Great Local Survey

It's an election year and now is as good a time as any to size up our Municipal Councillors. SurveyGreyBruce.ca has put together a short survey where you can tell it like it is. It only takes a few minutes, and trust me, you'll feel much better afterwards!

www.surveymonkey.com/s/2010MES

Stay tuned to local media for the results coming soon.

The Book of Awesome

This is not the Sound Bytes Book Review. But every now and then, a book comes along with the power and potential to transform boring everyday thinking into a higher and more enlightened state of awareness. Having read my share of novels dealing with life strategies and self-help perspectives, I have become a just a little tired and confused with all the complicated psychoanalytical overkill. Many books make it difficult to put their preachings into practice.

Such is not the case with Neil Pasricha’s hugely popular “The Book of Awesome”. If you haven’t heard of it, I regret to inform you that you might just be in the minority. The book contains almost four hundred pages that expose life’s trivial but important details in a truly unique, entertaining, often humourous, and most importantly, simple fashion. Pasricha has assembled a collection of vivid thoughts on the awesome things in life we all can relate to but almost always take for granted. For instance… He discusses the great feeling that arises from sleeping in new bed sheets, the sound of scissors cutting construction paper, getting gas just before the price goes up, giving a trucker the signal to blow his horn, finding money in your old coat pocket, the tantalizing aroma of bakery air, high-fiving babies, the joy of getting the milk-to-cereal ratio just right, etc., etc., etc.

These are the simple things… life’s small pleasures that can make a big difference just by reading about them. And trust me, you’ll have a hard time forgetting many of them as you resume your everyday life. Pasricha ends every thought in the book with a consistently simple expression that says it all… “AWESOME!” There is really no other way to describe it.

Check out the author’s website at www.1000awesomethings.com for a sneak peek.

Facebook Fanatics

An interesting article on some of the strangest Facebook habits surfaced on MSN recently. Though I’ll gladly admit that I am one to casually engage in the social media phenomenon, I am hardly an FB addict like some. In my humble opinion, if you are one to utilize any of the following FB applications, maybe it’s time to put down Facebook and read another ‘book’…

· Death Time Calculator – An app that predicts the time and cause of your death when you enter your birth date. This is just disturbing!

· I Have Kids – Allows parents to create profiles of their little ones with photos and status updates. Parents can actually leave comments on their friends’ kids’ walls. Too much!

· What’s Your Romantic Nickname? – Just type in your name and choose from a variety of backgrounds and your nickname will be determined. For those who need a hobby in life.

· SpongeBob Mood – Users can pick from a variety of SB images to describe how they’re feeling at any given time. I wonder if there’s one for ‘annoyed at the sight of SpongeBob’.

And the list goes on and on and on. Harmless fun or the pinnacle of time wasting? The jury is out.

If you must rush out and visit Facebook after reading this, please do become a fan on our myowensound.ca fan page. (insert 'happy face' emoticon... just not SpongeBob)

Happy Friday the 13th!

Did you know?

- Any month that begins with a Sunday will have a Friday that falls on the 13th.

- The term, 'friggatriskaidekaphobia' is used to describe the condition of someone with a fear of Friday the 13th.

- Many theories have circulated about the origin of Friday the 13th as an unlucky day. One of these involves the death of Jesus occurring on a Friday with 13 in attendance at the Last Supper. Norse myth says that having 13 people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the participants.

- Tuesday the 13th is an unlucky day in Spain due to a rich history in bad occurrences on a Tuesday.

May the good luck of Friday the 13th be with you!

Hot Dog Tips

Though we could be headed for a cooling off period, one cannot soon easily forget the sweltering 30+ temps we recently experienced heading into August. But bad enough as it was for us humans, I can’t begin to imagine the discomfort felt by our four-legged friends. It blew my mind on one exceptionally hot day to see a dog caged up in a car with hardly any relief coming from the window openings.

There are a few little known and often overlooked facts I found about dogs and the heat that I felt like sharing…

· During the summer, it’s recommended that dogs be walked early in the morning or later in the evening after the sun has gone down. Aside from the heat of the sun, this also has to do with the sidewalk pavement temperature, which can actually burn doggie paws. If it’s too hot for you and I to walk barefoot on, the same applies to dogs.

· Further to summer dog walking, these strolls should be brief and treated as light exercise. Avoid making it a run. Bring water and make frequent stops.

· Dogs pant to cool themselves. However, when panting doesn’t cool down a dog’s body temp, heat exhaustion can occur. Quick breathing, heavy panting, a tendency to salivate and fatigue are symptoms to watch out for. If heat exhaustion is occurring, take the dog to a shady spot, use wet towels to try and cool the body, give water in small amounts, and be sure to call a vet right away.

· It may sound strange, but dogs get sunburned too. This is especially true of shorthaired dogs. Keep their exposure to the sun minimal.

· Snub-nosed dogs such as boxers, bulldogs and pugs do not cope as well in the heat. Instead of leaving them to lie in the yard all day, keep them inside where it’s air-conditioned. Dogs with heavy coats can be trimmed but not shaved (which will put them more at risk of being sun burned).

· Dogs that stay outside for long periods during the day need more than just a shady tree to stay cool. A ventilated doghouse or covered patio where the dog can rest under is essential. There must always be a good supply of clean water. Consider 2 dishes in case one gets knocked over.

· Though some of us like to put the dog in the back of the pick-up truck, this is generally not a good idea. Like the pavement example above, if the standing surface is metal, this can be scorching. Test the surface on a hot day first.

· As for traveling with the dog in the car, it’s simply best to avoid this practice altogether during the hotter months. If taking the dog cannot be avoided, make sure the A/C is on at all times. This includes when s/he is sitting and waiting for you while the car is parked. Even if the windows are slightly open, the car can heat up so quickly on a sweltering day that brain damage or even death can happen in minutes.

An Aussie Treat

Whenever I have mentioned fairy bread to people, they’ve responded with a cringing look of confusion. For those who don’t know about this common treat loved by countless children in Australia and New Zealand, you are quite frankly missing out!

I even looked up the term ‘fairy bread’ on Wikipedia recently just to make sure that it wasn’t some figment of my imagination that I dreamed up as a child before our family came from the 'Land Down Under' to settle in Canada in the late 70’s. Sure enough, this is what I found as a definition…

“Fairy bread is sliced white bread cut into triangles, spread with margarine or butter, and covered with ‘hundreds and thousands’ which stick to the spread. Fairy bread is commonly served at children's parties in Australia and New Zealand. The origin of the term is not known, but it may come from the poem 'Fairy Bread' in Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, published in 1885.”

‘Hundreds and thousands’, by the way, is the Aussie term for what Canucks refer to as ‘sprinkles’, or those multi-coloured tiny balls of hard candy that we sometimes like to adorn ice cream or birthday cakes with.

Recently, we just happened to have some grocery store bought white bread and ‘hundreds and thousands’ in the house simultaneously… two out of three of the essential ingredients for fairy bread. The nostalgic child in me couldn’t resist, so I slathered on the margarine and sure enough, it was just like those long lost times that still seem so real yet feel like a lifetime away.

So before you cringe, give it a try or at least let your kids be the guinea pigs. You and they might be pleasantly surprised.