~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
July 12, 2014

★~  Today’s Quote:  “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.” ― Henry David Thoreau

★~ Simplicity Day:

We celebrate simplicity day on the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote of simple living in his book Walden, the memoir of his time spent living at one with nature at Walden Pond. The best reason to keep life simple is so we can focus our time and energy on the things that are near and dear to us.

I’ve recently discovered The Minimalist web site: Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus write about living a meaningful life with less stuff for 2 million readers. They live in Montana by way of Dayton, Ohio. I especially enjoyed their book:  Everything That Remains “….a touching, surprising story of what happened when one young man decided to let go of everything and begin living more deliberately. Heartrending, uplifting, and deeply personal, this engrossing memoir is peppered with insightful (and often hilarious) interruptions by Ryan Nicodemus, Millburn’s best friend of twenty years.”  “The book reads like Henry David Thoreau but with Wi-Fi (Boston Globe).”

★~ Different Colored Eyes Day:

Heterochromia, in case you didn’t know, is just a fancy word for different-colored eyes. It comes in several forms – different colored eyes entirely, eyes that are part one color and part another, or even eyes that are a different color around the pupil than at the outer edges. Roughly   .67% of the world population has Heterochromia

★~ Pecan Pie Day:

If pies are considered to be a national offering of comfort, pecan pies are the grand dames of Southern hospitality.

Made with simple ingredients, these perfect pies combine an ooey-gooey bliss-inducing base of melted butter, eggs, corn syrup and sugar with the woodsy crunch of pecans. You can also pour some chocolate chips an bourbon into the batter to sass it up even more.We’d like to think this simply divine dessert has been around since before the days of white-columned wraparound porches, but recipes for the pie didn’t surface until 1925. However, New Orleans is happy to take the credit for its creation after Native Americans introduced them to the home-grown nut.

Classic Pecan Pie 

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1873 –  It rained frogs in Kansas City. Really. The logical explanation for the odd occurrences is that a tornado or strong whirlwind picked up the frogs from a shallow body of water and carried them – sometimes for hundreds of miles – before dropping them on a Kansas city.

♥~ 1958 – Yakety Yak, by The Coasters, became the number one song in the U.S.A., according to Billboard magazine. It was the first stereo record to reach the top of the chart.

♥~ 1960 – The first Etch-A-Sketch went on sale. Over 50 million units were sold during the next 25 years. It was the favorite toy of many moms because it was self-contained and so-o-o quiet.

♥~ 1962– Fifty-one years ago, a band called The Rollin’ Stones played their first gig. Just a couple of months before, guitarist Brian Jones had placed an ad in Jazz News, a local nightclub newsletter, announcing auditions for a rhythm-and-blues band. Two London flatmates named Mick Jagger and Keith Richards joined the band. Jagger and Richards had gone to primary school together in Kent, and had lost touch, but then they ran into each other on a train in 1960 and renewed their friendship. They both loved blues, and had formed a band of their own: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. They had run into Jones a few times at the Ealing Jazz Club, and they’d occasionally jammed together. Jones was the one who came up with the new band’s name. He was on the phone with the Jazz News, who asked him what his band was called. He glanced over at a Muddy Waters album that was lying on the floor. One track was “Rollin’ Stone Blues,” and the band was christened The Rollin’ Stones, then and there.

♥~ 1982 – E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial broke all box-office records by surpassing the $100-million mark of ticket sales in the first 31 days of its opening.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1817 – Henry David Thoreau philosopher, writer: On Walden Pond; died May 6, 1862

♥~ 1854 – George Eastman inventor: Kodak camera; flexible roll film; died Mar 14, 1932 An interesting fact about Eastman-he hated to have his picture taken.

♥~ 1908 – Milton Berle (Berlinger) comedian: Uncle Miltie, Mr. Television: The Milton Berle Show, Texaco Star Theatre; actor: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Oscar, Side by Side; died Mar 27, 2002

♥~ 1937 – Bill Cosby Emmy Award-winning comedian, actor: I Spy, The Bill Cosby Special [1968-1969]; The Cosby Show, Fat Albert & the Cosby Kids, Leonard VI, California Suite

♥~ 1948 – Richard Simmons weight loss expert, entertainer: Sweatin’ to the Oldies

♥~ 1951 – Cheryl Ladd (Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor) actress: Dancing with Danger, Changes, The Grace Kelly Story, One West Waikiki, Charlie’s Angels, Poison Ivy

★~ Today’s Gallimaufry:  July is Ice Cream Month, Let’s talk about brain freeze. 

“Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia” sounds like a terrible disease, and, certainly, it can be painful. But for most of us, sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia pain is worth the gain. Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is the affliction better known as “brain freeze” or “ice cream headache,” the stinging sensation one feels at the top/ front of the head after eating too much ice cream too quickly.

Many of us have experienced it— one study in the British Medical Journal (yes, there’s a study on ice cream headaches) suggests as many as one-third of the population has been so afflicted. Why does it happen? The most common explanation suggests that, in a sense, brain freezes are caused by our brains malfunctioning.

Your face has a nerve called the trigeminal nerve that contains three parts. One of the three parts carries sensory information from your forehead to your brain while another one does the same for the roof of your mouth. (The third one focuses on the lower mouth, but that’s not relevant to conversations about ice cream headaches.) Eating ice cream causes the blood vessels in your face to contract quickly and, when the ice cream leaves your mouth, those same blood vessels get warm and dilate, or expand. If you eat ice cream too quickly, the blood vessels expand rapidly, and that’s where the trigeminal nerve takes over. The part of the nerve in the roof of your mouth sends a signal to your brain, telling the brain that something’s wrong.

The brain screws it up. This “mistake” is a phenomenon called “referred pain,” in which the brain misplaces the source of the sensation. It’s not very common, although it’s also seen in heart attacks, during which the brain incorrectly places the pain in the shoulder instead of the chest. In the case of brain freeze, instead of “understanding” the signal for what it is— a change in temperature in your mouth— your brain instead thinks that the signal is coming from the forehead. The brain reacts by turning that signal into a migraine-like headache, although a short-lived one, thankfully. Why this referred pain phenomenon occurs is unknown. But we do know that if you do not want to experience it, there’s an easy solution: Slow down when you’re eating a frosted treat.

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I’m being treated to an early morning thunderstorm as I write El Morno. I think it is suppose to be rainy all weekend. Aside from muddy paws I don’t really mind, but it’s been a tough summer for those who want to picnic and enjoy outside sports activities. We are taking a break from basement restoration and will pick up again next week. I just had my nails done and would like to enjoy them for a few days. We are going to my Godson’s graduation party (you know the one that was on the Academy Awards 🙂 ) tonight and while I’ve been enjoying our construction project I would prefer not to look like the part.

El Morno Friend Carol is out of the hospital and is feeling fine – or to quote her, ” I guess that I’ll live to see another day unless I get hit by a bus.” I strongly suggested she look both ways and not cross in between.

Have a wonderful Saturday and don’t forget to howl at the Super Moon if the clouds part and you can see it!  It’s suppose to be, well, SUPER!

Odd Loves Company,