A blog I like to read:

Fantastic Spanking: Allow Me To Introduce Myself

These questions were found here:

http://wednesdayweird.blogspot.com/


1.) If you knew one of your close friends was cheating on their significant other, would you get involved? (EX: Tell their SO, try to talk to your friend about it, etc) Why or why not?

I would be interested, but would not take sides or pass information. Don't want to spoil the fun or do any damage.

2.) If your SO was cheating on you and one of your close friends knew, would you want them to tell you? Why or why not? Yes I would want to know, as I believe it highly unlikely;  anyway she shares information about her online male contacts with me, and has occasionally mentioned real life attractions too.


3.) Have you ever stuffed your bra or underwear to make the size of your breasts or penis seem larger? NO


4.) Would you sleep with a friend's significant other behind their back if it were guaranteed you'd never be caught? Maybe ...


5.) Do you think you are more intelligent than your significant other? Intellectually yes, but socially she is more intelligent


6.) Do you ever fantasize about cheating on your significant other? Are you ever tempted to really go through with it? Yes; and No 


7.) Have you ever had cyber sex, text sex or phone sex with someone other than your significant other during a relationship? Not in my present marriage; but in my last marriage, yes.


8.) Would you cheat on your significant other twice monthly for half a year to have all your debt permanently erased? No debts, sorry!


BONUS! Have you ever fantasized about having sex with any blogger friends? Would you be daring enough to reveal five of them? You want FIVE?? Not blogger friends, but others. No revealing though.

how to be happy

I came across this article from the Christian Science Monitor. I agree with most of what she says, only that I don't think "Expect less" is the answer, though "want less" certainly is.

"

Want less, spend less – wealth is relative to desire

It's when we are satisfied with what we have, that we become rich.

By Diane Cameron

from the December 3, 2008 edition

Guilderland, N.Y. - We are concerned about the economy. We worry about the stock market, investments, and retirement. We hesitate to open bank statements. We are told: It will get better. It will get worse. It will rebound.

How do we cope? We have to make do with less. Lots of articles offer advice: Eat at home. Take the bus. Rearrange, don't redecorate.

At the heart are these questions: What can you live without? Can we be happy with less? Can we do it when the American way seems to be distilled lately to all about believing that we need and deserve more?

What I keep thinking about is what it was like when I really did have less.

In my 20s I lived in Washington, D.C., and made $13,000. I had an apartment and a car. I packed my lunch and saved up to go out for dinner. Was I really as happy as I remember? Yes. Most of us probably were. The reason isn't complicated.

We wanted less.

I was proud to be paying rent. I wanted to drive instead of take the bus so making the car payment for my used 1971 VW Beetle was great. I bought clothes on sale or at consignment stores, and when friends moved they passed along furniture they didn't want.

But over time, through reading and traveling and meeting people, I learned about nicer cars and better clothes. I bought into the status symbol they stood for. I began to want a real couch and a newer car and I began to fantasize about someday buying a house. Later my hopes included owning a Subaru and – I laugh to remember this – I thought I'd have the perfect wardrobe when I could buy one (yeah, one) really good purse.

Today, four houses later and many closets filled with shoes and purses, I can feel deprived simply by thinking about making my car last a couple more years. Everything I have now is nicer than what I had at 25, but it's easy to feel poor. Why? Because I have seen – and imagined – better.

Wealth is relative to desire.

Every time we yearn for something we can't afford, we become poor – regardless of our resources. It's when we are satisfied with what we have, that we become rich. The hard part is understanding that and adjusting accordingly.

We know there are nicer things and we see people who have them. For this you can blame television and magazines.

Through them, we can see easily what others buy and own and wear. Every new thing whispers its promise of happiness then gradually slides into the background of everyday life. Then we notice that someone else has a different or nicer thing. And we suddenly need it, too. This isn't the same as ambition or reaching for a goal; it's more about tweaking how we think about what we want.

This is why many of us recall feeling better when we were younger. We felt as if we had enough because we hadn't yet begun to compare ourselves with others. We didn't expect that we should have a lot more. It's our expectations that trip us up. We substitute one material desire for another, convinced each time that the next whatever will make us happy. And we then seek out that happiness through spending money.

But what we need is less desire, not more money. There are two ways to make a man richer, writer-philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau reasoned: Give him more money or curb his desires.

The solution this year: Expect less and want less. Perhaps the way to sort a real desire from just wanting is to wait a few weeks and see if the want changes. Or maybe to listen carefully to the dialogue inside. Is the inner voice saying "I like this" ... or "They will be impressed"?

• Diane Cameron is a freelance writer living in Guilderland, N.Y."

Visual delights

Yesterday I was walking around in our lot, looking at the plants and whatever else was to be seen. I noticed the beautiful patterns made by the differently shaped trees of the many species we have. Over the roof of the house, against a grey, watery sky I could see the feathery leaves of one small tree and in front of it but not obscuring it were the round, regularly spaced leaves of a bauhinia. They made such a beautiful contrast in shape and shade of green, the bauhinia being a solid dark green and the other a much lighter shade. Visual delights are something I very much appreciate.

I went to the kitchen window, knocked on it and beckoned Rose to come and look too. We stood together, me behind her holding her gently, and gazed at this sight for a minute or two. Later she told me how much she enjoyed standing there with me holding her. It's unlike her to offer this kind of information and I was delighted to hear it.

dancing thanks

I made fried meatballs and fried egg with rice for supper, and cooked some green beans too. Claude helped, particularly with coating the meatballs ready for frying.

We sat down and ate with enthusiasm. After he had finished eating, Claude jumped up, and while doing a kind of rotating, jumping dance, said "Thank you for the very, VERY nice chicken-coated meatballs (jump, turn) and fried egg (jump, turn) and rice (jump, turn) and beans." He then disappeared back into the computer room.

He always thanks me for the meal but doesn't always do a dance to go with it.

Caring for others

"When the oxygen mask drops, put it on yourself first!" This advice for aircraft passengers applies to other situations, too. If I don't look after myself I cannot look after others properly.

The pond puzzle again

Well, the mystery is solved: it leaks (see previous post).

One morning last week we actually noticed that the water was lower than it had been a few hours before. But it doesn't leak all the time. A good heavy shower or a morning's steady small rain will replenish it, so we aren't going to do anything about it - yet.

Here's an interesting snippet. I haven't read the book and I had decided to stop reading books to acquire more knowledge and try and use the knowledge I actually have, such as it is. I might fall for this one, though.

Carol Ritberger, Ph.D., is a medical intuitive, radio host, and an innovative leader in the fields of personality typology and intuitive medicine. She is the author of Your Personality, Your Health, What Color is Your Personality?, LOVE...What's Personality Got to Do With It? and Managing People... What's Personality Got to Do With It?
As the result of a near-death experience, Carol can literally see the human aura to identify where there are energy blockages that prevent the body from functioning properly.

This book is the result of 25 years of using that ability to gain an understanding of why we become ill and learning how the impact of stress, emotions, and personality type have on the health and well-being of the physical body. Her education includes personality behavior psychology and behavioral medicine. She holds doctorates in religious psychology and in esoteric philosophy and hermetic science.

Learn more about Carol by visiting her website at ritberger.com. You can also listen to her every Friday 12:00pm - 1:00 pm PST on her Internet talk show. Just log on to HayHouseRadio.com.

A mystery

A weird thing happened the night before last. We have a small goldfish pond, 2 meters square with an average depth of about 0.5 meters - i.e. it holds about 2 cubic meters of water. When I went to feed the fish in the morning, the water level was about 8 inches below its normal level. At first, I though there must be a leak; but the level was not falling, so I discarded that idea.

Having thought about it, I think someone must have come in to our lot and taken a lot of water. Were they wanting the fish? We have so many, hundreds of small ones, I could not tell if any were missing. The two big ones we have were still there.
Problems:
1) the amount of water taken was about 2 x 2 x 8 / 39 cubic meters - about 0.82 cubic meters. This amount of water weighs 820 Kg. There must have been a lot of hard work removing 820 Kg of water in the middle of the night. They could have siphoned it out with less work, but they would not get many fish that way, if any.
2) What did they do with the water? The ground was wet with rain, we could not see any signs of excessive water nearby.
3) Why did our three dogs raise no alarm? They are normally good watch dogs and they were out there in the yard, free to roam about. My wife went to bed after 01:00 and I woke and got up at 03:15, so there were only two hours when there was no one awake that night to hear a disturbance.
4) Who would want so much water and what for? Anyone wanting water had only to draw it from the well a few yards away and easily accessible, there is no shortage of water here at this time. If they wanted the fish, what for?

My wife thinks it was not any human that did it. OK, what then?

The pond is now full again, we have had rain since then and a pipe from the gutter provides a lot of water during a shower.