My mother sent me the link to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmi_qFsiHBM

I would love to embed that video on this page so that you can watch it from the comfort of my blog, but WordPress – for some reason – still does not allow YouTube videos to be embedded. Boo.

It’s a video about some dogs who do some pretty cool tricks. After watching this, I realize how lame Lilly is. I’m kidding, of course. But not really. Anyway, enjoy the video!

There is a guy down the street from me that I sarcastically refer to as my favorite neighbor. At this point, the partying and loud noises are a weekly occurrence at his house. In fact, we were pretty sure that he went out of town last weekend for the 4th, but we decided to stay at Jody’s apartment that night just in case he decided to come back. He is known to get drunk and light fireworks on any random night, so I was sure that if he was home, I was not going to get any sleep. Better safe than sorry.

Well, Saturday night – beginning at about 8 or so – he started lighting fireworks. I walked down there at about 1am and asked him to stop, and I know my neighbor across the street asked him to stop, and possibly other neighbors as well. Cops were called by me and according to the woman at the police station, they have received several calls about him that night. Cops came, he stopped for a little while, but shot another one at about 3am (just one really loud firecracker, just enough to wake us up and piss us off!). Even after the fireworks ended I couldn’t sleep because he was riding up and down the road on a four wheeler and I was concerned about him trying to seek revenge for calling the cops by smashing my mailbox or doing something to the cars in my driveway – my neighbor across the street has had his mailbox vandalized before. So Saturday night I slept for about 2 hours, at most.  I had to induce a nap by taking NyQuil Sunday afternoon, after all of my errands for the day were completed.

He is so annoying. But what can we do besides call the cops!? We can’t kick him out of the neighborhood. I used to cut him some slack since he would usually quiet down by 11pm, but now I don’t care – if he makes a peep after 11pm (time the noise ordinance starts), the cops will be called.

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On a different note, my brother – the biker, with long flowing hair – has cut his hair off! I’m sorry I don’t have a decent picture of it yet. I didn’t think to take one last night. He really liked his hair long so I was surprised that he cut it, but he has been trying to find a job and felt that the hair may have been hurting his chances. So he had someone cut it off, and he is donating it to Locks of Love.

Heather will be leaving next week on a trip to Pigeon Forge, TN. And I am by no means an expert on Pigeon Forge, but I have vacationed there at least once a year for the past 6 years, so I’m going to offer my advice and opinions to her, and to anyone else who happens to Google “Smoky Mountain Guide” and ends up here on my blog.

So, away we go:

• 441 is the main highway that runs through Pigeon Forge. By about 3pm, this road will be packed. Not might be crowded, not slightly busy – traffic WILL BE bumper to bumper. tobumpertobumpertobumpertobumper. For miles. After about a half hour of being stuck in this traffic (possibly less time in summer heat), you will begin looking around for cops because you are thinking about jumping the curb and driving on the sidewalk, and don’t want to get caught. Look for alternate routes, you can get just about anywhere with minimal time on 441 if you take the right roads.
• There are coupon books at most hotels, restaurants, gas stations, welcome centers, etc. We grab some every time we’re up there. There are coupons available for many of the popular attractions as well as restaurants and stores. We go to one restaurant for breakfast a lot – Flap Jacks – and we use a coupon every time. Plus they print an additional coupon on the bottom of the receipt.
• There is one Wal-Mart in the area, on 441. If you absolutely have to go to Wal-Mart, and would like to actually park in the parking lot, the best time to go is ….eh, about 3am. It will be completely packed if the sun is up.
• If you’re going to visit Gatlinburg, prepare for the fact that you will need to walk everywhere.

Places that I recommend:

• The Apple Barn (off of 441) This places has several restaurants and cute shops, and you’ll never believe this but they all have an apple theme.
• Wonderworks (on 441) You can’t miss it, it’s an upside-down building. It’s kind of a kid’s place, but Jody and I enjoyed it. It’s filled with interactive games and illusions and things like that.
• The Christmas Place (on 441) This is the greatest place on Earth. The first time I went it was snowing! It was perfect! This is several Christmas-themed stores all together in a cute little Christmasy “village”. And I don’t know where you’re staying, but I will be completely jealous if I find out you’re staying at the Inn at Christmas Place.
• Ripley’s Believe It or Not (Gatlinburg) I don’t know if Aeralyn is too young for this type of place, but Jody and I enjoyed it when we went. It has several interactive exhibits.
• Ripley’s Aquarium (Gatlinburg) It’s not very different from other aquariums, but it is part of the Ripley’s franchise so it has a few fun and unique exhibits. When we went, it was extremely crowded and surprisingly hot inside (in the middle of winter).
• Guinness World Record Museum (Gatlinburg) I don’t really recommend going IN this museum unless you really like this type of thing, but they have a huge harp outside that Aeralyn might enjoy, unless it’s not working – it wasn’t working the last time we went. But it doesn’t have strings, instead it uses lasers and you just run your hand in the air where the strings should be and it plays. Kind of fun if you’re just walking by, and it’s free.
• Pancake Pantry (Gatlinburg) The food here is pretty good but I mostly enjoy the look of the restaurant. And if you’re up early enough you can park on the street right in front of the building until 9am.

And there are tons of other places to visit that I either can’t think of right now or haven’t been to. But up there you can basically turn around and walk ten steps and run into another attraction, there’s an endless supply of things to do, places to go.

Have fun, Heather!

I’ve been working hard in Farm Town this week! Not only am I taking care of Jody’s mom’s farm while she is on a cruise, but I also decided to turn my farm into a maze:

You can click on the picture above for a larger version. My vision was to make a corn maze, but I ended up using wheat instead because it grows faster. Looks the same, right?

There’s one problem with my maze, though. See, in Farm Town if you want to walk somewhere you just click where you want to go and your little farmer avatar starts walking. I was hoping that someone who started at Point A (bottom corner) could click on Point B (Top corner where the animals are) and the program would send the farmer through the maze. But Farm Town seems to think it’s OK to just walk all over my crops, so sometimes it will let the farmer take a shortcut through the wheat to get to the end.

There is a way to force someone to walk a certain path – you have to use closely-packed trees or other items that the farmer can’t walk through like hay bales. My mother somehow found a farm that used trees to force the path:

If you’re a member of Farm Town, click on the image above to go to this farm, and click on the windmill. Oh, and make sure you have about 10 minutes to spare…because it takes a long time to walk through this maze! It’s just a ton of trees, but it works – you can’t cheat and skip to the end like you can in my maze. Personally I think this maze is way too big and takes too long, but I am thinking about using trees and other items to improve my maze.

And now the sweater…I knit this sweater for myself:

Cute, right? Do you like it? I like it, but it just doesn’t look right on me. I don’t know what it is…it’s just not something I would normally wear. I fully intended to wear it today – I had it on over a tank top and walked around my house trying to get use to it, but I eventually took it off. I’m going to try to wear it again tomorrow morning when I go to the needlework group again. And I realize how ridiculous it sounds when I say I’m going to “try to wear” something.

You can’t tell on the mannequin, but it hits mid-back on me and I think I’d like it if it were longer. I’ll probably start another one tonight with some minor adjustments, like more stitches on the front so that I can button it.

If you are a member of Facebook, you may be aware that there are “Applications” available for Facebookers to use. They come in all forms: Quizzes, games, widgets for your profile, etc.

There is one application in particular that my mother, a new Facebook user, has become addicted to. It is called “Farm Town” – the premise is simple, you have to take care of a virtual farm. You buy seeds, grow crops, and sell them for coins that you use to buy more seeds, rinse, repeat. The better you are, the higher you climb on the Farm Town levels.

You can also earn trophies for different things, like being a big spender, or if you visit your friends’ farms often. There’s also a trophy for being popular….the more “neighbors” you have (neighbors are Facebook friends that also have farms), the more popular you are.

My mother is not quite able to get the Popular Farmer trophy. Although she was able to talk me into starting a farm, she just doesn’t have quite enough Facebook friends interested in being virtual farmers (imagine that…I wonder why), and was complaining about it this past weekend. So I *jokingly* suggested that she open an account for Tinker – her dog – and set up a farm for Tinker so that she could have one more neighbor in Farm Town. I was completely joking.

Well, she did it.

My mother’s DOG now has a Facebook page.

Now, if you will excuse me, I must go tend to my farm now…my tomatoes are almost ready.

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://chickwithsticks.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/farming-on-facebook/feed/ 3 Lindsey tink-facebook1 http://chickwithsticks.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/bm/ http://chickwithsticks.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/bm/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:25:35 +0000 Lindsey http://chickwithsticks.wordpress.com/?p=651 ]]>

Would you like to hear about Lilly’s bowel movements?

Would you?

I have received two phone calls today about it. And I find that really amusing

Lilly went to the vet Wednesday because of her tummy issues, and once she had the medicine in her system, she just stopped pooping. Which is normal according to the vet. But she didn’t…eh, *go* at all on Thursday either.  Again, normal, but both the vet and Jody’s mom have called today for an update (Jody’s parents left Thursday to go to the cabin).

And just so you know, she *went* this morning. Everyone rejoiced! It was an exciting moment, I should have grabbed my camera! Dang it!

But seriously, she’s getting better. She has three medications that she has to take, 2 of them twice a day. One is a powder that we mix in with some soft dog food and she will eat that wihout any problems. One is a liquid that I have to squirt in her mouth, and she hates it! And the third is a pill that I have to hide in a dog treat before she will eat it. But she only has to take it for a few more days.

I spent my Sunday dyeing the washable yarn in orange an blue. Or, I tried to. The results resemble the picture above.

The yellow and orange yarn turned out great because both the colors were bright and even at the part where they mix, it looked great. But yellow and orange are much closer together on the color wheel than orange and blue.

See, when yellow and orange mix, it creates a yellow-orange color which looks fabulous between yellow and orange, it creates a gradual change between those two colors. When the orange and blue mixed, it created a horrible greenish color so vile that when I tried to take pictures, my camera just shut off. Actually the batteries died and I can’t find the charger anywhere and it’s driving me crazy because I know it’s in the house somewhere and I just used it a few weeks ago…but anyway…

In my attempt to cover up the horrible green by adding more blue and orange, it turned for the worse. The blue just took over! And it got on my nice bright oranges and now they are a dull orangy-blue-kinda green color. The point is, that yarn is ruined. It’s a waste. And that was the only washable yarn that I had available to dye. And now I’m stuck with this hideous yarn.

Like bacon?

I do.

I like it so much I decided to add some to my blog:

Bacon provided by one of the most ridiculous websites I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of ridiculousness): Bacolicio.us