~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
April 28, 2012

 (This is my Azalea bush–I am trying out some new technology with this picture so please bare with me…)

★~ Today’s Quote: People who throw kisses are mighty hopelessly lazy.  ~Bob Hope

★~ Kiss Your Mate Day:

This holiday is pretty self-explanatory. Very little direction is needed. If you don’t have a mate, perhaps you can borrow someone else’s. Just be sure to ask first and maybe offer a bit of an explanation in case they forgot to put Kiss Your Mate Day on their own calendar.

★~ Blueberry Pie Day:

I had no idea that so many people like blueberry pie and was surprised to find out that blueberry pie is one of the most popular pie flavors in the United States. Maine produces 25% of all low bush blueberries in North America, which makes New England the largest producer of blueberries in the world. An El Morno friend shared that Mrs. Smith makes a really good frozen blueberry pie. I thought I would share this tip in case you were not planning on making a blueberry pie from scratch.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1939- – Small cars were offered for sale in the U.S. for the first time. The Crosley one of the first small cars sold had a list price of $325.00, was 10 feet long and had an 80-inch wheelbase and a four-gallon gas tank

♥~ 1973- The Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, topped the U.S. album chart for one week before settling in to become the longest-running U.S. chart album of all time. Though it was only number one the first week, The Dark Side of the Moon stayed on the chart for 741 weeks.

♥~ 1985- The little town of Parker, TX, not far from Dallas, reported a 2-to-1 edge in the ratio of tourists to residents. The small town was visited by 2,100 tourists each day as they flocked to  Parker to visit Southfork Ranch, the home of the Ewing family (CBS-TV hit, Dallas).

♥~1994- Northwestern University announced that the so-called biological clock, that gene governing the daily cycle of waking and sleeping called the circadian rhythm, had been found in mice. Never before pinpointed in a mammal, the biological clock gene was found on mouse chromosome 5.

♥~ 2003 – Apple computer launched the I-tunes store

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1878- Lionel Barrymore (Blythe)Academy Award-winning actor: A Free Soul [1930-31]; Camille, Captains Courageous, Duel in the Sun, It’s a Wonderful Life, Key Largo, The Little Colonel; died Nov 15, 1954

♥~ 1926 – Harper Lee (Nelle Harper Lee) wrote just one novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), but it has sold more than 30 million copies. She hates interviews and speeches, and prefers to live quietly in Monroeville, where she is known as Miss Nelle. She wrote: “I arrived in the first grade, literate, with a curious cultural assimilation of American history, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapunzel, and The Mobile Press. Early signs of genius? Far from it. Reading was an accomplishment I shared with several local contemporaries. Why this endemic precocity? Because in my hometown, a remote village in the early 1930s, youngsters had little to do but read. A movie? Not often — movies weren’t for small children. A park for games? Not a hope. We’re talking unpaved streets here, and the Depression. […] Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.” (Writers Almanac)

♥~1941 – Ann-Margret (Olsson) actress: Carnal Knowledge, Tommy, Viva Las Vegas, Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, Bye, Bye, Birdie, Scarlett; singer: I Just Don’t Understand

♥~ 1948 –– Marcia Strassman actress: Welcome Back Kotter, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Honey I Blew Up the Kids, Another Stakeout; singer

♥~ 1950 Jay Leno – comedian, TV talk show host: The Tonight Show

♥~ 1971 – Simbi Khali actress: 3rd Rock from the Sun, She TV, Vampire in Brooklyn, A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Plump Fiction, We Were Soldiers

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ kiss (v.)  O.E. cyssan “to kiss,” from P.Gmc. *kussijanan (cf. O.S. kussian, O.N. kyssa, O.Fris. kessa, M.Du. cussen, Du., O.H.G. kussen, Ger. küssen, Norw., Dan. kysse, Swed. kyssa), from *kuss-, probably ultimately imitative of the sound.

♥~ The science of kissing is called philematology.

♥~ Lips are 100 times more sensitive than the tips of the fingers.

♥~ Approximately two-thirds of people tip their head to the right when they kiss. Some scholars speculate this preference starts in the womb.

♥~ On July 5-6, 2005 a couple in London locked lips for 31 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds, making it the longest kiss ever recorded.

♥~ Kissing is good for teeth. The anticipation of a kiss increases the flow of saliva to the mouth, giving the teeth a plaque-dispersing bath.

♥~ The first on-screen kiss was shot in 1896 by the Edison Company. Titled The May Irwin-John C. Rice Kiss, the film was 30 seconds long and consisted entirely of a man and a woman kissing close up.

♥~ Polls consistently list the kiss between Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant in the 1946 film Notorious as one of the sexiest kisses in cinematic history. Because the Hays Code allowed on-screen kisses to last only a few seconds, Alfred Hitchcock directed Bergman and Grant to repeatedly kiss briefly while Grant was answering a telephone call. The kiss seems to go on and on but was never longer than a few seconds.

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It’s a rainy, blustery Saturday in Chicago. Cole and I just returned from breakfast, and I suggested he figure out a way to move the entertainment center off the front porch and into the alley. He suggested we use it as a mailbox. We are in negotiations.

Cole’s birthday shoes arrived. I love the way his size 13 feet make my feet look small. My side of the family is known for having huge feet (we call it “Murphy Foot”). Legend has it that a Murphy baby can be identified by foot size alone in a hospital nursery. My boy is 6 feet tall, and I’m not sure how much more he will grow, but can you imagine how tall he would be if he did not have so much turned under for foot?

Odd Loves Company, so leave a comment if you have an El Morno moment!