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

★~ Today’s Quote: “My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M’s and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.” Dave Barry

★~ Coast Guard Day:

 

–U.S. Coast Guard:  On August 4, 1790  Congress authorized the President to build and equip ten boats to collect revenue, and provide for a complement of officers and men to operate them. This early service known as the Revenue Marine (later the Revenue Cutter Service) represented an attempt to counter a serious smuggling problem that had tremendous financial impact on the nation’s ability to enforce its laws at sea.

Currently, The Coast Guard oversees maritime safety and security, national defense, mobility, and the protection of natural resources. That means they protect the international water borders, prevent smuggling (drug busts!), perform search and rescue, as well as protect the coastal environments. That’s a pretty darn big job. Hats off to the Coast Guard!

★ – Watermelon Day: 

Full disclosure Watermelon Day was yesterday, but since today’s food of the day is rather vague I thought we would make-up Watermelon Day.

Watermelon goes back as far as the 12th Egyptian Dynasty, with seeds found in the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. Pioneer David Livingstone was also impressed by the abundance of watermelons he encountered throughout his missionary travels through Africa in the mid-19th century. It is believed that the watermelon originated somewhere in Africa.

You can celebrate “National Watermelon Day” by eating watermelon as a snack, or enjoying it as a side dish, a dessert, or adult beverage (when fortified with alcohol or made into wine).

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1922 – Every telephone in the U.S. and Canada went dead as the Bell System shut down all its switchboards and switching stations for one minute in memory of Alexander Graham Bell, who had died two days earlier. During this time, none of the 13 million telephones in operation could be used.

♥~ 1983 – New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield threw a baseball during warmups and accidentally killed a seagull! After the game, Toronto police surrounded the slugger and arrested him for “causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.”

★~Born Today:

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

♥~ 1834 – John Venn FRS,  was a British logician and philosopher. He is famous for introducing the Venn diagram, which is used in many fields, including set theory, probability, logic, statistics, and computer science. Check out  Google’s latest Doodle marking the 180th anniversary John Venn’s birth.

♥~ 1901 – (Daniel) Louis Armstrong Satchmo: jazz musician: trumpet; Grammy Award-winning singer: Hello, Dolly! [1964], Lifetime Achievement Award [1971]; It’s a Wonderful World, Mack the Knife, Blueberry Hill; appeared in films: The Five Pennies, The Glenn Miller Story, Hello Dolly!, High Society; American ambassador of good will; inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [1990]; died July 6, 1971

♥~ 1961 – Barack Obama 44th U.S. President [2009- ], first African American to be elected U.S. President; U.S. Senator from Illinois [2005-2009]; Illinois State Senator [1997-2004]; president of Harvard Law Review [1990]; married [Jun 1989] to Michelle Robinson; two daughters: Malia Ann and Natasha [‘Sasha’]

♥~ 1961 – Lauren Tom actress: The Joy Luck Club, When a Man Loves a Woman, Grace Under Fire, DAG, Max Steel

★~  Pepquinos Gallimaufry: 

While they might look genetically-engineered, Pepquinos come from an ancient wild plant in South America, and are 100% natural. They are just 3-cm-long and 2 cm in diameter, but apart from their size, they look just like regular watermelons. But only on the outside, because once sliced, the juicy green flesh of a cucumber is revealed. They also have the crisp fresh taste of cucumbers and usually served in luxury restaurants, as appetizers, in summer salads, stir fried and even as a sorbet.

The rare Pepquinos were discovered and brought to Europe in 1987, by a Dutch company that later began producing them and selling seeds. They’ve only recently started cultivating them in the US and Asia, but their popularity in foodie communities is growing rapidly. The growth cycle of the Pepquinos plant is between 60 and 85 days, and a single string yields 60 to 100 fruit.

A Pepquinos by any other name could be called a Cucamelon which is what Diane (Tangled In Kudzu) called them. No matter, they sound tasty and I want to try one!

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I am proclaiming the first week of August: Finish It Week!

Just Do It!  has us swimming in half finished project that I hope to wrap up this week.  I’ll share as I go along, but todays riveting project is to finish painting the picnic table. Yes, the picnic table, I’ve been talking about for the past two weeks.  It’s half painted. What happened? Well, boards fell off, the foot rotted, and the paint bubbled. Ok? Nothing, is ever as easy as I tell myself it will be. Perhaps, you would like to suggest, that if we planned and researched our projects more thoroughly our troubles would be fewer. HA.  If I knew how hard most of these “anybody can do them projects” would be before I started – I wouldn’t ever start anything. Skewed logic? No. Starting is the hardest part. Finishing, of-course, is the second hardest part, but at heart I’m a finisher and what is started will be done. Sometimes, it just takes me awhile to figure out how to do it or  fix what we have done. But along the way I learn a lot the hard way. For example,  I speak VW bug fluently. Yes, the June Bug still resides with us. Cole plans to update his long lost blog this week. He has a to finish list too.

Do you have anything you can finish along with me this week? Odd Loves Company!

Have a most Merry Monday!