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Post by Phalon on Jul 22, 2017 5:16:17 GMT -6
Do you think it's because they're not making decent systems anymore (electronics - cell phones, computers, etc - seem to be almost disposable items), or because the decent ones are so expensive, they're out of your students' price range? Given the choice, I think an average college kid would be more able to shell out a few hundred for a 'starter' system, then $400 to $1000 for just a turntable alone. (HA! My kid doesn't even have a television because she can't afford it.)
Back in the day, it seemed things were definitely built to last longer...and were more affordable. Hubs still has his stereo system from the early eighties! It's minus the turntable and tape deck, but he still has everything else to include those 'the bigger, the better' speakers that seemed to be a status symbol of any guy I knew back then. I don't know why he doesn't get rid of them - they're giant and take up half his man cave.
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Post by Phalon on Aug 14, 2017 22:58:17 GMT -6
<slaps forehead>
Now, I get it!
I wasn't quite sure what Scamp was saying, thinking maybe she didn't drink moonshine or watch NASCAR. I was watching a show on the History Channel last night though, called "The Cars That Made America" which was about the earliest days of the auto industry in Detroit. It was mentioned that during Prohibition the bootleggers had fast cars to run their moonshine and outrun the law - mainly in the South. The bootleggers would race each other, and eventually it turned into an organized sport (racing not running moonshine!) which would later become NASCAR.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 8, 2017 20:57:25 GMT -6
Came across this tidbit while doing a 31 Days of Halloween Random Word Drill...
As night progress, your dreams escalate in weirdness.
Researchers found that soon after you fall asleep, your dreams tend to be based in reality, reflecting on things you may have experienced or thought during the day. After even just a few hours of sleep though, dreams take on a more bizarre tone, and become detached from reality. By morning, just upon waking, your dreams are pretty much anything goes.
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 9, 2017 18:19:11 GMT -6
I'll have to try and keep that in mind when I wake up and remember any dreams that occurred during the night.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 10, 2017 4:10:05 GMT -6
Yep, by remembering that tidbit of information, you'll know that it can't get any weirder than your last dream of the night. HA!
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Post by Phalon on Dec 14, 2017 22:40:13 GMT -6
Weird little tidbit I ran across...
The first crash test dummy, named Sierra Sam, was developed in 1949 by Sierra Engineering; before then, human cadavers were used.
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 14, 2017 22:58:14 GMT -6
Eeeeewwwwww! I'd hate to be the one that had to clean up the debris!
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Post by Phalon on Dec 14, 2017 23:08:41 GMT -6
Eeew, is right! I didn't even think about that!
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Post by Phalon on Dec 28, 2017 9:33:51 GMT -6
One of LX's friends was talking about her extended family's Christmas dinner, part of which consisted of something she called "Holiday Potatoes" (sweet potatoes with marshmallows, brown sugar, etc.), and another dish of mashed yams. They asked me, aside from the way they were prepared, if there was a difference between sweet potatoes and yams. I told them yes, botanically there is a difference, but <shrugs>, I have no idea what it is. Of course, we drilled:
Yams are related to lilies and are native to Africa and Asia. They are are starchier and drier than sweet potatoes.
Sweet potatoes are members of the morning glory family. Sweet potato varieties are classified as either ‘firm’ or ‘soft’. The soft varieties are often labeled as yams in the United States.
The confusion started here because the slaves from Africa called the soft varieties of sweet potatoes "yams" because they are so similar to the yams from Africa. Hence, the U.S. Department of Agriculture still requires labels with the term ‘yam’ to be accompanied by the term ‘sweet potato.’
True yams in the U.S. are usually only found international food markets; grocery store "yams" are actually sweet potatoes.
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 28, 2017 17:05:53 GMT -6
I thought 'Yams' _were_ 'Sweet Potatoes.' I just assumed it varied by region of the US what term was used. Now I know.
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Post by Phalon on Dec 30, 2017 8:30:48 GMT -6
Even though they're sweet potatoes, you may be right about the preferred term being a regional thing - growing up and now, they were always "sweet potatoes"; Hubs calls them "yams". I was reminded yesterday of one of the weirdest produce colloquialisms I've ever heard, when BP and I were sharing a mango for lunch - the tropical fruit mango. When we lived in the Cincinnati area though, bell peppers were called "mangoes". Hubs, remember, works for the USDA Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Market News division, and the mango/bell pepper thing caused him a whole lot of confusion at first! Was he reporting on pepper prices or mango prices? He had to learn to verify the produce item that was being discussed. Thing was nobody - even on the market - could explain why peppers were called mangoes. This was more than 20 years ago, before Internet access a common household tool - so, after all these years, I drilled yesterday. Mystery solved: www.word-detective.com/2009/04/mango/(The first comment after the article cracked me up! Hubs says all of those things! Or he did say them, until after years, I finally convinced him that "hose pipe" and "loaf bread" weren't just weird, they are redundant. He still calls ground meat "hamburger meat" though.)
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 30, 2017 18:49:31 GMT -6
I've never heard peppers called mangoes before. I used to say 'hamburger meat' until there was ground beef and ground chuck. Hose. Loaf of bread. To distinguish it from other kinds of bread, like the French bread.
I've heard sweet potatoes called yams, but it usually depended on the dish. Mostly we called them sweet potatoes.
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 25, 2018 21:23:03 GMT -6
I don't know why, but in my dreams that deal with my home, I always live in my parents' house. I have my house, I just don't live in it. Usually, somewhere in my dream I have the sudden realization that I haven't been to my house in months ... and I have to jump in the car to go check on my critters. (It's usually one, or both of my cats. Both have passed away now, but not in my dreamworld.) Sometimes in my dreams my parents are still married, sometimes divorced. Dad and I usually end up fighting ... nothing new there.
I have figured out a few things about my dreams. If I'm constantly fighting with my family or strangers, I wake up hot and have to throw off the covers. If I'm scared, running, hiding or spooky things are going on all around me, I wake up cold and have to pull the covers up.
I've had dreams within dreams. I've woken up from a dream, and then woken up for real from the dream of dreaming. The other night I woke up from a dream, then woke up from that dream, and then woke up for reals from that dream. I swear, I don't use/abuse drugs or alcohol.
But back to the 'living with my parent/s' dreams. I've been living in this house since 1999. Why do I never live in it in my dreams? I've never lived in my other home in my dreams either, though sometimes I have/own both homes in my dreams, still living with my parents. And what's really wild, is that when I drive into the 'bottoms' they aren't there. There is a crossroads and a small town. What am I trying to tell myself?
Sometimes my parents are alive in my dreams, and sometimes I know they're dead ... we just don't acknowledge that tiny little detail and go on as if they didn't pass away. So, okay, I got that off my chest, maybe I'll stop having those "I'm still a child who hasn't grown up yet" dreams. Ooh.
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Post by Phalon on Feb 26, 2018 10:14:08 GMT -6
When LX was here last week, she said she'd been having dreams within dreams within dreams for a few weeks - she described it like the movie "Inception", and said when she wakes up, she's not quite sure if she's actually awake, or if she's awake only in her dream. I asked her why not just leave a note or an object next to her bed, so that when she wakes up sees the note (or whatever), she'll know she's actually awake; she said it'd freak her out more if, knowing the note was there subconsciously, she read the note in a dream.
I've had dreams in which my parents were still alive, I was living in Mom's house, or something that was supposed to be Mom's house, but was nothing like Mom's house.
I've never given my dreams any credence as trying to tell myself something - they are just too weird to try to dissect, although sometimes I can relate images in them back to something I saw or heard during the few days preceding the dream. Like Michelle Obama, for example...
When the official portraits of former President Obama and Michelle were unveiled a couple of weeks ago, I had a dream about her...a dream actually that Hubs had a one-night stand with her! In my dream I was so f***ing mad at him for sleeping with another women, and got even more furious that he was so nonchalant about it. I was so mad, in fact, that I woke up as furious at him as I was in my dream, even after I'd been awake for a few minutes, and knew it was just a dream.
Told Hubs about the dream because I thought it was kind of funny. Had coffee with my co-worker that morning - who is a gay happily married man, and saw Xena Sis, a happily married straight woman, later that day; I told them both about the dream. Hubs, my co-worker, and Xena Sis all said the same thing - which was Dream Hubs' reasoning: "It's Michelle Obama! How could you pass that up? I'd sleep with her too."
It all made me laugh. It's my personal opinion of course, but my dreams mean nothing - because I don't believe they are anything but dreams - a kind of way for my mind to pass the time making up stories while I'm at rest; I'm just along for the ride. For people who believe their dreams have meaning, I can see why trying to interpret them is important. My question about dream interpretation is this: if certain things in dreams are supposed to mean something - say a small town and crossroads like you mentioned has a particular significance in "dreamology" - if I don't consciously attach any particular meaning to that thing, why should my subconscious do the opposite. It's just like any piece of knowledge, if you don't know it to begin with, you're suddenly not going to know it in a dream - a math equation or some chemical formula you have no knowledge of, is not going to miraculously make itself known to you in a dream so that when you wake you suddenly have that knowledge.
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 26, 2018 19:33:15 GMT -6
I think dreams can be the mind's way of working things out. Though not all of the time. Sometimes my parent's house is very similar, and sometimes not so. Though the front door is most always in its old spot. When my niece renovates, the front door will be back in its old spot once again. And the kitchen will be opened up to the living room again too.
My homes, on the other hand, are pretty much always very different than the ones I lived/live in. My house is usually way up on stilts. I used to have to climb a ladder to a platform, and then throw my leg over the floor and pull/roll my way onto it. _Finally_ my house got a set of stairs ... but the front door still opens to nothing. People have fallen when leaving when they went out the front door instead of the back door. Though the last few dreams have had an enclosed porch.
I hope you ate before telling your dream. The 'rule,' that I've been told all my life, is that if you tell a dream on an empty stomach, it will come true. Never thought to Google it to see where that bit of wisdom came from.
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Post by Phalon on Feb 28, 2018 12:14:25 GMT -6
I think it depends on if you believe dreams are the subconscious trying to tell you something, or not. If I had the dreams you're describing, I'd think 'ok, so I've been thinking or talking about my parents recently and they showed up in my dreams in the house I've always known them to live in, and therefore, it's natural that when we're all together in my dream, we're in that house' - or 'so I've been thinking I've got to get Mom's house cleaned out lately; I associate the house with my parents, so in my dreams, that's were we are.' The whys of it wouldn't matter to me other than I'd be able to relate some one thing in the dream to some recent thought or action.
For you on the other hand - since you think some dreams are a subconscious way of working things out in your conscious life, it is most likely the case. I believe it's different for everyone - though events, places, and people in dreams may seem weird fantasy type things, a person's subconscious mind doesn't have the ability to make that person in their dreams go against the beliefs of their conscious mind.
I've never heard of that, but BOLL, I can say with certainty that although I didn't eat before having coffee with my friend and telling him the dream, that Michelle Obama is never going to come on to Hubs!
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Post by Mini Mia on Feb 28, 2018 19:23:09 GMT -6
I think the majority of the time, my dreams are just for entertaining me, but every now and again I think my fears/frustrations/daily life influences them. Not sure if they're trying to tell me something, or if they're trying to work out what's bothering me, or if they're just a reflection of what's lurking around in that vast, dank, dark abyss. I just like to decipher them every now and again. I've gotten cool story ideas by digging into the whys, wherefores, and whatnots of my dreams. Could they be trying to show me, force me to face, what I've been burying/suppressing/hiding in order to help me 'shake it off' and move on with what's more important? It's a hot mess in my head sometimes.
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Post by Phalon on Mar 5, 2018 6:35:48 GMT -6
It could be too, that it's just a way for your mind to release what's been bothering you - subconscious venting. I learned something weird last night, from of all things, a Tide laundry soap commercial: in ancient Rome, urine diluted with water, was used to clean clothes. I drilled it, and it's true - imagine that scene from "I Love Lucy" of Lucy and Ethel in that big vat, stomping grapes. That's how the ancient Romans used to do laundry. People would relieve themselves in public urinals, the contents were collected and taken to laundries and poured into tubs with dirty clothes, and a worker would get in the tub, and stomp them clean with their feet. Not only was urine used to clean clothes, it was used to clean teeth!...and a multitude of other uses! www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/from-gunpowder-to-teeth-whitener-the-science-behind-historic-uses-of-urine-442390/
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Post by Mini Mia on Mar 6, 2018 0:59:36 GMT -6
I can't find the full video. Before the first woman who sings sat down, she dumped a bucket of 'hot piss' onto the table and the wool/cloth/tweed. [Outlander Season One Episode Five Rent]
Wool Waulking --- Waulking Wool/Cloth/Tweed
outlander.wikia.com/wiki/Rent
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Mar 15, 2018 8:50:39 GMT -6
Urine has amonia......native people used urine to bleach and tan animal skins.
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Post by Phalon on Apr 8, 2018 9:17:42 GMT -6
I was talking with Scrappy about the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, mentioning how I'd been there a couple of times...and about Jim Morrison's grave. It's been something like 30 years the last time I was there, and back then, there was graffiti throughout the cemetery, with spray-painted directions and arrows on tombstones, pointing the way to Morrison's grave. Once there, the bust of his head had a burnt candle sitting on top, and someone had painted on blue eye shadow, and colored in his lips bright red. Wine bottles where strewn about everywhere. I've got a photo in an old photo album somewhere. I've heard it's been cleaned up a lot since then, and curious, I drilled to see what it looks like now. I was surprised to find the bust, since stolen, wasn't even the original grave marker. Here's an interesting look in photos at Morrison's grave throughout the years: parismojo.fr/visual-history-of-jim-morrisons-grave/
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Post by Mini Mia on Apr 8, 2018 20:20:14 GMT -6
It's a shame that his bust was stolen.
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Post by Phalon on Apr 12, 2018 6:03:46 GMT -6
The story - now legend? - goes that two Morrison fans stole the bust to prevent it from being further destroyed; not just by graffiti, but people were starting to chip off pieces of it to take as souvenirs. You can see the progression of the destruction in the photos. It's nose was missing long before the bust disappeared.
When I was there, I was struck, not only by the graffiti at Morrison's gravesite, but of all the other graves around it. It was fascinating, but very sad at the same time.
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Post by Mini Mia on Apr 12, 2018 14:17:57 GMT -6
It’s a shame others have to ruin things so the rest of us can’t enjoy it too.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 3, 2018 18:00:24 GMT -6
Yesterday, when I was at Mom's house to feed her cats, I had to use her restroom. A knocking sound came from her bedroom. Her dog looked into the doorway, but then headed into the living room. I said to her, "Are you gonna just leave me here alone?" And she came back to me, but stayed away from Mom's bedroom. (A small hallway has 4 entrances/exits, somewhat like a 4-way stop: Living Room across from Bathroom, Parent's Bedroom across from Kid's Bedroom.) The knocking just kept on and on, and I told Mom's dog, "Go tell her (meaning Mom) that I'm on the pot and I ain't coming in there until I'm off."
When I finally got into Mom's bedroom, the noise was done. (I had been texting my sister, letting her know what was going on. I texted her I was "going in ... pray for me.") I checked the boxes, which had enough stuff in them that a mouse could have made it out. I opened the closet door, and found nothing. And no more noise to try and figure out where the sound was coming from. So I went home. Today when I went to feed the cat, before leaving, I headed towards Mom's bedroom, and I could hear knocking. It got quiet when I entered the room. Took another look around, and nothing. I texted my sister, and she's going to have my b-i-l check it out to see what he can find out.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 6, 2018 8:28:42 GMT -6
My sister was distracted and forgot to have my b-I-l check out the knocking, which seems to have stopped. I had left open the bedroom closet, so maybe something got out? I’m guessing it was a mouse, but it would be nice if I knew for sure.
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Post by Phalon on May 8, 2018 6:13:13 GMT -6
I meant to get to this when you first posted hearing the knock, because it was coincidental - I heard eerie knocking last week too. It was late at night - around one or two in the morning; I was having a hot flash, so I went out on the front porch to cool down, and heard this loud, echoing knocking. Because it was echoing, I couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from. You've seen The Blair Witch Project, yes? Last week's knocking sounded exactly like the knocking in the woods in that movie, and I thought to myself, "I could sort of freak out right now if I wasn't so damned tired."
The knocking wasn't as unexplained as what you heard at your Mom's though. I left the porch, walked down the front walk to the sidewalk, saw a light coming from the next store neighbor's garage, and assumed the neighbor boy was working on his truck. Good enough of an explanation for me - I went back to bed.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 8, 2018 17:58:57 GMT -6
I wasn't scared, strangely, when I was on the pot. For one thing, I wasn't able to just jump up and run. For another thing, I knew my Mom wouldn't hurt me ... if it was her ... nor would my grandmother, (Dad's Mom), who had died in the room in '85. I figured it had to be a mouse. I just wish I had seen it. Mom's dog refuses to follow me in there, so that has me uneasy. She's been left inside the house a few times, so she pretty much stays in the front room so she can knock me down when I head out the door.
There was one day when I went to feed the cat, and I opened Mom's front door, and Mom's dog jumped on me, nearly giving me a heart attack. Earlier in the day, I had let her outside, and I guess she followed my b-i-l to Mom's house, and he didn't realize he had left her inside. I texted my sister and let her know that their plans failed ... my heart was just fine, and I was still alive.
I'm trying to remember to be tight-lipped around the great-niece & great-nephew. Mom's bedroom will be my great-niece's bedroom. She's not as skittish as her brother. Her bedroom at my sister's house is where Mom died. I let her know that grandmother was just like Mom, and she would never bother her either. But that was before the knocking. I gotta keep that info away from them.
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Post by Phalon on May 10, 2018 6:00:17 GMT -6
HA! at remembering the first time I was alone in Mom's house after she died, doing some cleaning out while my brothers were at work. It still makes me laugh because I know how Mom would have reacted if she had been alive to hear me say what I said - "Mom you know how much I love you, but do not freak me out by doing anything weird."
She would have given me the 'who me?' look.
More to say about this later...
...as well as a haunted barn encounter I had years ago, that was brought back to my attention by my boss a couple of days ago.
Gotta run now, though.
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Post by Mini Mia on May 10, 2018 17:21:55 GMT -6
Oh, I said that a few times when I first entered her house after her death. The house was just as she had left it when we had to take her to my sister's house for her final months. Once we finally got in there and moved stuff to her garages, it didn't feel like the house was sitting there waiting for her to come home. Still, it does creep me out every now and again. I really don't know why I didn't freak out when I was in her bathroom and the knocking was coming from the other side of the wall. I just felt calm. Which in the back of my mind I noted as very strange.
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