virginia's last day in san francisco....

questions virginia still had when leaving SF...

will the real crabby patty stand up?

will jill ever be found?

are there truly only 400 pirate attacks a year?

and was this license plate really made at alcatraz?

round two...where's virginia????

where's virginia????

virginia heads to san francisco...

Before boarding the plane in STL to go San Francisco, virginia stopped to have breakfast at Burger King. Unfortunately, Virginia didn't see much from the plane because she took this great opportunity to take a nap... no big surprise!

In the afternoon Virginia went to ALcatraz. There she meet Darwin E Coon a real life convicted bank robber who spent four years in the prison at Alcatraz. He was incarcerated there from 1959 through 1963.

good heavens...who knew!

Well, my curiosity got the best of me. We now know that there is a Hell and a Purgatory… so, the question at hand remains…is there a Heaven?…and, yes there is... I am happy to say there are three…

Heaven, New York

Heaven, Pennsylvania

Heaven, Georgia.

Amazing, no wonder there are no waiting lines in Purgatory! But I must say, as with Purgatory…Heaven is not what I expected…where are the beautiful clouds that the sun rays beam through…where are the angels that are bowling and taking pictures during thunder storms? Inquiring minds want to know…

catch me if you can...

Congratulations Oscar!… finally after all these years he has caught his tail. He has been working very hard each and every day to catch this strange, wild, furry tail, often several times daily. Not sure why this is so fascinating, but it is… Kodi assured him that this is not the way to become a dog and that he must give it up...not!

beyond the differences...

NAIROBI (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise, in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa, officials said. The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean, then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

"It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a 'mother'," ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is in charge of Lafarge Park, told AFP "After it was swept and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together," the ecologist added.

"The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it follows its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother," Kahumbu added "The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years," he explained.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. This is a real story that shows that our differences don't matter much when we need the comfort of another. We could all learn a lesson from these two creatures of God, Look beyond the differences and find a way to walk the path together.

leezard, leezard…

By cracky! We are finally safe from the 5 foot lizard that roamed the neighborhood for the last 6 weeks. Who said we needed the crocodile hunter? It was just a matter of time before St. Louis’ finest found the razor-toothed rascal and rassled him into a tupperware…read on…

logic into reverse...

Again, the same-sex marriage issue is at our door. This arcticle by Ellen Goodman was in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch this morning and I felt it was worth a blog.

And no marriage for the infertile
By Ellen Goodman
08/05/2006

After spending hours poring over Washington state's Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on same-sex marriage, I've finally figured it out. The court wasn't just ruling against same-sex marriage. It was ruling in favor of "procreationist marriage.'' This is the heart of the opinion written by Justice Barbara Madsen:

"Limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children's biological parents.''

So isn't it time for the legislatures in Washington and in New York, which issued a similar ruling against same-sex marriage this summer, to follow their own logic? If marriage is for procreation, shouldn't they refuse to wed anyone past menopause? Shouldn't they withhold a license from anyone who is infertile? And for those who choose to be childless? Nothing borrowed or blue for them.

Indeed, the state could offer young couples licenses with sunset clauses. After five years they have to put up (kids) or split up.

Of course, the states' other interest is in families "headed by the children's biological parents,'' Madsen wrote. Why then give licenses to the couples who are raising 1.5 million adopted children? And surely we should release partners from their vows upon delivery of their offspring to the nearest college campus.

This is where the courts' reasoning leads us, and I use the word "reasoning'' loosely. If anything, these two decisions are proof that the courts and the country are running out of reasons for treating straight and gay citizens differently.

Today, if some straight couples cannot or do not procreate, some gay couples do, using all the old and new technologies. Gays aren't banned from fertility clinics. They aren't the slam-dunk losers in divorce custody fights. Even Arkansas has just ruled that gay couples can become foster parents. And New York and Washington, the very states now refusing to let gays marry, have supported gay adoption.

I am a citizen of Massachusetts, a state where gay people have been getting married for two years without the sky falling. But the furor over the decision here produced a backlash that has scared a lot of judges straight, and the decisions in Washington and New York reek of that anxiety.

These judges seem ready to bow to any legislation on this hot-button subject that isn't certifiably nuts. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that "There is ample evidence to show that children raised by same-gender parents fare as well as those raised by heterosexual parents.'' The Washington court still determined that "the legislature was entitled to believe'' the opposite.

The backlash against gay marriage has produced strong passions and weak arguments. It's no longer enough to state in court that marriage has always been for straight couples, ergo it should be only for straight couples. This time the courts ended up arguing on procreationist grounds, pretty shaky legal terrain.

"It is the exclusive and permanent commitment of the marriage partners to one another, not the begetting of children, that is the sine qua non of civil marriage,'' wrote Chief Justice Margaret Marshall in the Massachusetts decision that extended marital rights to gays and brought conservative wrath down on her head.

Marshall has been demonized as an "activist judge,'' a label pinned on the author of any ruling you dislike. Now, in an anxious attempt to put their courts into neutral, judges in Washington and New York have thrown logic into reverse.

purgatory...purgatory rd...

At last Purgatory…it’s not what I thought it would be and I did not realize that it was truly a place here on earth but there it is right under our noses in Newport, Rhode Island…a place called Purgatory or Purgatory Charm. Quite charming that Purgatory! There is even a Purgatory Road that takes you there. You didn’t ever have to leave this fine earth to get there. Amazingly enough there don’t seem to be any waiting lines in Purgatory to get to heaven like the good Sisters would have us believe. I wonder if they really know where Purgatory is…I guess Jesus didn’t cover that in the bible…geography wasn’t his subject only woodworking, political science and eating out (an early foodie)! If you notice throughout the bible Jesus never eats at home, he was always at a friend’s house or a banquet. I’m sure Sauce Magazine would be interested in talking with him!

Well, I would say we’ve been to Hell and back and now we can say we’ve been to Purgatory and back! Where shall we go next???