushing beyond my limits

Mastering things beyond
what I ever thought I could do.

I love the rubix cube of life,
and the infinite number of quests.

I love to study,
learn,
solve,
create,
wonder,
dream,
hope,
prevail

There was a time when I would have jumped at the chance
to spend Eternity in Candyland,

But Eternity is a
Very
Very
Very
long time.

Sundown

When I was young, like most little girls, I was obsessed with horses. I took riding lessons, went to horse camp in the summers, and had a huge collection of Bryer horse toys. I pleaded with my parents insessantly to buy me a horse, which was an impossible dream for a girl living on a half acre plot in the suburbs.

But my will was strong, even then. I began a quest to fufill my dream, and in less that a year, I had racked up a big wad of cash from odd jobs, babysitting and 10 cent returnable pop bottles.

I enlisted the aid of the daughter of a wealthy endodonist by convincing her of the greatness of my dream, and got her to go in halvsies with me. (My first attempt to garner investors for a cause.)

Together we purchased a beautiful Palamino Gelding named Sundown, who stood a majestic seventeen hands high. I loved that horse, and I worked so hard to make the dream beautiful; but boarding fees, vet expenses, feed cost, and the like, put me in a catch twenty two situation. If I worked all the time, I could afford the bills, but this left me no time to spend with my magical steed.

Jenny had all the time in the world to ride, as her parents were paying her half. She joined 4-H, and rode my dear Sundown in many horseshows and events. It seems like she brought home a blue ribbon every weekend.

When my grades bagan to suffer, mom pulled the plug, and I reluctantly let go of my dream.

I still think of Ol Sundown often, and I would have kept him forever, if I could have. It was a tough lesson in the commodity of ranching, to accept a pile of dirty green cash, in exchance for a living thing, that I loved. A hard lesson indeed for a preteen girl with a broken dream.

Mom still says that I bought the back end of that horse, but I don't see it that way. I never did.

Just for Today

Just for Today:

I will not
Drink any Cigarettes
Eat any Coffee or
Smoke any Chocolate.

Just to see what happens...

Completing the Puzzle

Every morning, for as long as I can remember, my mother has started the day with "her puzzle." Mom lives for the daily crossword. She is one of those who insists on filling in the blanks with a pen, even if a suitable pencil lies nearby. She rebukes the lowly lead, and will search diligently for the inking implement of experts, before she settles down to begin.

The family knows not to interrupt mother once the ritual has begun. She times herself, you see, so it is important that we all respect her quest, and run interference on any potential distractions.

She is good, folks. A real pro. If there were a national crossword championship, I am quite certain that mom would have the Heisman.

"I minored in Latin." she quips, when she trumps a particularly challenging curmudgeon.

My brother and I have taken after her, and adopted the ritual too, both trying so hard to scribe as neatly as the girl who was famous in her small town for such beautiful handwriting. We have oft heard the story of her elementary days, and the teachers who asked Her to write the lessons on the board, because her script was so lovely to behold.

My brothers handwriting is much neater than mine, though not even in par with mom's. We both use her style of "E" and "Y"

Yes, I have adopted mom's penchant for puzzles. I like to figure things out, to play with words, to test myself, and challenge my skills. That's a gift from my mother, I cherish.

Maybe I'll call her and tell her, but not yet, she is still working that puzzle right now.

Ever Expanding Universe

I met a new cyber friend today. VENNILA nr KAIN.

She sent me an e-mail asking about the symbolism of The White Hawk, and what it means to see such a thing thrice. After checking her website, I must say that I was most honored and humbled that she chose to ask the question of little ole' me.

I never imagined that blogging would become an ever expanding universe of cerebral friendships, existing entirely independently from the constraints of the physical world.

Aint it Grand?

Check out her web site: www.vennila.net

"The Talk"

Sissy's mother shifted nervously as she began the long overdue discussion with her daughter. "The good Lord created Sex for Divine Procreation, my dear. Do not let any of those boys try to tell you any different. Do you understand?"

Sissy was in a fog. She had never heard the word Procreation before, but it sounded a bit like recreation, and she knew what 'Pro' meant, so she nodded her head.

"Yes Mamma, I understand."

And that was the end of it.

Too Many Amandas

My fourth grade daughter was in CRISIS!!!!
She was supposed to memorize the poem
"Too Many Amandas"
by Loris Lesynski.

She had forgotton the poem, and left it at school.

"MOTHERRRRR, WHAT am I going to DOOOOOOOO?"
She cried, (at eight pm Sunday night.)

"You could e-mail the author."

Thus began a charming exchange.

Shelby sent her flowery, hopeful, pleading request.
Ms. Lesynski replied and saved the day.
Shelby wrote back a dramatic and heartfelt thanks, adding the line:

Thank you, Thank You, YOU'VE SAVED MY LIFE !!!!!!!!

To which the author and poet, responded:

Oh that's great! I like saving lives with poems !!!!!!

Loris

Rebalancing

"The greatest flaw in patriarchal civilisation has been the over-emphasis on the masculine archetype (identified with spirit) and the devaluation of the feminine one (identified with nature). This has been reflected in the fact that the god-head has no feminine dimension, in the consistent neglect of feeling values and in the misogyny responsible for the repression and suffering of women. The history of the last 4000 years has been forged by men, determined by male perspectives and directed towards goals defined by men - principally the goals of conquest and control."

-Anne Baring
From her Essay Rebalancing the Masculine and the Feminine

What The Bleep Do We Know

http://www.whatthebleep.com/synopsis

My favorite movie has now become a book! (Ain't THAT a Twist)

Here is a short excerpt that I hope will motivate you to run out and experience either the book or the movie:

Back to the laboratory!

Having not come up with the answer to "What is reality?"-
which turned out to be way too big a question-humanity turned to the lab and tackled a simpler aspect: Take all the "stuff" around us, which we all pretty well agree is "real", and see what that's made of. That's much simpler than dreams or ideas or emotions or any of that inner stuff.

It was the Greek philosopher Democritus of Abdera who first had the idea of an atom: "nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." And that was a great place for us to start. So out came the electron microscopes and the atom smashers and cloud chambers, and we big people peered into the world of little things.

Now when you went to school, you probably were shown a model of an atom, with its solid nucleus and orbiting electrons, and you were probably told, "Atoms are the building blocks of nature." Nice Try! It's a neat concept and diagrams quite nicely, but it just ain't so.

It turned out that those solid little atoms, in their neat little orbits, were really just energy packets. Then it was discovered that they're not really energy packets either, but momentary condensations of a field of energy...Of course, as you know, every "atom" consists almost entirely of "empty space", so much so that its a kind of miracle that we don't hit the floor every time we try to sit down on a chair. And since the floor is also mostly empty, where would we find something solid enough to hold us? The kicker here is that "we" - at least our bodies - are made up of atoms too!

And now leading-edge research is suggesting that the so called "empty space" within and between atoms is not empty at all; it's so lively with energy that one cubic centimeter - about a thimbleful or an area the size of a marble - contains more energy than all the solid matter in the entire known universe!

So what did you say Reality was?