Digging for Graves

A week ago, I started delving into my genealogy projects some more. My newest discovery was that I was able to determine that Lord Calvert of Baltimore was my 10th- great grandfather... pretty cool stuff. At any rate, while digging up my past, I came across a website called findagrave.com. Apparently, there are people that go around to cemeteries all over the world and document graves. Findagrave has even listed its top posters -- some people submitting over 50,000 graves to this site!

There's also a neat feature on the site where if you really want a picture of a grave, and you are not able to travel there, you can request that a grave hunter go and photograph it for you. Cool!

I was able to find my grandmother on this site who passed away in 2005 and some of my ancestors as well. You can also do searches for famous people and leave "virtual flowers" at the graves.

My Makeover

For my birthday, my mother-in-law purchased an "Excitation" for me -- basically it was a gift certificate for an experience of my choice. I chose to have a one-on-one makeup consultation with celebrity makeup artist Erwin Gomez in Georgetown.

The whole experience lasted about an hour and a half, and was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of great makeup tips like dont use your fingers to put on foundation, never put concealer on your pimples (go figure) and dont use brown mascara on a fair complexion. After my "free" experience, he promptly asked me if I wanted to take home some of the "product" he used on me. "Sure," I replied.

Before I knew it, he loaded everything he used on me into a bag and handed it to the cashier. "That will be $400 dollars please." GULP!!!!!!!!! So much for my celebrity experience.

Erwin was great -- apparently he does the Bush twins' eyebrows and after some googling, I found out they attended his wedding in 2004. Wonder what W thought about that one?

First Honeybees, now Frogs?

I think humans are next...

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,251365,00.html?sPage=fnc.science/naturalscience

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,252215,00.html

Even Drug Smugglers Have Rights in America!

Not sure if any of you have heard about this one. Apparently, a while back, there were two border patrol agents that caught a Mexican citizen trying to smuggle 725 pounds of marijuana into the country. The guy decided to run, so the agents shot at him, hitting him in the butt. Not only are the two border patrol agents in jail serving 11 and 12 year terms, but the drug smuggler has been granted amnesty and is suing the US Government for 5 million dollars.

There's a million articles swirling about on this one, but here's one of them:
http://www.startribune.com/484/story/995662.html

Blast from the Past

I was reading a bunch of my saved documents from college, and happened across this letter that I posted on our school cafeteria's comment board. The board was designed for note card sized comments, but I took it a bit further by posting this...

Dear Wood Company:

I have just read the article in the student newspaper about your services. Although I am not fully satisfied with everything you have to offer, I believe that the letter was not fair to your company because it did a lot of complaining and didn’t list any solutions. Therefore, I would like to tell you a little about what I have observed my 3 semesters here at Mary Washington.

First of all, I am very pleased with your comment board. You always respond promptly to students ideas and if an idea is not feasible, you list the reasons why. This tells us that you actually do care about our concerns. Also, I understand that it is very difficult to provide for a large amount of students. You either please most the students some of the time or some of the students most of the time. It is a no win situation, and I congratulate you on putting forth your best efforts. With that said, I would like to list a variety of concerns that I have and possible solutions to remedy these problems.

The first thing I would like to point out, is your cakes. These cakes taste so good when they’re fresh! However, when you cut them up in individual slices, they quickly get stale because all four sides are exposed to the air. Why don’t you place the entire cake out uncut and let students cut the cake themselves? That way, you don’t have to worry about cutting the cakes, and we don’t have to worry about them getting stale!

The second thing, is the sodas. This seems like a very simple solution to a very frequent problem. A day doesn’t go by when all the syrup is gone from the soda machines leaving us with a glass of club soda. This past week, all the sodas but Dr. Pepper were out of syrup in the North Room. This leaves students with little options when the milk is frequently sour and the juices are just as watery as the sodas. If you could check the syrup on the machines more often, I do believe this could be solved.

Another thing I’m sure you have noticed is the ice cream. Have you noticed that after a while, the only thing that is left in the freezers are popsicles? This is because none of the students will eat them because of the thick coating of slime covering each one. If you could either order less popsicles and more ice cream, or find a way to regulate the freezers so the slime doesn’t appear, you’d have a lot more students eating the frozen treats.

Also, college students are scared of “gourmet” foods. I wanted to give you an example of a name of one of these foods but when I asked my friends, they all said, “I don’t remember… I don’t eat those.” And it’s true! The food in the South Room is unappealing mainly because of its “exotic” names. Instead of oranges and zucchini, serve things like mashed potatoes and gravy! Give us old fashioned foods that our mothers make like fried chicken and stuffing and corn instead of eggplant and rutabaga. I’m sure you’ll get a much larger response if the foods we are given are familiar to us.

Another concern we tend to have is that of “recycled food.” This means that one day, you’ll serve sweet potatoes and the next day, you’ll serve sweet potato soup. I understand your need to conserve, but it automatically triggers a red flag in our minds and we tend to steer clear of foods served the day before. A large concern of students is food poisoning and “recycled food” poses a huge threat to our weak tummies.

I hope that these suggestions were of a help to you and I thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Michelle Lambiasi

New Game

It's pretty easy, but fun for a few minutes.

Global Warming

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17042993/?GT1=9033

Dog DNA -- Email

Hello Michelle

Thank you for your interest in the MMI Genomics Canine Heritage™ test product. Canine Heritage™ test kits will be available at the end of February. We will send you information to request a sampling kit at that time. Please watch your mailbox for further Canine Heritage™ news over the next few weeks. The cost of the test will be $65 per dog.

Currently, these 38 breeds (listed below) are included in the Canine Heritage™ test.

If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Paul

Afghan Hound
Akita
Basenji
Basset Hound
Beagle
Belgian Tervuren
Bernese Mountain Dog
Border Collie
Borzoi
Boxer
Bulldogs
Chihuahua
Chinese Shar-Pei
Chow chow
Cocker Spaniel
Collie
Dachshund
Doberman Pinscher
English Setter
German Shepherd Dog
German Shorthaired Pointer
Golden Retriever
Greyhounds
Italian Greyhound
Labrador Retriever
Mastiff
Miniature Schnauzer
Poodle
Pug
Rottweiler
Saluki
Samoyed
Shetland Sheepdog
Shih Tzu
Siberian Husky
St Bernard
Whippet
Yorkshire Terrier

Dog DNA

Ok, so I've tested myself, my next step is to test Bailey. Once the kit becomes available at the end of the month, poor ol' Bailey is gettin the cheek swab!

http://www.metamorphixinc.com/products3.html