Kristy's Blog

Was driving to Copper Mountain yesterday and it was very icy on I-70. About a mile before the exit to Copper, I was about 5 car lengths behind this Toyota 4Runner in the passing lanes. Suddenly it starts fish-tailing, goes into the right lane in front of the car it was just trying to pass. I was thinking, oh crap, I’ll be involved in this accident of these cars. Then the car in the right lane barely misses the Toyota by a hair as the Toyota slid by it towards the snow bank.

Just when I thought the Toyota was going to merely crash into the side snow bank, it points right at the snow bank and launches over it. Good thing there wasn’t a ravine down there. It landed on its side. About 5 cars pulled off to help as I was reaching to dial 911. Everyone else on the highway slowed down to a crawl.

The year is 1909. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some statistics for the Year 1909 :

1. The average life expectancy was 47 years.
2. Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
3. Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
4. There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
5. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
6. The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
7. The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour.
8. The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year
9. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500
   per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical
   engineer about $5,000 per year.
10. More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .
11. Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
12. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as ‘substandard. ‘
13. Sugar cost four cents a pound.
14. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
15. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
16. Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
17. Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
18. The American flag had 45 stars.
19. The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!
20. Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn’t been invented yet.
21. There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
22. Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
23. Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, ‘Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind,regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health’
24. Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
25. There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE ! U.S.A. !

Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

I also just finished reading “Eat, Pray, Love” – which is a very good read, great ideas and a good story to go along with the ideas. Have you read this? You should.

Thanks are going well here. It’s funny, my sister has an unbelievable amount of rules to follow regarding her household that I apparently already should have known. It’s tough to not argue sometimes, but I just grin and do whatever she wants. It’s her house, after all.

We went skiing in ridiculous temperatures on Saturday, minus 5 degs and windy for a wind chill factor of -31 at the top of the mountain. Basically, you can only do one run, then you must go in for a beer to warm up. I’m going again on Tuesday, but it will be about 30 deg, which is definitely more acceptable.

Drove from Phoenix to my sister’s house in Denver yesteray, and it was anything but boring. Technology is a wonderful thing. Here’s all the things I did:

1. Continued rating every song on my iPod (2700) of them. You listen to them and rate them from 1-5. Easy, and it helps you to create playlists. “My Top Rated” playlist was getting a little old with only 467 songs. Most of my songs are unrated.
2. Did some thinking about my life and where I’m going. This is actually the perfect thing to do when you have a lot of time on your hands and you are kind of stuck not being able to walk, run, move or use your hands much. I made a mental list of improvements to help myself and other people around me.
3. One of my goals for the past month has been to stop hanging on to ridiculous anger towards people in my past who really don’t deserve it. I mean, it is not helping me and they are not even aware of it. I knew I would be over it when I would happily forgive someone with my whole heart. But this is a choice – and I decided to jump off the cliff and do it. It felt wonderful.

Clear out email via my phone. Yeah, I know it isn’t safe, but you have 12 hours and you don’t have to do anything too quickly.

4. Send text messages to my sister letting her know where I am. Yes, another unsafe activity.
5. Send text messages to other people and wish them Merry Christmas. I don’t believe in the Happy Holidays thing. I’m not even religious, and I love Christmas. To me, it’s not a religious holiday, as commercial as it is. I wouldn’t be offended if some one said Happy Hanuka so whatever.
6. Enjoy the scenery. Some nice stuff along with the boring stuff.

Here’s your chance:

http://www.sockandawe.com/

From Reuters:

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush has become the talk of Iraq, hailed by marchers as a national hero but blasted by the government as a barbarian. TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi remained in detention on Monday, accused by the Iraqi government of a “barbaric act.” He would be sent for trial on charges of insulting the Iraqi state, said the prime minister’s media adviser, Yasin Majeed.

Zaidi shouted “this is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog,” at Bush in a news conference he held with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki during a farewell visit to Baghdad on Sunday. The journalist then flung one shoe at Bush, forcing him to duck, followed by another, which sailed over Bush’s head and slammed into the wall behind him. Throwing shoes at someone is the worst possible insult in the Arab world.

Yahoo!! Immediately, it takes away any authority of the US. About time. And this cannot be a coincidence….

• It calls for U.S. forces to leave the streets of Iraq’s towns and villages by the middle of 2009. Dabbagh said U.S. forces would hand over their bases to Iraq during the course of 2009 and lose the authority to raid Iraqi homes without an order from an Iraqi judge and permission of the government.
• Iraq’s cabinet approved a pact on Sunday that will let U.S. troops stay in the country until 2011, setting a final date to end a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
• The draft would place the U.S. force in Iraq — which now numbers about 150,000 — under the authority of the Iraqi government for the first time, replacing a mandate enacted by the U.N. Security Council after the U.S. invasion.

I am happy!

No one disputes that carts harbor microbes. In a study released last year, University of Arizona researchers who sampled bacterial content on 60 grocery-store shopping carts in the Los Angeles area found that cart surfaces had exponentially more bacteria than what they had measured in about 100 public restrooms, from toilet seats to flush handles.

And a 2006 study of 442 infected infants in eight states by the Centers for Disease Control showed that riding in shopping carts next to meat was one of the biggest identified risk factors for Salmonella infection in infants, right below reptile exposure and consumption of partially cooked eggs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122636407171115805.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

The video is poor, but there ya go…

My sister’s diatribe is worth listening to…again, ignore my stupid laugh.