elle's blog: "Random Goodies"

1. Sex is a beauty treatment. Scientific tests find that when women make love they produce amounts of the hormone estrogen, which makes hair shine and skin smooth. ============= 2. Gentle, relaxed lovemaking reduces your chances of suffering dermatitis, skin rashes and blemishes. The sweat produced cleanses the pores and makes your skin glow. ============= 3. Lovemaking can burn up those calories you piled on during that romantic dinner. ============= 4. Sex is one of the safest sports you can take up. It stretches and tones up just about every muscle in the body. It's more enjoyable than swimming 20 laps, and you don't need special sneakers! ============= 5. Sex is an instant cure for mild depression. It releases endorphins into the bloodstream, producing a sense of euphoria and leaving you with a feeling of well-being. ============= 6. The more sex you have, the more you will be offered. The sexually active body gives off greater quantities of chemicals called pheromones. These subtle sex perfumes drive the opposite sex crazy! ===========! == 7 Sex is the safest tranquilizer in the world. It is 10 times more effective than Valium. ============= 8. Kissing each day will keep the dentist away. Kissing encourages saliva to wash food from the teeth and lowers the level of the acid that causes decay, preventing plaque build-up. ============= 9. Sex actually relieves headaches. A lovemaking session can release the tension that restricts blood vessels in the brain. ============= 10. A lot of lovemaking can unblock a stuffy nose. Sex is a natural antihistamine. It can help combat asthma and hay fever.

(originally posted February 26, 2009) Hubby and I tried out bombing last night, it's kinda fun, makes me want my VIP back... hmm.. tempting EDIT I bit the bullet and got my VIP back What I discovered about bombing... • You only have an hour for it so it's pretty short-lived • You can only hit one album per person • You can only hit one album every 60 seconds which is annoying and really limits how many points you can get • You can't bomb an album that's already been bombed! Total bummer! If you have an activated bomb, it'll show you at the top of the album who that album has been bombed by, if it hasn't, it'll give you a link to bomb the album, or show you how long you have left until you can bomb again. EDIT They changed it! Now it shows who bombed the album before you, but you CAN bomb it too! YAY! • You can easily tell which albums have been bombed in the list, it will show a little burning folder image on the albums that have already been bombed. • You can only hit a max of 250 pictures per album, even if there are more pictures than that in the album. If it's 788 pics in the album, you only get points for 250 of them. • You get DOUBLE the points if you hit someone who has auto11s on! My experience last night: Before activating... 36,486,438 points to go After the hour was up... 35,969,995 points to go Thanks to the mathematical genius of my calculator, I see I dropped about half a million points in the hour I had the bombing active. It was wicked fun. EDIT My second experience I went down nearly 1.5 million points, a definite improvement. I saved the names of who I bombed and I counted 'em up afterward. I think I missed adding a couple of names, but I managed to get to at least 55 people during the hour. I think it's too expensive, and the 1 per 60 second limit is frustrating. If it's going to cost so much, I think we should be able to just go for broke and hit as many albums as we can! Fine don't let us hit more than one album per person and once it's hit don't let someone else hit it, but only one every 60 seconds? Bah... in my humble opinion Auto11s are still more points for the money, but I think bombing is way more fun, and it doesn't mean I'm relying on other people either.

For those who don't know.. there's a whole list of reasons why they'll reject a salute that aren't listed in the 'bible'. I submitted a special birthday salute and it was rejected because my dog happened to be in it. If I'd known that, I would have made sure he wasn't in it, but nowhere in the rules did it say anything about animals and salutes. I've seen salutes that break the 'rules' listed in the message I got along with my salute rejection... sure makes things confusing. Here's the list! Thank you for sending in your FUBAR SALUTE picture to be reviewed, however, your SALUTE has been returned, because one or more of the following items that have been marked with an (X) need to be corrected: ( ) You need to shoot a candid personal photo of Yourself holding your HAND WRITTEN FUBAR SALUTE SIGN, WITH YOUR WHOLE FACE CLEARLY SHOWN. Dark glasses, painted faces, masks, and/or bandannas, etc...are NOT allowed. ( ) Your sign is covering your face and we can not see you clearly. Please make this correction in your next salute submission. ( ) Your Photo is too dark, blurry, and/or grainy and a new photo needs to be taken to correct this. ( ) Your Photo is too small for us to be able to read the information on your sign. ( ) You are NOT allowed to use ANY kind of enhancement or alteration program such as Type Set Print, Paint, or Photoshop, etc. to alter your Salute photo. ( ) ONLY the Account holder is allowed to be in the Salute photo. ( ) NO animals are allowed in the Salute photos, and NO animal can have a salute. We have an OWL for the official Fubar Mascot. ( ) Privately set Salute photos are NOT allowed. ( ) NSFW language, photos, comments, or any other non appropriate NSFW material are NOT to be placed in the Fubar Salute Photos. ( ) Your computer screen is only an enhancement. We still need your photo with your hand held sign in order to review your salute. YOUR SALUTE NEEDS TO BE CORRECTED BECAUSE: ( ) You are missing your hand held ( we need to see you holding it ) Hand Written Fubar Salute Sign with the following information: Your Fubar Screen Name Your Fubar Member ID Number The words, Fubar.com or Fubar ( ) You are missing your Fubar Member ID Number. ( ) Your Fubar Member ID Number is incorrect. ( ) You are missing Your Screen Name from your sign. ( ) Your Screen Name does not match what you have on your Sign. ( ) Missing Fubar or Fubar.com on your sign. ( ) Your Salute Sign is to be HAND WRITTEN ONLY. No stencils, or printed alteration programs are allowed. ( ) You can not place your Salute photo into a private folder. You must move it into a public folder and resubmit it. ( ) Other:

I put this together one day quite a while ago, from various lists I'd seen online. I'm just an amateur myself, but even so, several of these describe me perfectly!! You know you're a Photographer if.... • 1 GB of memory lasts most people a month but barely lasts you the afternoon. • A local shop (or bar) keeps your tab under “photographer”. • Everywhere you go you’re thinking, “Now that would make a good picture!” • Instead of sleeping in, you get up earlier on your days off just to catch the good light.... or alternatively, instead of going out at night you go night-shooting instead • No one else brings a camera to an event if they know you’re coming. • On bus rides you sit besides the window instead of your spouse. • On those occasions when you haven't brought – because you couldn't, or you thought you shouldn't bring – your camera, you fidget and curse under your breath. • People show extra love and interest to you at a special event, and keep saying “You will email them to me, right?” • PS7 is a software program and not a school you attended as a child. • Sometimes you're blue because you can either afford the holiday, or the lens that would be oh-so-perfect for it! • The day seems gloomy and you feel a bit sad, and going out and hunting for good pictures brightens your whole day. • When talking to a friend, you step to one side so that the lamp standard doesn't grow out of his head. • When you're on a photo trip, you spend your evenings filing and submitting images and writing articles. • You are using a urinal for its intended purpose, and you notice that the reflections from the halogen lighting above create some interesting abstract shapes in the bowl ... and you seriously consider photographing them. • You are willing to carry a backpack of equipment around, just in case you see that perfect shot. • You ask strangers to turn around, step back and tilt their head a bit… and you’re not carrying your camera. • You ask your wife if she can ‘just push it back in a little bit’ because you were busy changing from your 16mm fisheye to your best macro when the baby's head broke through. • You buy lenses you will never use. • You can crouch down on the ground, and then rise back up to standing, in a blink of an eye, without losing your focus. • You can find a picture of every person you have ever met but not one of yourself. • You can stand on a broken wall and keep yourself absolutely still. • You can turn around any conversation, whatever the topic, into one about photography. • You can walk backwards as easily as you can walk forwards. • You choose airlines based on carry on baggage allowance. • You date someone based on how happy they are posing for pictures. • You delete more photos in a week than most people make all year. • You don't remember what year you joined NPS or CPS. • You draw two thumbs down on the front page photo of your newspaper. • You dream at f/11. • You go on a hike with 10 pounds of food and water, and 15 pounds of camera gear. • You have enough camera bags in your closet to pack up your entire house. • You have thousands of pictures and you’re not in any of them. • You keep getting lost all the time in a group trip. • You know what aperture-priority means. • You literally dream about new equipment. • You look at a gradient of a clear day's sky and try to find spots on the sensor. • You look at a scene with one eye closed and squint with the other to judge contrast and exposure… without a camera. • You look at different places and try to time the focus speed of your eyes. • You need just one more lens. • You own lots of bags and backpacks but you only have one that is for carrying anything apart from photographic equipment. • You ‘pan’ with the birds flying by. • You plan all your vacations based on how well they will photograph. • You put your digital film wallet in your pants pocket in the morning even before your car keys. • You refuse an alcoholic beverage with the justification, “I can't, I'm photographing”. • You run home half way through your child’s sports day to get the 'right' lens. • You say, “I have no lens to use,” while standing in front of your collection of 15 lenses. • You stand in a field for 5 hours waiting for the correct snowfall to drop for the perfect landscape shot • You start looking at the keyhole before opening the door. • You stop and look at the wine bottle advertising shots on the side of bus stops wondering how they lit ALL the gold leaf ALL the way across the label equally. • You think it's a pity there's no vertical movies. • You think of your sunglasses as your polarisers. • You think, “Are my eyes f/1.0 or f/1.2 wide-open?” • You thought of a monopod version of the tripods in war of the worlds, jumping around with one leg. • You try to blur the background with your eyes • You watch the defocused background instead of the movie • You wish your camera equipment cost less so that your insurance would cost less. • You’re looking into the kitchen sink, filled with dirty dishes, and find you’re liking the shapes being created with the hamburger grease on the water. • You’ve been up before dawn or out in the freezing cold or even done something semi-dangerous… all for a photograph. • You’ve crawled on the ground to get a shot of something rusty. • Your camera equipment is worth more than your car. • Your daughter wants you to photograph her wedding instead of walking her down the aisle. • Your family cringes every time you say, “I'll be right there, I just need to take a couple shots of this.” • Your family doesn’t recognize you without a camera covering your face. • Your friends ask you to shoot a family Christmas portrait for them as a favor. • Your grandchildren call you grandma camera-face!! • Your heart races when you are on the same street as B&H. • Your spouse is not surprised when you come home with dirt all over your clothes. • A Victoria’s Secret catalogue arrives in the mail, and you try to reverse engineer the lighting setup from the reflection in the bikini model's sunglasses. • You're happy when the clouds obscure the sun on a hot day (especially when trying to shoot people pictures). • You're the only one *not* taking pictures of a great vista because the lighting is all wrong.

I've been in the online world for about 12 years now, and I've been asked some really odd things by Americans over the years. Some are quite knowledgeable about Canada, others just have no clue. There were some hilarious interviews done by "This Hour has 22 Minutes" that I spotted one time, they could probably be found at YouTube. They were going around interviewing Americans about various Canadian things, like Tim Hortons! In one, they were telling Americans that Canada had just gotten it's National Igloo.. and you had all these people congratulating us on camera for finally getting our igloo! As for people I've talked to, one lady thought the CN Tower was in the USA, another thought we always had snow. I suppose that actually explains the Americans who pulled into the convenience store I worked at many years ago, with skis on top their car, in the middle of a scorcher day in July, asking me where they could go skiing. Point your vehicle north, and keep driving for a loooong time! :D I've also been "corrected" by some Americans for how I spell colour, neighbour, favour etc. It's just funny. Of course not all those I meet know so little about Canada, but it's good for a chuckle when I run across someone who doesn't know much. My sister passed this list along to me several years ago, and I just stumbled on it again a while ago and thought I'd share. After she shared this list with a group of our friends, one American friend we had said that thanks to the list, she FINALLY understood something from the movie Men in Black. She had never understood why all of the main characters had letters for names, but yet the big-whig got to be called "Zed". After reading the handy-dandy list my sister shared, she understood that he DID actually have a letter for a name after all, Z, pronounced Zed instead of Zee! :) The list may be a bit dated.. but it's sill amusing I think. One friend said that we must have really bad roads that our government gives us "tire" money... and although not on the list, I remember another friend did not believe me when I mentioned one day that I needed to get a bag of milk... she was dumbfounded that we have milk in bags. A few years ago I was reading about this guy who was overseas somewhere.. and in this little bar/restaurant.. the owner had under glass money from all over the world. The fellow didn't see any Canadian money at all... then finally noticed some.. tucked in with all the other worldwide currencies... was a 25¢ Canadian Tire bill.

25 Signs Showing You Might be Canadian

1. You're not offended by the term "HOMO MILK". 2. You understand the phrase "Could you pass me a serviette, I just dropped my poutine, on the chesterfield." 3. You eat chocolate bars, not candy bars. 4. You drink Pop, not Soda. 5. You know what a Mickey and 2-4 mean. 6. You don't care about the fuss with Cuba. It's a cheap place to go for your holidays, with good cigars and no Americans. 7. You know that a pike is a type of fish, not part of a highway. 8. You drive on a highway, not a freeway. 9. You have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers. 10. You know that Casey and Finnegan were not part of a Celtic musical group. 11. You get excited whenever an American television show mentions Canada. 12. You brag to Americans that: Shania Twain, Jim Carrey, Mike Myers and many more, are Canadians. 13. You know that the C.E.O. of American Airlines is a Canadian! 14. You know what a touque is. 15. You design your Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit. 16. You know that the last letter of the English alphabet is always pronounced "Zed" not "Zee" 17. Your local newspaper covers the national news on 2 pages, but requires 6 pages for hockey. 18. You know that the four seasons mean: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road work. 19. You know that when it's 25 degrees outside, it's a warm day. 20. You understand the Labatt Blue commercials. 21. You know how to pronounce and spell "Saskatchewan" - Sas-KAT-chew-w'n 22. You perk up when you hear the theme song from 'Hockey Night in Canada'. 23. You were in grade 12, not the 12th grade. 24. "Eh?" is a very important part of your vocabulary, and is more polite than "Huh?" 25. You actually understand these jokes, and forward them to all of your Canadian friends and then you send them to your American friends just to confuse them... further. I hope you enjoyed it ;)