Pruple Nurple Optical Illusion

Keep in mind.. the image is NOT moving.. it is your EYES!!

Love Mattress..

Its the LOVE MATTRESS!
It LOOKS like a good idea... You know how it goes when you want to hold someone in bed.. but your arm get stuck underneath... falls asleep.. and you cant slyly slide your hand out... nor can you jerk it out because it is stuck..
Welll.. this little love mattress seems to have solved that dilemma. ..though i don't know how comfortable it is...
Well.. you CAN put bed sheets on it.. and it is solid in the middle/bottom its just the top part that has slits in it so that the arms and whatnot can easily slide in and out/up and down/whatever.

Links! Treehouses, Science fair experiments, and more!

Thanks to Mental Floss, I have found soo m any great things and learned soo much!

Here is a link to 41 AMAZING(LY HILARIOUS) Science fair Experiments..
Some Highlights... Moon Babies!! Crystal Meth: Friend or Foe?!! Voice of the Dragon!! Electroworms!! Juicy Beans!! Garlic: The Silent Killer!!

Here is another link.. this one is to "The 15 Most Annoying Video Game Characters"
Featuring: Baby Mario from Yoshi;s Island and a bunch of other games I haven't played or heard of..

10 Creative Methods of Advertising..
Featuring .. Escalators..
and Flower beds..

AND.. finally.. from WebUrbanist.com

10 Amazing Treehouses from Around the World: Sustainable, Unique and Creative Designs

Spring Break Plans and Zoo Fun!

okay..
So..
I did it!

I had been toying with the idea for a while.. and I finaly decided to stop toying with the idea and JUMP SHIP.
I did it.
I am going to Ecuador for my spring break!
I get to help out in the Amazon jungle, at the Wayra Urku Animal Rescue Centre.

http://www.youvolunteer.org/ecuador/animals/index.html

I am soo nervous and excited and happy and proud and scared all at once.

I have not traveled outside of the country alone by myself (except to Canada).
I have always wanted to do something drastic. I figured.. it not now, when? Robert is my little cheerleader. Robert and Sarah too, actually. they both feed me healthy doses of encouragement and EXACTLY what i needed to push me to do it.

I had told many people that I was going to do it... now I actually am.

I always have such dreams and expectations and ideas.. but I never follow through with them. I communicate with the people in charge. I research the organizations or places I would visit. I make sure I have the money.. but i never do anything.
Now I have.

The scariest part will be getting taxis and buses from the airport to the hostel in Quito.. and then finding the bus to take me to Puyo and then the 5 hour bus ride...

Other exciting news,
Satruday, I took the animal handling class at the zoo.
NOW I CAN HOLD THE ANIMALS!
I held..
1. Madagascar Hissing Cockroach.. had silly little prickly feet as he crawled around on my hand.

2. Hermann;s Tortoise... LILY! holding lightly on either side of the shell.. it was amusing to watch as he slowly swung his feet in the air trying to kick me.. they looked like miniature elephant feet...

3. a Norway Rat.. RINGO!! He was a very curious little rat friend! sniffling all over the place..

4. Milk Snake... GOODYEAR!! ooo he slithered up and down my arms and through my fingers.. I am definitely going to do a LOT more of that.. letting it slither up and down and all around and watch his little tongue flicker in and out..

5. Guinea Pig.. not all that exciting to me... but he did squeak in delight as I held him :)

6. White's Tree Frog... BUDDHA!! soo slimy! He had a smooth little belly that rested right on my palm.. with his little webbed fingers wrapped around my fingers..

7. a desert lizard that stored fat in his tail.. so that if an animal was hungry they would try to eat the tail (it truly does look like its head) and the lizard would detach its tail and run away.. Once again.. smooth underbelly.. he was way too calm.. just sat there in my hand..

8. CHICKEN!! CORONAL!! (as in Coronal sanders) Soo funnY! I loved him!! I want to hold him again! I hugged him to my side.. the "football hold" as we called it.. he clucked in delight...

I love animals.
I love kids.
I love life.
I love this quote..
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Steve Iriwin.. :]

I LOVE STEVE IRWIN!!

He had such passion for animals... so contagious!



Crikey means gee whiz, wow! -Steve Irwin
I believe that education is all about being excited about something.Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message -Steve Irwin

Inside Out Bears

Kent Rogowski
He created a book pictures of teddy bears turned inside out!
Here are some comments by visitors to his website...

->"I think these photographs might mean happiness. They are made by softness and cotton."
-Nicholas, 3th grade student, PS84 New York

-> "I think this one is funny because in a book that I read there was a monster that looked just like this one."
-Maya Lee Christianson, 7

->"You’re a monster. Maybe you should be turned out…"
–Anonymous

->"What kind of inhuman, paranoid, and selfish human being would do such a cruel thing to these once soft to the touch creatures? These "teddy bears" or at least that's what they were, look like nothing I have ever seen. And yet, as all the horror and disbelief fade by, you see the true meaning behind this scheme. These things look more adorable then before. But if you look at the last one, you think to yourslef, wow this bear has gone through a 360 life change, literally, and yet he still has a smile on. Now that's what you call a man's best friend."
-Matthew Stefanski, 14, Student at Bayonne High School, Bayonne, NJ

"Smoke on the Water" ... Ancient Japanese Style!

"First Week" Graham Colton Band

Passion.. motivation.. life... what would you do?

Passion.
What drives you? what animates you?
You should do what makes you feel alive.. find out what makes you come alive and do it. The world does not need more people just doing things because they need done. The world needs more people that come alive when they are doing what they are doing. Does that make sense?

-> most heart attacks occur between 8am and 9am on Monday mornings. It is the beginning of the work week. About to face a whole week of work you don't want to do.

-> Before, people's jobs were what they did. Now, your job is who you are.

http://flickr.com/photos/brettlider/495048140/

What is it that stops you from taking bigger risks?

When have you been so absorbed in something that time flew by?

What are you most/least grateful for?
->Ask yourself that everyday for a year and see if there is a pattern that emerges
When have you felt most alive?

What are times in your life you would like to repeat?

If you could do anything-assuming time and money were of no concern-what would you chose to do?

What's the wildest thing you've ever done in your life that turned out better than you'd imagined?

If you knew you couldn't fail and no bad would come of it, what is the wildest thing you would do?

Where do you go in your head when you are stressed out?
->PAY attention to that place... it is telling you something

When you were a child, who did you dream of being when you grew up?
-> When did you give up on that dream?

Who do you most want to be like today

Do you feel any expectations or pressure from family regarding your current or future work?

What could you accomplish that would make your parents proudest?

How do you know you're parents are proud of you?

What movies or stories moved or influenced you.. changed your view on life?

If you listed 10 favorite movies, what would be a common theme?



Find your passion..
What do you have a passion for? What has made you want to jump out of bed?

"When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn."
— John Wesley
Evangelist (eighteenth century)

Chase down your passion like it's the last bus of the night.
-- Glade Byron Addams

)

LIGERS AND TIGONS AND MORE! OH MY!

yes. They are real. Ligers.

The faintly striped, shaggy-maned creatures are the offspring of male lions and female tigers, which gives them the talent to roar like lions and chuff like tigers-a loving sound that is somewhere between a purr and a raspberry.
They weigh about a thousand pounds, each and eat 50 pounds of raw meat in a meal.

Tigons are the babies of a male tiger and a female lion. They are usually tawny in color with pale brown candle flame shaped stripes along their backs and down their legs. Their underbellies are often paler and even sometimes white

Fun experiments to try!

I have a couple challenge for you all.. LET ME KNOW HOW YOU DO!!

Try nailing jello to the wall...

Toast/Grill a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron....

Fry an egg with pure energy and head from the sun.. either in a wok or a skillet or straight up on the sidewalk....

Put office supplies.. forks.. rubber duckies inside jello

Leave a pop tart on the dashboard of you car during a hot day.. when you come back after a long day of class or a day shopping, will it be nice and toasty for you?

Take a whole container of corn kernels, put it in a hot air popper and let it pop.. how much will pop? Can it fill your entire room?

Take a container of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream and dump it out in a strainer.. let it drain.. and figure out how much cookie dough is actually in the ice cream... Try comparing the consistencies of different brands.. which one has the most cookie dough?

Find out exactly how much whipped cream is in one of those containers... is there a difference between the fat free/light container and the regular container.

Try chewing an entire package of chewing gum at once...

Send airmail.. tie a letter to a balloon.. let it go.. and see if you get a response from whoever finds it! .. similar to putting a message in a bottle in hopes of a response..

Take a box of Honey Bunches of OAts with Almonds and separate them into the different cereal bits.. (frosted flakeys, granola/oat clusters, corn flakeys, almonds, etc.) what are some ratios?

Same experiment as above with Lucky Charms... Are there more marshmallows or more of the other cerealy bits? Which marshmallow is there most of?


--> By the way I have tried many of these.. I recommend them... good tales to tell others... fun times to be had...

AND... try one of these... 85 ways to decorate your house with Christmas lights!
if you click, don't just look at the first page, there are 6 whole pages..
... it acutely isn't all that exciting, but it does give you some ideas for next year!

Doggy Lamp! + one more lamp..

Well.. here is another lamp I found..
ITS A DOG LAMP! And you turn it on and off by petting it on the head.. Awww... how fun!


And here is Mr. Sit Down lamp.. called the

Black + Blum Reading Light

:)

Seymour Sheep Lamp...

SEYMOUR SHEEP!
he is a fun light up lamp-sheep! It will illuminate your room with the inner glowings of Seymour Sheep...

Hey Jude..

here is a little protogee for you..
A Beatles fanatic.. Not even 5 years old yet.. but hes a kicker!

Pandas on Film!

Do YOU like PANDAS??? If you ever are interested in finding out what they do all day, check out these fun panda cams at various Zoos.. They ARE live, so the pandas may not always be within Camera range...

PANDA CAM!! (San Diego Zoo)
PANDA CAM!! (Atlanta Zoo)
PANDA CAM!! (Memphis Zoo) .. as well as a link to their polar bear cam
PANDA CAM!! (National Zoo in Washington, DC)

Girl wants a weenie... aww...

She wants a weenie... aww.... but since she can't have one, shes got a back up plan.

awww...

Awww... how i LOVE PostSecret

Barak Obama, "Yes We Can"

Wow..
Powerful video from Will.I.Am of Blackeyed Peas.. inspirBlogger: A Laugh Is A Smile That Bursts - Create Posted by Barak Obama's "yess we can" speech.
Celebrities featured include: Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon

Questions for YOU..

okay.
So I want to do something with my life.
This class is really getting to me, which is a good thing.
Other things are getting to me as well... .walking around and around.. no one meeting my eye.. feeling inferior to everyone and everything.. Feel so disconnected from everyone around me... I am trying to convince myself that what I see in the mirror is not who I am.. not what I look like.. Or so i hope.
my perception of myself has always been messed up. Twisted reality.. I always feel like the blob. The misshapen putty. So I try to hide. I try to turn away from everyone and get lost in my own world of nothingness. I can't compete with everything and everyone around me anymore. Im tired of fighting. Fighting for a lost cause (thanks Beck.. he sung those words JUST as i was thinking of what to say)

So i am going to do something.

I am going to join the Peace Corps.
I sent in the application the other day... now am awaiting the next step.. for them to contact me.
I want to escape from everything. Get lost in another country. I want to see that i can make people smile. I want to inspire people. I want to be a role model. I want to prove to people that you can still have fun in life without catering to the majority of society.... that you don't have to be a cookie cutter. You can be eccentric, different, unique and still be smart and intelligent and fun to be around.. still have a head on your shoulders.

I want to interview people. I want to find out what drives them,

Jane Goodall, Ken Kesey, Dr. Timothy Leary, Charlie Chaplin, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Annie Lebowitz, Mister Rodgers, Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin, Robin Williams...

Joy Adamson, author of "Born Free" and promotor of wildlife conservation. In it, she recounts her adventures as the surrogate mother of an orphaned lion cub named Elsa with parenting duties shared by her husband George.

Tippi... who grew up in Africa among the leopards, mongooses, cheetahs and was pretty much barefoot and clad in only a loincloth.. what an amazing life to live..

Kevin Richardson the animal behaviorist and relies on instinct to win the hearts with Lions and form an intimate bond with them. He spends nights with them with no fear of being attacked. He also works with cheetahs, leopards and even hyenas. Ultimate trust between human and lions... wow..

But what about the old lady down the street who wears muumuus and a bonnet everyday? The man who plucks garbage out of the garbage can hoping to find some food? Your neighbor who has a strange obsession with tribal masks to the point where they are all over his walls? The baker? The waiter at your favorite restraunt? Who is to say that their life isn't as fascinating as some of the people i listed above? It may have a different level of interesting.

I challenge all you who read this (if anyone really does) to invite someone out to coffee or lunch or something... ask them,
---<> or even ask them for yourself.. how would YOU answer these questions?

"Would you rather be the painter or the painting?"
"If you had to chose three words that would describe who you would love to be, what three would they be?"
"What gets you going every day? What drives you?"
"When you were younger would you ever have imagined that you would be where you are now?"
"What makes you smile?"
"Who would you want to interview?"
"What songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?"
"Are you happiest in the morning when you first get up or in the evening when you get home from work/school?"

And the most important question:

"Who do you want to be for people?"

Fun Art

browsing around, i found a fun website and thought that i would like to share some wondeful artwork by Genevieve Gauckler with you!
I will explore the other artists later..

Artist Genevieve Gauckler

Funerals... a different take...

Funerals..
Unusually they are sad and solemn. Reflecting on life, honoring the dead...

then again, I would not want crowds of crying people clad in black lamenting during my funeral.
I want people to celebrate life.. their life, my life... take a second look at their life and hopefully make a change for the better.. or give them courage to do the things on their list of things to do before they die.
I want to punctuate my life with a smile.

I thought about this the other day when i was listening to the radio.. Kidd Kraddik in the Morning.. on the way to my internship.

They mentioned that at Heath Ledger's funeral, everyone stripped down and jumped in the ocean.. when they came out- they all seemed at peace.. it was their way of closure..

others they talked about:

-> in honor of a tow truck driver of 40 years, a funeral procession consisted of 75 tow trucks.
-> the whole front 2 rows of the funeral broke into song, "At the Coco Cabana" since it was a song that the family used to sing in order to make the person who had died laugh..
-> everyone wearing pink.. males and females.. it was a little girl who had died and pink was her favorite color... as they walked out the door, they let bunches of pink balloons sail into the air.
-> since the deceased's favorite holiday was Halloween and he died 6 days before Halloween, people came to the funeral dressed in costumes..
-> the artist daughter of the deceased created a beautiful and moving painting with the deceased's ashes
->Nadine Jarvis discovered a way to create pencils out of the ashes of the deceased, as the website says, the average body can create up to 240 pencils.
-> a company, Eternal Ascent, will place your ashes in a biodegradable balloon that is released into the air. It eventually pops and your ashes are dispersed....to be rained down on earth..
-> Heavens Abover Funerals allows people to go out with a bang... they pack your ashes into fireworks and then create a remarkable firework display in your memory.
-> Founder of the Body Shop Anita Roddick, who died last year, opted for a camper van to be used as her hearse.
-> From My Funky Funeral, a website "Keith Richards, of Rolling Stones fame, has recently admitted to snorting his late father's ashes with a couple of lines of cocaine. He later retracted the claim but we tend to believe his original line ... only he nose!"



some things i want to have at my funeral... a few ideas...

-> Glitter
-> Bubbles
-> handouts of lollipops to every person who comes
-> no black.. better yet, no shoes..
-> no fancy clothes.. flowy dresses.. khakis.. jeans.. shorts.. costumes.. Feetsies pajamas... whatever you feel I would enjoy, wear it.
-> handing out a sheet of paper to all guests with numbers down the side.. with the title "Things to do before I die"
-> a bonfire... with people dancing around it... taken away by the music.. that would be fun too..
-> planting a tree in YOUR yard... (Thank you Krystle for this idea.. She is doing that in honor of Kyle, because who knows where my family will be moving to... she can wake up every morning and look out her window and see kyle's tree...)
->

i love you steve erwin..

Strange vending machines in Japan

More fun, thanks to Dark Roasted Blend

Coke Vending Machine in Tokyo.. Its a real machine/robot! and it walks around and people can still buy drinks from it..

Rice vending Machine!

Cigarette Vending Machine!!

.Flower Vending Machine! No need to go to the store for flowers anymore!

Egg Vending Machine!!


And there is even Women's Undies Vending Machines...

.. if that isnt enough, there are Porno Vending Machines...

Play with your Food!!

This is all thanks to Dark Roasted Blend...

Thermal Pictures of Zoo Animals!

"Three South African black-footed penguins trundle along the edge of their cold pool"

News:Lite (a website) came upon a fun way of looking at animals! Its a THERMAL CAMREA!!

There is a camera at the London Zoo that captures images of the internal temperatures of the animals. I was intrigued..
The cameras give us information on how warm these animals are beneath their feathers and fur. Ever wondered how or if the fur/feathers of animals really make any difference in insulation.

"*The dark stripes on these zebra clearly showing up as warmer than the white areas because they absorb heat instead of reflectinAg it"

There are lots of pictures, directly from the London Zoo website, HERE...

"These Asian short-clawed otters are as hot-headed as the penguins"