I see London, I see France. I see someone's underpants?

Talk about creative!!! I was out shopping with my daughter this afternoon at Forever 21, and I must say, this mannequin display was definitely a creative find! What do I see but a mannequin in the act of pulling up (or was she pulling down) her underpants.
I have to give the mannequin dresser some credit for arranging the clothing so expertly. I was standing almost underneath the display and could not even see the slightest hint of the mannequin's private parts (do mannequins have private parts?).

I just couldn't pass up taking a couple of pictures with my phone. What a hoot!

The Bird Girl from Gilbert

(Cheryl and her young charge just before release)

My oldest daughter, Cheryl, is such a sweet person. She and her husband were leaving his place of work and came across a fledgling that had fallen out of its nest. She was concerned that its mother would abandon it since her husband had touched it, but I assured her that this myth has been debunked. I didn't hear anything from her for the rest of that week and figured they were able to put the baby bird back in its nest.
To my surprise, I learned that she had taken the bird home and had been taking care of it. She bought some baby bird food from the local pet store, a syringe and a small cage. It didn't take long for the little bird to learn to eat from the syringe and within a couple of days would get really excited when my daughter entered the room. Once my daughter opens the cage, she places her finger near the bird and it eagerly hops on and opens its mouth, and starts fluttering its wings and making those cute little baby bird noises.
Now mind, you feeding a young bird is a lot of work. My daughter has been feeding this thing around the clock. She even went so far as to buy some precooked meal worms that she would add to the mix. Talk about dedication.

Well, there's a very happy ending to this story. The bird is old enough to fly now, so yesterday my daughter and her husband took the bird back where they found it and set it free.

Dell Computer, You Rock!!!

Dell absolutely, positively knows what customer service is all about. I have been purchasing systems from Dell since 1998 and will continue to do so. Unfortunately, their systems are so damn good (my original desktop from 1998 is still operational), I don't need to buy a new system as often as I guess I could, but let me tell you why I love them so much.
My laptop, an Inspiron 6000, I purchased 3 years ago, recently starting exhibiting symptoms of what I call Microsoft OS bewilderment. For some reason unbeknownst to me, Windows gets really confuzzed after a couple of years and the only surefire way to remedy the situation is to reformat your hard drive and reload your OS and applications.
My laptop starting getting really confused about the available USB ports it thought it may or may not have and kept rejecting devices. Windows kept telling me the drivers were bad, when I know darn well they weren't.
When I originally received my laptop, it came preloaded as they often do, but I did receive media to reinstall the OS and all necessary drivers. However, I was lacking my DVD decoder/player and Roxio media software packages.
I started searching the Web for downloads and came across a link in the Dell User Forum, where I learned it is possible to request backup disks of what came with your system. So, I gave it a try.
Well to my delight, I received an e-mail from Dell the very next day informing me that even though my warranty had expired 2 years ago, they would still fulfill my request (thank you Ronald). In less than a week, I received backup disks for everything I needed and more.
Dell, you rock!!!! My laptop is working like a champ and it's just as good today as it was the day I first received it in April of 2006.

Open a Target credit account and SAVE!! (a penny???)

I was in Target today, checking out their outdoor stuff when my daughter grabbed me by the hand, told me to close my eyes, and proceeded to guide me to one of those humungeous offset umbrellas (I'm having my backyard landscaped and have been thinking about buying one). I opened my eyes and gasped. I mean this thing was huge, and it was a beautiful cranberry red.
I checked out the price and did a double-take. If you've done any shopping at Target, just about every time you go through the check-out stand, they ask if you want to save 10% by opening a credit card account. Well, I think someone was asleep when they created this item tag, 'cause all I would save is one whole penny. Whoopee. I couldn't help but wonder how in the world a math error of this type could even happen in the first place. I would think they have a standard program that automatically figures 10% off of the list price, which in this case would mean a reduction of $39.99. Oh, well. I guess I may never know.

Camp is spiritual, so they tell me...

While at The Home Depot the other day, I stumbled across this prose, hastily written on a board in the closet organization aisle. In case you can't quite make it out (click the image to view it at a larger size), it reads:

"Camp is spiritual, so they tell me, by next week I'll be so spiritual you can smell me."

I would love to know what inspired this poet to leave behind such a desparate message. I wonder, are they crying out to be delivered from the much-dreaded church camp? I guess I'll never know.

Happy Easter!

This year my oldest daughter and I colored Easter eggs with a good friend of mine from work. We used a variety of egg coloring methods and experimented with different techniques. My absolute favorite is Cheryl's hand-drawn floral egg. She used Papermate Flair markers and the colors are really vibrant. My second favorite was a plain robin's egg blue egg that I dyed using a store-bought kit (see the egg at the lower left in the last picture). The color came out really pure. Here are a few pictures of our labors. Enjoy!