WINDOW WASHER FALLS ASLEEP 20 STORIES UP?

Talk about no worries!

A window washer working on a downtown Nashville high-rise building apparently fell asleep on the job. The man was cleaning the glass on the 20th floor of the Fifth Third Bank building on Church Street Friday when several onlookers noticed he was not moving. No one could tell if he was sleeping or passed out because he was 20 stories high, but they could see that he wasn't moving.

Nashville Fire Chief Henry Booker said the worker was taken to Baptist Hospital to be checked for a rapid heartbeat. My heart would be a little racy too! I don't know how he could be so relaxed 20 stories high, that he would just decide to take a little nap. This last sentence is so blase (from an article in the Tennessean):

"It's unusual to fall asleep outside while on scaffolding that high up," Booker said."

Unusual?? I'd say it's a little more than unusual!
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Information from: The Tennessean

URBAN LEGEND? REAL CROCODILE CAUGHT IN BROOKLYN

Another New York legend (no not the dog again) is the alligator-in-the-sewer, which students trace to Feb. 10, 1935, when a group of teenagers discovered a 7-foot 'gator in a manhole in East Harlem. Hauled out with a rope, it tried feebly to open its jaws and was dispatched with snow shovels, according to a story in The New York Times.
From that incident apparently grew the widespread myth the city's sewers teemed with reptiles that had been bought as souvenir pets in Florida and were discarded when they became too big for their cages.

Looks like another crocodile turned up in New York City yesterday, far from its native habitat in the tropical Americas, and replenishing one of the city's most enduring urban legends. On Tuesday, police responding to a 911 call in Starrett City, a public housing complex in Brooklyn, found a two-foot caiman (crocodile) in a cardboard box, with a shoelace firmly tied around its jaw.

The police gathered up the crocodile and turned it over to Animal Care & Control. "The caiman was cold, and we had to warm it up," said Richard Gentles, director of administration for AC&C. But whoever left it in the box was concerned that nobody got hurt, he said. "It was pretty feisty. The shoestring was double-knotted for safety, like a running shoe."

The last time it happened was in June, 2001, when a small caiman was discovered in the Harlem Meer, a lake in the northeast corner of Central Park. After it eluded capture for five days, a self-described alligator expert flew in from a Florida game park to save the city. After some posturing, he used a canoe and a flashlight to retrieve the reptile in minutes.
(Courtesy AP News)

THE KEY TO HAPPINESS IS WHAT??

I read a couple articles over the weekend about "the key to happiness." The first one, "does money buy happiness?" An overwhelming YES!! Duh. Hmm, let's see, run down apartment or big house, junker car or let's say HUMMER? Can't afford doctor/no insurance? Get very sick. Able to see doc? Get better! For obvious, on the surface reasons, money can increase one's quality of life, therefore increasing happiness. This only applies to the average person, not someone who is chronically or clinically depressed.

Another article more along the lines of how to become happier, it is suggested that every night, think of three good things that happened that day and analyze why they occurred. This is supposed to increase one's overall happiness. Why I don't know. But it is claimed this is a proven method and in fact works. Me? I am not rich nor poor, don't do mental exercises before bedtime, but I am blessed, I am just happy for no good reason!

HEY MIKEY!

I have a soon-to-be-13-year-old son who is all boy. Michael likes to watch "Mythbusters" on the Discovery Channel, a TV program which investigates popular myths and legends and actually puts them to the test. Michael is a myth-buster himself. Our backyard is full things that have been tested, such as exploded soda cans and bottles, aerosol spray cans, paintballs, golfballs, basketballs, Coke-Cola and Pop Rock experiements Coke and Mentos experiments, chemical experients like mixing certain cleaning agents with dog poo and emptying out eggs and putting the chemical creation in the hollowed shell. Hey, let's see what happens to it when we leave it out in the hot So. California sun all day! Yay. It is sometimes scary, but more often fun, to have a son.

Remember "Mikey" on the Life Cereal commercials? An old rumor/legend says he died experimenting Coke and Pop Rocks. Not true. "Mikey" is still alive-Pop Rocks didn't kill Little Mikey (not my Michael), his real-life alter ego, John Gilchrist is still alive and working as an ad exec for a New York radio station.

FOR MY FRIENDS IN INDIA :)

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UN EVERYTHING!

Content-free from Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.

I just had to share this. I couldn't stop laughing.

For those without comedic tastes, the so-called experts at Wikipedia have an article about Free Content. “It's free!!! Like the clap!” ~ Oscar Wilde on Content-free encyclopedia.

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

BLACK FRIDAY

I definitely will be staying home today. I don't like mall shopping all that well even when it's not crowded, let alone ''Black Friday'', the day after Thanksgiving. It is thought to be the busiest retail shopping day of the year. Although Black Friday is typically the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of customer traffic (including full parking lots, massive lines, stores letting only a set amount of people in at a time, and people fighting over products) it is not typically the day with the highest sales volume. That is usually either Christmas Eve, the last Saturday before Christmas, or Christmas Eve.

COMMON THANKSGIVING BELIEFS

Contrary to popular belief, the pilgrims dressed in black and white clothing only on Sunday and other formal or solemn occasions, and large ornamental buckles didn't come into fashion until much later in the 1600s

Due to a poor harvest the next year the pilgrims never celebrated another Thanksgiving, and it remained an irregularly-observed holiday in America for more than two centuries.

The first time all the states in the U.S. celebrated Thanksgiving together was in 1777, but that was a one-time only affair prompted by the Revolutionary War. Abraham Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday celebrated on the last Thursday in November in 1863, and Franklin Roosevelt moved it to the fourth Thursday in November in 1939.

Do you have any Thanksgiving facts, trivia, legends or myths to share? Post it!

IN THANKSGIVING TRADITION

POPULAR TURKEY LEGENDS

Yesterday I was concerned about having frozen turkey for our feast today-but true to popular belief, thawing a completely rock solid frozen turkey in a sink full of water does the trick! I placed an 11 pound rock hard frozen turkey in a sink of cold water yesterday afternoon and in the fridge overnight and it is completely thawed and ready to go this morning.

For everything you ever wanted to know about turkey, check out butterball.com for some tips. If this is your first time working with turkey, check it out! I kid you not, that website has "Turkey Tools," a "Turkey Podcast, and a "Turkey Talkine" if you are ever in a panic.

THANKSGIVING SHOPPING

We all of the sudden had no plans for Thanksgiving this year. This means I get to shop, plan, prepare and cook a traditional feast in 24 hours. No problem. Afterall, Swanson's very first T.V. dinner (frozen dinner for the under 30 crowd) was turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and peas. Uh, yum. If you remove this meal from it's tray it will fit into a tablespoon.

We can accompany this meal with Jones Soda "Turkey, Mashed Potatoes & Gravy" flavored soda. No kidding. The only Thanksgiving flavor Jones Soda did not approve is Sweet Potato. Darn!

CURRENT EVENTS TODAY

My usual routine is to review my feeds, check out the headline news and breaking stories and check my favorite "what's new today" websites. Unfortunately, there was too much sadness today it seemed; women grieving over killed loved ones on the Gaza Strip; kids killed on school buses; the state of the union, even business and technology news was blah. That's ok, it can't always be upbeat and exciting like it was Saturday and Sunday; I found a lot of funny stuff, crazy pictures and the like. But, I switched my blog from the original verson to Beta over the weekend, and seemed to have lost all that groovy stuff. Nothing like starting fresh!

WHAT'S ALL THE BLOG ABOUT?

I am reading so much on blogs these days, I thought I'd give it a try. There are many reasons to blog. Blogging for dollars? Create a blog to share your life with family and friends? Blog as a way of creating a simple and free "website"? Some blogs are more "website-looking" than others. This one, on the Blogger platform, is not one of them. It is just a blog, at least from what I can see so far. Although Google does allow their Google Adsense ads here, since it is their platform, which is a fun way to make a couple bucks without really trying.

My groups and interests are in the news category. I love things that are new. Things that are odd-but-true. Human interest. Urban Legends. Current events. I have started a collection of such bookmarks at del.icio.us.com where the bookmarks look like search results pages rather than just a list of titles. You can share these bookmarks with other people in your community who have similar interests as you, and they don't have to surf to find them. There's alot of good stuff out there these days, including another good social bookmarking site technorati.com where you can bookmark all your favorite blogs in one place.

If you have any cool sites to share, feel free to post it!