Beachfoxx's WunderBlog

Congrats, a really beautiful pic! But sad about the tarballs still.

Good Morning my friend.

As the Moon is Waxing Gibbous in these early morning hours, and as the French Roast Coffee with a dollop of half and half with two cubes of sugar compete with the Happy Pill for control of my thought processes, I felt the need to wax poetic this morning.

It may be a side of me that you have never seen. It has not been kept hidden from you, but simply is a part of me that surfaces every now and then for no particular rhyme or reason.

The following poem was written by me many years ago and was included in a book of Poetry I called "Love Notes" that I had published and copyrighted in 1991. You have my authorization and permission to copy it and share it with your family and friends as you see fit.

It is not to be sold however, but given away freely from your heart to others as I have done today.

"A LOVING SMILE"

I was in my car in a traffic line
Lost in thought I knew not where
When I glanced into the car near mine
At a brilliant light that came from there

A tiny child not more than three
With golden hair and eyes of blue
Had shared her love and smiled at me
A stranger that she never knew

Her eyes touched mine across the miles
Of time and pain and many trials
Until my smile had matched her own
And then she waved and her car was gone

I kept her smile throughout the day
And shared it as I went my way
How much I learned from a little child
About the joy in a loving smile

Have you smiled at someone lately
Have you seen the good it does
How it brightens others faces
A reflection of your love

CHRISTOPHER

Beach ~ That sunset photo is so beautiful. You wouldn't have to "collect" sand - Mother Nature's done it for you!

Hey Foxxy!

Sorry about your friend. I've lost a couple with a smile like that. A rare and beautiful thing that is always missed, but will shine on in your memories and bring a smile to your face and warmth to your soul at times when you really need it.

So, I'll be sending warm thoughts and a smile your way. You won't see it, but hopefully you'll feel it and you'll know.

Take care my friend.

Foxx, I saw that beach photo over on FB, all your photos looks great.

Your beaches are so beautiful.

So tar balls still washing ashore?
That is a bummer. Back in the 70's and early 80's we had so many here off our SE Fla beaches.

Been a lot better in the past 20 years.

Just stopping by to say HI on your WU Blog!

Hello, Foxxy

I have to agree that your beaches are the most beautiful I've seen in my life. Seeing them marred by tarballs makes me sick. Mother Nature will clean up the tarballs eventually, but what a mess!

So sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. May her smile stay with you forever.

Oh Donna,

I was out at Hallmark store during lunch break getting the Grandkids their yearly ornament.

and I saw some cute Christmas Cards at a decent price and decided to go ahead while I was there and get some of them.

The front has a photo of the beach/sand...and a pair of red flip flops!

I immediately thought of you and all my flip flop loving WU girlfriends!!!

You will get one for Christmas!

There is still a lot of OIL still floating around out there ... which will continue to wash ashore for 1000's of years ...

Hi Foxxy,
Your beach still looks beautiful.

Nothing there that'd keep me from being Barefootonthesand. Would've had a comment up sooner but I started typing, then clicked on your AC beach photo and left the page. Unless you preview, it's gone when you get back. I had not previewed. lol Ditzville.

And speaking of tar balls, only a numbnut would've rated that photo anything less than 10!

Thanks for your comments in the Alaska storm blog this week.

So sorry for the loss of your friend.

Morning Foxxy!!!

I'm sorry to hear about your friend but I'm glad my poem touched your heart in some small way.

Knee is getting better slowly but surely every day.
Sure seems to be taking forever, but its really only been five weeks so far.
Being on pain meds is sure a challenge, I get fuzzy on two asprin.
I get really foggy on this stuff, plus he has me on a muscle relaxer med every 12 hours.
The combination of the two seems to have some sort of effect on the cartoons I've been sending out to everyone. :)

Take care. I know you will.
:)

Good Morning Everybody!

Due to the fact that my beloved wife, SugarBear, now has her own acct and handle here called "HarleyBear", (WU said that someone already had SugarBear), and she may post something about the incident that happened at our house yesterday, I felt that it was important for you to hear my side of the story first.

While she was getting ready to go out to lunch with "The Girls", a group of ladies from our Sunday School class, she asked me if I would run a full virus scan on her laptop for her while she was gone. This is important, let me repeat this again: "SHE ASKED ME". There, that was important evidence was it not?

After I started the full virus scan on her laptop I noticed that all of the computer icons on her screen were slightly askew. That is being polite of course, they actually looked like they were simply thrown onto the screen like spitballs on the boys restroom ceiling at the local middle school.

Being somewhat compulsive and as we all know by now, highly medicated on Happy Pills, I looked at this dissaray in horror and said to myself, while the virus program is running, I could organize her icons for her at the same time. I thought at the time that she would appreciate my gift of spatial acuity and so I began to reorganize the icons.

The logical part of me first placed the important icons like my computer and my documents at the top of the screen, and the lessor used icons like recycle bin at the bottom. Then the systems part of me moved the internet icons to the left side of the screen and the personal hobby icons like photo lab and such to the right side of the screen.

Then the artistic part of me noticed that there were blue icons right next to each other and red icons above and below each other so I moved all the icons around until no two colors were next to the same color horizontally or vertically. Then the mechanical part of me noticed that the little green retangular boxes underneath all the icons were not squared off so I lined them all up like little ducks in a row until I was satisfied.

Then the supply officer part of me noticed that no two icons were the same size causing a misuse of space so I moved all the icons around again until the entire screen was evenly matched.

At this point, I looked at my handiwork and saw that it was logical, practical, pretty as a Christmas tree, linear to a fault, spacially utilized, and easy to use. I finished checking the virus report and left her laptop ready for use on her Lazy-Girl chair where she uses it.

I was sitting at my desk with my laptop in the room next to the kitchen when SugarBear came in the back door from the garage. I told her that her laptop was Virus Free and that I had left it on her Lazy-Girl chair. After taking the bags she brought home from lunch from someplace called Chico's, "The Girls" always go shopping after "doing lunch", she came back out of the bedroom and I heard the Lazy-girl chair with the footstool open.

Within seconds I heard the Lazy-girl footstool slam down and SugarBear came flying out of the living room into the kitchen waving her hands and getting red in the face and stomping her cute little feet like a two year old throwing a tantrum. I have to admit that I was laughing so hard and loud at the sight of this that I missed a good part of what she was saying but I do remember certain phrases like "MY ICONS", "LIMITED COMPUTER ACCESS", "SPECIAL PASSWORD CONTROLS", and "RECTAL SCANS".

No, wait, that was "RETINAL SCANS". :)
And then she stomped out of the kitchen and headed back to her laptop.

I thought about checking her laptop this morning while she is still sleeping to see if she really did change the password on her laptop, but I noticed a small tripwire attached to the top of her laptop and left it alone.

In retrospect, it was probably not a good idea to let her read my Ranger manual on bobbytraps a few years ago. It would seem that she remembered a few of them. :)

0500 hrs, time for a Happy Pill and some coffee and danish rolls.

Good Morning Everyone, it has now been six full weeks since my knee replacement surgery, and last night was the first time I have ventured out for dinner with my family. Had a great time with no problems at all. We went to nice family owned New York Style Pizza cafe where the entire wait staff speaks Italian.

It reminded me of a funny incident involving languages that has become one of those inside family jokes that you treasure all your life.

Years ago SugarBear and I and another couple that we rode motorcycles with in Fort Lauderdale went on a two week motorcycle tour of Europe. It started in Munich Germany, went through Austria, the Northern Italian Alps, Switzerland, back to Austria, and then back to Munich.

Two years later the four of us flew to Paris, France, where we spent 4 great days touring Paris before heading to Nice to rent two motorcycles and tour the southern mountains of France. But it was in Paris that the funny incident took place.

SugarBear had taken two years of French in college so everywhere we went she would speak to everyone for the rest of us. Ray, his wife Doris, and I, had studied the English/French translation dictionary that SugarBear had bought for us so we could at least learn some limited words to get by with.

One night in Paris we went to a rather fancy French Cafe for dinner. Ray and Doris ordered their dinners in French, then SugarBear ordered her dinner in French, and then it was my turn. I ordered what I thought was a type of Chicken dinner. Our waiter, a suave middle aged man in a tuxedo, leaned over so only we could hear him, and said to me in perfect English: "An excellent choice Sir. I regret to inform you that we are out of roasted vulture and grub worms at this time. I would recommend the chicken in lemon sauce with new potatoes."

An excellent substitution I whispered back to him. :)

As our waiter entered the kitchen we could hear loud peals of laughter coming from the kitchen. It seems that he told the Chef that I had ordered roasted vulture and grub worms. As the other waiters heard the laughter they each made a visit to the kitchen to see what was going on. Again and again peals of laughter could be heard.

After our dinners had been served, the Chef himself came out of the kitchen and came over to our table. He spoke to SugarBear in French and then in English to the rest of us. He asked us where in America we were from and then told us that he and his family had been to Fort Lauderdale one year on vacation and had really fallen in love with the beach area.

He then told us that very few Americans that visited Paris ever tried to learn their language and that we had brightened up their entire day by our wonderful attempt to do so.
SugarBear told us after he went back to the kitchen that a visit from the Chef was considered somewhat of an honor in cafe's of this type.

Our dinners were so rich and the wonderful breads and cheeses so plentifull that the four of us had no need for dessert but when we were done with our dinners the waiter showed up at our table with four pastries filled with liquid chocolate and four coffees with brandy and cream. He told us that they were the Chef's signature pastry and that they were a gift to us from the Chef and they were on the house.

Not bad for a country boy from Arkansas. :)

Good morning everyone, todays story is about Therapy. Just the word alone sounds wonderful does it not? It brings to mind soothing ideas like cool ice packs on a pulled muscle, or healing massage with coconut scented oil.

WELL, BULLFEATHERS!!!

I went to the new physical therapy office yesterday to begin the final stage of recovery. My therapist said his name was Brutus. I couldn't stop myself, I said "ET TU Brutus?" The reference went right over his head.

I followed Brutus down a hallway thru a door that automaticly locked behind us that had steel mesh in the small glass window. At the end of the hallway we turned left into a large room containing enough strange looking machines to make Vincent Price smile in anticipation.

There were dumbbells, barbells, chains and trapeze looking contraptions hanging from the ceiling, mechanical and electronic machines of all sinister kinds, ropes and pulleys and clamps attached to the walls, four tables next to what appeared to be electric generators of some kind, and one entire wall was mirrored so you could watch yourself being tortured.

Standing in the middle of this room was a creature named Igor, Brutus's therapy assistant. Igor stood six foot six, had one eyeball in the middle of his forehead, hair growing out from every visible part of his body, and hands the size of basketballs that dragged on the carpet when he walked.

Brutus hooked me up to my first machine called the Lifecycle, you leaned back with your feet extended out to the front of the machine and strapped and anchored to the pedals. He armed the control board, the pedals started to move of their own accord, and he left me there to go help Igor who was standing in the table area holding down an athletic looking young man with his left hand and a little old lady with his right hand.

As the pedals on my lifecycle kept picking up speed faster and faster, I noticed Brutus hook up what appeared to be electronic pads on either side of the young mans right knee, wrap a wet towel around the whole thing, and turn the large red dial on the generator marked DANGER way over to the right until his body was bouncing slightly on the table.

Meanwhile, the spunky little old lady that had been next to him had managed to jump on Igor's back and had him in a choke hold that was turning Igor's face as red as a beet and he was bumping into the trampoline in the corner of the room.

Just as Brutus went to help Igor, my cycle shut off and the straps were released from the pedals and I knew this was my chance to escape. I shut the power off on the young man's generator just as his hair started to glow, grabbed two dumbbells and headed for Brutus.

He turned around when he heard the power go off, saw me coming for him, did a double back flip onto the trampoline, vaulted into the ceiling and grabbed the trapeze bar out of my reach. I slammed one of the dumbbells into Igor's eyeball, grabbed the little old lady and the kid with the glowing hair, broke the window on the locked door with the other dumbbell, reached thru the window to unlock the door from the other side, and we were free.

As the three of us ran for the front door, I stopped at the reception desk and made an appointment for me for Monday at 1030 hrs.

I always did want to try a trampoline, it looked like fun. :)

Good Morning everyone, in my story about the Cafe in Paris, France, I forgot to tell you about the four fun filled days we spent touring around the city of Paris looking at all the wonderful attractions and cool places that Paris is known for.

Sugar Bear, who was a Marketing Executive for Motorola for 25 years had spent many years traveling around the world to most of the big cities. She had visited Paris many times and it was one of her favorite places to take a vacation, so she acted as our tour guide and organized the entire trip.

Lets start with the Eiffel Tower, a definite Disney E-ticket ride to the top. I never realized it was almost a mile up there, it didn't look that big on the postcards. What a great view of the entire city from up there! They had installed a steel cage around the top after that daredevil parachutist did that dive off the top years ago, but you could still get your camers lens through it for some great shots of the city.

Near the tower is another big attraction, the Ark of the Triumph. For the life of me I still don't know why the French would build a monument to a British Motorcycle. When I asked SugarBear about it one morning she sort of choked on her coffee and suggested that I not ask any of the local people about it.

I had to be pretty careful what I said while I was there. She told me it would not be wise to ask where they had BBQ'd Joan of Arc, nor should I inquire if the Guillotine had a Ginzu blade. :)

I did enjoy the trip to the Louvre because they have the original Sword of King Charlemagne called "Joyeuse" there. I have a modern copy of Joyeuse in my sword collection but my copy only has four stones called lapis lazuli in the eyes of the winged dragons on either side of the cross guards where the original has four rubies for the eyes. The original still looks good to have been made in the year 700 AD.

The trip to Notre Dame was very strange, the building itself if very dark and gothic looking and the inside is very similar. The exception was the incredible stained glass windows throughout the church. They also have a lot of famous popes and people buried in tombs within the building. Odd place to bury people I thought.

We were all really inpressed with the Paris Opera House too. I've never seen so many things trimmed in Real Gold in one place in my life. Sort of made you want to run home and put on your tuxedo just to tour the place. I had to use the restroom while I was there and even the urinals had gold pipes on them. They also had someone they called an "attendent" in each restroom who handed you a small towel after you washed your hands but I think he was a security guard to make sure no one stole the gold pipes. :)

The really fun thing about Paris is that there are 9 million people that live in the city and another 2 million people in the suburbs who drive into the city every day to work, and they all think they are Grand Prix Drivers. We took these double decker tour buses to the various sights or walked to the river and took a tour boat to get to places and the traffic was an incredible sight to see. There are not that many traffic lights, everyone sort of merges into the traffic flow at high speeds and the bigger vehicle you drive the better you can merge. Motorcycles and scooters don't seem to obey any of the traffic laws whatsoever, they were constantly cutting right thru stoplights an stop signs as if they weren't there and that just added to the crazy things that we saw going on.

We were there two years after 9/11 and I was impressed with the police and military presence that was visible everywhere not only throughout the entire city but at every building and place of interest that we went to.

My favorite things about Paris?
THE FOOD, THE BREADS, THE DESSERTS!!!!!
Sorry, got a little carried away for a moment there.

Have a great day, its time for a cinnamon roll or two. :)

Thanksgiving Pictures Comments - Photobucket

Helloooooo from the Ozarks!!

Foxxy,

Up very early. Things I needed to get done before my son's arrival. He was visiting friends in Gainesville last night. The night prior to that he stopped in Atlanta to see friends there. With his flying schedule he has not been able to do this so inbetween jobs he is taking the opportunity.

We have nothing specail planned for Thanksgiving other than the complete meal with all the football games etc. Just the three of us. I hope for each of you your Thanksgiving is the best ever. Don't forget to give thanks for the many wonderful things we each have. Life has been good to us even with all the bumps. Love each one of you and thank you for being my friends for another year.

Good Morning Everyone!

Todays story concerns four odd things that I have discovered that happen in a home that no one ever talks about. Since I have been home for six weeks with this knee in various stages of disability, I have tried to help SugarBear as best I can with the various household duties that I can do without hurting the knee.

1. Did you ever notice when you put clean sheets on your bed that the bottom sheet, you know, the one with the rubber bands on all four corners, goes on the bed bright side up. But the top sheet has to go on the bed dull side up so that when you fold the top over the bright side hem will show. Of course it shows over the dull side unless you put a blanket on it so no one sees the dull side. That is odd don't you think?

Who came up with this silly idea. Did the first seamstress not know that you had to fold the top sheet over? Did the first bed maker simply decide to fold the top sheet over one day only to discover that it made the dull side of the hem show and therefore it had to be put on upside down? Logical minds want to know.

2. Did you ever notice that when you are cooking tomato sauce and you've covered the pot to let it simmer for awhile, and you go back to stir the sauce, that when you lift the lid you discover much too late that the sauce has formed these volcano looking mounds rising up from the surface that pick that instant to explode like popcorn throwing boiling hot oily red dots all over the kitchen all over the stove and all over your brand new shirt?

Why aren't there warning labels on cans of tomato sauce? Why does it explode like popcorn? Other sauces don't do that, oh they may bubble and boil over the top of the pan if the heat is up too high or you wander off for a few too many minutes, but they don't explode. Is it possible that the first farmer planted his tomato plants too close to his corn plants and due to the close proximity that some sort of cross pollination or genetic DNA mixing occurred? Do you think we could replace gasoline with exploding tomato sauce? Logical minds want to know.

3. Did you ever notice that just at the moment you're watching something in the oven that requires precise timing like those wonderful garlic cheese biscuits that are baked at 450 degrees for exactly 9 minutes and 3 seconds and if you don't remove them at that precise moment it can be the difference between something that melts in your mouth or something that looks like a burned hockey puck, that ten seconds before the timer goes off the door bell will ring and you will be the only one home at the time and the dog will begin snarling and barking like there's a squad of aliens at the front door.

Normally the dog is a wimp and you didn't even know she knew how to snarl so you have to check it out only to discover that its some cute little 7 year old girl selling girl scout cookies so you can't yell at her because her Mom is standing on the sidewalk watching you like a hawk so by the time you tell the little girl no thank you and get back to the oven, forget it, hockey puck city.

How do they do that? Is it ESP? Is it Radar? Do they have noses like bloodhounds? Is there an invisible sign on your front door only visible to people that go door to door? Logical minds want to know.

4. Did you ever notice that the one place in your home that you would think would always be clean, the shower stall, is always grungy after a week? You would expect the toilets to need cleaning after a week considering the traffic they have to deal with.(You didn't think that I could say that politely did you?)

How is it possible that the shower stall gets all that stuff on it? Even when I get dirty outside in the yard I hose myself off before I come back into the house to take a shower. I wonder if it has something to do with makeup? I don't use makeup, but I know someone that does, SugarBear. Logical minds want to know.

chuckle, chortle, snort

(((FOXXY))) ~




HOPE THAT, THIS YEAR, YOU'LL HAVE A MOST WONDERFUL THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY WHILE BEING SURROUNDED BY LOVED ONES AND/OR CLOSE FRIENDS! MAY YOUR WEEKEND BE ENJOYABLE AND PEACEFUL AS WELL!

Link BREAKTHROUGH IN THE MACONDO MYSTERY: BP ADMITS TO NEW ACTIVITY AT DEEPWATER HORIZON SITE

Good Morning Everyone.

WOW, what can I say about Thanksgiving? The family, the food, the fun, the extra 10 pounds that suddenly appeared on the bathroom scale this morning. It just sort of warms the cockles of your heart does it not?

Speaking of cockles, what part of the heart are they? I've heard that expression all of my life. You would think that a guy with a classical education would know what it means. Not only do I not know what they are, I don't even know why they would be warm.

It's sort of like the expression "warm and fuzzy". I've been warm a lot of times in my lifetime, but until I started taking pain pills and muscle relaxers at the same time I never knew what fuzzy really meant. Boy, do I know what fuzzy is now. :)

I remember being pretty well pickled once or twice in my lifetime. I once had a close encounter of the third kind with some old soldiers and a big bottle of Wild Turkey at the Airborne Officer's Club at Fort Bragg, NC one night, but that's a story for another time.

Since I woke up early this morning, and the in-laws and out-laws are all headed home today, I thought I would do a little research on cockles.

The expression first turned up in the middle of the 17th Century with the phrase "rejoice the cockles of one's heart". You may recall that sweet Molly Malone once wheeled her wheelbarrow through Dublin's fair city crying "cockles and mussels, alive, alive, OH". I am not sure why Molly would have a wheelbarrow full of hearts and muscles for sale but having never been to Dublin, I am not sure what their dietary requirements are and I'm not sure I really want to know.

The Latin name for the ventricles of the heart is Cochleae Cordis, with the word Cor meaning "the heart". Years ago SugarBear bought a huge book from Time Life books called "The Medical Advisor". 1,152 pages of some of the worst medical conditions known to mankind. You can close your eyes, open this book to any page, put your finger on the page somewhere, then open your eyes, read the symptoms listed there and swear that you have whatever it says there.

But the book has really cool photos and pictures and charts with colors and stuff, so I turned to the page on the heart and started looking for cockles. They had a really neat picture of an open heart that showed the superior vena cava, the pulmonary valve, the right atrium, the tricuspid valve, the inferior vena cava, the right ventricle, the aortic valve, the left atrium, the left ventricle, the mitral valve, the pulmonary veins, the pulmonary artery, and the aorta. Not a cockle to be found anywhere.

I did find that heart disease is listed right after heartburn and right before hemorrhoids but that's a story for another time also. So, what to do now? The index of course. Wasn't there either. It should have been right after cochlea, which is the spiral cavity of the inner ear, and right before codeine, which is the stuff they put in strong cough medicine, but not a cockle to be found.

The next place I looked was the Webster's Concise Desk Dictionary of over 125,000 Words and Their Meanings Edited by P. H. Collin. I don't know who he is but he has to be a real brainy person if he knows over 125,000 words and their meanings. AND THERE IT WAS.

On page 82, right after the word cock-eyed, which means a stupid or odd idea, and right before the word cockney, which is a way of speaking of a person who comes from the east part of London, was the word C O C K L E.

It said a cockle is a small edible shellfish, a heart shaped bivalve mollusc with a double shell.

Holy Cow Batman. How did these things get into our hearts? The Vet we take the cat to is always warning us about heart-worms. I better ask him if he knows anything about cockles. My regular doctor has never mentioned heart-cockles. You don't think Molly started this whole pandemic do you? I better notify the CDC in Atlanta right away.

Ok, YOLO is not a wussy as I thought it was...

BF????

Hi Foxxy,
Good to see your smiling face around here. Kept meaning to post some links from the Anchorage paper. BP's been in hot water up there for a while, and again.

Hope you get back before then. If not...
Enjoy the Holidays!

Quoting Beachfoxx:
Thanks everyone!!!
Loved getting the AC for the beach sunset…

More AC coming soon :)

Good morning Beach
Thanks for commenting on the Northern Edge.
BTW the offer of handi man services is still open in exchange for airfare to warmer climes come the -40 weather we experience in January. :)
Enjoy the day.

This is one of the first things I ever wrote. I wrote it for a friend that had gone through a divorce just before Christmas years ago. It was the first Christmas they were going to be alone. Some of it is from Corinthians, some from Proverbs, some from my years as a Psychologist, and some from my 64 years of life experience. We all know someone like that. A co-worker, someone in our neighborhood, someone from Church or our circle of friends. Someone we could invite to share Christmas dinner with our family this year so they are not alone.

Even though I had it Copyrighted, this will serve as my legal permission for you and anyone on the website who reads it, to copy it and share it with someone you think may need to read it. A gift of love from your heart to someone else has amazing healing properties. Love can walk through darkened halls like rainbows in the rain.

LOVE NOTES

Love is patient, it is kind, it is never jealous, it never brags, it is never arrogant, it never acts unbecomingly, it never seeks it's own way, it cannot be provoked, it doesn't worry about being hurt, it can bear any burden, it always believes the best, it can endure any trial.

Love is truth, love is hope, love can never fail, love is a light that shines from within you, no darkness can stand against its power, time cannot extinguish it, for time is the universe in which love travels.

Love is being in a room full of noisy people and you can still hear the one you love think about you, love is being apart from someone and yet they are there in your mind and heart, love is thinking of someone and realizing that you're smiling, love is being by yourself and knowing that a part of you is with the one you love, and the part of you that is missing has been replaced by them.

Love is a tender touch that speaks only to the two of you, love is a smile that only you can hear from across the room, love is a gift that returns when it is given.

Love is a friend, because a friend is someone that loves you, a friend is love, because love is the bridge that spans the differences between you, a friend loves at all times, a friend will cross over the bridge without asking you to do the same, a friend will give you time to grow and find out who you are, even if that growth separates you in time.

For time is the endless bridge of love.

Love is, a friend is, love.

Your friend,

CHRISTOPHER

Hei Foxxy Donna! Just droppin' in to say 'HI!' as I'm flyin' in low and fast! I made a new post to raise a few brows - courtesy of a rather humorous WUcomputer glitch - and to make a presence to keep my WUcitizenship active. ". >

Y'all take care. ". )

See y'all on the flip-flop.

les O'fieldstream

Yes whitewabit, it is bad in the Gulf. But not exactly in the way you're stating it.

Literally, the vast majority (well over 80%) of the BP oil dumped in the disaster, is already gone from the Gulf. So you can safely remove two zeros from your predicament prediction and reduce that number down to the low 10`s of years. But in reality - the oil won't ever totally disappear from the Gulf waters.

I realize it doesn't seem like the BP oil is gone. And there's good reason. The 'acceptable levels' of oil-loss-incidents, by oil tankers, drilling platforms, and boats - spill more than 310,000 gallons of oil every year into the Gulf waters!

And if this weren't enough ... even if we halted human activity in the Gulf, natural seeps would still send 42 million gallons of oil coursing from the sea floor into Gulf waters each year.

This large quantity of 'natural seep' has been a source of oil globules landing onto the shores of the northern Gulf beaches for as long as oil has been forming in the earth.

Yet, despite the large - 42 million gallon natural release - the quantities that actually reach shore, or bring damage to the natural resource - have been quite small.

This is due, in large part, to the natural buffering system that has developed in the Gulf - and other waters around the world - to 'deal with' this naturally occurring seep of oil.

But...there's another part to this. The oil that comes through the natural seeps, is a very different mix of oil; far less toxic, easier to breakdown, than that which comes pumped from deep in the bowels of the earth: to the surface in a matter of minutes, instead of thousands of years.

So, the real nail-biter, isn't the 'amount of oil', present in the Gulf waters. It is the daily potential for another BP-like incident - in at least 20 other wells throughout the Gulf. Any one of these potential incidents would again spew highly toxic petroleum into the Gulf's buffering system. Sucking up valuable resources for natural buffering against the increased quantity and toxicity of the deep-crust oil.

Overly toxic oil, in large quantities, at excessive heat... all combine to push the buffering capacity of the Gulf to breaking limits. What happens IF, we have multiple events in a single year? There is no definitive answer (ie, empirical proof) for just how bad this would be. But there is a lot of associative understanding (ie, common sense experiential wisdom) that leads the investigator to a very steep precipice of catastrophic failure.

It's not good. And that's the problem to be concerned about.

Through all of this, the most serious drawback in the BP disaster isn't that the oil isn't going away... it's that it's gone 'out of sight' -thus 'out of mind' - too, fast. Engaging the old adage, 'Out of sight, Out of mind '. Our memories do not linger without reminders.

So, keep the bell ringing! Urge people to not forget the dangers that lurk in the Gulf's deep-water oilfields; the lack of human ability to 'control' nature; our playing in water well-over-our-head is dangerous by any criteria; we deceive ourselves to think we can, 'Handle it." We cannot.

So...YES, by all means, keep the fires burning.

But please... be sure to fuel that fire with solid, scientific fact. Not emotional hyperbole. Otherwise, we'll have a repeat of the 'cry of wolf' syndrome to fight as well. And waging a war on multiple fronts is a recipe for disaster.

les O'fieldstream

From Syd my cockotoo,

Afternoon,

Ofieldstream..... Great article on Gulf Oil, Thanks.

Have a wonderful Christmas FOXX...Big Hugs girl

(((Foxxy))) ~

Due to increasing computer problems, etc., I wanted to be sure to post my Christmas greeting to you and yours before my computer possibly crashes. Hope you're doing well and will remain with us when able during the holiday season and year ahead!!

Hello Foxx,

Had to pull up your WU blog to send you greetings here!!!


From our Home to Yours
Merry Christmas and a Healthy & Happy New Year 2012!





"And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons.
It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn%u2019t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn%u2019t come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more."

- Dr. Seuss