angelm's Blog

The following is a list of the 10 worst gifts collected at the Sam Goody Bad-Gift Boycott. Let them serve as a warning to bad-gift givers everywhere:

1. Clown Art � in the form of prints, statues, T-shirts and towels. Who knows, clown art might make resurgence in the years to come, but for now, resist the urge to purchase anything clown-related. Whether it's a happy clown or a sad clown, the receiver of your gift will resemble the latter.

2. Homemade Sweaters � Remind yourself that the person who knitted the garment at least thought enough of you to take the time to create it, regardless of how itchy and ill-fitting it may be.

3. Puzzles � A good puzzle can be a great way to get the family together. However, be wary of giving a puzzle to anyone between the ages of 15 to 25. This age group sees the concept of working on a puzzle akin to watching grass grow.

4. Tube Socks � Many stores carry them in packages of three at prices thrifty holiday shoppers can't refuse. Retro is in, but not THAT in.

5. Ties � Ugly ties, along with the fruitcake, have become a bad gift clich�. Yet, both items arrived in droves at last year's Bad-Gift Boycott. Ladies, trust us, go easy on the ties this year.

6. Exercise Videos/Diet Books � Even if the package is adorned with multiple bows, it is impossible to give a gift of this ilk without offending the receiver. A gift/hint of this nature is as subtle as a battering ram.

7. Undergarments � Women typically choose boxer shorts with overly cute designs that men can't wear to the gym. Men typically choose something too risqu� -- your average woman wouldn't wear them in a million years. Men, trust us, go easy on the lingerie.

8. Padded Toilet Seat � What were you thinking?

9. Sausage Sample Pack � Sausage is best in small quantities. Very few people really, truly have a need for 10 different kinds of sausage at any one time.

10. Drug Store Perfumes � It's cute if a very young boy buys it as his first gift for Mom, other than that, cheap perfume is wrong on too many levels to actually list.

Ten signs you're not getting a christmas bonus

10. Co-workers refer to you as "the ghost of unemployment future"
9. The last time you saw your boss was when he testified against you at the embezzlement trial

8. On your door, you find a lovely wreath of pink slips

7. What you call "my new office," everybody else calls "the supply closet"

6. Boss's Christmas card says, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out"

5. You keep getting memos reminding you that employees are required to wear pants

4. When your boss came over for Thanksgiving, he was crushed under an avalanche of stolen office supplies

3. Whenever you ask for a raise, a guy shows up at your house and breaks your jaw

2. In your most recent performance evaluation, the word "terrible" appeared 78 times

1. You're the starting quarterback for the New York Jets

In Greek, St. Nicholas is known as Hagios Nikolaos, Bishop of Myra (in the present day Turkey),
St Nicholas reportedly died about 350 AD.

Today, this mythical character is still alive and well and is known all over the world as: Nicholas of Myra, Santa Claus or "Santa" in America.

His fame spread rapidly during the Middle Ages and thousands of churches are dedicated to him.

He has been the patron saint of Russia, Moscow, Greece, children, sailors, prisoners, bakers, pawnbrokers, shopkeepers and wolves.

His gift-giving role in Christmas rites probably follows from his fame as the friend of children. The story also tells that he used to give anonymous donations of gold coins to persons in need. His cult spread in Europe and Christmas presents were distributed on December 6th when the celebration of St. Nicholas took place.

In many countries this day is still the day of Christmas gift-giving, although there is a mounting pressure everywhere to conform to the custom of 24th/25th December. The relics of St.Nicholas are in the basilica of St. Nicola, in Bari, Italy (they were stolen from Myra in 1087 AD). For this reason he is sometimes known as St.Nicholas of Bari.

Christmas Tree History
The use of evergreen trees to celebrate the winter season occurred before the birth of Christ.
The first decorated Christmas was in Riga, Latvia in 1510.
The first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531.
Nineteenth century Americans cut their trees in nearby forests.
Christmas trees have been sold commercially in the United states since about 1850. Until fairly recently, all Christmas trees came from the forest.
The first Christmas tree retail lot in the United States was started in 1851 in New York by Mark Carr.
In 1900, large stores started to erect big illuminated Christmas trees

INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup shortening
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup molasses
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup raisins (optional)

1 cup confectioners' sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a 9x 13 inch baking dish.
In a medium bowl, cream the white sugar and shortening together. Stir in the molasses and honey. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves; add to the creamed mixture and mix until well blended. Finally, stir in the raisins.
Press the batter evenly into the prepared baking pan. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, bars should turn golden brown. Top will appear smooth and dry to the touch.
Meanwhile ... make the icing. In a smaller bowl, stir the confectioners' sugar together with the milk and vanilla. Drizzle over the spice bars while they are still warm. Allow cookies to cool before cutting.

The one that didn't get away yields long-lost ring
... BUNA, Texas � The one that didn't get away held an unlikely surprise for a Texas man. The blue-stoned class ring of Joe Richardson, engraved with his name, turned up inside an 8-pound bass 21 years after he lost it while fishing on Lake Sam Rayburn.

"My first reaction was � you gotta be kidding," he said Wednesday.

The fisherman who discovered the tarnished ring inside his catch contacted Richardson on Nov. 28 in Buna, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, after tracking him down with help from the Internet.

His fisherman hero asked to remain anonymous.

Richardson, 41, said he lost the ring about two weeks after his 1987 graduation from Universal Technical Institute in Houston. His mom had bought it for about $200 and wasn't pleased when it went missing.

As a mechanic, Richardson said he doesn't wear jewelry so he tucked the undamaged ring away.

"I have not cleaned it," he said. "I told my wife I don't want to clean it."

___

Man uses candy cane to subdue attacker with knife
    SACRAMENTO, Calif. � A man using a candy cane lawn ornament fended off a knife-wielding neighbor who had been attacking holiday guests at a Sacramento home. Police spokesman Sgt. Norm Leong said the man used the two-foot-tall plastic ornament to subdue the attacker until officers arrived.

He said the 49-year-old suspect became intoxicated, went over to a neighbor's home on Thanksgiving and began waving a kitchen knife at people gathered on the lawn.

He cut several peoples' clothing before one of them decided to fight back.

Police said the man with the knife was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. The guest who took up the candy cane was not arrested because police determined he acted in self-defense.

Don't let the boogie man get ya!!

Woman says she was shot in the leg by her stove

SEKIU, Wash. - A woman said she was shot in the leg by her stove. Cory Davis told the Peninsula Daily News she had just stoked her cast-iron heating stove Sunday when she heard a loud bang and was struck in her left calf.

Davis said a case of shotgun shells spilled about a month ago at her home and one must have landed in the newspapers she used to light the stove.

She removed a metal fragment herself and was treated Monday at Forks Community Hospital.

Spermicide Coke, stale chips research wins Ig Nobels

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A researcher who figured out that Coke explodes sperm and scientists who discovered that people will happily eat stale chips if they crunch loudly enough won alternative "Ig Nobel" prizes Thursday.

Other winners included physicists who found out that anything that can tangle, will tangle and a team of biologists who ascertained that dog fleas jump farther than cat fleas.

The Ig Nobels honor real research, but are meant as a funny alternative to next week's deadly serious Nobel prizes for medicine, chemistry, physics, economics, literature and peace.

Awarded by the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research, a scientific humor magazine, the prizes are based on published research, some intended to be humorous but often not. Usually the "honored" researchers go along with the joke.

Deborah Anderson of Boston University Medical Center and colleagues were awarded the chemistry prize for a 1985 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found Coca-Cola kills sperm.

She said she was serious in testing the soft drink because women were using it in a douche as a contraceptive and, later, to try to protect themselves from the AIDS virus.

"It definitely wouldn't work as a contraceptive because sperm swims so fast," Anderson said. But Coke made with sugar quickly kills sperm, she said, probably because sperm soak it up. "The sperm just kind of explode," she said in a telephone interview.

It kills the AIDS virus too, she said.

The Ig Nobel committee made up a "nutrition prize" to go to Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Britain's Oxford University, who tricked people into thinking they were eating fresh potato chips by playing them loud, crunching sounds when they bit one.

The biology prize goes to a French team that found dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas, while the medicine prize was awarded to a team at Duke University in North Carolina who showed that high-priced placebos work better than cheap fake medicine.

Dorian Raymer of the Scripps Institution in San Diego and a colleague won the physics prize for demonstrating mathematically why hair or a ball of string will inevitably tangle itself in knots.

The peace prize was given to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology for adopting the legal principle that plants have moral standing and dignity. There is a website explaining this: http://www.ekah.admin.ch/en/topics/dignity-of-creation/index.html.

A team at The University of Sao Paulo in Brazil won a special archaeology prize for showing how an armadillo can mess up an archaeological dig.

The economics prize went to researchers at the University of New Mexico who learned that a professional lap dancer earns bigger tips when she is most fertile, while David Sims of Cass Business School in London won the literature prize "for his lovingly written study 'You <snip>: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations'," the committee said.

Past winners include the creator of the plastic pink flamingo, a researcher who recorded a mallard duck sodomizing a dead drake and a doctor who cured hiccups by applying digital rectal massage.

Man shoots himself in arm after being denied sex

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Authorities say a Fort Myers man shot himself in the arm after his girlfriend refused to have sex with him. The Lee County Sheriff's Office reported that a 29-year-old man and his girlfriend returned home from a bar early Wednesday morning.

The girlfriend told deputies that her boyfriend wanted to get intimate, but she just wanted to go to sleep. When she refused, he became irate.

Authorities said the girlfriend went to a spare bedroom, and several minutes later she heard two gunshots. She told deputies her boyfriend came into her room and threatened her. He then stumbled into the kitchen before falling into the oven, knocking himself unconscious.

The man was treated for two gunshot wounds to the arm and was taken to jail.

The man was charged with threatening violence and firing a weapon in an occupied dwelling. He was being held on $100,000 bail.

Life's A Gift

Life�s a gift for you to send
Life�s a gift for god to end
Life�s a gift now you�re with me
Life�s a gift for all to see
Life�s a gift when love is true
Life�s a gift when times look blue
Life�s a gift with the one you trust
Life�s a gift even if UN just
Life�s a gift a ray of sun
Life�s a gift though your heads held to a gun
Life�s a gift when its handed on a tray
Life�s a gift even though it�s always on display
Life�s a gift it�s hard to understand how
Life�s a gift so take advantage of it now

SharonAnn Dawson

Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time,
for that is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin

Step-dad has throat cancer,he is having some surgery today.He only found out a couple of weeks ago.I would appreciate any prayers for him.Thank you LP friends!!God bless!!

Hospital tells grandfather, 71, that he's pregnant

PORTLAND, Ore. - A patient treated for agonizing abdominal pain received this surprising news in the hospital's paperwork: "Based on your visit today, we know you are pregnant." Surprising indeed for 71-year-old John Grady Pippen.

The staff at Curry General Hospital in Gold Beach gave the retired mechanic and logger the ridiculously happy news this month, along with some pain pills.

Hospital administrator William McMillan says an errant keystroke caused the hospital's computer to spit out the wrong discharge instructions for the grandfather.