Saw the following on Google+.

It inspires me to make a collage of photos for my own job at a nuclear plant!  Perhaps it will inspire you, but I hope you get a chuckle in any event.

Prokob built and installed the wood-fired stove himself and got an operating permit from the Swiss technical inspection authority.

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/09/10363589-zany-swiss-man-installs-wood-burning-stove-in-car

Stuff you hear about, but never wanted to do with your own microwave.

There IS a short ad in the middle, but the video makes up for it.

My ministry partner, Donna, is marking her 34th wedding anniversary today. 

Her marriage hasn't always been easy, but they still hang in there. She bought this dress from Penny's for the occasion:

She has a slender fame, so this looks very nice on her.

Her husband's comment:

"When did you decide you can wear green?"

Nice. Real nice.

I just came across an interesting article that lists the most popular names for pets in 2011. Turns out "Bella" has the top spot (pun intended) for both dogs and cats.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bella-becomes-most-popular-name-for-both-dogs-and-cats-2012-01-04

(Footloose and Toast just chill'n) Linked photo - not our Boo dog.

What I found more interesting was this comment in the article:

The tendency toward selecting human names for pets appears to continue with nearly every name on the top 10 dog names list doubling as a popular name for people. Of the nearly half a million pets insured by VPI, only 13 were named "Fido," and just 17 came running to the name "Spot," which indicates a decrease in the popularity of traditional dog names.

I think it's fair to say that most pet-owners love them as though they were family members. It's often as emotionally hard or harder when a beloved pet dies as when a beloved human dies. 

What I'm curious about is how many people think of pets AS human. I've known quite a few people who do. 

"She's my baby."

"They ARE my children."

Bumper sticker with "Pets are People, Too!"

As our society becomes less face-to-face (touch) connected and more gadget-to-gadget e-connected, I wonder if the trend to give pets "people" names is a sign that they are socially replacing face-to-face friendships.

How did you decide on the name for your favorite pet?

A landfill was my lighthouse to safety. It really was.

SaintVI and I took the dog (aka “Boo the Biting Travel-Bug” or BBTB) with us on a geocaching expedition this afternoon. The weather was unseasonably mild for a Michigan January and studying about how to keep a nuclear reactor safe when its supporting water pumps stop working didn't interest me. I imagine doctors-in-training also get bored about reading when our blood pump stops working. I wonder if they geocache, too?

First three finds were simple enough to get to. Only the bottoms of my shoes were dirty, which is a sign of successful geocaching for me. When other parts of my body get dirty or are otherwise assailed by nature, my geo-joy meter slips down a bit. Geo-joy is that experience geocachers have when they are on the hunt for a hidden cache and suddenly discover it. Bums have a similar experience when they discover a can worth a dime deposit or a partially full bottle of liquor hidden under a bush.

The last two were not far from a landfill. In Michigan, landfills are also known as hills. In Kansas, they would be known as mountains. For me, it was a lighthouse. Here is why:

A good rule of thumb when geocaching is to “stay on the trail.” It's actually a good rule of thumb for most adventures in the woods if you don't like to be assailed by nature. We stayed on the trail all the way to the edge of a 30 foot ravine. Then the GPS pointed across the ravine and said “Go that way – it's easy.” GPS's, for those who aren't familiar with them think everything is easy. They see the world from 22,000 miles high. When you fly in an airplane, all the roads and streets look easy. When you're in the traffic jam or going the wrong way on a one-way street, it's not so easy.

Rule of thumb: Don't place your full trust in anything 22,000 miles away.

Rather than back-track to see if the ravine could be crossed, I suggested that SaintVI and BBTB stay top the ravine and I would cross it. It's only 0.1 miles. That's 528 feet. How hard could that be?

Nature laughed at me. Then it assailed me. As thematic background percussion music, gunshots rang out repeatedly in the distance.

First effort was negotiating down the ravine. Wet leaves are slippery. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If someone says otherwise, you tell them this: Wet leaves are like brown ice.

I made it to the bottom of the ravine without falling. In fact, I didn't fall at all. I used a long stick to help me down. Rule of thumb: Carry a long stick when walking on brown ice. I didn't fall, but nature was quick to muddy well beyond the bottoms of my shoes. It would've preferred to muddy my bottom and head, but it had to settle for my shoe sides since I had my long stick.

I crossed the bottom of the ravine and headed up the other side. Surely, I'd gone at least 200 feet, but the GPS now said “You're only 0.14 miles away – it's easy!” Did I mention to not trust something 22,000 miles away? What does it know about 0.14 miles??

Up the other side I went. It was either forward or back and my shoes were already muddy, so forward I went. At the top of the other side, there was no trail. I was in the boonies. Boonies are places off the trail where nature can assail at will. Unable to comply with the rule of thumb of staying on the trail, I made my way toward the cache through thorns and saplings and brown ice. All the while, the GPS kept saying “Gee, I though it was closer, but keep going, you're getting warmer!”

At last I spotted the long green tube. My geo-joy meter always goes higher when I spy a large container. I opened it, signed the soggy paper, took away a Puss-in-Boots McDonald's toy and headed victoriously back through nature and to the ravine. (McDonald's toys are frequently interred in geo-caches after their battery dies. Geo-cachers have a special spiral-bound book with inspirational words that are spoken over them upon interment. The ceremony usually ends with this line: “That's one less thing I have to carry around.”)

When I reached the ravine, I called out to Saint Vi.

Me: Hello!

She: Hello!

Me: I found it!
She: What about the other one?

Me:

She: It wasn't far from the one you found.

Me: Oh.

Nature laughed at me.

Back through the stickers and sapling and brown ice I trod until I reached the marsh. It wasn't really marsh. It was long grass saturated in thawed ice-water. Not too hard to walk across, as deer had made trails. They obey the trails rule of thumb. Still, I had to watch my step. One wrong one and nature would soggy my socks with ice water.

Down another ravine I went and found the other geocache. It was a large tube. My geo-joy meter rose, which was good, as it was quite low at this point. Had I known at the time it was my official 200^th “Find,” my geo-joy meter might have gone higher. Whenever geocachers find enough caches to equal round 100's, their geo-joy meters go very high. Some go so high that they take pictures of themselves with the number in front of them. It's kind of like a famous football player with a famous number on their jersey – but different.

Nature had made several swat marks of mud and thistles upon me as I stood in the woods pondering my return. Then I saw the landfill. It was tall like a lighthouse, and offered promise of not just a trail, but a paved road that cars use. Paved roads peg my geo-joy meter. I went that way.

Though the deer trails, and marsh, and stickers and thistles, and saplings and brown ice I went, heading for the landfill. SaintVI was heading for the van with BBTB. She was on a trail. Wise woman, she.

Just past a wall of overgrown stickers and thistles, I saw mowed green grass. Rapture! I was very close now. And then I saw a metal silhouette of a man with a rifle. Then I saw I was downrange of a fake deer target. And I remembered the thematic gunshots.

Nature laughed at me, again. Rather than risk being shot, I plowed through really thick piles of stickers and thistles until I found an opening safe enough to not be shot. I followed the landfill and arrived at the paved road. Hooray! I tried to call SaintVI, but there was no phone reception. 22,000 mile is a tricky thing for voice communication. Apparently it works fine for text messaging. I wrote this:

Drive back to the landfill.

She did. And now I'm here. And now I have 200 geocaches to my credit. And now I have a dead Puss-in-Boots Happy Meal toy to show for it.

My geo-joy is high.

Bluebeard - Kurt Vonnegut - Chap 9

I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the
widow Berman and Paul Slanzinger were obviously born to tell stories
better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing
and dance or explain the starts in the sky or do magic tricks or be
great leaders or athletes, and so on.

I think that could could go back to the time when people had to live
in small groups of relatives - maybe fifty or a hundred at the most.
And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep
the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all
have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and
somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and
somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.

That's what I think. And of course, a scheme like that doesn't make
sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made
worthless by the printing press and radio and television and
satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have
been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to
go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him
or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion
performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted
person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner
of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the
coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for
him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist."

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next
morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night."

Be it resolved that I, Bookmark 61, intend to strive to keep the following resolutions for the full calendar year of 2012.

1. Avoid dressing in any sort of vampire manner, so as to not attract Twilight moms.

2. Keep a zillion-giga-pixel video camera fully charged in my truck to record any sudden sightings of a UFO, ghost, Bigfoot, Elvis, or any viable Republican presidential candidate.

3. Stop wearing my "Where's Waldo" costume when trying to enter the security gate at the nuclear plant.

4. Let go of the idea that every long tunnel leads back in time. Start looking for a blue Police Box, instead.

5. Stop saying "Beam me up, Scotty!" during meetings with my supervisor.

6. Make a viable escape plan to a defensible tropical island in the event of pandemic plague or related zombie infestation.

7. Quit believing that small dogs and pretty young women don't have ulterior motives when they're being nice to me.

8. Stop saying "Oops!" when I'm behind a Reactor Control Panel.

9. Quit keeping conspiracy theory facts in my safety deposit box - the government will find them. Start leaving them in geocaches.

10.  Live to see 12/22/2012 and laugh! (But buy a book on Mayan culture, just in case.)

Came across these pictures today.

They resonate in my spirit in ways words don't well express.

For those who may not know, I have a passing interest in the paranormal, specifically ghosts and UFOs. The strong science based books and specials intrigue me, skeptics and proponents alike. The tawdry and sensationalist books and specials entertain me.

So, for Christmas I received a copy of The Ancient Alien Question by Coppens. I thought it would present some sort of "unified Ancient Alien theory," since so much has been presented on the History Channel documentary: Ancient Aliens.

It started out typically enough - stones and structures more massive than known technology at the time appears to have been able to construct, curious devices like an ancient battery (used for electroplating) and the Antikythera Mechanism (solar system tracking device), and so on. 

Before long it became a full side-show of theories and pseudo-science. A few of my favorites:

• Paleovisitology - a term used to describe "the science" of looking for archaeological evidence of alien visits. 
• Panspermia - the theory that earth, and other habitable planets are seeded by microscopic organisms that are spewed through space from who knows where - ancient gods, I suppose. (Don't make me describe the image that comes to mind.)
• Flu epidemics are a result of similar alien microbes that are showered upon earth, particularly when comets pass.
• Connecting with beings from other dimensions can be achieved through careful use of hallucinogenic mushrooms. (No kidding!) 
• And of course - the end of the world by decree of the Mayan Calendar on Dec 21, 2012.

So now I know that aliens were the gods that our ancient ancestors worshiped and who gave them new technologies and did unspeakable things in space to inseminate our planet only to bring it to an end within the next year. 

I guess that means we won't need to shop early for next Christmas!