19 January 2008

a riddle inside a puzzle, wrapped in an enigma. . .

last night, we were sitting around the dinner table discussing what we would do if we sold our house and moved to another. during a part of the conversation, we were discussing having enough room to jigsaw puzzles on the dinner table, and having the room to leave the puzzle there all the time.

as a jibe, my wife said to my oldest daughter, “you are a puzzle!”

in her best quick-witted retort to date, moira responded, “yeah—with a piece missing!”


moira: 2
isuzu: 0

16 January 2008

does red wine or white go with an isuzu?

we knew this day was coming.

eight years ago this summer, our lovely oldest daughter was in a car-versus-bike accident involving an isuzu rodeo. she was such a little p'up at the time.

she wasn't hurt badly, thank god. only two of her front teeth were knocked out, and her dentist came to the rescue by being at the emergency room when she arrived to be sure her teeth were reinserted properly. we knew there was a chance that the teeth would not hold for long, and that the roots would dissolve in her gums, and that eventually she'd need a false tooth or an implant.

today it happened. out came the tooth at the insistence of her dentist, and she has been fitted for a temporary false tooth. eventually she'll get an implant.

she's been a real trooper (pardon the isuzu references--it's completely intentional) through the whole ordeal.

even i, to cope with the accident, don't say she was hit by a car. i like to lighten it up a little. . .

. . .i say she tried to take a bite out of an isuzu.



we thank our lucky stars and god above that it wasn't worse.



moira: 1
isuzu: 0

and on the third day he rose from the pan?

please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community. the pillsbury doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection & trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly. he was 71.

doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. baker's dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including mrs. butterworth, hungry jack, the california raisins, betty crocker, the hostess twinkies, & cap'n crunch.

the grave site was piled high with flours. aunt jemima delivered the eulogy & lovingly described doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. he was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. despite being a little flaky at times he still was a crusty old man & was considered a positive roll model for millions.

doughboy is survived by his wife play dough, 2 children, john dough & jane dough, plus they had one in the oven. he is also survived by his elderly father, pop tart.

the funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

15 January 2008

life sucks. . .then you're dead

first-year students at texas a&m's vet school were receiving their first anatomy class, with a real dead cow. they all gathered around the surgery table with the body covered with a white sheet. the professor started the class by telling them, "in veterinary medicine it is necessary to have two important qualities as a doctor: the first is that you not be disgusted by anything involving the animal body."

as an example, the professor pulled back the sheet, stuck his finger in the butt of the dead cow, withdrew it and stuck it in his mouth. "go ahead and do the same thing," he told his students. the students freaked out, hesitated for several minutes. but eventually they took turns sticking a finger in the anal opening of the dead cow and sucking on it.

when everyone finished, the professor looked at them and said, "the second most important quality is observation. i stuck in my middle finger and sucked on my index finger. now learn to pay attention. life's tough, it's even tougher if you're stupid."

thanks to cycledon for sending this to me.

12 January 2008

holy dorsal fins, batman!

A family was on holiday in Australia for a week and a half when husband, wife and their 15-year-old-son decided to go scuba diving.

The husband is in the navy and has had some scuba experience. His son wanted a pic of his mum and dad in all their gear so got the underwater camera on the go.

When it came to taking the pic the dad realized that the son looked like he was panicking as he took it and gave the "OK" hand sign to see if he was all right.

The son took the pic and swam to the surface and back to the boat as quick as he could so the mum and dad followed to see if he was OK.

When they got back to him he was scrambling onto the boat in an absolute panic. When the parents asked why, he said "There was a shark behind you" and the dad thought he was joking but the skipper of the boat said it was true, and that they wouldn't believe him if he told them what it was.

As soon as they got back to the hotel they put the pic onto the laptop.

Click here to see what they saw.

06 January 2008

first of all, young man, you've got geek disease*

it seems my girls (all 3) have gotten a bite from the geek bug--the bored stiff geek bug, that is. carrie discovered a new hobby called geocaching, in which various items are hidden around the world, clues are sprinkled around the internet complete with gps coordinates, and hints about the nature of the booty are part of the description. (a gps device is essential. you download the coordinates of the cache, and the gps tells you which direction to go and how far away you are.)

for example: What?? (was I thinking when I named these caches) is the name of the first find.

its description reads like this:

Log, No writing utensil.
I drove by this place a couple times and seen it from the hwy. So thought I would check it out. Is this like the cart before the horse?? There is NO need to climb, mess up landscaping, nothing needs to be messed up to get the cache. No need to get wet although I personally wouldn't Stop you if you were so inclined. Medication is not always a bad thing....Just a quick cache. I parked at the false start. play play play...


Additional Hint: Zrqf. ebpx!!!
Decryption Key

ABCDEFGHIJKLM
-------------
NOPQRSTUVWXYZ
(letter above equals below,
and vice versa)

(decrypted: Meds. rock!!!)
turns out there was a medicine bottle in a hole in a rock, in which there was a tiny notepad (log) on which you are supposed to write your name and time you visited. lots of names and dates on the log.

seems geocaching is quite the phenomenon. worldwide, even. you can make quite an adventure out of the most mundane trip to germany or poland or aruba. all you need is a handheld gps device, a reasonable sense of direction, and a bagful of loot. some of the geocaches allow you to remove an item so long as you leave an item. in lost my marbles, you take a marble and leave a marble.



in magness, there is an ammunition box left by the mount hood geocaching club (there are ten others around oregon) full of loot. sign the log, take one, leave one.



the cool thing about the geocaches is that many of the treasures are hidden on private or semi-private property, and the property owners themselves have given permission to hide stuff on their land, knowing full well that people are going to be-a-traipsing through their yards, digging under logpiles or rooting in tree stumps looking for hidden treasure. many of these homeowners or property managers are geocachers themselves.

we really had a rollicking good time--even in the driving wind and the rain.




*apologies to dire straits, industrial disease