April (Friday the 13th), 2012

Good morning & happy Friday the 13th LOL! I had a decent day yesterday, got a lot done & got out of the shower as Pete got home. Today's actually a lucky day for me so far, it's payday & I actually have more money than bills, so it can't be all bad, right? I'm still in the middle of my Gardening class but will finish it before the next paycheck, so I signed up for a Landscaping class so I can slide right into that after I finish the gardening class. That will conclude my home & garden classes: Cooking, Baking, Gardening, & Landscaping. After that I'm going to slide into the next category but I'm not decided on which one just yet. I would have liked to stay in this category & switch back to Penn Foster for their big Gourmet Cooking class, but it's expensive. I hate to take a break just after getting started, but I need to go to the station & get some work done with the Chief. I know it's all the same to you, because you won't see this until after it's completed & posted, but what the heck ... be back in a few. :) A few?! Try over 3 hours! I swear the FD is the Hotel California. I don't think I've ever gone to the station "just for a minute" & walked out of there in under an hour. HA! BUT ... don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I love the department & everything that was done today was necessary, productive & useful. Ann-Marie's birthday Sunday!

Baseball All-Star killed in truck accident (2009):

On this day in 2009, former Major League Baseball all-star pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych is found dead at the age of 54 following an accident at his Massachusetts farm involving a Mack truck he was working on. Fidrych, the 1976 American League Rookie of the Year, suffocated when his clothes got tangled in the truck’s power takeoff shaft.

On April 15, 2009, The New York Times Wheels blog referenced a report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on noncrash fatalities and injuries: “According to the report, in 2007 more than 168 people were killed by falling vehicles, and more than 10,000 people were injured in hoist or jack incidents. While Fidrych’s death did not seem to involve a jack, it was still a noncrash fatality that probably could have been prevented. ‘About 29 percent (168 of 588) of the noncrash fatalities involved people who were pinned or trapped under vehicles, usually while working on passenger vehicles that fell from their supports,’ says NHTSA in the report.”

Fidrych, who was born on August 14, 1954, in Worcester, Massachusetts, became a national sensation during his rookie season with the Detroit Tigers. That year, his record was 19 wins and 9 losses with a league-leading 2.34 ERA and 24 complete games. The 6’3” Fidrych, who reportedly earned his nickname for his resemblance to the “Sesame Street” character Big Bird, was a favorite with fans. However, after his spectacular rookie season, he was plagued by injuries and his career with the Tigers ended in 1980. He attempted a comeback with the Boston Red Sox during the 1982-83 season then retired in July 1983. Following baseball, he went on to own a trucking business.

On the afternoon of April 13, 2009, Fidrych’s body was discovered by a friend beneath a Mack truck (brothers Jack and Augustus Mack began making motorized vehicles in 1900; in 1905, they started producing trucks in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where the company is located today) at the former baseball player’s farm in Northborough, Massachusetts. According to the AP, the friend reported that it appeared as if Fidrych had been doing maintenance work on the truck at the time of his death.

Closet:

Minimize clutter in the linen closet. You only need 1 set of sheets for a guest bed. When the guests leave, wash the sheets & put them back on the bed immediately. You'll always know the sheets are clean & you'll save room in your linen closet.

Cordless vacuum cleaners:

From bread crumbs to sprinkles, small messes are gone with just a broom. (1987)

Coworkers need your help. Luckily, they are helpful right back, every time you turn around. Like chimps grooming each other, you all find synergies and relief in each helpful maneuver and cooperative endeavor.

Dining dilemmas & Rescues:

You don't like the food.

Send a dish back only if it isn't what you ordered, has not been prepared the way you requested (a "medium-well' steak arrives raw, for instance), tastes spoiled, or contains a hair or a pest. Speak calmly & discreetly to the server when making your request.

Don't get conned into using debt CON-solidation outfits. Going that way will trash your credit for the purposes of buying a house. According to the underwriting guidelines of both Fannie Mae & FHA, you will be treated as if you'd filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy. And it changes nothing: You think you're doing something about your debt problem, but the debt is still there, along with the bad habits that caused the debt.

Eldritch:

Weird or eerie.

As a writer, she is best known for her eldritch tales of ghosts & otherworldly encounters.

"Eldritch" comes from a time when otherworldly beings were commonly thought to inhabit the earth. The word is about 500 years old & believed to have come from Middle English elfriche, meaning "fairyland." The 2 components of elfriche - elf & riche - trace back to the Old English aelf & rice (meaning, literally, "elf kingdom"). Robert Louis Stevenson wasn't scared of "eldritch" - he used the term in his novel Kidnapped: "'The curse on him & his house, byre & stable, man, gues, & master, wife, miss, or bairn - black, black be their fall!' - The woman, whose boice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, & was gone."

Highlights Sports Recorder:

Normally when you film a game, you have to spend a lot of time and effort to identify the highlights and then edit everything into the final video.
Like to take video snapshots of your child´s game, and then merge & save all the highlights directly into one file without any editing?! Yes, it´s possible!
Take advantage of the high-quality video capabilities of your iPhone! With Hightlights Sports Recorder we give you the natural way of capturing the clip-worthy situations from a sports event.
The camera REMEMBERS the last seconds, so when the situation is over and you click SHOOT the past 10 seconds will be saved as an individual clip. After the game, you just MERGE all the small sub-clips into one common file containing all the highlights from the game. Both clips and final file are saved into your phone´s photo library.

How did Dustin Hoffman come up with Tootsie as a possible title for his 1982 cross-dressing hit comedy?

Tootsie was his mother’s dog.

How many common words of 4 letters or more can you make from the letters in the following word? (You may use each letter only once.)

BICYCLE

If you're not sure what your goal is, you may have a hard time getting started. Talk to your loved one about what you'd like to accomplish together, then come up with a plan to make it happen.

Today, selecting the best partner is extremely important if you want any kind of real success. Even if you're just picking a buddy for a lab experiment, a seatmate on the bus or train, or someone to help you lift something that's heavy, you'll need to make sure you choose the best person for the task, not just someone you like a whole lot. The good news is that you have got an even better ability to assess someone's character than ever before.

Try to get a handle on your latest big idea -- but do it in a practical way. The only way you can figure out whether it will work is to try it out, maybe as a first step or trial program.

What is the only snake known to build a nest for its eggs?

When Harry Met Sally:

Can men and women remain friends without sex getting in the way? Nora Ephron's episodic screenplay introduces womanizing, neurotic Harry (Billy Crystal) and ambitious, equally neurotic Sally (Meg Ryan) as chums who resist sexual attraction to maintain their friendship -- a relationship always teetering on the brink of love. As the two draw closer, the question resurfaces: Can they stay just pals? Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby co-star.

Which creature kills the most, 2nd most, & 3rd most people?

A. Poisonous snakes

B. Mosquitos

C. Bees

Which order do human teeth appear from front to back?

A. Cuspid

B. Central incisor

C. Lateral incisor

BCA. Tooth decay is one of the most common diseases throughout the world, & here in the U.S. it's the most common childhood disease - more common than asthma. What a pain.