I wonder why discussions of bodily functions can be so darn hilarious. A blog that I read frequently ran a contest recently about embarassing farts. Yes, you read that right. And the entries for the contest are in the comments section. Go there and prepare to do some laughing: ShaunaGlenn

My family seems to revel in the awesomeness of their gas-passing. I, on the other hand, am the prude of the family. The kill-joy, if you please. I frown upon their gross public displays of gassiness. But, I do understand there are times when a person has to do what a person has to do. And as you will find when you go to Shauna Glenn's Letterrip contest, people have emitted some amazing sounds and fluids from their hind ends in some pretty embarassing locales.

Mommy Rage

Here is an opinion piece by writer Denise Albert about her Mommy Rage. You should see the comments that are pouring in about this on their website!

She reminds me of someone I used to be very good friends with, but shall hereby remain nameless. That friend of mine had the same attitude as this Denise Albert. And to quote her: "Yes, I have mommy rage. I don’t hide my feelings, and if you make me angry you will know it...the bottom line is I know what I want, what I like, and how to get it done." That is just a sampling.
 

I am a huge fan of M&M's. Especially Peanut M&M's.

But they have gone and given us a flavor profile that I really do NOT like. I give you Strawberried Peanut Butter M&M's:

These have been out for a bit of time but I didn't take the opportunity to try them until now. My advice to you: don't bother. The flavor combination just does not work at all for me. I'll stick to the Peanut Butter M&M's or Peanut M&M's. Or even the limited edition Coconut M&M's.

But on the bright side, M&M's has a really good website: M&M's

And in other news: I took my daughter to the county science fair this past weekend where she entered her project into competition. We walked around to view the other projects while we were waiting. There was one project that showed the scientific probability of finding a green M&M in a bag of M&M's. Good one!

Today I was driving my daughter home from school and she was telling me that they were talking about spiders at school. She reminded me of an incident we had with a spider years ago at our house in the country:

We were sitting on the front porch of our house. We had a few people over visiting. Plus there was my daughter who was about 5 years old at the time, my sister, and myself. So we're just hanging out, talking, maybe having a couple of beers and it was late in the afternoon.

Suddenly Toot said, "Mommy look at that big spider!"

I looked and sure enough, it was a huge spider. Probably the biggest one I had ever seen in person outside of a zoo enclosure. Everyone kind of froze and stared at the spider sitting there on the porch.

Someone said, "I think that is one of those wolf spiders." This spider was amazing and scary looking. It was one of those fearsome things that you can't stop staring at but know you should get a shovel or something and take it out swiftly.

And then suddenly we didn't see the spider anymore. It apparently moved at the speed of light because one moment it was there and then the next moment it wasn't.

Of course, all hell broke loose with people running and screaming and slapping at themselves to make sure the spider wasn't on them. I grabbed Toot and we ran down the sidewalk and I sat her down some distance from the house to carefully check her over, making sure the spider wasn't on her.

Finally a couple of us ventured back up onto the front porch to look around for the spider. I believe someone actually grabbed a garden rake or something to kill it with. We didn't even want to open the front door because as fast as that thing moved, we didn't want to chance letting it into the house.

We never found that spider. Can you just imagine the horrible squishing noise it would have made if someone had flattened it with a garden implement?

I have been meaning to post this for some time now but kept forgetting. It is the Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody.

And here is the original, and still best version. By the best band of all time: Queen.

I came to the Project Runway love-fest rather late. I did not watch the first seasons of it. Every once in awhile as I was changing channels, I would happen upon the show and watch it for a few minutes. But something made me start watching it a few seasons ago and here I am: a full-fledged Project Runway junkie.

My favorite designer this season is Anthony Williams. It is not because of his designs though. It is his hilarious personality. He throws out these one-liners and quips throughout the show and really livens things up. Plus, he is a southerner from that great city of Birmingham, Alabama.

I can't wait to see how he fares this week on Project Runway. I wish they were filming and showing it in real-time or at least filming weekly. But they film months in advance so the ones who were eliminated already know it but can't say a word ahead of time.

We recently tried a new kind of coffee at our house and I will have to say that it is really good. It is Dallmayr prodomo kaffee.

Dallmayr dates back to the 17th century in Munich, Germany. It is a luxury food store and delicatessen that also happens to make some fine coffee and export it to the rest of the world. In case you don't happen to be in Munich, you can order your Dallmayr coffee from Germandeli.com

The Dallmayr coffee is free of any bitter after-taste which is a quality I especially like in coffees and is brewed from Arabica beans. Normally we just use Kona coffee here at our house for our regular coffee and Cafe Bustelo for our latte's. Now we have another favorite coffee to add to our line-up.

Visit their website at http://www.dallmayr.de/en/about_dallmayr.html and you can learn more about the fascinating history behind this business that is more than 300 years old.

It should be noted that I am a total coffee nut. I get up really early in the morning, get my daughter ready for school, and drive her to school. Then I come back home and make a pot of coffee. Don't interrupt me when I am enjoying my cups of coffee in the morning. I like to fix a cup of coffee and troll through the blogs that I regularly read and also the latest news before I get started on my work day.

I love to have access to all sorts of random, but important information and trivia. Today I stumbled upon a world of information at Harper's Index. This is the index to Harper's magazine and to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Harper's Index, they have published their entire database online.

I put in the word "Texas" and here are some facts that popped up (the first numbers are the month and year of the data):

2/1987: price of 12 ounces of drug-free urine from Byrd Laboratories in Austin, Texas: $ 19.95
9/1988: percentage of Texas voters who say they do not consider George Bush a "real" Texan: 57 %
1/1994: chances that a member of the Hempstead, Texas high school cheerleading squad was pregnant last fall: 1 in 4
11/1998: price a Houston company charges for sending a DNA sample into outer space for possible cloning by aliens: $ 50
3/2003: Amount the U.S. Air Force will pay a Texas woman this year for mistakenly hitting her home with a dummy bomb: $12,000
5/2006: Minimum number of ranches in Texas where one can shoot a zebra: 56
10/2007: Number of different reasons for having sex, as identified this year in a University of Texas study: 237

Visit Harper's Index and see what you can find.