From the hills of Kentucky -- Friday, April 21

Hey there! I'm back. Did you miss me? Well, today here in my part of Kentucky, it has been a cloudy & rainy day. We had one clap of thunder this morning so loud that it made me jump. My hubby was online at the time, and said he saw the lighting strike in a nearby field. He got offline as quickly as possible, and turned the computer off. No smaller warning rumbles beforehand. Just one sudden loud boom that made you jump. Fortunately our computer is just fine. I love surge strips and am a big believer in them. We now have one that our phone lines plug into as well.

The days are longer now. We are up to 12 hour days now. Yaaayyy!!!

By the way, if you haven't filed your taxes yet, then guess what -- you're late. My hubby takes care of ours. All I do is sign. Before we were married, I took them to a tax preparer to do. And before we were married, the 2 jobs that I had were legal secretary and bookkeeper for 6 Dairy Queens. This brings me up to an article from my much behind emails, from the MSNBC Business Headlines for April 17th --

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Why can't IRS make tax filing simpler?
With hours to go before this year's filing deadline, Matt in Missouri is asking a question that anyone waiting in line at the post office must be wondering. Why can't they just simplify the ridiculously complicated process of filing a tax return?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12318501/

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-- Now I didn't read the article, but the question is a good one. Why can't they make it simpler? What's your guess?

So are you a sports fan? We are at our house. Our two favorite sports are Nascar and football. Between the 2, we have year-round sports entertainment. Now before I got married, I didn't watch football at all nor did I understand it. But I married a man who did a very good job of explaining the sport to me, and now I really like it. And with arena football, we sorta have year round football.

Here is a website recommendation for you all. It is a website where you can read my favorite Christian devotional online: My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. Here is the web address --

http://www.rbc.org/utmost/

We're starting to get to strawberry season. I have noticed them making their appearance in the stores. The ones I have noticed in the stores around here are really big ones. Haven't bought any yet. My favorite way to have strawberries is washed and sliced up in a bowl, with plenty of sugar on them. I really like strawberries. But my digestive tract is more sensitive now than it used to be, so the big question for me is how well would the strawberries like me?

By the way, do you ever spend much time online playing games? I do every once in a while. I have a few favorite websites that I go to, with one favorite in particular. So what is your favorite game? I think mine is flipwords. Have you ever played the game hearts against the computer? I do fairly regularly, and even though it is hard to win, I still enjoy the challenge.

Do you ever take a day off from the computer? I do. Being a housewife, it is probably easier for me than for other people who might work with computers in their jobs. But every now and then, I like to take a day off from the computer completely. I enjoy it. But then the emails pile up. Right now they are piled up pretty good. But that's okay, because I will get them worked thru.

My emails pile up less than they used to because I have whittled down the number that I get. I realized that I needed to whittle them down when it got to where missing a day's emails meant about 100 + emails piling up. For I am a recovering email newsletter addict. They make email newsletters so easy to subscribe to; and when we first got online, I would subscribe to anything and everything. But I have pared them down a great deal. I have kept the ones that I really enjoy the most.

Share your recipe requests! -- You may or may not be familiar with the series of cooking articles that I do on Gather called 'Ky. Cooking'. Starting with my next Ky. Cooking column, I am going to start inviting recipe requests to be featured in future Ky. Cooking columns. Thought I would go ahead and mention it in this column. So here is how it will work - submit your recipe requests by way of a post to my most recent Ky. Cooking column or by message to me with the subject 'recipe request'. Recipe requests will be replied to by way of being the subject of future Ky. Cooking columns.

By the way, have you discovered Freecycle yet? If you haven't, visit their website and check it out; and find out the local group nearest you. To quote from the website -- "The Freecycle Network™ is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free." To learn more about Freecycle or to find out about the local groups in your area, go to:

http://www.freecycle.org/

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I am writing this while I go thru some of my piled up emails. So let's include a little humor in this too. Here are a couple of jokes that I copied from one of my emails:

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A man was driving down the road with fifteen penguins in the back seat. The police stop him and say that he can't drive around with the penguins in the car and should take them to the zoo.

The man agrees and drives off.

The next day the same man is driving down the road with fifteen penguins in the back and again.

He is stopped by the same police officer who says, "Hey! I though I told you to take those to the zoo."

The man replies, "I did. Today I'm taking them to the movies."

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Two men went bear hunting. While one stayed in the cabin, the other went out looking for a bear...

He soon found a huge bear, shot at it but only wounded it. The enraged bear charged toward him, he dropped his rifle and started running for the cabin as fast as he could.

He ran pretty fast but the bear was just a little faster and gained on him with every step. Just as he reached the open cabin door, he tripped and fell flat. Too close behind to stop, the bear tripped over him and went rolling into the cabin.

The man jumped up, slammed the cabin door and yelled to his friend inside, "You skin this one while I go and get another one!"

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-- Hope you enjoyed those. You know, about the 2 guys and the bear and the cabin: the guy in the cabin with the bear needs to make a new friend, and that wounded bear would be a real good place to start. (hee, hee).

Well, I guess that's all for this column. It was just before sunset when I started, and now it is a little after 9:30 pm central standard time. So I guess I will wind this one up. By the way, does anyone out there know who came up with this spring forward-fall back thing with our time and clocks? Just wondering.

Take care and God bless.