Amazing Facts

Amazing Facts

If you want to spend some very interesting time, go to the website mentalfloss.com and click onto the Amazing Facts link. Some of the facts there you may already know, but I can guarantee you will come across others that will make you say, "Wow, I never knew that". Here are some examples of what you can discover:

• Swanson sold a whopping 55 million TV dinners in 1954, the first year it introduced them. At least one tray never got reheated; it's in the Smithsonian.
• Though the U.S. only makes up 5% of the world's population, we house nearly 25% of the world's prison population.
• Only 1% of all the readily accessible water on earth is drinkable.
• Ty Cobb was baseball's first millionaire.
• Artist Ellen Barbara Senger, who created the Little Miss Sunbeam bread mascot, also illustrated the Dick and Jane book series.
• The first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel wasn't a young male daredevil, but rather a 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor.
• Canada has more lakes than all other countries combined.
• An estimated 15% to 20% of people who receive gift cards never redeem them.
• Marie Curie's notebooks are still radioactive.
• The strings attached to boxes of animal crackers were originally placed there so that the container could be hung from the branches of a Christmas tree.
• The phrase "under god" in the pledge of allegiance has not always been in the pledge. It was put in during the Eisenhower administration.
• Invented in the 1940's in Tennessee, Mountain Dew was created to be mixed with whiskey. In fact, its bottles were first designed to look like moonshine jugs and the original Mountain Dew labels featured outhouses, stills and hay-chewing yokels.
• When he died in 1977, Elvis Presley had $1,055,173.69 in a non-interest-bearing checking account.

copyright 2009-2010 by Lane A Geyer

photo by deb

Interesting Websites

My major endeavour these days is writing, which means I spend many hours on the computer. A lot of that time is connected to the Web for researching topics, updating this blog, generating ideas and reading many sites by other full-time RVers to garner feedback on their experiences with RV parks and road conditions throughout the country.

Sometimes, though, I do more play than work online checking out fun, interesting and outright goofy websites. Here are a few worth visiting:

1. refdesk.com - Billed as the Fact Checker for the Internet, this site is the mother lode for any information you might need from links to small town and big city newspaper worldwide, current gas and oil prices, daily diversions, pictures, quotes, random facts and much more. If you want an eye-opening (and outright scary) experience, click on the link from this site to U.S. Debt Clock:Real Time. It's one thing to hear the numbers about our national debt, federal budgets, consumer debt and other economic factors bantered around on the news. It's a whole different thing to see these numbers accumulate by hundreds of thousands of dollars per second right before your eyes.
2. thinkexist.com - This is a site where you could easily end up spending many hours. With more than 300,000 quotes by over 20,000 authors, you can find just the right words for any occasion or subject.
   
3. peopleofwalmart.com - Warning: This sites will make you laugh, moan, shake your head in disbelief and sometimes trigger spontaneous vomit reflexes. These are candid photos of the oddballs who hang out at Walmarts throughout the country. As I've written many times before, we spend a lot of time at Walmarts not only for the prices, but also because they are good to RVers. After seeing a photo on this site of a man we saw at the Clinton, TN store, I'm beginning to wonder if we're spending too much time among these oddballs.
   
4. mentalfloss.com - This is "Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix". Here you can find all kinds of interesting things ranging from people who were born on the same day as you to trivia to amazing facts and lunchtime diversions. Another site where you could end up spending way too many hours.
   
5. icanhascheezburger.com - This is the site for anyone who loves cute and humorous pictures of cats and dogs. The photos are submitted, and captioned, by real visitors. But beyond the cute animals, this site also has links to other interesting topics including the make-your-stomach-hurt-laughing-so-hard one titled Engrish.
   
6. postsecret.blogspot.com - This is one for the voyeur in all of us. Postsecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. Interesting in ways that range from funny to sad.
   
7. cakewrecks.com - This is the site of pictures "When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong". I can't even begin to try and explain this one. Just check it out.
   
8. recipecurio.com - This site is "Preserving Recipes & Cookbooks From The Past Century". Here you will find charming handwritten recipes, old clippings, vintage recipe booklets & promo pieces submitted by people from all over the country. They are scanned onto the site in all of their tattered, stained and yellowed glory. You'll find both good eats and fond memories reading through these pages.

Have fun!

copyright 2009-2010 by Lane A Geyer

photo by Deb

Where Is Spring??

Where Is Spring??

Will this Winter never end?!?!?!??

Once again, we awoke this morning to a heavy blanket of snow here at the Flower Mill RV Park in Taylors, SC. It began falling around 3 p.m. yesterday and continued throughout most of the night. Thankfully, there was no ice with this storm; just large, fluffy flakes that quickly shut down every activity in the area. Although it accumulated to only around three inches in depth, people here at not experienced in driving on snowy roads. It has been very unusual to have two major snow storms in this part of the country in one year. Hopefully, it is the last one.

Too many days have passed since my last post due to fighting the weather and helping my Mom after another emergency trip to the hospital. She is once again resting at home, but for almost two weeks Deb and I were busy with trips to the hospital and then helping Mom at her house while Dad was away on business. During that time we were out in weather that included snow, sleet, ice, torrential rains, flash floods and more snow. It's been nice to have a few days of doing nothing except staying at home here in the RV and getting some rest.

I'm sure I am expressing the sentiments of many people by saying that Spring can't come soon enough this year! Oh how nice it will be to once again feel a warm sun, see the first signs of new leaves and flowers, breath deeply the aromas of newly awakened soil and finally turn off the damned heaters. It's past time for some extended outdoor activities. I fully concur with Robin Williams who said, "Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let' party!""

copyright 2009-2010 Lane A Geyer

photos by Deb & Lane