6 Things We Learned This Week 14 of 2011 (charities, animals, Chinese, exercise, Autism, exercise)

Comment For Charity

I am so encouraged to see another blogger, Beth Ann at It's Just Life, start donating to charity for comments left on her blog too! This month being Parkinson's Awareness month, she will be donating 50 cents to The National Parkinson’s Foundation for each legitimate comment on her blog. I am starting a blog roll in my right sidebar for blogs I discover that are doing this. Wouldn't it be great if more would join in? I you decide to do this, please let me know! I'd love to add your blog to the list and comment regularly.

Smart Birds

Over at Everyday Adventurer I learned that that crows are now believed by many scientists to possibly be the second most intelligent creatures on the planet? They're only behind humans. That's right. Not even chimps or dolphins are as intelligent as these birds. Ratty even got a great picture of a crow flying which is hard to do!

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4 Things I Learned This Week-Part 29

Moose

At our SonRock Camp Vacation Bible School at Parma Heights Baptist Church this week, I have learned some interesting facts about moose:
* They like to eat twigs.
* They can run up to 35 mph
* They are fiercely protective of their young.
* They grow new antlers every summer.
* They can kick in all directions.
* They can swim up to 6 mph and ten miles without stopping.

Dogs as Shark Bait

When reading Just a Thought, I learned that on an island off Africa, in order to help with the overpopulation of dogs and cats they are feeding them to sharks! This horrified me to think of this. The article about it is at National Geographic News.

Social Media Sites

In the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER I read that the government of China has blocked out popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Glad I don't live in China.

EntreCard Toolbar gone!

After updating my Firefox browser to 3.5 I found out that the Entrecard Toolbar is not compatible with it so now I lost it. It takes much longer to do EC drops now and I miss not having the advertising button, and seeing the number of drops I did all on the toolbar. Also miss not being able to drop on my favorites quickly anymore. If I want to drop on my favorites now, I have to do it through my Entrecard page and clicking on them takes me to the profile and not the site so that's two clicks now to get there--forget that! I sure hope they will fix this somehow to work with the updated version of Firefox. I contacted Firefox through their support and was told it's an Entrecard issue. Hmpf!

Keep The Ants Away With A Moat and A Use For That Good China

When I got home from work Friday I was greeted by a slew of ants crawling in my cats' food dish and all over the place mat under it. This was very distressing to me. I wish I could have gotten a picture of all those ants that I came home to, but unfortunately, my digital camera battery died that morning when I tried taking a picture of Manny lying in my wardrobe closet. I grabbed up the dish and squished those little tiny ants as they crawled around in the dish. Every time I stirred it up, I saw some more!!! By the time I got them all and went back to the place mat, most of them were gone but I did get some.

I knew I couldn't spray anything like RAID around in the house because it would hurt my cats. I decided to go to my friends on the Internet through Twitter but didn't get any help there. Then I remembered about http://answers.yahoo.com. You can search for a question and if someone has asked it before, chances are there's several answers to it. Sure enough, other people had the same problem and I found a great answer byKatslookup--not suspended yet.

She said to spray Home Defense around the OUTSIDE of the house, windows, doors, down spouts but also place the bowl inside a larger dish filled with water so there is a moat around the cat's food bowl. Ants can't swim so won't be able to get to it! She said after they realize the food source is no longer available, they will leave.

So, I went looking for a slightly bigger bowl I could use and guess where I found one. In the basement storage closet from among some of the good China that belonged to my parents which we never use. Well, I dug out one of the soup bowls and after killing the spider that was in it and cleaning it up, it worked perfectly. The cats food dish is a good China bowl that belonged to Gerard's parents. (Nothing but the best for our cats!) Anyhow, it works! There have been no ants crawling in the food since, just some on the mat around the bowl now and then which I promptly squish with my fingers.

Can you guess where we went first thing Saturday morning? At 8 a.m. we went up to RiteAid for the RAID. Then Gerard went to the gym and library while I learned football drills for coaching sports camp, then we went hunting for a new battery for my digital camera, finally finding one at Best Buy after trying Radio Shack and OfficeMax with no success. Whew, what a relief! What would I do without my camera to take pictures for my blog posts? We ate lunch at Arby's and then played two sets of tennis at Elmwood Park. After all that, I was just too tired to do it so waited until yesterday to spray.

Have you ever used Yahoo Answers find a solution to a problem? You might want to give it a try. What do you use your good China for?

(For Spunky Doodle's post about this, click here.

Kids From East Cleveland Play In China

Below is a short film clip of Shaw High School's Band performance in China. What a marvelous experience for these kids from East Cleveland! Their band is super and I look forward to watching the whole documentary on Thursday, August 21 at 9 p.m. on WVIZ and again on Sunday, Sept. 7 at 3 p.m.

Shaw Band in China featured in documentary film