I have been meaning to post this for some time now but kept forgetting. It is the Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody.

And here is the original, and still best version. By the best band of all time: Queen.

I love to have access to all sorts of random, but important information and trivia. Today I stumbled upon a world of information at Harper's Index. This is the index to Harper's magazine and to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Harper's Index, they have published their entire database online.

I put in the word "Texas" and here are some facts that popped up (the first numbers are the month and year of the data):

2/1987: price of 12 ounces of drug-free urine from Byrd Laboratories in Austin, Texas: $ 19.95
9/1988: percentage of Texas voters who say they do not consider George Bush a "real" Texan: 57 %
1/1994: chances that a member of the Hempstead, Texas high school cheerleading squad was pregnant last fall: 1 in 4
11/1998: price a Houston company charges for sending a DNA sample into outer space for possible cloning by aliens: $ 50
3/2003: Amount the U.S. Air Force will pay a Texas woman this year for mistakenly hitting her home with a dummy bomb: $12,000
5/2006: Minimum number of ranches in Texas where one can shoot a zebra: 56
10/2007: Number of different reasons for having sex, as identified this year in a University of Texas study: 237

Visit Harper's Index and see what you can find.

On a recent trip to the library I picked up Swamp Gas by Nicole Paolini. It is a pretty funny tale of political abuse with lots and lots of Louisiana swamp cliches and Cajun food references thrown in. This is not heavy reading. It is deliciously amusing and light-hearted despite the frequent pokes at corrupt Louisiana politics. The main character Lana Pulaski has you rooting for her all along as you wonder what on earth could possibly happen next.

I do recommend this book. It was written more than ten years ago but doesn't feel dated. Get your copy of Swamp Gas at Amazon or find it at your local library.

Two Bloggers

One from France but living in America

One from America but living in France

Each week they compare life in their adopted coutries:

A Femme d'un Certain Age is the American in France

Through the French Eye of Design is the Frenchwoman living in America

Both of these blogs make for excellent reading

I totally stole this idea from Avitable, one of the funniest bloggers out there. You can check out his blog but if you are easily offended, don't go there please.

My new band (if I actually decided to start a band, that is):

1. Go to the Random Article link on Wikipedia. Write down the title of the article. This is the name of your band.

2. Go to Random Quotations. Write down the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page. This is the title of your first album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on "Explore the Last Seven Days." The third picture will be your album cover.

Since our town has such an excellent recycling program, I strive to recycle everything I possibly can. That includes all paper, plastics, and metals. Last night I was flattening an empty Kleenex box to put in the paper recyling when I noticed a pithy little paragraph printed on the bottom of the box:

Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip...
Tell calm, cool and collected to take a hike.  Whoop it up!
Laugh, scream, cry, holler! And when tons of stuff stuffs up
your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud!
Show your heart and show some tears...of joy and sorrow,
in awe and pride. Just let it out!

I liked that! I liked that the Kleenex box had something on it besides just maybe a list of best uses and the usual marketing banter. I like the fact that they really thought about how people use their product and put a humorous spin on it. And I bet a Southerner had something to do with the writing of this paragraph because they included the word "holler". Of course in Southern vernacular, holler is a way of speaking loudly and it is also a sort of valley or depression of the land (as in: "he lives down in that holler over yonder."

So I looked closer at the bottom of the Kleenex box and they have a website for this whole idea: www.letitout.com

Now don't confuse this with www.let-it-out.com which is a gay and lesbian accomodation service in Australia.

So this evening we had dinner at a local Japanese steakhouse. We've been meaning to go there for awhile but it is fairly new to the area and the crowds were still rampant. We waited until the "new" wore off the place and we could get a table easily.

We sat around one of those grills and watched the chef guy toss spatulas and throw eggs as well as grill our meal. There was another family sitting around our table also. We did not know them. That is the nature of these hibachi steakhouses: they seat you where there is availability. The other family was a couple and their four children who appeared to range in age from about 5 years to 14 years old.

When we left the restaurant and settled back into our vehicle to leave, I turned to Dan and asked him if he paid much attention to the other couple. Did he notice that something about them was off?

His answer: mail order bride. That one threw me because I was thinking the same thing but wasn't sure if my instincts were right.The woman had something of an eastern European accent. The guy was straight Texan. They didn't talk much. Their children were extremely well behaved. But I got these weird vibes. Hmmm....maybe we're just imagining things. But maybe not.

Sorry to all my readers for my being so conspicuously absent this month. I have been busy participating in National Novel Writing Month.  I have now finished my manuscript (first draft). It comes in at 51,530 words. Completed in one month despite the fact that I work a full-time job, Project Runway was airing the latest season, Iron Chef America was airing their episodes of chosing a new Iron Chef, and we had Thanksgiving holidays.

Whew. I'm done. For now. I'm going to rest my poor aching fingers. I wrote about 11,000 words during the first part of the month. Then I had a dry spell for about 7 days when I didn't feel like writing at all. So I basically wrote the last 40,000 words over the past 7 days.

Now I am putting the manuscript aside for a couple of weeks to let it fester and ferment. Then I will begin the process of the first re-write on it.

I stumbled upon this blog about tiny houses and I am fascinated. I love the idea of tiny houses and I want to build one on my land in Mississippi at some point in the future.

To visit the Tiny House Blog click here. They have some great ideas well worth reading about.

I will have to admit that I was not at all fond of the blogging platform that came with my website which is built in Dot Net Nuke. So I searched around for another blogging module and happened upon the SunBlogNuke blogging platform. After a few misunderstandings, I now have the new blog up and running. My old blog had been moved to another page of this site under the tab Blog Archive.

The link to SunBlogNuke in case you would like to acquire your own copy of this program: click here