Apparently it's called a frilled shark. It used to be thought extinct until 2007 when a live one washed up on shore. It is one ugly bug, though! Here is a video for your pleasure.

I wonder how long it sat up there, and how many people took a slip just to show it to their (maybe) smart friends?

I was quite surprised today to meet a kid (less than 20) who was actually familiar with the Blaxploitation films of the 80s. In particular, we were talking and laughing about I'm Gonna Get You Sucka, in which the hero's brother succumbed to an early death by "overgold." Of course, nobody knows how he actually died, but it seemed to have something to do with the piles and piles of gold chains he was addicted to collecting. It was just pretty cool to talk to a young person who knew a movie that was older than my kids.

For those of you who have been paying attention, we are in the process of slimming down the possessions we intend to move with us at the end of the year. One of the things NOT going is our bed. It really has had the crap kicked out of it, and I rarely get a decent night's sleep anymore. I'm nearly at the point where I'm going to just throw the thing out and sleep on a yoga pad or one of those memory foam toppers. I hate this thing.

Lifted this from Bad Astronomy. My god, incredible. I never really stopped to consider the scale of Saturn (as viewed here from the Cassini space probe). I can think of it relative to the Earth, but how useful is that? I am familiar with how big the United States are, since I have driven across it several times. Here, Matt Andrews superimposed the United states on Saturn's surface.

I need to bone up on statistics before I get much further along in my education here. Of course, I'll have a bit more time for calculus next semester, but I was looking through a practice test for actuaries, and the test I saw was very VERY heavy on statistics. Of course, that makes sense if one is going to construct casualty tables for insurance companies, like Medical Malpractice Insurance. But, things what they are, it's a lot better than slicing roast beef for a living. Would you like provolone with that?

I enjoyed writing and submitting this. What do you think?

    A simple definition for transcendentalism might be a belief that divinity pervades all nature, and that to comprehend the divine, one must appreciate nature and individuality for their subjective worth. I view transcendentalism as a sub branch of romanticism because of its emphasis on emotion and perception rather than reason and formulae. The rising literacy and education levels of the middle 19^th century, as well as the industrial revolution, created more leisure time for Americans who had the skills to endeavor in intellectual pursuits. The paintings didn't help me much at all, but they did remind me of some of the painting shows that used to be aired on television.

    Transcendentalism and it's emphasis on nature and self-reliance almost seem to push back on some of the social movements of the middle 19^th century. Around that time, the Second Great Awakening was driving people across the country into churches and inspiring them to take up a multitude of social initiates, including abolition and various reforms, while people were flocking to cities and Utopian experiments to take advantage of the industrial revolution. Transcendentalists, though, preached self-reliance, study of nature, and the idea that all people are part of the same spirituality.

    I think the only part of "Nature" that seemed noteworthy to me was the last sentence: "The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population" (Emerson, Nature 549). This appeals to me because I see transcendentalism's value in its expression of the individual journey for growth and self-understanding. We tend to see everything in the world, not just nature, through the tinted lenses of our experience, but not just of the experience that brings us our current emotion. While it might be convenient to interpret the sky as less grand, that doesn't make it so for everyone else, and some things are open to interpretation or closed to absolute definition, other things are not.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the GOP candidates. I enjoy listening to the debates (I get them on podcast instead of tuning in to the commercial-ridden broadcasts) but I'm not sure how productive they are. The only person in the field bringing up the really important issues like civil liberty and individual freedom is Ron Paul, and very few of the other candidates will respond to him because he doesn't often make any charges against them. I can see that it's just because he doesn't see them as the problem; it's our entire system of government. But he needs to get in the fight if he is going to earn any respect from these primary voting schmoes. In fact, I am considering registering Republican just to vote for him. Sometimes it seems to me that nobody on that stage right now can beat Obama, and other times, it seems like if they bring up liberty and freedom, how can they NOT beat Obama?

A woman walked into an insurance agency looking for life insurance quotes for her and her husband. The agent asked for the value of her husband's life insurance policy, but the woman was confused. To clarify, the agent asked, "If you lost your husband, what would you get."

The woman replied, "Probably a Pomeranian."

Yep, it's been a while since I let a joke slip in here, and I felt bad about it!

We really love the internet. Even though the dollar store is great for stocking stuffers that are going to get busted anyway, we can get great stuff for our teenager to express herself and have fun like beadaholique.com beads. We checked out the local craft stores, and while they have some sort of selection, it is nowhere near as extensive as the collection at beadaholique. Hooray for the internet!!

Really, go check it out right now. Leeanne has been busting her tail putting together high quality, high value card and scrapbooking kits. She takes a much lower percentage of profit than every other paper kit purveyor she finds, and as a result, she is adding a new person to her subscription list every time I turn around. I'm amazed that the mailman has room in his truck for all of them, sometimes!! And she got all of it going without any small business loans. By the way, if you are looking for a Cricut CNC paper cutting machine, she is selling hers to upgrade. Let me know and I'll forward it to her, or just visit her at www.artfuldelight.com.

Is my desktop pc. It is a really old Dell Dimension 4600. It was great when I got it, but Pentium 4 just isn't cutting the mustard any more. Of course, part of the issue is surely the hard drive I swapped in so my kid could have my faster drive, but the blasted thing takes nearly ten minutes to be responsive once I boot it up. That and even with 2gb of ram and a fresh install of Windows XP, I have to shortchange all the graphics pretties to make it fast enough to run more than one program at a time. My hp Eitebook smokes it, and that's a shame because it's so much smaller. HP has earned my allegiance, though, and after we move, I will most certainly be getting one of the many hp desktops that are on the market, or maybe even one of the touchscreen all-in-ones. SWEET!

Yep, I'm really not, just yet, but I think about how prospects have changed in the last twenty years. When I was twelve, seniors seemed to have very few options for bone and joint surgery, and most of them were incredibly scary and could have huge recovery times and be very debilitating on their own, never mind the conditions they were correcting. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was twelve. At any rate, new techniques are definitely cutting recovery times and increasing comfort. Minimally Invasive Spine Institutes can now offer incredible surgeries that were impossible two decades ago, and it doesn't seem so challenging to get old any more.

That's right. When we move next time, we are going to have somebody else do the driving. With four kids, though, even the Explorer is going to get cramped. What we are planning on is getting a basket cargo carrier that fits into the hitch receiver, like the ones from curt trailer hitches. That way whatever gear we need to get will be accessible at any stop, but we won't have to cramp everyone up on the inside. Just pack some duffel bags and go.

That's right. If anybody missed it, we all got several inches of snow up here last week. BEFORE Halloween!!! Looks like it's going to be another one of those winters. You know, the kind that they told me almost never happen up here? The kind that have happened EACH year? The kind where people trade in their atv winches for snow plows to clear the driveway? I'm really not pleased with this, and can't wait to move back to the dessert.

Leeanne is really picking up some steam with her paper crafting, lately. Kind of amazing, considering all the responsibilities she juggles. She is up to nearly 20 paper kits each month, and a handful of card kits. She has already started planning her Christmas Cards even!! I haven't really seen that much of them, but they are so far much nicer than the cartoon looking ones I tried to help with last year.

We are trying something new this year. Our oldest kid has managed to turn holidays into that special time of year when family all comes together…and gives her presents. With the three little ones growing up rapidly, we want a strategy to keep the holidays what they are to us: a time to relax and remember that no matter how much the world throws at us the rest of the year, we are always, and always will be, family. So we are buying our Christmas gifts early, and we'll spend the holidays celebrating the highest power we know…family. But until then, I need to ask my own Santa for something for Christmas. I'm not talking a little garden gnome, either, no matter how cute they are! Any ideas for me?

    I just realized that Microsoft Word has a blog post option. I think I like the Microsoft Office Suite more and more each time I use it. The add-ins are pretty handy, and the suite is very well integrated. I remember not really caring for it way back when, but that was when every application was separate. Bash pcs and Microsoft if you will, I love em.