Don't Fear Starbucks

Why the franchise actually helps mom and pop coffeehouses.

Strange as it sounds, the best way to boost sales at your independently owned coffeehouse may just be to have Starbucks move in next-door.

Family's Dog Saves 5-year-old from Cancer

Hooray for Phoebe!

5-year-old Kendall Sendall is a little camera shy and so is her best friend Phoebe, a 6-year-old Australian Shepherd. But luckily Phoebe wasn't shy about something else.

“She decided she wanted to be an inside dog,” Heidi Sendall, Kendall’s mother, said.

And that was Sendall's first clue that something wasn't right. Every time Phoebe came inside she went straight for Kendall, who at the time was 3.

“As soon as I would walk in the room she would place her paw on the baby,” Heidi said. “Kendall kept sleeping, so she kept pulling us and when she was awake she would actually pull her to us.”

The Sendall’s called the doctor. Heidi says she was told, ”Don't worry about it. It's an ear infection we'll write a prescription.”

But the doctor in Phoebe knew it was something else and she started to get more adamant.

“She came in and kept putting her paws up on us and biting us and pulling at our clothing,” Heidi said. “It wasn't any of the other children, just specifically Kendall, and pulling her or me to each other so we would meet, like there's something wrong, look at the baby. She actually ripped some of my sweatshirts. She was that desperate.”

Heidi got the picture after three days of pestering from Phoebe and took Kendall to the emergency room. The diagnosis was acute leukemia.

“It had gotten into her joints already,” Heidi said.

Phoebe knew it all along.

Kendall is now just a normal, healthy 5-year-old. The cancer is in remission, thanks to her family pet.

Phoebe was honored by the Franklin County Humane Society. They presented her with a trophy and gave the family $700 to help with Kendall’s medical expenses. They also decided not to exchange gifts among the staff members, and instead spent that money to buy everyone in the Sendall family, including Phoebe, a Christmas present.

Phoebe is now a permanent member of the family who sleeps inside with Kendall, who she is still watching over.

“She's never left her side since,” Heidi said.

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West Virginia....

'Nuf said!

So, a Wolf Walks into a Bar...

A wolf walked into a packed bar in Italy, ate a steak sandwich and walked out again.

The wolf strolled into the bar at Villetta Barrea, near to the Abruzzo national park, and helped itself to a steak sandwich from a table.

Bar owner Giacinto Lorenzo, 43, said: "It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but it really happened.

"Everyone here knows what a wolf looks like and there was no mistaking this beast for a big dog. It was one of the wolves from the national park.

"It looked pretty thin and we guess it must have been suffering with the recent cold weather and the snow.

"Everyone was so frightened we couldn't move for about five minutes afterwards, but the wolf just sauntered out as if it was the most normal thing in the world."

Whoops!

When something was mentioned earlier today about some big meeting happening after lunch, I made the connection that it was for the whole staff... .
Imagine my surprise when there were only six (senior) people at the table.
And, of course, once you realize that, it's too late to get out gracefully.
So two hours later, here I am back at doing some work before.

Since it's two weeks until that meeting happens again, hopefully no one will think to ask where ol' what's-his-name is.

In charge

I'll decide what we watch today, thank you very much!
Maybe that songbird special on Animal Planet...

Uber Geeky Watch

The Pilot Watch with slide rule!
This watch from Torgoen will allow you to step back in time a little bit. Featuring a circular slide rule that can solve time, distance and speed equations, it can also perform a wide variety of calculations. These include currency conversions, multiplication and division and any conversion of a linear nature such as ounces to grams, kilograms to pounds, miles to kilometers, etc.

Once before an undergrad surveying class, my calculator bit the dust, & I showed up to take the final exam with an actual slide rule (which I still have). After my prof got over his initial shock, he was at least a little impressed that someone actually knew how to use one.
If that watch wasn't so expensive, it'd be fun to have.

Who uses an odd number of batteries??

So, I've got a wireless keyboard & mouse (Microsoft) that I use with one of the machines in my office, & whenever I have to change the batteries in the keyboard I'm amazed that it takes three of them.
This is especially a nuisance since my battery charging unit works in pairs of batteries.

I feel sure that MS planned it this way, because they love to cause frustration... .

When I'm reincarnated

This is where I want to be!

A pig called Babe is living a charmed life on a private island in the Bahamas.

Fun coloring books for your kids (or grandkids)!

Each available as a handy downloadable PDF file!
You & the kids will have hours of educational fun while you're in the car going to visit relatives this holiday season!

Disaster Preparedness
Food Safety with Thermy™
Why Elephants Cry
Biomedical Research with the Lucky Puppy
and the ever popular Making firearms safety fun

Bender's Big Score

On shelves now! The straight to DVD Futurama feature movie!

The film features return appearances by many of the recurring and one-shot characters in the series. Several of the notable ones include: the Nibblonians, Fry's dog Seymour, Barbados Slim, Robot Santa, the God space entity, Al Gore (played by himself), and Coolio as Kwanzaa-bot. It also introduces Mark Hamill as the Chanukah Zombie, a character mentioned by Kwanzaa-bot in an earlier episode.

Bender's Big Score and the three follow-up films will be turned into season five of Futurama on Comedy Central, each film comprising four episodes of the broadcast season.

It is the holiday eating season, after all...

Earth's tropics belt expands
WASHINGTON - Earth's tropical belt seems to have expanded a couple hundred miles over the past quarter century, which could mean more arid weather for some already dry subtropical regions, new climate research shows.