★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
February 4, 2014

★~ Todays Quote:  “There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.” ― Ranulph Fiennes

★~  Thank A Mailman:

In 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the Constitutional Post—the first organized mail service in America. Before this act, people relied on friends, merchants, or private messengers to carry their letters. It was an unreliable system, and colonial British postal inspectors often intercepted confidential messages.

As the nation’s first Postmaster General, Benjamin Franklin established many of the conventions we are accustomed to today, including a standardized rate chart based on weight and distance. Before the invention of the stamp in 1847, the writer could pay the postage in advance or leave it for the recipient to pay upon delivery!

Over the past two centuries, the Postal Service has grown and changed dramatically, but its mission of promoting free and open communication has remained the same. To celebrate thank your mail carrier the next time you see him or her! In case you ever wondered the official guidelines for tipping and gift-giving allow Carriers to accept a gift worth $20 or less from a customer per occasion. However, cash and cash equivalents must never be accepted in any amount.

★~ Homemade Soup Day:

M’m! M’m! Good  Whether from scratch or just jazzed-up canned stuff, nothing comforts like a bowl of soup.

The earliest evidence of soup dates to 6000 BCE.

The Middle English word soupen meant “to drink in sips”, which is how most soups were consumed. The words ”soup,” “supper,” “sip,” and “sop” are derived from this term.

Condensed soup was invented in 1897 by Dr John T Dorrance while working for the Campbell Soup Company.

In Nebraska, it is illegal for bar owners to sell beer unless they are brewing a pot of soup.

Andy Warhol liked Campbell’s Tomato Soup a lot, he ate it every day for lunch for more than 20 years.

Frank Sinatra always asked for chicken and rice soup to be available to him in his dressing rooms before he went on stage.

Women are more than twice as likely to eat soup as men, 9.67% vs. 4.0%.

On average, American consumers stock six cans of Campbell’s soup in their pantries at all times. I have 8 cans: Chicken noodle, 2-Tomato soup, 2-Mushroom Soup, Vegetable Soup, Cheddar Cheese Brocoli Soup.

NO SOUP FOR YOU! The Seinfeld character “Soup Nazi” was based on New York City restaurateur Al Yeganeh. Jerry Seinfeld visited Yeganeh’s Soup Kitchen International after the episode aired, only to be greeted by a profanity-laced demand for an apology. According to writer Spike Feresten, Seinfeld delivered a sarcastic apology and was promptly kicked out—but not before Yeganeh bellowed, “No soup for you!”

★~ Stuffed Mushroom Day:

The stuffed mushroom has been around since the early 20th century, and was most likely based on a traditional Italian recipe for stuffed zucchini blooms.

Mushrooms are often filled with breadcrumbs, garlic, parsley, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. In the 1940s and 1950s, restaurants began presenting stuffed mushrooms as a delicacy and used  ingredients such as hot sausage or crabmeat.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1789 – The Electoral College met for the first time to choose a U.S. president. Electors unanimously chose, George Washington.

♥~ 1939 – World mile record-holder Glenn Cunningham said in the newspaper that “running a four-minute mile is beyond human effort,” and that the best mile run will always be 4:01.66. That, of course, was his own best time. The mark has been shattered several times since. The current world record of 3:43:13 was set by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj [Golden Gala Meet, Rome, Italy, July 7, 1999].

♥~ 1957 – Smith-Corona Manufacturing Inc. of New York began selling portable electric typewriters. The first machine was a ‘portable’ of 19 pounds! Soon, other manufacturers offered similar models, made of lighter-weight plastics, with a lot less of the sophisticated workings inside.

♥~ 1973 – The comic strip Hagar the Horrible debuted 136 newspapers. Like his earlier strip, Hi and Lois, Dik Browne’s Hagar the Horrible revolves around a man who has amusingly imperfect success in dealing with both his job and his home life. In this case, the man is a Viking rather than a suburbanite, and his ‘job’ is looting and pillaging. Hagar now appears in some 2,000 papers throughout the world, and has been translated into over a dozen languages, including Swedish, as no less than 58 of Sweden’s daily papers carry the strip about their ancient countryman.

♥~ 2004 –  Today marks the tenth anniversary since the social network Facebook,  launched at Harvard University in Mark Zuckberg’s dorm. After Google, Facebook is the most visited site in the world and has over 1 billion members.

★~ Born Today:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/bTc9urjZ_a0[/youtube]

♥~ 1913 – Rosa Lee Parks civil rights leader: triggered 1955 boycott of Montgomery AL bus system by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger; died Oct 24, 2005

♥~ 1936 – Gary Conway actor: Burke’s Law, Land of the Giants, I was a Teenage Frankenstein

♥~ 1941 – John Steel, drummer with The Animals who had the 1964 UK & US No.1 single ‘House Of The Rising Sun’.

♥~ 1962 – Clint Black singer: Killin’ Time, Like the Rain, Summer’s Comin’, A Good Run of Bad Luck, State of Mind, A Bad Goodbye, A Better Man; actor: Maverick

★~  Good to Know: A few things your mailman would like you to know…

♥~ Maybe your dog won’t bite you. But in 2009, 2,863 of mailmen were bitten, an average of nine bites per delivery day. Please don’t let your dog bite me.

♥~ Remember this on Valentine’s Day: It takes our machines longer to read addresses on red envelopes (especially if they’re written in colored ink).

♥~ Why stand in line? At usps.com, you can buy postage, place a hold on your mail, change your address, and apply for passports. The site even offers free package pickup and free flat-rate envelopes and boxes, all delivered right to your doorstep.

♥~ Media Mail is a bargain, but most of you don’t know to ask for it. Sending ten pounds of books from New York City to San Francisco through Media Mail costs $5.89, compared with $16.77 for Parcel Post. Besides books, use it to send magazines, manuscripts, DVDs, and CDs; just don’t include anything else in the package.

♥~ We don’t get a penny of your tax dollars. Really. The sale of postage, products, and services at our 36,000 retail locations, and on our website, covers all of the post office’s operating expenses.

♥~ UPS and FedEx might charge you $10 or more for messing up an address. Post office? Not a cent.

♥~ Paychecks,personal cards, letters—anything that looks like good news—I put those on top. Utility and credit card bills? They go under everything else.

♥~ Sorry if I seem like I’m in a hurry, but I’m under the gun: Our supervisors tell us when to leave, how many pieces of mail to deliver, and when we should aim to be back. Then some of us scan bar codes in mailboxes along our route so they can monitor our progress.

♥~ Yes, we do have to buy our own stamps, but a lot of us carry them for customers who need them. If we don’t charge you, that’s because we like you.

♥~  Use a ballpoint pen. Ink from those felt tips runs in the rain.

♥~ Please dress properly when you come to the door. A towel wrapped around you doesn’t cut it. And we definitely don’t want to see you in your underwear!

♥~ Most of us don’t mind if you pull up to our trucks while we’re delivering and ask for your mail a little early. But please get out of your car and come get it. Don’t just put your hand out your window and wait for me to bring it to you.

♥~ We serve 150 million addresses six days a week, so we’re often in the right place at the right time. We pull people out of burning cars, catch burglars in the act, and call 911 to report traffic accidents, dead bodies, and more.

#

Isn’t it rather amazing that mail is delivered to our homes, or close to our houses, in those community mailboxes, every single day except Sunday. And while I’m not fond of our crabby mailman (no, it isn’t the weather–he is crabby year around) I do appreciate the fact that he trudges up to my door and delivers the mail. My pups live for his arrival racing towards the locked front door like wild dogs. Today, I might yell “Quit” in honor of Mailman day.

Oh Joy, 4-8 more inches of snow is headed are way.  I no longer have to place an ad on Craigslist to hire someone to shovel–shortly after the snow ends, someone just arrives with a knock and a shovel. However, the last guy showed up with a snow blower, I was tempted to insist on a discount. 2014 the winter of our discontent….

Hope you have a Terrific Tuesday but if it falls short of your expectations feel free to rant….It’s Rant Tuesday!

Odd Loves Company!