Things that make you go hmmm.: April 2006

Friday, April 28, 2006

Another Post about Elevators

After posting about things to do on an elevator, it reminded me of an elevator of a different sort, a grain elevator. There aren’t that many elevators of this type around here either, but they were a common site when traveling the highways of the Texas Panhandle where I grew up. There was one in particular that we always paid attention to when we drove by it. My family may be able to share more or correct me on this if they remember better than me, but I think it was a fairly large structure somewhere near Lubbock maybe along I-27. There were several column-like rounded silo sections and the name of the company (I think “CONE” maybe but I can’t remember) was printed with one large letter on each section. As you drove past it, parts of the letters were hidden from view because of the rounded edges. At just the right spot, it looked like a giant clock with the parts of the letters you could see forming squares marking the numbers and two hands in the middle. Any of you know about this and want to share about it? The link below to a picture of a Cone elevator might be the one, but maybe not. Take a look at some of the other pictures at this website. These grain elevators can be huge and quite a sight. http://www.bnsf.com/markets/agricultural/elevator/bin8/ele2248.html

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Elevator Shenanigans

I read this on someone else's blog and copied it because I just had to laugh at the thought of doing some of these, but I can't remember where I read it and I didn't copy the reference. So if you are reading this and it was yours, sorry and/or thanks. I don't really see myself doing any of these esp. since there aren't that many buildings with elevators around here, but some of you who read this may frequent elevators on a daily basis. If you try one of these let me know.

Things to do on an elevator

1) When there's only one other person in the elevator, tap them on the shoulder and then pretend it wasn't you.

2) Push the buttons and pretend they give you a shock. Smile, and go back for more.
3) Ask if you can push the buttons for other people, but push the wrong ones.
4) Call the Psychic Hotline from your cell phone and ask if they know what floor you're on.
5) Hold the doors open and say you're waiting for your friend. After awhile, let the doors close and say, "Hi Greg. How's your day been?"
6) Drop a pen and wait until someone reaches to help pick it up, then scream, "That's mine!"
7) Bring a camera and take pictures of everyone in the elevator.
8) Move your desk in to the elevator and whenever someone gets on, ask if they have an appointment.
9) Lay down a Twister mat and ask people if they'd like to play.
10) Leave a box in the corner, and when someone gets on ask them if they hear something ticking.
11) Pretend you are a flight attendant and review emergency procedures and exit with the passengers.
12) Ask, "Did you feel that?"
13) Stand really close to someone, sniffing them occasionally.
14) When the doors close, announce to the others, "It's okay. Don't panic, they open up again."
15) Swat at flies that don't exist.
16) Tell people that you can see their aura.
17) Call out, "Group hug!" then enforce it.
18) Grimace painfully while smacking your forehead and muttering "Shut up, all of you, just shut up!"
19) Crack open your briefcase or purse, and while peering inside, ask, "Got enough air in there?"
20) Stand silently and motionless in the corner, facing the wall, without getting off.
21) Stare at another passenger for a while, then announce in horror, "You're one of THEM!" and back away slowly.
22) Wear a puppet on your hand and use it to talk to the other passengers.
23) Listen to the elevator walls with your stethoscope.
24) Make explosion noises when anyone presses a button.
25) Grinning, stare at another passenger for a while, and then announce, "I have new socks on."
26) Draw a little square on the floor with chalk and announce to the other passengers, "This is my personal space."

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Letters, words, typing and such

Here are a few interesting tidbits I read somewhere on the internet. Just for your reading pleasure, no references, nor any assertion that they are 100% true. But they must be true... as I said I read them somewhere on the internet and we all know you can believe anything you read on the internet, right?

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable. This is true even for those of you in the South who can make most words have multiple syllables. : )

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple. Not true, my father-in-law told our kids just the other day the color of his burps... burple.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right. Flight attendants and suckers please don't take offense.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing. Makes you wonder why more people don't have the nickname "Lefty".

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. I tried to disprove this but gave up when I spelled out these words using all the letters from the "TOP ROW YOU QUITTER".

The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet. So does "The wicked queen jumped as the hazy fog covered her last box". And my sentence makes you want to read more doesn't it? What is in the box? Why did she jump?

The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left! (palindromes). Can you think of any others? "refer", "radar", "madam", "mom", "dad", "noon"

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious." Who careious.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. This just made me think of one of my favorite words from Buddy the Elf "ginormous".

Things that make you go hmmmt.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Stinking in Absentia

My wife calls me while I am at work last week trying to contain her laughter. She tells me that she and the kids are dying Easter eggs so she is making hard-boiled eggs. Our little 3 year old sniffs the air, scrunches up her nose and says "I think Daddy is stinky". Man, I'm not even home and I get blamed for it. : )

Friday, April 14, 2006

Good Friday & Glorious Sunday

I was wanting to do a post about Easter, but I think the best thing I could do is to refer you to some wonderful posts this week by others who have done a great job of detailing the events of the week that we are celebrating. See The Danny Sims Blog and Joe's Jottings .

Praise the Lord, on Friday He conquered sin and accomplished His mission giving us forgiveness through His shed blood. It is finished.
On that glorious Easter Sunday, He conquered death giving us hope, joy, and the opportunity to have eternal life if we believe and place our faith in Him.

HE IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

"Easy" Recipe for Tuna Casserole

A few weeks ago, my wife and kids were out of the house when I came home from work. On a normal day, (well actually we don’t have very many “normal” days so maybe I should say quite often) my wife will have dinner ready or in the works when I get home. Well on this day, she calls me and says she and the kids will be late and asks if I could get this tuna casserole started. She had a new “easy” recipe for it from a Campbell’s soup can or something like that.

Now, I am definitely not a great cook and gladly let my wife handle those duties for us while I am much better at cleaning up which she gladly let’s me handle in return. But I figure that if I can make Tuna Helper, this can’t be too much harder than that, so I say sure and look at the recipe and it says prep time is only 15 minutes and cooking time is something like 20 minutes, so I ask if she will be home by the time this is done or should I wait to put it in the oven. She says she thinks it will take me longer than the 15 minutes prep time so not worried about that. I hang up and start reading the list of ingredients and get them out and ready to put together. Everything is going smoothly and I have everything put together after just 20 minutes and I even have the oven preheated so it is ready.

I call my wife and proceed to brag to her that it only took me 20 minutes of preparation and ask if I should go ahead and put it in the oven. She asks are you sure you have everything put together properly, clearly questioning my cooking skills. I say yes and start reading over the list until I come to the last ingredient. Two cups of cooked egg noodles. She says so you were able to cook the noodles and still get all that together in just 20 minutes. Whaaaat! Cook the noodles? Dohhhh! I read right over that word “cooked”. Why didn’t they include that in the list of steps? Or at least highlight it more by calling the ingredient “previously cooked” egg noodles. I had just mixed the hard uncooked noodles in with the other ingredients I guess assuming that they would get cooked in the oven. Now I really felt stupid after just bragging about how I was pretty quick in getting this dinner ready. So now what do I do? I could start all over, but that would take too long and waste all the ingredients. So I decided that since we had plenty of egg noodles that I could just redo that ingredient, cooking them this time. That means I would have to take out all the uncooked hard noodles. I pulled out a small pot to heat up some water to boil while I began the very long process of fishing out the uncooked noodles. It took me forever, but I was able to do it with only a few hard crunches I missed and without losing too much of the other ingredients. While cooking the noodles and fishing out the hard ones, the doorbell rang and the phone rang which further made the process difficult. By the time the family got home, we only had to wait a few minutes and it actually tasted pretty good, but once again this whole experience sure makes me appreciate all my wife does for us.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Another Tease

Here is another post that will make you hungry and tease you with scrumptious pictures:

I got another interesting forward in my email that is pretty neat. It can guess your age by the number of times you like to eat chocolate.

YOUR AGE BY CHOCOLATE MATH
DON'T CHEAT BY SCROLLING DOWN FIRST!
It takes less than a minute. Work this out as you read... be sure you don't read the bottom until you've worked it out!
Ready?

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10)

2. Multiply this number by 2

3. Add 5

4. Multiply it by 50 -- I'll wait while you get the calculator

5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1756 .. If you haven't, add 1755.

6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

You should have a three digit number The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).
The next two numbers are YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!)
THIS IS THE ONLY YEAR (2006) IT WILL EVER WORK

Now this makes me go... who spent the time to figure this one out?

Things that make you go hmmm.