- January 7, 2013 -

Good morning & happy Monday! It's a new week, make the most of it. Saturday I made my favorite, an over easy egg & toast for breakfast & then dusted the bedroom lights & dusted the bookshelves in my office. While I was there I also neatened one of the shelves by reorganizing the books which somehow were out of order (alphabetical) & then got interested looking through one of my "How it Works" books. It's an older set from the 80s, but still very interesting. I ended up reading about hot air balloons. I've never been up in one & probably never

will be, but they're pretty cool! I know there's a place locally where you can pay to go up in one & float all over Collin County, but I'm not a fan of heights. I decided to be healthy Saturday & had a banana for lunch. After that I machine knitted for a while, checked YouTube (I don't like the new layout, I can't find the videos that it always suggested for me that were cool), went through the mail, checked Twitter, & then loaded up Sims. I added a circular staircase

to my Breckenridge home that I'm building & then loaded up Lakeside Mansion built by my FAVORITE Simmer Curtis Paradis. It's a beautiful home & has 4 fireplaces. Only problem was, all 4 fireplaces were cheap so I had to delete them all & install 4 expensive ones that WON'T set the house on fire every time I turn around. I placed the house in Appaloosa Plains & then created Nikki (1st gen). She's a grumpy vehicle enthusiast who's disciplined, a mooch, & charismatic. She decided to be a CEO of a Mega-Corporation & likes French Toast, custom music, & the color Aqua. She's a Pisces. Her furry companion is Rummy. A hydrophobic (perfect, we live on a lake ... sheesh!) Boxer who is loyal & hyper. They started off in the spring & it was a beautiful 74° at noon. She met Benjamin Schmidt at work & they married. Benjamin had a dog, so they moved him & his dog in. Rummy loves his dog, they get along great & keep each other company. Nikki & Benjamin had a son ... Harry Schmidt (2nd gen). He's a slob & good. An Aquarius who likes classical music, cookies, & the color grey. When I packed up Sims for the day we had dinner out at Sicily's, picked Josh up in Princeton, stopped at Kathy's to pick up some wonderful food that she had made for dinner & shared with us because she made so much of it (Thank you Kathy!) & Pete talked politics for a while, then we came home, watched some TV & then headed to bed around 2:30a. Sunday was a nice, relaxing day. I started out with a call from Andrew, then went through the Sunday paper. I checked facebook, went through my regular e-mail for the week (mostly deals of the day stuff that I couldn't afford this paycheck), spent some time on the phone with my Chief, then went to pick Josh up from work with Pete. When we got home I had a nice hot cocoa with a baked potato & then started dinner. Pork loin roast with potatoes. While dinner cooked I took care of some FD stuff & then just lazed around. I played solitaire on my PC, ate dinner, & then Pete & I spent the rest of the evening watching TV. I guess neither one of us felt like doing much. We're tired. This cold is kicking the crap out of us. We're feeling much better than we were, but we're still drained of energy & sleeping a LOT. We finally went to bed around 1:30a. This morning I updated the apps on my phone & talked to Pete on the phone for a bit. City Council Meeting tomorrow.

AnyTime Organizer Deluxe 14:

My absolutely wonderful bestest friend in the world (Ann-Marie) told me about this software & then forwarded a gift card to me via e-mail so I could purchase it NOW. I downloaded & installed it on my PC & can't wait to use it! It's going to be the 1st thing I do after posting this blog, grocery shopping, & picking Josh up from work.

• • Software with all the tools you need to organize your personal and professional life
  • Calendar, to-do list, address book, and notebook combined into a simple, familiar interface
  • Organize your calendar for work, personal, or other groups and filter to view one at a time
  • 3,000+ printable layout design combinations; expense reports, password organizer, world clocks and timers
  • Synchronize with Google, Outlook, and your mobile device; helpful alarms, to-do lists, and more

   
  
  ArtsProjekt:
  

  ARTSPROJEKT iPhone App features the most-wanted art print and poster images from ARTSPROJEKT Global Creative Network’s established fine and commercial artists across styles and genres including underground, lowbrow, tattoo, graffiti, street art, pop surrealism, urban exploration photography, anime, manga, kawaii, abstract, digital, fantasy, animation, character and game design, rock poster art, graphic design, traditional illustration, and many more!
  Here’s what you get:
  -The most-wanted independent artists and brands in the world straight to your device!
  -Free Art Wallpapers, download as many as you want!
  -The newest up-close-and-personal interviews, photos, and videos from The PROJEKT, our daily-updated community blog!
  -The freshest art prints and posters at your fingertips! Save ‘em to your photo library and share ‘em on your social media profiles!
  -Weekly curated updates from our cutting-edge roster of artists, so tune in and stay up!
  ARTSPROJEKT iPhone app is an ever-evolving experience featuring ARTSPROJEKT Global Creative Network’s most immediately-relevant products from the world’s hottest artists.
  Connect with ARTSPROJEKT Global Creative Network at ARTSPROJEKT.com or apply to become an ARTSPROJEKT Artist at ARTSPROJEKT.com/join !
  ARTSPROJEKT Global Creative Network is a highly-curated collective of nearly 1000 globally recognized independent artists and brands from over 25 countries, who self-publish art, products, and even new brands for sale exclusively on ARTSPROJEKT.com. This app features the freshest poster images and art prints from the most-wanted ARTSPROJEKT Artists, updated weekly to give you the latest and greatest. Built on the Zazzle technology platform, the world’s most-powerful product customization and visualization engine, ARTSPROJEKT.com hosts thousands of the world’s most innovative and trendsetting art images from artists including Obama HOPE poster illustrator and OBEY founder Shepard Fairey, Eisner Award nominee and Dark Horse Comics author Camilla D’Errico, twice Grammy-nominated graphic designer Matt Curry, vector character art phenom Julie West, and Chinese Biennial artist Yun Bai, among many others.
  ARTSPROJEKT enables its curated community of artists and brands to self-publish and merchandise high-quality apparel, art prints, skateboards, electronics, device cases, footwear, stickers, stationary, cards, and much more from an ever-widening range of product categories. AP Artists and Brands publish graphics, art, and designs instantly as collections that are available for sale worldwide in many languages. Artists and brands control the pricing and appearance of products in their ARTSPROJEKT stores and can extend these products to all social media and sites. Artists offer products for as long as they want, making global distribution and promotion for exhibitions, collections, and collaborations incredibly easy and highly profitable.
  ARTSPROJEKT was founded by Andy Howell, a gallery and museum artist, entrepreneur, brand creator, author, former pro skateboarder, and innovator of creative youth culture for over twenty years. Looking to serve the art world with access to the ultimate DIY product platform, Howell met Zazzle in early 2008, and soon found that the robust technology platform would serve as a perfect tool for established artists and brands from around the world. Zazzle acquired ARTSPROJEKT in late 2008, and launched ARTSPROJEKT.com The highly-curated ARTSPROJEKT Global Creative Network has since grown to nearly 1000 of the worlds most-wanted trendsetters and innovators from a wide range of traditional and commercial art and design disciplines.

  
  Clinton impeachment trial begins (1999):
  

  On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, formally charged with lying under oath and obstructing justice, begins in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside, and the senators were sworn in as jurors. Congress had only attempted to remove a president on one other occasion: the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, who incurred the Republican Party's wrath after he proposed a conservative Reconstruction plan.

  In November 1995, Clinton began an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old unpaid intern. Over a year and a half, the president and Lewinsky had nearly a dozen sexual encounters in the White House. In April 1996, Lewinsky was transferred to the Pentagon. That summer, she first confided in Pentagon co-worker Linda Tripp about her sexual relationship with the president. In 1997, with the relationship over, Tripp began secretly to record conversations with Lewinsky in which she gave details about the affair.

  In December, Lewinsky was subpoenaed by lawyers for Paula Jones, who was suing the president on sexual harassment charges. In January 1998, allegedly under the recommendation of the president, Lewinsky filed an affidavit in which she denied ever having had a sexual relationship with him. Five days later, Tripp contacted the office of Whitewater Independent Counsel Ken Starr to talk about Lewinsky and the tapes she made of their conversations. Tripp, wired by FBI agents working with Starr, met with Lewinsky again, and on January 16, Lewinsky was taken by FBI agents and U.S. attorneys to a hotel room where she was questioned and offered immunity if she cooperated with the prosecution. A few days later, the story broke, and Clinton publicly denied the allegations, saying, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky."

  In late July, lawyers for Lewinsky and Starr worked out a full-immunity agreement covering both Lewinsky and her parents, all of whom Starr had threatened with prosecution. On August 6, Lewinsky appeared before the grand jury to begin her testimony, and on August 17, President Clinton testified. Contrary to his testimony in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case, President Clinton acknowledged to prosecutors from the office of the independent counsel that he had had an extramarital affair with Ms. Lewinsky.

  In four hours of closed-door testimony, conducted in the Map Room of the White House, Clinton spoke live via closed-circuit television to a grand jury in a nearby federal courthouse. He was the first sitting president ever to testify before a grand jury investigating his conduct. That evening, President Clinton also gave a four-minute televised address to the nation in which he admitted he had an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky. In the brief speech, which was wrought with legalisms, the word "sex" was never spoken, and the word "regret" was used only in reference to his admission that he misled the public and his family.

  Less than a month later, on September 9, Kenneth Starr submitted his report and 18 boxes of supporting documents to the House of Representatives. Released to the public two days later, the Starr Report outlined a case for impeaching Clinton on 11 grounds, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and abuse of power, and also provided explicit details of the sexual relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky.

  On October 8, the House authorized a wide-ranging impeachment inquiry, and on December 11, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment. On December 19, after nearly 14 hours of debate, the House approved two articles of impeachment, charging President Clinton with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice.

  Clinton, the second president in American history to be impeached, vowed to finish his term. On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial began. Five weeks later, on February 12, the Senate voted on whether to remove Clinton from office. Clinton was acquitted on both articles of impeachment. The prosecution needed a two-thirds majority to convict but failed to achieve even a bare majority. Rejecting the first charge of perjury, 45 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted "not guilty," and on the charge of obstruction of justice the Senate was split 50-50. After the trial concluded, President Clinton said he was "profoundly sorry" for the burden he imposed on Congress and the American people.

  
  

  Did you know, folks, that the great horny toad is on the EPA's endangered list? Which makes you wonder, if it's so great & so horny, why is it endangered?

  
  Disney-MGM Studios becomes Disney’s Hollywood Studios (2008):

  At the close of business on January 6, 2008, the Walt Disney World Resort theme park known as Disney-MGM Studios officially shut its doors after almost a decade of operation. Fans didn’t have to worry too much, however, as the park would reopen the next morning under its new name, Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
  Debuting on May 1, 1989, Disney-MGM Studios was the third theme park to open at Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, after the Magic Kingdom in 1971 and Epcot Center in 1982. The project began with an idea for a movie-themed pavilion, resembling a film soundstage, to be built at Epcot; it was later expanded into its own theme park, which now stretches over 135 acres. The name of the park was the result of a 1985 licensing contract between Disney and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio, which allowed Disney the right to use the MGM name and logo for a studio-themed park.
  In its original conception, Disney-MGM Studios was to operate not only as a theme park, but also as a fully functioning television and movie production studio. Several feature films, including the lightweight comedy Ernest Saves Christmas (1988), were produced there before its opening as a theme park. This caused trouble with MGM, who filed suit against Disney in 1988 alleging that using the park as a working production studio violated the terms of their contract. Disney later countersued, and the case was settled in 1992. The verdict allowed Disney to continue using the MGM name and logo on films produced at the theme park facility and MGM to open a movie-themed theme park of its own, which it did in Las Vegas in 1993 (the park closed in 2000).
  On opening day in May 1989, Disney’s then-president, Michael Eisner, dedicated Disney-MGM Studios to Hollywood, which he called “not a place on a map, but a state of mind that exists wherever people dream and wonder and imagine.” By 2007, the sprawling theme park was hosting close to 10 million visitors in six themed areas, including the “Hollywood Boulevard” main entrance; the Great Movie Ride, a tribute to classic films such as Casablanca; and a motion-simulator ride based on the Star Wars movies.
  The change in the name of the park in January 2008 was clearly intended to reinforce the openly symbiotic relationship between the theme park and the movie capital of the world. As Meg Crofton, president of Walt Disney World, put it in the press release announcing the change: “The new name reflects how the park has grown from representing the golden age of movies to a celebration of the new entertainment that today’s Hollywood has to offer--in music, television, movies and theater.” In addition to the name change, the resort announced an ambitious roll-out of new and upcoming attractions, including interactive exhibits based on the mega-hit movie High School Musical and its sequels, the animated award-winner Toy Story from Disney and Pixar Entertainment, the big-screen version of The Chronicles of Narnia and the blockbuster TV reality show American Idol.
  
  Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into 2 main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, & maps of the way things should be, or values.
  
  More people speak Chinese worldwide than any other language, with English comin in a close 3rd after #2, Spanish. Un idioma nunca es suficiente (1 language is never enough).
  
  Most important words & phrases when learning a language top 10 (This list doesn't include the most important phrase of all: Where's the toilet?):
  

  1. Hello
  2. Thank you
  3. There is
  4. Already
  5. This/That
  6. Why?
  7. May I have
  8. What?
  9. I want
  10. Finished

  
  

  

  Parcel:
   If you are looking for the app to track shipments on iPhone or iPad - Parcel app is the best choice for you.
  With this application you can promptly access tracking information for 150 delivery services, including UPS, USPS, FedEx, TNT, LaserShip, Aramex, OnTrac, China Post, SingPost, vPost and many other postal services. Full list of supported couriers is available at: http://parcelapp.net/#services
  Tracking data is collected on our server, so you will get it right to your device with a click of a button. You don't even need to enter the tracking number, barcode scanning is available on iPhone and iPad. With unique carrier automatic recognition function, adding new delivery is just a matter of seconds.
  You can also locate your delivery on the map or manage your deliveries using Web Access (web.parcelapp.net) - easy and simple.
  Push notifications provided by Parcel are more convenient than from any other app. They are being sent only from 8am to 10 pm according to your timezone, so you will not be bothered at night. (however, you can disable this option in the settings)
  If you want to use push notifications or track more than 3 shipments at the same time - you can purchase extended version right in this app for $1.99.
  ---
  Please note that not all delivery services are activated by default. You can activate required services in the Parcel settings.
  You can track up to 50 shipments in the extended version of Parcel.
  
  People with the rare Fregoli delusion believe that other people in their lives are actually a single person in different disguises. The disorder is named after the 18th century actor Leopoldo Fregoli, who could quickly change his appearance.
  
  Pesticides & wax are increasingly added to our produce. Fill your sink with water & wash your fruits & vegetables with baking soda. It's cheaper than a store-bought produce wash.
  
  Play solitaire on the floor of an elevator.