♪ April 9, 2012 ♪

Good morning! Like, REALLY morning for me. Pete took me out last night to a great Easter dinner at Pappadeaux where Pete & I both got an AMAZING steak dinner & then we came home & watched a movie.

 

Kyle & I loved the movie, it was called In Time. Very interesting concept & it really makes you think. Don't think in dollars. If you're going to buy a car, it's not how many DOLLARS it's going to cost you, it's how many MONTHS you're going to have to work to pay it off. Time IS money, so why not just remove the pesky money problem & only barter your time? The trouble is, if you run out, you die.

Milligan water meeting tonight.

A smart owner of rental property asks questions & does some research to find out if you're who he wants as a tenant. Renters can do the same thing! Ask up-front about the situation & about the landlord's financial stability. Let them know you'd like some assurance for you & your family that they're not a foreclosure risk.

Bunnies take a vitamin with a bath. When a rabbit grooms its ears, it secretes oil containing a chemical that forms vitamin D when broken down in sunlight.

By what name do we know the South Pacific island that’s called Rapa Nui by its Polynesian inhabitants?

Easter Island, which is what Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen named it when he came upon it on Easter Sunday in 1722.

Cell phones:

Though they can ring at bad times (at dinner, in the library), they're a godsend at really bad times (blown tires, medical emergencies). 2008

Honda wins World Green Car award (2009):

On this day in 2009, the Honda FCX Clarity, a four-door sedan billed as the planet's first hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle intended for mass production, wins the World Green Car award at the New York Auto Show.

The first FCX Clarity cars came off the assembly line at a Honda plant in Takanezawa, Japan, in June 2008. As The New York Times reported at the time: "Fuel-cell vehicles have been a sort of holy grail of the auto industry, offering the promise of driving without emitting air-polluting exhaust. Fuel cells work by combining hydrogen and oxygen from ordinary air to make electricity, in a process whose only byproducts are water and heat."

According to Honda, which reportedly spent more than 15 years and millions of dollars developing its fuel-cell technology, the FCX Clarity is more fuel-efficient than a gas-powered car or hybrid and gets 74 miles per gallon of fuel. The Times also noted that fuel-cell vehicles such as the FCX Clarity are more eco-friendly than an electric car "whose batteries take hours to recharge and use electricity, which, in the case of the United States, China and many other countries, is often produced by coal-burning power plants."

One downside of fuel-cell technology, however, is its cost, which in the case of the FCX Clarity, added up to several hundred thousand dollars per vehicle. To combat this issue, Honda chose to initially lease rather than sell the cars, at a subsidized price of some $600 per month. In July 2008, the first FCX Clarity cars became available in California. In November of that same year, another fleet was leased to government employees in Japan.

At the time of the FCX Clarity's debut in 2008, the Japanese auto industry, led by Honda and Toyota, was out in front of American car makers in developing green technologies. In 1997, Toyota launched the Prius, the world's first mass-produced hybrid car. The Prius debuted in the U.S. in 2000 and went on to dominate the hybrid-vehicle market. American auto giants such as General Motors were criticized for maintaining a focus on producing gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and small trucks for too long, even as consumer demand shifted toward more fuel-efficient, eco-friendly cars.

How did the holiday celebrating the exodus of the Jews from Egypt come to be called Passover?

From the use of the word in the biblical account of the 10th plague. God visited the plague—death to all firstborn children—on all houses in Egypt except those belonging to Jews who alerted Him to “pass over” their homes by smearing their doorposts with the blood of a lamb (Exodus 12:1–27).

Intransigent:

Characterized by refusal to compromise or to abandon an extreme position or attitude : uncompromising.

Ms. Baxter was intransigent about her most famous rule: no gum or candy in her classroom unless you'd brought enough to share with everybody.

English-speakers borrowed "intransigent" in the 19th century from Spanish instransigente ("uncompromising"), itself a combination of the familiar prefix in- ("not") & transigente ("willing to compromise"). Transigente comes from the Spanish verb transigir ("to compromise", which in turn derives from Latin transigere ("to come to an agreement"). The French have a similar verb, transiger, which also means "to compromise." The word "transigent" is only occasionally used in English, however.

In what year were the movies 9 and Nine both released?

Kitchen:

Place a piece of old newspaper in the bottom of your trash can. The newspaper absorbs odor & makes a leaky trash bag easy to clean.

My Beautiful Laundrette:

Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a Pakistani, and his old school chum Johnny (Daniel-Day Lewis) use stolen drug money to renovate a laundrette in a squalid London neighborhood. But conflicting interests soon threaten their newfound success. Hanif Kureishi received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay, a stunning portrait of two boyhood friends who are struggling to survive in racially tense Thatcher-era Britain.

Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph agrees to plead guilty (2005):

Eric Rudolph agrees to plead guilty to a series of bombings, including the fatal bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, in order to avoid the death penalty. He later cited his anti-abortion and anti-homosexual views as motivation for the bombings. Eric Robert Rudolph was born September 19, 1966, in Merritt Island, Florida. He served a brief stint in the U.S. Army and later supported himself by working as a carpenter. On July 27, 1996, a 40-pound pipe bomb exploded in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, killing one woman and injuring over 100 people. A security guard named Richard Jewell was initially considered the prime suspect in the case. Then, on January 16, 1997, two bombs went off at an Atlanta-area medical clinic that performed abortions, injuring seven people. In February of that same year, a bomb detonated at a lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, injuring four people. On January 29, 1998, a bomb exploded at a Birmingham, Alabama, women’s health clinic, killing a security guard and critically injuring a nurse.

Rudolph became a suspect in the Birmingham bombing after witnesses reported spotting his pickup truck near the clinic before the bomb went off. Authorities then launched a massive manhunt in North Carolina, where he was spotted stocking up on supplies. In February 1998, Rudolph was officially charged as a suspect in the Birmingham bombing. In March 1998, Rudolph’s brother Daniel cut off his hand to protest what he saw as the mistreatment of Eric by the F.B.I and the media. In May of that same year, Eric Rudolph was named to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and a $1 million reward was offered for his capture. In July, a North Carolina health food store owner reported that Rudolph had taken six months’ of food and supplies from him, leaving $500 in exchange.

In October 1998, Rudolph was officially charged in the three Atlanta bombings. He continued to elude authorities, who believed he was hiding in the Appalachian wilderness and possibly getting assistance from supporters in the region. Then, on May 31, 2003, after over five years as a fugitive, Rudolph was arrested by a rookie police officer who found him digging through a grocery store Dumpster in Murphy, North Carolina. On April 8, 2005, just weeks before his trial was scheduled to begin, the Department of Justice announced that Rudolph would plead guilty to the charges against him in all four bombings. He was later sentenced to four life terms without parole and in August 2005 was sent to the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado.

Particularly if you have a small business or a home office, you'll want to be careful about keeping receipts for tax purposes. Once again, you'll find the value in keeping a handy In-box in a convenient place so that you can quickly take care of these receipts upon returning home.

Placing phone calls:

Identify yourself.

When the call is answered, state your name unless you're talking with a family member or close friend who knows your voice. If someone other than the person you're calling answers the phone, keep your conversation brief: "Hi, this is Louise Brown. May I please speak with Joan?"

Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner, is born on April 9, 1926.

SoundHound ∞:

SoundHound is instant music search and discovery:
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♪ The world's only viable singing and humming recognition
♪ LiveLyrics: see Lyrics in time with the music for over 1 Million tracks
♪ SoundHound Player: play your iTunes tracks with LiveLyrics and instantly link to artist info
♪ An included iPad app with beautiful, full-size lyrics and YouTube pages
♪ The ultimate SoundHound experience, ad-free with premium features including exclusive Recommended Songs!
♪ NEW: Real-time Facebook and Twitter Updates from Artists: tap a band's name to instantly see its latest social news!
★ Reviews and Honors for SoundHound ∞ ★
The #1 Top Paid iPad App of All Time
- Apple App Store, Jan. 2011
Top 10 Must-Have iPhone Apps
-Bob Tedeschi, NY Times, Nov. 2010
Best Music Engagement App
- BILLBOARD Music App Awards, Oct. 2010
Essential iPad App - "Seriously fast"
-John Herrman, Gizmodo, April 2010
"Genius, isn't it?"
- B.B.C. World Radio
"This is amazing... insane, right?"
-David Pogue of the NY Times
And there's more: Listen on startup and geotagging options, Facebook and Twitter sharing and optional auto-sharing, previews, iTunes and Pandora links, full length YouTube videos, and your favorite artists' top songs, bios, and Wikipedia pages.

Which country comes 1st, 2nd, & 3rd after leaving Panama?

A. Honduras

B. Nicaragua

C. Costa Rica