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Post by Phalon on Oct 8, 2007 18:59:11 GMT -6
It is a beautiful view, isn't it? We spent a lot of time up in that area when I was a kid; we camped in the Lower Peninsula, and my aunt ran a small motel there also. Every summer we'd go up to visit at least once.
It's not too scary to drive across; even with my fear of heights that manifested itself during my adult years, I can manage. But walking....I don't know if I could do that; I think they have a "bridge walk" every year. Way back when I was.....way back in 1976...we walked it, (Useless Fact: there is a photo of my dad, my two brothers and I in National Geographic taken during this walk - an aerial shot of the crowd, but we are visible. My fifteen minutes of fame.) The two center lanes are steel grates to allow for expansion, and movement. You can see the water way, way down below!!! That sensation I probably couldn't do now.
Neither could I probably drive on the left side of the road without crashing, let alone cross the River Severn driving on the left side of the road.
Pictures?
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Post by Siren on Oct 8, 2007 21:31:46 GMT -6
You'd have to bind, blindfold, gag, and sedate my mom to get her across that bridge. Yikes! But thanks for the pics, Gams. Happy travels!
My cousin, Jo, whom we stayed with in Colorado this summer, is currently visiting Mackinac Island, Michigan. Of course, they plan on touring the Grand Hotel while they're there, and bringing back some "Somewhere In Time" memories.
Lovely, lovely sunny, cool day here today. Beautiful and fallish. Loved it!
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Post by Phalon on Oct 8, 2007 22:07:12 GMT -6
OOooo, hope your cousin has a great time, Siren; it's such a cool experience. We didn't make it to the island this time; we ran short of time. Hope the weather holds out for her; it was gorgeous while we were there, and unseasonably warm. My other aunt, (not the motel one, but an aunt in Traverse City said last year their first snowfall came on the 11th of October!)
Nearly ninety again here today, but raining now, and it's supposed to be back down to normal sixtyish weather the rest of the week.
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Oct 8, 2007 22:26:02 GMT -6
*sigh* I guess you don't need your hostess cupcake anymore. They grow up so fast.....
Love the pics though...
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Post by Phalon on Oct 13, 2007 5:50:54 GMT -6
The current record for the world's heaviest pumpkin is 1,502 pounds.
The reason men's and women's buttons are on different sides of clothing stems from wealth: Buttons used to be elaborate and costly, therefore only the rich had them. For the most part men dressed themselves, but women were dressed by servants - who could fasten the buttons more easily if the side they were attached to was reversed.
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Post by Siren on Oct 13, 2007 8:58:17 GMT -6
That's a very interesting tidbit about buttons. I always wondered about that.
A 1500-pound pumpkin?? Maybe that's The Great Pumpkin Linus waited for, in vine. (I was going to make a pun about him waiting "fruit"lessly. But, darn it, pumpkins are vegetables.)
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Post by Phalon on Oct 14, 2007 6:48:41 GMT -6
Actually Siren, Linus did wait fruit-lessly, his hopes and dreams squashed.
A pumpkin truly is a fruit - a berry, berry big fruit, which is actually a berry. I knew the fruit part - fruits contain their seeds inside, while vegetables have their seeds on the outside. But a berry? I just heard that somewhere, and I can't remember where.
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Post by Phalon on Oct 14, 2007 7:54:34 GMT -6
Oh Dear Gourd! An grueling, extensive Two-Minute Drill which took an agonizing three seconds because cats and kids demanded food, (and still She sleeps), proved berry fruitful and squashed the idea that a pumpkin is a berry. It is a fruit, but the berry misconception comes from the definition that a berry is a fruit with seeds distributed throughout the flesh.
So now that that is cleared up: Squash or gourd?
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Post by Siren on Oct 21, 2007 9:25:15 GMT -6
Some vampire bats have been known to adopt orphans and will even risk their lives to share food with less fortunate bats, just because they share a roost. Most animals who share food only do so with their relatives. An anticoagulant from vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat human heart patients. The world's smallest mammal is the bumble-bee bat of Thailand, weighing in at less than a penny. Here's one. Isn't it cute?
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Post by Phalon on Oct 21, 2007 23:44:17 GMT -6
Ooooo, it is cute, Siren....for a rat with wings. No, no...just kidding; wouldn't want to give the poor, little guy a complex. Bats are fascinating creatures. I love to watch them fly through the yard in summer, flying the same pattern around and around.
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Post by Siren on Oct 22, 2007 22:40:19 GMT -6
We have bats too, Gams - I've seen 2 here in my neighborhood in the city, and 1 down by folks' house in the SE part of the state. I read that they can eat 100 mosquitoes a minute. Imagine that!
I do think that little bat is cute. Look at his wee little ear, and that tiny, tiny little paw. Amazing!
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Post by Mini Mia on Oct 31, 2007 17:11:09 GMT -6
Hey Scrappy. Did ya hear . . . I got something for you.
Enjoy.
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Oct 31, 2007 20:40:06 GMT -6
Yeah yeah......one more bounce I think.....3 hours 20 minutes to go.....
Thanx Jox
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Post by Siren on Oct 31, 2007 22:11:48 GMT -6
Americans are expected to spend 5 billion...that's BILLION...dollars this year to celebrate Halloween. But just think, Gams, you got this bit of holiday cheer for free.... unless it's already midnight where the whoosh clock is. In that case, I'm left with egg..er..pumpkin on my face.
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Oct 31, 2007 22:43:26 GMT -6
Nope...you're good......
2 hours 15 min
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Post by Siren on Nov 2, 2007 8:47:51 GMT -6
Actress Lisa ("Friends") Kudrow's father is a physician, whose specialty is headaches.
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Post by moonglum on Nov 2, 2007 12:53:18 GMT -6
Apparently the humble cheesecake was invented by the Greeks and made it's debut at the first Olympic Games in 707ad.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 11, 2007 23:19:58 GMT -6
A spooked turkey can run 20 miles per hour.
Yeah, but can it beat a chicken running around with its head cut off in a Poultry Marathon?
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Post by Phalon on Nov 13, 2007 6:57:41 GMT -6
State (and one city) Laws...
In Alaska, it's illegal to look at a moose from an airplane.
In Georgia, it's against the law to slap a man on the back.
In Lexington, KY, it is illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket.
In L.A., it's against the law to kill moths fluttering around a street light.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 15, 2007 22:46:52 GMT -6
Gouda evening....
How's that for a cheesy pun to start off tonight's cheesy useless fact topic: cheese.
Most specifically macaroni and cheese, of which I make a pretty damned good one....not the plastic stuff out of the box, though I have mastered that too, under my protest, and under pressure from the girls who prefer the boxed kind. My "real" macaroni and cheese is a mixture of cheese, mushrooms, onions, chopped spinach or whatever else I can find hanging out in the fridge, and is layered, and baked with a crusty au-gratin topping on it, of which I will not divulge the ingredients, because again, it's made from whatever hanging around.
I love cheese. And apparently I'm not the only one.
On average, Americans consume more than one-half pound of cheese per person, per week.
Andrew Jackson invited the public to the White House for his last reception as president to partake in consuming a massive 3 by 4 foot hunk of cheese that had been aging in the basement for over a year. Ten thousand people crashed the party, and it took a month to get the cheesy smell out of the East Room carpet, drapes, and furniture.
In 1922 more than 2,800 cheese factories were located in Wisconsin.
The first cheese commercial to air in the U.S. appeared in 1968.
Mozzarella is often made with water buffalo milk.
The term maccheroni in Italian refers to dried pasta made without eggs.
Macaroni shipments from Sicily to Genoa were recorded in the 1100's.
The first pasta factory in the U.S. opened in Philadelphia in the late 1700s.
In 1937, Kraft Foods introduced the first boxed macaroni and cheese.
Today, Kraft sells approximately a million boxes of macaroni and cheese dinners per day.
Pfft....give me the real stuff, and until then...
Good-brie.
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Post by Scrappy Amazon on Nov 17, 2007 7:13:58 GMT -6
I'm guessing this is how the "Giant Wheel of Cheese Day" started at the white house. Any facts about that oh wise one?
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Post by Phalon on Nov 17, 2007 17:30:33 GMT -6
Whee'll just have to see if there's any truth to that bit of fiction - a two second drill produced "Big Block of Cheese Day" is from the television show West Wing; I never watched it.
But if there is even slightest bit of fact in there, I'll expand the two-seconds to two-minutes, and uncover the whole edamn truth. Nothing shall get in my whey.
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Post by katina2nd on Nov 17, 2007 20:51:37 GMT -6
You is funny Lady P. Anyway being the helpful chap that I am I did a quick 'ten minute' drill that uncovered a few interesting facts, seems like there's some truth to the legend of the "Giant Wheel of Cheese Day." "When the people of Cheshire, MA, hear that President Jefferson is eating cheddar made in Norton, CT, instead of their own, they decide to do something about it. Against all odds, they make a 1235-pound wheel of cheese and ship it to the president, who declares it the best that he has ever tasted, puts it in the record books, and serves it until it finally goes bad." "Andrew Jackson did once receive a 1,400 pound, four foot in diameter, two foot thick (635 kg, 1.2 m diameter, 60 cm thick) block of cheese as a gift. After two years of aging, he held a public "cheese tasting". The event was heavily attended and the cheese was consumed in two hours." How's that, any help at all, did I do gouda?
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Post by Phalon on Nov 18, 2007 7:21:54 GMT -6
Katina, Dear Man, curdeous and kind....you did a wonderfully gouda job on your ten minute Two Minute Drill. Whey to go!
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Post by Phalon on Nov 21, 2007 1:05:19 GMT -6
In two related useless facts, (sort of), we have one yummy, and one eeew and icky.... The average person consumes 5,000 calories during the Thanksgiving meal. I wonder if that includes left-overs? And I saw this on either Animal Planet's Most Extremes, or a show on the Food Channel, I can't remember which, and LX was watching them both the other day. In the early 1900s diet treatment with “sanitized tapeworms” was widely advertised. No baths? I'd rather roller-ski.
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Post by Siren on Nov 22, 2007 23:38:11 GMT -6
What a ghastly fact that is, Gams. Just about as ghastly as the thought of having fat surgically sucked from one's body.
Hmmmm...
No, I think the tape worm is still worse. Yuck!
How about a more pleasant subject: cranberries? The name cranberry was given to this plant because the Pilgrims believed the plant looked like the head of a sandhill crane - thus, the name "craneberry". Over time, the “e” was dropped. Good, ripe cranberries will bounce, which is why they are nicknamed “bounceberries.”
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Post by Phalon on Nov 23, 2007 7:04:09 GMT -6
I never much cared for cranberries - too tart - except for cranberry juice, (not cranberry juice "cocktail"), blended with other fruit juices to cut down on the tartness.....I've always wanted to watch them harvested, though. There is a cranberry farm right down the road from us, and every fall they have a "Harvest Day", when the public is invited to watch the flooding of the fields, and the floating berries corraled into nets. But it's always held on a Saturday in October when I'm working.
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Post by Siren on Nov 27, 2007 9:22:39 GMT -6
Hawaii has the largest consumption of Spam in the United States. Where do you stand, Whooshites, on Spam? Cooked or uncooked? I will eat it either way. But a fried or grilled Spam sandwich on plain white bread w/ plenty of Miracle Whip is a treat. And, hey, you can almost get your daily allotment of sodium in just one sandwich! MG, Vox, kat, do you have Spam where you are? Is it popular?
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Post by moonglum on Nov 27, 2007 15:06:35 GMT -6
Hawaii has the largest consumption of Spam in the United States. Where do you stand, Whooshites, on Spam? Cooked or uncooked? I will eat it either way. But a fried or grilled Spam sandwich on plain white bread w/ plenty of Miracle Whip is a treat. And, hey, you can almost get your daily allotment of sodium in just one sandwich! MG, Vox, kat, do you have Spam where you are? Is it popular? Yes we do. It used to be very popular, way back when. I think over the years it has fallen out of favour. God, memories of Spam fritters I had as a kid. Oooh I can smell them. Isn't the memory a wonderful thing when it works.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 27, 2007 17:39:37 GMT -6
Fried or straight from the can onto white bread with miracle whip. Is there any other way to eat it?
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