White owl witch

HAPPINESS, LASAGNA STEW, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PHONE BOOTHS? SPEED BUMP CARTOONS & TRIVIA + FASCINATING FACTS

Wednesday Greetings, Readers!

Halloween season is upon us.  Have any plans or cool decorations you’re displaying outside for all to see?

Today’s Wednesday Reader is full of fun and mischief.

Beginning with Quick Question –
What is something that used to scare you, but no longer does?  I can think of 2.  But I’m not telling.  You?

Casanova cheesy lines are indeed cheesy – and they’re a hoot!

REMEMBER PAY PHONES AND PHONE BOOTHS?  Gosh, they sure have gone away, haven’t they?
Question – when’s the last time you saw one or the other?

I remember working on a commercial not that long ago.  The Craft Service person said that she and her 8 year old daughter were watching an older movie several nights before and one of the actors in the movie made a call in a phone booth.
Her daughter said, “Mom, what’s that thing all about?”

I rolled with laughter!

Gosh!  Time marches on, for sure.

Lasagna Stew is tried-and-true by moi.  It’s fantastic!  You won’t be disappointed.  It’s stellar, hearty greatness in a bowl!

Tracy Beckerman’s “Knower of Where Things Are” reminds me of many years with my husband Peter.  He OFTEN misplaced his glasses and we’d go on the hunt for them.

My inside voice was like, “How could you possibly misplace your glasses?  You need them to see.”

Inevitably, we always found them — somewhere — usually close by.  HA!

Leslie Elman’s trivia and fascinating facts is always a favorite to me.

Blows me away that giraffes get about 30 minutes of deep sleep every day.  WHAT?  God Bless giraffes for being able to function on that short of sleep time!

And WELCOME BACK Speed Bump cartoons!  We traded in Spectickles for Speed Bump ((read about Dave Coverly the syndicated cartoonist by clicking here ))

Thanks for sliding by on this Wednesday to give us a little piece of your day + sharing and commenting.

WE’LL SEE YA FRIDAY!
SAME TIME.  SAME PLACE.

POP Quiz

POP QUIZ

  1. THE SUEZ CANAL LINKS THE RED SEA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA IN WHICH COUNTRY?
    a) Egypt
    b) Israel
    c) Morocco
    d) Saudi Arabia
  2. EARLY IN THEIR CAREERS, DEMI MOORE AND JOHN STAMOS WERE REGULARS ON WHICH DAYTIME SOAP?
    a) “All My Children”
    b) “General Hospital”
    c) “One Life to Live”
    d) “The Young and the Restless”
  3. HOG IS THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE TICKER SYMBOL OF WHAT COMPANY?
    a) Halliburton
    b) Harley-Davidson
    c) Hewlett-Packard
    d) Hormel

Wednesday Reader October 11

QUICK QUESTION

WHAT USED TO SCARE YOU BUT NO LONGER DOES?

Wednesday Reader October 11

POP QUIZ ANSWERS

  1. The Suez Canal links the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt.
  2. Demi Moore and John Stamos played Jackie Templeton and Blackie Parish on “General Hospital.”
  3. HOG is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol of Harley-Davidson.

~ COPYRIGHT 2023 LESLIE ELMAN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

MOVE OVER CASANOVA

These pick-up lines are so cheesy — but pretty sure they’d get a grin or a laugh from the recipient:

  • Are you an interior decorator?  Because when I saw you, the entire room became beautiful.
  • Are you religious?  Because you’re the answer to all my prayers.
  • I seem to have lost my phone number.  Can I have yours?
  • Do you know what my shirt is made of?  Boyfriend material.
  • Can I take your picture to prove to all my friends that angels do exist?
  • Baby, if you were words on a page, you’d be what they call FINE PRINT.
  • You must be a helluva thief, because you stole my heart from across the room.
  • Excuse me, but I think I dropped something.  MY JAW!
  • Hey, didn’t I see your name in the dictionary under SHAZAM!?
  • Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?
  • When God made you, He was showing off.
  • Well, here I am.  What were your other two wishes?
  • I hope your day has been as beautiful as you are.

NORMAL IS AN ILLUSION.
WHAT IS NORMAL FOR THE SPIDER IS CHAOS FOR THE FLY.

~ MORTICIA ADDAMS ~

(( Remember pay phones and phone booths? ))

RIDDLE ME THIS

WHAT CAN A CHILD MAKE BUT NOT SEE?

Lasagna Stew

LASAGNA STEW

Super recipe.  All the great flavors of lasagna without the task of layer, layer, layer drill.  It’s Amore!

HERE’S HOW WE MAKE IT –

IN A LARGE STOCK POT (think just a big soup pot you have in your cabinet)

1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground Italian sausage
1 large yellow onion, diced small
2 tsp minced garlic

COOK ALL, STIRRING ON OCCASION SO THE LITTLE GARLIC PIECES DON’T BURN.

WHEN COOKED – DRAIN OFF FAT FROM BEEF AND SAUSAGE.

NOW ADD TO THE STOCK POT:

1 – 10z package of frozen spinach, thawed
1 TBSP dried basil
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
6 oz tomato paste
1 – 15 oz can beef broth
2 – 15 oz cans chicken broth
1 – 15 oz can crushed tomatoes

STIR WELL TO INCORPORATE ALL INGREDIENTS.  BRING TO A BUBBLING BOIL OVER MED-HIGH HEAT, STIRRING FREQUENTLY FOR ABOUT 5 MINUTES

TURN DOWN HEAT TO MEDIUM-LOW AND PUT A LID ON POT – LOOSELY COVERED.

Let it do its magic for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally. 

IN A SEPARATE POT OF WATER:

Break 10 packaged lasagna noodles into 3″ pieces.  Cook according to package instructions until al dente.  Drain.  Rinse.

RESERVE UNTIL MEAT MIXTURE IS FINISHED COOKING.

NOW STIR IN :

Al dente lasagna noodles to meat sauce.

AND THEN ADD:

8 oz package of finely shredded 5 cheese Italian Blend
6 oz package of finely shredded Swiss cheese

STIR GENTLY until cheeses are melted.

LADLE:
Lasagna stew in big bowls and top each serving with 2 TBSP ricotta cheese.

SERVE WITH FAVORITE FRESH ARTISAN BREAD

~ Hippie Cowboy recipe box

RIDDLE ANSWER

NOISE

Wednesday Reader October 11

LOST IN SUBURBIA

KNOWER OF WHERE THINGS ARE
BY TRACY BECKERMAN

My husband and I just celebrated 31 years of marriage.  We have a lot to show for it, including two adult kids, a daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law-to-be.  When they asked me what the secret to a long, successful marriage was, I told them these two things:

No. 1:  Never go to bed angry.
No. 2:  Know where he puts his shoes.

As the wife, I seem to have acquired the title “Knower of Where Things Are.”  Whether it’s the ketchup in the fridge (on the shelf next to the mustard, where it always is), or my husband’s shoes (wherever he took them off when he got home), I have a sixth sense for finding those items that are invisible to him.  In nearly all cases, these items are fairly easy to locate, assuming you look where they always are (i.e., the ketchup), or the last place they were (i.e., his shoes).

The question, really though, wasn’t “Where were his shoes?”  The question was “Where weren’t they?  While there was only one bottle of ketchup to be found, my husband routinely had a pair of discarded shoes in every room of the house and for the life of him could never remember where he had left them.  I could.  It was hard to miss them.  And yet he could walk right by a pair and not see them at all.

I realized the issue wasn’t his memory.  It was that my husband had a massive case of Hysterical Shoe Blindness.

I wondered if maybe he’d had some kind of shoe trauma as a young child that caused him to block out the sight of his shoes as an adult.  Maybe a freak tornado swept through his house and sucked up all his shoes.  Or perhaps a shoe thief snuck into the house and took any shoes that had been left out in the open, leaving my husband utterly shoeless.  Whatever had befallen him in his shoe youth, he was now condemned to a life of shoe location issues.

Although I sympathized with his problem, I had to admit, it also irked me.  When I wasn’t tripping over his errant shoes or stubbing my toe on a wayward boot, I was having to help him find his shoes so he wouldn’t have to go off to work in his Birkenstocks.  Admittedly, I had been known to relocate various family belongings when they were dumped in places they don’t belong.  But in my husband’s case, it really wouldn’t matter if I moved his shoes or not.  If he couldn’t find them where he left them, he wouldn’t find them if I put them where they belonged either.

“I have a novel idea,” I said to him.  “Whenever you come home, take off your shoes and leave them by the front door.  If you do this every day, I bet you will be able to find them pretty easily the next time you want to wear them.”

“OK,” he agreed sullenly.

For one week, my husband made sure to leave his shoes in the same place at the same time, every day.  By the second week, it seemed to have become a habit, and by the third week, he had stopped asking my help in finding his shoes.

“Honey, I think we fixed your shoe problem!”  I said gleefully.

“Great,” he said.  “Now can you help me find my jacket?”

~ Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, “Barking at the Moon:  A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble,”  available on Amazon.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

Fascinating Stuff

FASCINATING STUFF

  • In Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days,” Phileas Fogg departs from London on Oct. 2 and plans to return on Dec. 21 “at a quarter before nine p.m.”  (There’s a wager of 20,000 pounds at stake, so he’d better be right!)  The 1956 movie version was filmed in 160 days and involved nearly 70,000 people, including members of the Royal Thailand Navy, Pakistani elephant herders and famous cameos from Frank Sinatra, John Gielgud and Marlene Dietrich.
  • In 1977, Lusia Harris-Stewart became the first woman officially selected in the NBA draft.  A 6-foot-3 center, she averaged 25.9 points and 14.4 rebounds per game playing for Mississippi’s Delta State University.  But when New Orleans Jazz made her their seventh-round draft pick, she was as surprised as anyone.  She skipped the team tryout (she was pregnant at the time), went on to coach high school and college basketball and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.
  • Giraffes get about 30 minutes of deep sleep per day, usually in bursts of five minutes or less.  For this REM sleep, they lie down, tuck up their legs and place their heads on their behinds.  That position makes them vulnerable to predators because it’s difficult for them to stand up in a hurry.  So they supplement their rest by drowsing on their feet periodically throughout the day, upright and able to run if danger arises.
  • The narrow space between the roof of a building and the ceiling of the top story — smaller than an attic, too small for storage or living area — is called a cockloft.  Washington Irving found the word so amusing he invented a whole family with the surname Cockloft.  For most of us, it’s antiquated verbiage, unless you happen to be a firefighter.  To firefighters, the cockloft is a potential danger zone, where fires spread quickly across the unobstructed horizontal expanse.
  • Monotremes are mammals that lay eggs, a highly unusual thing for mammals to do.  (Mammals, such as dogs and bears and humans, give birth to live young.)  Only two types of monotremes exist today:  the duck-billed platypus and the spiny anteater, or echidna.  Both or native to Australia and New Guinea.  Adult females lay one to three shells.  Then they nurse the babies as dogs or bears or humans would.
  • The idea that black cats are unlucky is a myth.  Same goes for the idea that black cats (and dogs) are adopted from shelters less often than animals of other colors.  The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals data shows that black cats (and dogs) are adopted at significantly higher rates than animals of other colors.  They also account for the biggest percentage of the animal shelter population, which might give casual observers the idea that they’re least likely to be taken home.

COPYRIGHT 2023 LESLIE ELMAN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Day Maker Readable Art

4 replies
  1. Carol says:

    The pick up lines are hilarious! We caught reruns of Bachelor Father not long ago and were amused by some of the lines uttered by John Forsyth, definitely in that (corny) vein!

    These cooler temps definitely call for lasagna stew. Will try for sure.

  2. Marty says:

    I could not stop scrolling back and back again to the top of today’s Daymaker to view the beauty of the artist’s WITCH and the OWL. I would love to have that in a rather large piece of stained glass hanging in my kitchen window during Halloween season. It would add a smile to my face especially as it catches the morning sun.

    • Cheryl Clarson says:

      Good morning, Marty –

      Agree that the illustration is really pretty and eye catching. Great idea about it being a stained glass piece. Would definitely be a beauty!

      Thanks for your support reading and sharing your thoughts.

      Have a grand day!

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