★ December 4, 2012 ★

Good news & bad news. The good news is Pete took today off & is home all day! The bad news is that he didn't do it just to be home, he's not feeling well. :( Yesterday I changed the bedding, straightened the dining room chairs, did a load of dishes & 2 loads of laundry. I checked eBay & then settled into my massage chair for 15 minutes of relaxing into a pudding-like puddle while playing 5 Card Slingo & then Kyle got home from school just as I was deciding it was lunch time but we didn't have what I wanted in stock. Kyle came in with good news, he sold an iPhone & proudly pulled out a wad of cash & said "are you hungry?" Why yes I am! What did you have in mind? He said to hit PizzaHut.com. PIZZA! We got the $10 box deal that they have & wow that was good! Kyle bought lunch for the 3 of us (Josh was off work yesterday & he had just walked in to hunt down lunch too). Thank you Kyle! After lunch I knitted the next to last gold wide panel on the knitting machine (3 panels to go!), went through the mail, checked Twitter, cleared my AOL e-mail & made plans with my mom to visit her in Tennessee on our way to Myrtle Beach in a few weeks, then had an easy dinner of beefy macaroni & cheese with Pete, watched Hawaii 5-0, & headed off to bed. I just checked my eBay Deals of the Day e-mail & I think I finally found the iPhone dock I've been looking for. I just purchased a Skullcandy Vandal Speaker Dock for iPhone. The reviews are great & the price was unbeatable. I checked all over & the prices were all in the triple digits but I got this for 69% off ... just $50-someting. SCHWEET! Finally I'll be able to HEAR the thing across the room. I kept buying cheap docks that were exactly that. It's true, you get what you pay for. I finally got a GOOD one though. City Christmas party & council meeting tonight.

Amanda Knox convicted of murder in Italy (2009):

On this day in 2009, 22-year-old American exchange student Amanda Knox is convicted of murdering her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in 2007 in Perugia, Italy. Knox received a 26-year prison sentence, while her 25-year-old Italian ex-boyfriend, Raffaelle Sollecito, who also was convicted in the slaying, was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. The sensational, high-profile case raised questions in the United States about whether Knox, who always maintained her innocence, received a fair trial. Then, in October 2011, in a decision that made international headlines, an Italian court reversed the murder convictions of both Knox and Sollecito and they were freed from prison.

On November 2, 2007, 21-year-old Kercher of Coulsdon, England, was found fatally stabbed in the bedroom of the home she shared with Knox and two other women in Perugia, the capital city of the Umbria region in central Italy. Investigators said the British exchange student had been slain the previous night. After questioning by police, Knox, a Seattle native and University of Washington student doing her junior year abroad in Italy, was arrested. She denied any wrongdoing, saying she was at computer science student Sollecito’s house the night the killing occurred. Police claimed Knox later gave them conflicting statements about her whereabouts at the time of the crime, and said she also accused her boss at a bar where she worked, who turned out to have a solid alibi, of Kercher’s murder. The American student, who was first questioned without an attorney or professional interpreter, said police coerced her into making the accusation as well as other incriminating statements. (The false accusation would later result in an extra year tacked on to Knox’s prison sentence.)

During the nearly yearlong trial that followed in 2009, Italian prosecutors charged that Knox, along with Sollecito and a third person, Rudy Guede, an Ivory Coast native, had viciously attacked Kercher in a sex game gone wrong. (Guede was convicted for his role in Kercher’s death in a separate, fast-track trial in 2008. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was reduced to 16 years on appeal.) The prosecution’s main evidence against Knox included tiny traces of her DNA and that of Kercher’s on a knife discovered at Sollecito’s home. Traces of Knox’s DNA were also found on a bra clasp belonging to Kercher. Knox’s attorneys argued the bra clasp was found over a month after the murder at a contaminated crime scene, and that the knife blade couldn’t have made the wounds on the victim.  

The case received extensive media coverage in the U.S. and Europe, where the attractive Knox was dubbed “Angel Face” and “Foxy Knoxy” by the tabloids. In the Italian and British press, Knox was painted as a promiscuous party girl. However, in America, she was often portrayed in the media as an innocent abroad, a young woman who had worked several jobs to earn money to study in Perugia, where she had been railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor.

Knox and Sollecito appealed their convictions, and at their subsequent trial court-appointed experts testified the original DNA evidence was unreliable and did not definitively link the young American and her former boyfriend to the crime. On October 3, 2011, a court in Perugia acquitted the two defendants of murder. The 24-year-old Knox, who been jailed in Italy since her 2007 arrest, flew home to the U.S. the following day.

A miscarriage is a death that requires grieving. Be sympathetic by recognizing the depth of the loss & by being there for your friend if she wants to talk about it. Never say, "It was for the best," or, "It was God's will." And never, under any circumstances, imply that the miscarriage my have resulted from something your coworker did or didn't do.

Aurora borealis is also called the what?

A. Southern lights

B. Far lights

C. Northern lights

D. Polar lights

Hang a Do Not Disturb sign on the bathroom door.

Hit Tennis 3:

Swipe or flick your finger to hit the ball. It feels like real tennis!
Hit Tennis 3 is the sequel to Hit Tennis 2 — a smash hit with over 15 million downloads. And this new version is even more awesome!
★ Amazing swipe & flick controls!
★ Beautiful new graphics!
★ Battle opponents and level up through 6 different locations!

If your kids have trouble getting up in the morning because they'd rather stay in their warm bed, try heating up their clothes in the dryer for a few minutes.

It still amazes me that some people seem surprised when Christmas rolls around every year on December 25! Planning for Christmas is just another part of the budgeting process. You know Christmas is coming, right? Spend every dollar on paper - including what you can afford to spend on gifts - before the month begins. If you stick to your budget, you don't have the problem of overspending.

Reduce your use of wrapping paper, opting instead for reusable gift bags, newspaper, fabric leftover from projects, or just a pretty ribbon around an otherwise naked gift.

Struthious:

Of or relating to the ostriches & related birds.

Why then is there this pathological fear or the future, a struthious instinct to hide from challenges?

"Struthious" can be scientific & literal, or it can figuratively mean "ostrichlike" (as in the example sentence), suggesting a tendency to bury one's head in the sand. But do ostriches really do this? No - the bird's habit of lying down & flattening its nexk & head against the ground to escape detection gave rise to the misconception. The word "struthious" has been fully visible in English since the 18th century, but "ostrich" is much older. Anglo-French speakers created ostriz from Vulgar Latan avis struthio ("ostrich bird"), & Middle English speakers made it ostrich in the 13th century. Scientists seeking a genus word for ostriches turned back to Latin, choosing struthio.

What famous Renaissance artist fled Rome and lived in exile after killing someone in a dispute over a tennis match?

Caravaggio, in 1606.

What was unique about the signatures on the $60 million in U.S. paper currency authorized by Congress in 1861?

Which are there more of?
A. Countries in the world

B. States in the U.S.

C. Cities in Canada

CAB. Surprisingly, there are more than 3,400 cities in Canada. Of course, they aren't all metropolis size - Acme, Alberta, for example. At last count, there were just 137 countries in the world.

Which fictional holiday rejects the commercialism/materialism of the modern Christmas season?

A. Life Day

B. Chrismukkah

C. Hogswatch Day

D. Festivus

Answer: D. Festivus

Which lake is the largest?

A. lake Michigan

B. Lake Huron

C. Lake Superior

Your favorite ice-cream flavor is

(   ) __________Praline.

(   ) Mint __________ Chip.

(   ) __________ & Cream.