Lost and Ground

While shopping I found this nearly mint condition Crayola Crayon on the parking lot. If you would like it back please leave a comment with the eXact color name and I wiLL send it to you. You must cover the shipping and "handling" fee, and teLL me the approximate date when it was lost.

The longitude and latitude of the site where it was lost:

35.66027 N 101.41003 W

When I looked at the photograph of the crayon I thought there was a hair underneath it! But it turns out that someone simply ruined a tiny piece of my kitchen counter top with a knife.

(There is also a secret contest.)

The Vineyard of Death at Wal-Mart

This is a group of grape vines for sale at Wal-Mart. They never lowered the price, and sold very few. I bought one a few months ago and it is thriving now. Its brothers are not. I asked the clerk what they were going to do with them. She said she would ask about getting the price chopped in half, but they would go no lower than that. Other wise they will just throw them all away.

There are a few almost done grapes. The typical yield for a mature grape vine is about 40 clusters per vine, at about a quarter pound per cluster.

There were a few over-done grapes.

There are a few grape leaves (essentially all of them) that have been transformed into big bugs. So their investment in a dozen plus plants has produced at least two bugs.

(I believe these are eXactly the same kind of worm that attack my tomato plants, but notice that the grape chemicals dye the worms with a light purple where there would normally be green. I noticed the same thing last year when one of my grape vines was attacked by these monsters)

Flour, Flour, Water, Flour - Cocaine???

I originally planned to only write this opening paragraph as a Facebook status: 

While waiting on coffee, my drug of choice, I glanced up at the ingredients for my dog's favorite treat. The first four ingredients were: Flour, Flour, Water, Flour - and I thought to myself, when I was young and made crude boat models from cardboard and laminated with pieces of newspaper, wasn't that my recipe for my home-made glue? There must be at least a trace of cocaine in those Wal-Mart brand doggie treats.

Someone asked for the meaning of this Facebook status. But I was confused by their question, so I offered this brief explanation:

There were three different kinds of flour in the first 4 ingredients of the small steak shaped dog treats, with water being the 3rd most ingredient of the 4.

Ol' Roy brand dog treats, their "Tiny Special T's"

On the front of the package it has as the very first dot point of three, "Made With Real Beef"

BUT on the back side below the heart warming story of Sam Walton's favorite bird dog, there is the list of Ingredients:

Note: items in brackets [ ] are my interjected explanations, items in parentheses ( ) are from the manufacturer

Wheat flour, Soy flour, Water, Corn flour, Sucrose [SUGAR], Propylene Glycol, Animal fat (preserved with BHA and Citric Acid), Beef [Ingredient #8 of 18], Salt, Natural Smoke Flavor, Calcium Carbonate, Phosphoric Acid (A preservative), Color added (Titanium Dioxide, Red #40, Yellow #6, Yellow #5, and Blue #2), Natural Steak Flavor.

Notice that they add artificial coloring. Aren't dogs color blind? So I am thinking the color must be there to impress the human's who see the pretty picture on the front of the package. And the amount of color is larger than the amount of flavoring, the very last ingredient.

Blue #2 - hold it, my dog really needs BLUE?

BUT then the first person asked a second time, why the cocaine reference? And then a second person wanted to know as well.

I have a tendency to write in a very exact manner but also in a variety of ways.

In the middle of the opening paragraph there are the words ".. and I thought to myself .." - the cocaine reference was the second part of my thought process at that very moment. The ingredient list started off with:

'flour flour water flour' 

'bland bland bland bland'

'light colored powder, light colored powder, clear water, light colored powder'

Yet my dog gets very excited about these, loves these things. Cocaine, another not-so-bland light colored powder, came to my mind. The cocaine is an exaggeration, something I was very sure was NOT in the dog product, yet I remembered that a long time ago it was a component of Coca-Cola, the cardboard box that was directly behind the dog treats at that moment on top of my frig by the coffee maker. So it was just my thought process at that moment, not a factual claim; that comes later when I actually list the ingredients, reference the home spun dog story, the need for blue color and the advertised package claims. I started the opening paragraph with a drug reference and ended it with one.

They throw in some sugar - so its a cookie?

Person number one didn't respond. Person number two responded "OHHHH WELLLLL, that explains it all... "

So I ended with: you'reEEE welcomeEEE

and a picture of myself:

{&^"?-

\@§~

or rotated:

Why I Moved To Oklahoma Today … Suddenly

Episode 1 

(Rough Draft - I have to take the trash out right now then I'll be back later to fix typo's)

2010.02.01 18:30 Monday

I was shopping at Wal-Mart today for dog rawhide bones, flea & tick collar, Diet Caffeine Free Coke and crackers, Nabisco's 'Wheat Thins Toasted Chips' - the 'Garden Valley Veggie' variety. Just 4 items. So I started the process of ringing up my items through the self checkout station.

Just as I scanned the 4th item, a message popped up on the screen: “Ernie, is that you?” - I thought that was odd, I hadn't even swiped my credit card through the reader yet, I thought, well, maybe Wal-Mart had started a system that did facial recognition matched to the laser retinal scanner matched to the previous purchases in order to speed up shopping and then do an automatic account withdrawal.

But banking wasn't what was happening.

Without thinking I pressed the “Yes” button but without realizing that it wasn't printed in English, but my native language.

Too late! Suddenly the ceiling tiles above me blasted away followed by Federal Agents and Army Rangers descending down ropes blasting me with automatic weapon fire. I took a bullet to my upper right chest and green liquid shot out of my chest hitting a young girl smack dab in the middle of her nose and she burst into flames. She screamed and fainted into her mothers arms right behind her. I reached over to help put out the flames but the mother clubbed me with her purse. I took my laser side arm weapon and sliced the Ranger at 2 o'clock in half.  His lower body half fell to the floor with a crash wiping out a customer. His machine gun began to spray bullets all different directions and my mind took control over his severed arm and I was able to take out the second Federal Agent with the first Ranger's weapon while simultaneously performing laser “surgery” on the 3rd and 4th agents. Suddenly there was no gun fire but a stampede of humans amid the smoke and carnage but then a sudden roar of vehicles approaching outside the store.

Suddenly the entire ceiling and roof opened above me with a deafening roar although surprisingly nothing dropped this time as a negative pressure sucked the room air out the top of the building and all the flying debris was going up but not straight up as a strange looking helicopter was descending at an incredible rate. But even faster coming at me was a human shape, on a rope, a girl (?!?!!?) - and screaming commands at me. Even though I was almost ready to faint, probably due to a lack of green goo due to the high velocity lead leakage, I could hear my name and it was my sister Susie! I didn't even know Susie was a space alien! “Grab my hand!” she yelled as one of her left hands extended several feet below her accelerating even faster than her and even faster than the copter which by now had leveled out its approach and had begun to take fire from the ground forces. But within about two seconds time it would take for its weapons system to lock on, the ground forces would, simply, “be no mo' below”. And as I predicted there was intense heat and light and momentary screams from the parking lot and then nothing much except my sole focus to extend one of my right hands and up up up it went, oooh, that's cool, I had been under cover so long I had forgot all about my stretchy limbs. We aren't allowed to display or use our stretchy limbs except in extreme situations. I was pretty sure we were in one right then.

Grasp, clasp, gasp. Susie locked and latched onto me and yanked me off the ground and I sped upwards through the remains of the Wal-Mart mess. Just as I got to Susie I almost passed out again and she reached with one of her right hands to touch my bullet wound. The leak suddenly stopped and I felt surprisingly better. I wasn't equipped with the seal slash repair mechanism in my right index finger of arm number four like Susie; she was a rarity among our kind. And a pretty good pilot I would find out in the coming days. I wondered who was piloting the craft above, but she read my thoughts and told me, “Silly, who do you think is running this show? It's just me doing everything! Never mind that I am still knitting a sweater back at the office by remote mind control” She really impresses me.

She hoisted us upward as the craft began to take on a bit of invisibility to the local radar just as the F-22's were only about 15 miles out and closing fast, but they were too late. I was headed to a safer spot in Oklahoma where I would blend in just fine.