So You Think You Know Everything

This Post is just a quickie.
(no it's not what you think)

SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING?


"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.
(Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "MT".
(Are you doubting this?)

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
(Now, you KNOW you're going to try this out for accuracy, right?)

The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
(Yep, I knew you were going to "do" this one.)

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
(You're not doubting this, are you?)

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."
(Yes, admit it, you are going to say . A e I o u.)

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
(All you typists are going to test this out.)

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
(Some days that's about what my memory span is)

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

A snail can sleep for three years.
(I know some people that could do this, too.)

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.


Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.


Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for
Each gallon of diesel that it burns.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by
a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
(Good thing he did that.)

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls Froze completely solid.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Now you know everything!

Thanksgiving Day

I just came across this and thought it was quite funny.
A little late for the Thanksgiving Day Holiday but better
late than never.
I added the sentence at the bottom of the photo.

A very short but "sweet" post.

A Mixed Bag Of Stories

Just before I post Part 2, of "Brisbane, Where I Live" I thought I'd do this post of a mixed bag of different subjects. In Holtieshouse, Peter did a post called "Let's look at Australia, Part 2 he commented "Do not wear a Hawaiian shirt." and I replied "now then what's that about hawaiian shirts.
Why it was only Thursday I had arranged with the staff at work that Thursday was hawaiian shirt day (for no particular reason) and 85% of the staff showed up wearing something hawaiian.
I must admit I looked pretty good in my hawaiian shirt and sarong (now no smart arse cracks now)". Now just for that here's a photo taken at work that day.






Various bloggers seem to like to either put recipes or photos of food on their posts so why should I be any different. I've always been amused
why Americans call what we say prawns whereas they call them shrimps.
I always thought shrimps were just smaller versions of prawns, but no I was wrong. This week-end I brought myself some prawns and I then boiled some fried rice, added two boiled eggs and four chopped up
mushrooms, then just simmered until all were warm enough to eat.
Waal I took a photo of the prawns, which look very yummy, but not of the result. I hadn't thought of taking a photo of the end result, as I had only intended showing the prawns, thus making those who like prawns...drool!!!!

Shrimp or Prawn?
There is often confusion regarding the difference between a shrimp and a prawn. Physically they look very similar but there is one sure way to tell them apart. In shrimps or carideans the side plate of the second segment of the abdomen overlaps the segments in front and behind. Prawns, most of which belong to the family Penaeidae have all the abdominal side plates overlapping tile-like from the front. It would therefore make sense to call all members of the Penaeidae "prawns" and members of the Caridean "shrimps" and this is what most Australians do. King prawns and banana prawns are names understood in this continent for penaeids sold frozen at the markets. The tiny shrimps bought in cans or frozen are imported carideans. Confusion arises when we hear Americans refer to prawns as "shrimp".

Many blogs ago I did a post called "A Few More Owl Photos & Some Funnies".
When I first moved into this house about twelve months ago, one evening I
heard this scratching noise under the house. Armed with a torch I peered into
where the noise was coming from. What I saw made me rush back upstairs to
get my digital camera and here is what was making the noise.


















First there appeared a tail.................................. Then came part of the head.
















More of the body........................................................................ It's a possum.

One of the possum after climbing up the railing to get onto the roof and then to go into the trees near the house to look for food.

As it turned out there were two possums and they live inside the roof of
the house.They squeeze in between the inner and outer walls of the house
where they sleep during the day and come out at night to forage for food.
They is a lot of wild life in and around our city. One afternoon I arrived
home and getting out of the car I saw a object near the driveway. I went
upstairs and looked out of a window and there was a blue tongued lizard
sunning itself in the hot afternoon sun. It was about twelve inches long.
I grabbed my camera and here's the photo.

Covering the fence right down the side of the house is a hugh display of a
jasmine bush. At this time of the year, spring, all the flowers are in bloom
and the smell is very sweet and almost overpowering


















The view looking along the side of the fence and a close up the flowers.


Another flowering bush which has a huge amount of flowers is the azaleas.

My next door neighbour has a bush/tree that Peter and I are must familiar
with and that is the bougainvillea. A very pretty flowering tree but with lots
of very sharp thorns.

My final story for this post. Today is Pink Day for the Breast Cancer Awareness
Appeal and one is asked to wear something pink. Last Friday I e-mailed
everybody at work to make them aware of Monday (today 23rd October) and
to wear pink (they then all knew what was in store for them with what I would
be going to wear). So today quite a large number of the staff turned up wearing
something pink, be it a dress, blouse, shirt, tie or a pink ribbon. Some brought
morning tea and I asked if when having morning tea to leave a gold coin
(be it a one or two gold dollar coin). All in all we collected $60.00 and this
will be donated to help find a cure for breast cancer.
In Australia 11,500 women are diagnosed each year with Breast Cancer
and yearly unfortunately 2000 women pass away from this disease.

Now you can see either the short photo or the long photo taken today at work.




















Or just the photo with me and Suzie. I'm doing the Cleopatra role lying on the couch (desk) and saying "peel me a grape"
Whenever I've done this before I usually get the same response
"piss off" and today was no execption.

Spring Is Here

Waal, actually spring is now one month old, but nevertheless
this post is about roses. My mother's favourite flower was a
rose and I must off inherited her love of roses.

One of her favourite places was New Farm Park.

It is here that a huge number of roses have been planted and
so today I drove to the park to take and share with you these
photos. I took quite a number of photos so I am going
to include them all here. Be it as it may if you enjoy looking
at photos of roses you are in for a treat.
Unfortunately I do not know the names of the roses.

"There is nothing no more beautiful than a rose"

















Poem:



A Vision



Nothing is more beautiful than a rose,

Except the warmth that fills my heart,

When you're in my vision.


Blooming from within

No feeling could make me want to give so much of myself

If only for a smile.



Copyright by Stephen Roberts, Writer.

FJ Holden Vs Morris Mini Minor

I went and visited some friends (who I haven't seen for quite a while)
and they introduced me to their new dog, Polly and this reminded me
of a incident that happened many years ago.
I reminded Rosemary of a Mini Minor (which she called Polly) and I
was taking her down to the Gold Coast for her birthday.
We were going to have a meal then go see a live show.
I arrived at Rosemary's place about 4pm and we discussed which car
we were going to take. She wanted to take her Mini for a run

The Morris Mini Minor

and I suggested my FJ Holden. This was the first car I had ever owned.

The FJ Holden

As it turned out we decided on my car and it was a good thing we did.
It takes about an hour to drive down to the coast. Once at the coast I
decided to take the more picturesque route besides the Southport
beach front. There were a lot of cars parked along the beach side of the
road, when suddenly a young girl of 7 just ran out in front of my car.
I was only about 6 feet in front of her and I slammed on the brakes.
I knew there was no way I could stop in time, as she was just too close
to me. When the car hit her she was dead (I know a bad choice of words)
centre of the vehicle (which as it turned out was a good thing). She was
knocked straight down and I watched in horror as she disappeared under
the front of the car. I saw her emerge from the rear of the car through the
rear vision mirror as the car stopped. Fortunately the car behind me was
far enough back that they were able to stop in time.
Jumping out of the car we ran over to the girl who was covered in blood,
crying and going into shock. We reached her the same time as her mother
also ran to her side. The person in the car behind us was a off duty policeman
and he called the ambulance.
Now if we had taken the Mini it proberly would of been a different ending.
The Mini had a much lower ground clearence than the FJ Holden. The Mini
would of gone up and over the young girl and maybe crushed her. The FJ
had a much higher ground clearance and by chance striking her "dead"
centre she was knocked down and fell in a straight line. All the wheels missed
her. The height of the car was just enough that she could of had less damage
except for the lower sump box that hit her. In record time the ambulance
arrived and took her to hospital. While waiting for the ambulance the girl's
mother said "that she always did this, got out of the car and and ran between
parked cars to get to the other side....so maybe this would teach her a lesson."
At the time I thought this was a bit of a callous thing to say of your daughter.
The off duty policeman said that he saw the whole incident and that I was not
at fault as there was nothing I could do to avoid what happened. Thinking
what he said later I was glad he was a reliable witness as I later found out that
the girl's father was a fairly well known lawyer on the coast and if I had of
been at fault he would of been able to "throw the book at me."
We took names and phone number and after the ambulance left we drove to
the nearest hotel were I had a "stiff" drink to settle my nerves. That evening
I rang the mother and was told the blood was mainly superficial, she had a
broken arm and broken collar bone, but was resting comfortably and was
expected to make a full recovery.
We finally went and have a nice meal, saw the show and the next morning
there was a small piece in the local paper reporting the accident.
I rang the mother a couple of weeks later and was told the little girl was
mending well. It just goes to show that if we had decided not to take the
FJ Holden perhaps the ending could of turned out much more serious (mind
you not that this was not serious enough).
'Tis amazing what one word, in this case "Polly" can do to bring back
memories of a long forgotten incident.

A Quickie (Nah not what you think).

Can you guess which of the following are true or false


1. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking
you up in the morning.

2. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button.

3. A pack-a-day smoker will lose approximately 2 teeth
every 10 years.


4. People do not get sick from cold weather; it's from
being indoors a lot more.

5. When you sneeze, all bodily functions stop, even your
heart!

6. Only 7 per cent of the population are lefties.

7. Forty people are sent to the hospital for dog bites
every minute.


8. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear
until they are 2-6 years old.

9. The average person over 50 will have spent 5 years
waiting in lines.

10. The toothbrush was invented in 1498.

11. The average housefly lives for one month.

12. 40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.

13. A coat hanger is 44 inches long when straightened.

14. The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute.

15. Your feet are bigger in the afternoon than any
other time of day.

16. Most of us have eaten a spider in our sleep.

17. The REAL reason ostriches stick their head in the
sand is to search for water.

18. The only two animals that can see behind themselves
without turning their heads are the rabbit and the parrot.

19. John Travolta turned down the starring roles in
"An Officerand a Gentleman" and "Tootsie."

20. Michael Jackson owns the rights to the South Carolina
State anthem.

21. Most television commercials advertising milk, a
mixture of white paint and a little thinner is used in place
of the milk.

22. Prince Charles and Prince William NEVER travel on the
same airplane,just in case there is a crash.

23. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle built in 1903 used
a tomato can for a carburetor.

24. Most hospitals make money by selling the umbilical
cords cut from women who give birth. They are used in vein
transplant surgery.

25. Humphrey Bogart was related to Princess Diana.
They were 7th cousins.

26. If coloring weren't added to Coca-Cola, it would be
green.

ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE TRUE!

(Now go back and think about No. 16!)

Lookout a New Blogger

Waal my ole' mate Peter at Holtieshouse has been hassling (not really) me to
start my own blog, so here goes, altho' for my 1st post this is it. Not much to
start off with but as it's now late here and I have to go to work (yeah yeah I
know some will say "you don't call that work what you do"....but let me beat
them to the punch) tomorrow (not like some bloggers I could name) so this
is gonna be short and sweet.

I'm a bit of a joker so expect to see some funny stories and photos.
Here's a oldie but a goodie.

A friend of mine, after going to see Mel Gibson's movie,
The Passion of Christ, was inspired to take his family to
Israel to see the places where Jesus lived and died.

While on vacation his mother-in-law died. An undertaker
in Tel Aviv explained that they could ship the body home
to Brisbane at a cost of $10,000 or the mother-in-law
could be buried in Israel for $500 US.

The man said.. . "We'll ship her home."

The undertaker asked. . "Are you sure? That's an awfully
big expense and we can do a very nice burial here."

The man replied. . ." Look mate, 2000 years ago they buried
a guy here and three days later he rose from the dead ...

I just can't take that chance.