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But I’m not done sharing wonderful photos from Joel Sartore because he has another book.
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Great Blue Turaco
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A book full of birds.
Northern White Faced Owl
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Our fine feathered….
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Baby Golden Parakeet
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And not quite feathered yet friends.
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Golden Pheasant
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Being an avid bird watcher and feeder, this book warms my soul.
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Kea
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I’ll try not to overshare.
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Andean Cock of the Rock
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But look at these beauties.
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Vulturine Guineafowl
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It’s going to be tough.
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At the beginning of December we gave $10 to a fundraiser for our local food bank which we wouldn’t have known about it if we hadn’t been sitting in our corner at the local pub.
We drank…
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And lo and behold, it paid off.
Because yesterday when we stopped in for a burger and a beer? This was placed in front of me by the bartender….
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The husband joked that they didn’t need to bribe us to drink there…
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But damn. For $100 gift card? I’d drink anywhere.
Apparently our donation was part of a raffle and we won a prize.
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Who says drinking doesn’t pay?
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I woke up this morning to proof of late night visitors.
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Thankfully they weren’t the kind who deploy the anal probe….
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But it does look like they surveyed the Barn Mahal.
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And who could blame them?
Heated winter space with a fully stocked beer fridge is a hard thing to resist for any species…
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But drop what thoust is doing and get thee to the nearest Wal Mart forthwith.
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Yes, that Wal Mart.
And I know, you’ll need to wear blinders or your faith in the human race as a species will spiral down the drain…. but trust me. This time it will be worth it.
Because during a begrudged trip there the other day to buy bird seed since both our local stores were out?
I found this:
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And holy guacamole Batman! There’s a little taste of paradise in every bite. Rich, sweet, and buttery…. I don’t even care if I’ll have to let my pants out at the waist next week.
And if that’s not enough to entice you to walk down Wal Mart’s hallowed halls?
Here’s an added bonus.
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Correct me if I’m wrong…
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But that has got to be the worst product ever invented. If you want to see me in a homicidal rage? Watch me chase a screaming alarm clock down the hall with a baseball bat at 4:00am.
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Do I need to wrap myself in a life size tortilla?
No. I really don’t.
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A foot hammock.
Because those pillowed neck rolls people wear on airplanes aren’t ridiculous enough.
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Why in the world would I pay for an implement that gives me the hairdo I spend all morning trying to get rid of?
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Read my lips…
I neither have an inner mermaid, nor do I need to find one.
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This.
Because the government doesn’t eat enough of our money as it is.
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My spam folder is definitely getting blue.
And at times? It’s down right crude.
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For example, I found this the other day.
Spam
Resort hopping Part 3… The Eagle Mountain House.
free porn pics of carmen hayes dos teens violently fucked doggy style.
royal doulton vintage clock girl cums during creampie lesbian triangles
meet women for sex dodge center Minnesota free gay foot torture.
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There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s break it down shall we?
I don’t know who Carmen Hayes is, but I’m thinking perhaps the ASPCA should be notified.
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As you know, the husband and I wander around a lot of antique stores…. but I’m pretty sure I’ve never run across that particular piece of Royal Doulton. Nor do I want to.
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And can someone please enlighten me, because clearly I lead a sheltered life in Maine. What exactly is a sex dodge center? The only mental image I have is dodgeball and that can’t be right. Or is it….
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Free gay foot torture. While I appreciate a good deal as much as the next girl…. I think my bunions and I will have to pass on that.
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I know the picture is bad and you probably can’t read the writing, but this salon I drove by last week?
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Claimed to be The Best Little Hair House in Augusta…. and that made me laugh.
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This is the January squirrel from our new calendar…. and if momma red dons a pair of skis? I’ll be sure to post a picture of that as well.
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I think we’re all entering the new year with a little trepidation, aren’t we…?
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Look!
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Our contractor does exist! I even caught him putting on the third coat of polyurethane.
And I had to take this picture as well, because the husband is so thrilled he’s going to have a bar?
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He walks out there everyday and communes with it.
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Yes, I’ve done it.
I’ve found the perfect work out routine for my inner couch potato. And if, like me….. your idea of strenuous exercise is slicing another lime for your margarita rim?
Rejoice! And read on.
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Four seconds of intense intervals, repeated until they amount to a minute of total exertion, led to rapid improvements in strength and fitness in middle-aged and older adults.
In what is probably the definitive word on how little exercise we can get away with, a new study finds that a mere four seconds of intense intervals, repeated until they amount to about a minute of total exertion, lead to rapid and meaningful improvements in strength, fitness and general physical performance among middle-aged and older adults.
I have often written about the potential benefits of brief, high-intensity interval training, or H.I.I.T., an approach to exercise that consists of quick spurts of draining physical effort, followed by rest, with the sequence repeated multiple times. In studies, short H.I.I.T. workouts typically produce health gains that are equal to or more pronounced than much longer, gentler workouts.
But the ideal length of the intervals in these workouts has been unsettled. Researchers studying H.I.I.T. agree that the optimal interval span should stress our muscles and other bodily systems enough to jump-start potent physiological changes but not so much that we groan, give up and decline to try that workout ever again. In practice, those dueling goals have led H.I.I.T. scientists to study intervals ranging from a protracted four minutes to a quickie 20 seconds.
But Ed Coyle, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas in Austin, and his graduate assistant Jakob Allen suspected that even 20-second spurts, performed intensely, might exceed some exercisers’ tolerance. So, he decided to start looking for the shortest possible interval that was still effective.
And in the new study, which was published this week in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, he and his colleagues settled on a blink-swift four seconds.
To test that idea, the researchers turned initially to eight healthy college students, asking them to sprint on the bikes for four seconds periodically throughout the day, to see if these short, strenuous workouts would counteract some of the undesirable metabolic effects of sitting all day and eating poorly. They did, as I wrote about in April.
But that study focused on robust, young adults and repeated, if diminutive, workouts sprinkled throughout the day. The scientists now wondered if a more practical, single session of four-second sprints would be enough exercise to improve health and fitness in out-of-shape adults well past their college years.
So, they recruited 39 of them, men and women aged 50 to 68 who were sedentary but had no other major health concerns. They tested the volunteers’ current aerobic fitness, muscular power and mass, arterial flexibility, and ability to perform what are called “activities of daily living,” such as getting up out of a chair.
The volunteers began visiting the performance lab three times a week. There, they completed a brief workout of repeated four-second intervals on the lab’s specialized bikes. At first, they sprinted for four seconds, with Dr. Allen calling out a second-by-second countdown, followed by 56 seconds of rest, repeating that sequence 15 times, for a total of 60 seconds of intervals.
Over two months, though, the riders’ rest periods declined to 26 seconds and they increased their total number of sprints to 30 per session.
At the end of eight weeks, the scientists retested everyone and found substantial differences. On average, riders had increased their fitness by about 10 percent, gained considerable muscle mass and strength in their legs, reduced the stiffness of their arteries and outperformed their previous selves in activities of daily living, all from about three to six minutes a week of actual exercise.
A majority of the volunteers also told the researchers during follow-up interviews that they enjoyed the workouts and would continue them, if possible, Dr. Coyle said.
The upshot, he said, is that these intervals, despite being as brief as possible, effectively boosted health and fitness in ordinary adults.
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Four seconds?
I think even I might be able to handle that.
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Because we all need a little chortle now and then.
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I hear ya sister.
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This is a brilliant idea.
I shall be cc’ing the CDC immediately.
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That’s pretty much been our last 10 months. You?
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Rode hard and put away wet.
Yup.
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This is almost too true to be funny.
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Wish that happened when I tried it.
Though I do firmly believe in sanitizing from the inside out when it comes to tequila….
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I’m an avid reader, some might say voracious. I never feel complete until I’m knee deep in a good book and if I don’t have a stack of at least 10 ready to go? I get twitchy.
Needless to say I live on Amazon and worship their Prime 2 day delivery. (If you mention the word Kindle? You’re dead to me. Reading is, and always will be, a tactile pleasure. Period.)
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About a week ago I did the unthinkable and ran through my unread pile in record time leaving me with *gasp!* only one book unread.
So just as I logged on to cruise the new releases, the husband started hollering at me to go help him with something in the barn. Rushing, I made a few quick picks because bookless is something I can not be. Without fully reading descriptions or reviews, I picked this one about a food critic because it had 4 out of 5 stars.
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Well… technically it is about a food critic. But after sampling an exquisite torta ai fichi e limone, she has raunchy, not to mention quite descriptive, sex with her lover… kills him… and then harvests his tongue to cook and savor later.
Yes. She’s a sexually insatiable Hannibal Lecter.
*Note to self- always read descriptions and reviews*
River's world..... 