Saturday Sampling

Still fragmenting, I guess...

***Mr.4444 discovered something freaky on a tree in our yard this morning. Check it out. (Sorry about the lack of focus, but you'll still get the creepy-factor. Ignore my "Shhhhhaa" comment; I was in shock.) Upon looking, Mr.4444 found 25 such "infestations" on our property. UPDATE: It's the Beech Blight Aphid, found now all over the neighborhood. Also known as the Boogie Woogie Aphid, for how they "dance" when disturbed. YIKES

***The trial starts on Wednesday. The newspaper yesterday reported that the defense will claim that Ryan's death was a suicide, not an accidental drug overdose (confirmed by the coronor). Poor Molly--She will be going through hell in that courtroom. I am choking up typing this. Keep the prayers coming, please....

***Heard about Second Life this week. It's an on-line virtual community in which you can have "a second life." I only checked it out briefly, because it was recommended to me, but it looks pretty amazing to me. You can create a character and make friends, do things your real-life body would never allow you to do (sports, etc.), buy property, travel the world, and even shop for clothes and accessories. It looks to be a lot like SIMS, but the graphics are impressive. One thing I did not appreciate is the fact that every "person" on Second Life appears to be gorgeous and stick-thin. When I tried to proceed after signing up, though, I found that Firefox could not launch the program. (since I was only signing up to check it out, that was okay with me, but I thought I would mention it.) When I canceled my account, I learned that Second Life is free but costs $9.95 per month for the Premium version. I'm busy enough with my own life to worry about getting involved with a virtual life, but it is the largest site of its kind in the world. So, if you are lonely, would like to be skinny, and have money burning a hole in your pocket, I recommend this site.

***Snopes.com is one of my top favorite websites, though I don't often need to use it. Snopes has been around for a while, but if you don't know about it, I wanted to enlighten you. It's an urban legends site; the place to go when you receive those annoying OMG email forwards that try to get you to forward to "everyone you know" in the name of alarmism. Whenever I get one of those stupid emails, I go to Snopes (where I find the story is false, of course) and copy and paste the link into a return email. If you think you have truly alarming news to send to the masses, check it out at Snopes, first, before you make a fool of yourself. :)

***I also wandered onto Idea Paint this week. Idea Paint is a product that allows you to paint a whiteboard on any surface. That's the cool part; I would LOVE to have this in my house! It appears to be easy to use, has a guarantee, etc. The downside is that it's $199 to cover 50 square feet. I'm mentioning it anyway, because I LOVE the idea, and YOU might be able to afford it.

Okay, off to catch up on yesterday's fragmenters! Have a wonderful weekend...