HOW TO CLEAN BIRKENSTOCKS, WOW-POW (!) ANIMAL FACTS YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW, FRUIT AND CHEESE PAIRINGS, WATERMELON SMOOTHIE, SUMMER CAMP

Hello Monday –
We greet you with open arms and a happy smile for the coming week!

Super fun collection of interestings to share today.

BEGINNING WITH:

AMAZING ANIMAL FACTS THAT WILL LIKELY BLOW YOUR “WOW” FACTOR AWAY:
My 3 favorite take-aways are:

1. A blue whale weighs as much as 3 elephants and is as long as 3 Greyhound buses.  What?!
2. Elephants have a specific alarm regarding humans are near.  WOW!
3. Dogs’ senses of smell is about 100,000 times stronger than humans.  However, they only have 1/6 of our taste buds.  No wonder they’re cool with the bagged dog food.  Ha!

HOW TO CLEAN BIRKENSTOCKS TO LOOK BRAND NEW
As a proud owner and wearer of about 10 pair of Birkenstock (different colors and styles) sandals – this cleaning them article has my full attention.  I’ve been wearing Birkenstocks for more than *cough* 35 years.  If you don’t have a pair.  Might wanna check them out.  They’re fantastic!

12 BEST FRUIT AND CHEESE PAIRINGS
I don’t have a favorite take-away.  All the dynamic duos make pairing sense!

ZOO SIGNS ARE CLEVER = LAUGHTER!

TOP 20 ANIMALS PEOPLE WANNA SEE IN THE WILD
Hands down agree.
… as long as I view them from a distance in the wild and in a secure safari-type vehicle.  Ha

• RECIPES!
  ZUCCHINI HOUDINI BOATS – thumbs up!
  Another creative recipe to enjoy the zucchini bounty of summertime!
  CHICKEN KA-BOBS
  Grilled summertime dinner on a stick.
  PARSLEY PESTO – would’ve never thought about parsley pesto, but I trust any and all recipes Shutterbean brings to the “table” – and the numerous examples of how she serves it!
  Call me the leader of the parsley/pesto fan club around here!
  GREEK STYLE SHRIMP SAGANAKI
  Totally has my curious ready to make the dish this week or next week at the latest.
  Easy to prepare +over 600 5 star reviews.
  Uhhhhhh – ‘nough said!
  WATERMELON SMOOTHIE
  Doesn’t sound all that unusual of a blender-whirl – save the part where the watermelon chunks are frozen first (!) + add strawberries.
  That’s the secret to success!
  HORCHATA
  Oh, how I love you Horchata!!
  Morning time, noon time, mid-afternoon pick me up time, Dessert time.
  Sip by sip you’re bliss.
  And now – thanks to this recipe, I (we) can make you conveniently at home!

THE BEST EGG SCENES IN MOVIES
Actually never thought about eggs in movie scenes – but totally am now!
Absolutely entertaining worthy of a watch.
Bet you’ll recall more than 5 or 6 from movies you’ve enjoyed in the past.

How do you prefer your eggs?
Me?
Hard.  Scrambled.  Poached but yolk cooked hard.
I can’t do the yellow ooze.  Although my sisters and my mom and some friends are fans.

SUMMER CAMP
And now we roll up on Michael Ball’s Zen of Summer Camp article.
Had me flashing back with memories.

Yep!  I remember Summer Camp as a kid.  And, no, I wasn’t a fan.  And, no, there was no negotiating with my big people (aka parents).
It was simple, “You’re going and you’re going to have fun.”

Our Kids’ Church Summer Camp was in Red Lodge, Montana.

And also mind you, our church was kinda a small little church and didn’t have a lotta dough — so the “camp” was a group of like 12 little cabins in a campground that were a little compromised and had been there a bazillion years.  I guess, if you’re Jeremiah Johnson – you’d be at home.

We, as camp kids, were reminded by our camp counselors (pretty sure they were volunteers from other churches in other states), “Look at the scenery.  It’s beautiful here.”

We were like, “Yeah, beautiful.  Been living here all our lives.  Just another day in the mountains.”

So inside the cabins at night – we would hear mice or maybe they were rats romping around the room for hours – and it was a little unsettling.  There were definitely big cracks in the plank flooring – and who knew where they were coming in from.  Ha!

Our Camp counselor, staying in the cabin with us, seemed a little more alarmed than we.
We’d whisper out, “What is all that noise in here?”
“She responded, ” Shhhhhh, girls, Go to sleep.”

Oh, yeah, that’ll be easy.  haha we all thought.

Did our Cabin Mama get up and investigate the rat-a-tat-noises rolling around on the floor boards of the cabin?  Nope.

Thank goodness no bear activity!  At least that we knew of.  Ha!
Cabin Mama would have probably fainted.  ha.

Anyway, that’s my camp story as a kid.

Do you have one?

AS ALWAYS
WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR TIME + SHARING + ENGAGING + LOVE
WE FEEL IT AND WE LOVE YOU BACK.

Ready?
Set.
Click away and enjoy today’s read!

• 29 Amazing Facts That Will Most Likely Blow Your “Wow” Factor Away!
•  How to Clean Birkenstocks to Look Brand New!
• 12 Best Fruit and Cheese Pairings!
• Humorous Animal (Zoo) Signs That Are a Laugh!
• Top 20 Animals People Want to See in the Wild
• RECIPE (!) Zucchini Houdini Boats
• RECIPE (!) Grilled Chicken Kabobs
• RECIPE (!) Parsley Pesto
• RECIPE (!) Shrimp Saganaki ( Greek Shrimp with Feta)
• RECIPE (!) Watermelon Smoothie
• RECIPE (!) Horchata Mexican Rice Drink (non-alcoholic)
• The Best Egg Scenes in Movies (!)

THE ZEN OF SUMMER CAMP
BY MICHAEL BALL

As we Americans work our way through Summer in this great land, a time marked by metric tons of bratwurst, watermelon, beer, and tepid potato salad, our children are facing a terror that most of us adults have blissfully forgotten.
This is because we have have spent years trying to methodically stamp out all from our memories.

I am, of course, talking about Summer Camp.

In case you grew up on one of the moons of Jupiter, Summer Camp is a place your parents send you when they figure it’s about time for you to learn how to braid plastic lanyards and cry yourself to sleep.

The way Camp worked when I was a kid is that your parents would pack you a duffle bag with twelve t-shirts, three towels, and all the other stuff they found on the list printed in the Camp Watchadointomee brochure, each bearing your name neatly printed in your Mom’s handwriting with a Sharpie.

Then they would stuff you in the back seat of the car next to your younger brother, whose number hasn’t come up yet, to meet your doom.

During the Death Drive your father says, “Cheer up.  When I was a kid I met some of my best friends at Camp.”

“Like who?”  you ask.

“Well, nobody I can think of right offhand.  Wait, there was that one guy… no, I met him on the chain gang down in Georgia.  Killed thirteen nuns.  Good singer though…”

“Dad, is Mickey gonna die?”  asks your brother.

“As long as he steers clear of bears, probably not.”

“Wait, what?  Bears?!?”

“Relax,” your father says.  “They haven’t spotted a bear up there in weeks.”

“You’re gonna be bear poop … OW!”  your brother sings, rubbing the shoulder where you just slugged him.

And so your big adventure begins.

You have many survival skills to learn, like how to cultivate black mold on a damp towel under your pillow, or how many mosquito bites can fit into a square inch of flesh of a fourth grader.

You learn that when the team names you for Capture the Flag are “Nerds” and “Turds,” it is better to be a “Nerd.”

You learn that it is always best to choose the top bunk if there is any chance your bunkmate is a bed-wetter.

My most vivid memory of summer camp is of my sadistic cabin counselor, who had a record player and one 45 RPM record.  It was the Joe Dowell’s interpretation of the song, “Wooden Heart, “ which was even more excruciatingly awful than the Elvis version.  He played that record constantly, repeatedly, day and night.

To this day I sometimes wake up with that stupid accordion melody running through my head, screaming the German refrain from that song:
Muss i denn, muss i denn
Zum stadtele hinaus
Stadtele hinaus
Und du, mein schat, bleibst hier?

It seems to me that modern summer camps are a lot more sophisticated than they were when I was a kid.

For one thing, many of them are specialized.
When my son was growing up, we sent him to hockey camp, where educationally enriching experiences like the ones I had, of sitting in poison oak, or of being bitten by a mule were replaced by more relevant useful ones, like taking crushing body checks and slap shots to the groin.

I was recently talking to a friend who is a few years younger than my son, and she said that when she was growing up she was a Camp junkie, going to a different theme camp every summer.  She went to Knitting Camp, and Band Camp, and for all I know, Decoupage Camp.

It’s kind of fun for me to imagine her spending an entire week lacquering magazine pictures of The Backstreet Boys onto a pine board, and I suppose she eventually got really good at it.  And my friend does not seem to have been permanently damaged by all that camp — other than the fact she is a professional musician.

The bottom line here is that if you are hungry for some one-on-one beach time with your spouse, and your kids are ready for some permanent emotional scarring, then it’s time to look for a good Summer Camp.  I suppose that in just a few years my granddaughter will be heading off to spend a week at Pinterest Camp, where she will learn to repurpose fashion photographs and pass on useful household tips.

And day and night for a solid week, her cabin counselor will play, through a Bluetooth speaker, a vintage mp3 of “Wooden Heart.”

Muss i denn!

~ Copyright 2002-2013 Michael Ball
from learnedsofar.com

TO BE INTERESTING,
BE INTERESTED.
~DALE CARNEGIE~

HAVE AN INTERESTING WEEK!
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