Every day is an earth day.

I know I need to write about the cruise, but I'll get to that some day. haha. It was great. That's the main thing!

Today, I'm just proud of myself. I scouted my winn dixie ad, printed coupons from my computer and planned my attack! With my winn dixie card and my coupons and ad purchases, I saved $28.50! Plus, I'm now up to 30 cents off/gallon of gas on my fuel perks card! I have about 1/8 of a tank left and I'm going to get to the E and then fill up before the end of the month hits. Thirty cents off each gallon?! Seriously. Awesome.

I also used my fabric grocery bags. I know that I still have a lonnnng way to go on becoming more eco friendly, but I'm making small steps. It's really hard to do and I'm slowly learning what to look for. Today, I bought Seventh Generation (http://www.seventhgeneration.com/seventh-generation-mission They have coupons on their site) natrual fabric softeners. it's a company that makes organic and eco friendly items for your home. Ten percent of their profits go to organizations working for positive change. That's awesome. Little fact on the back and this amazed me "If every household in the U.S. replaced just one box of polyester fabric softener sheets with [their] paper sheets, and recycled or composted after use, we could prevent 6,000 tons of solid waste from entering our landfills, equivalent to 640 garbage trucks!" Holy crapanoli.

Everyone think about that every time you throw a dryer sheet into your laundry.

Recently, Kleenex came out with a hand towel product for your bathroom at home. (http://www.kleenex.com/HandTowels/home.aspx) It's supposed to replace a fabric hand towel to reduce germs. This upset me. If you wash your hands and then dry them with the towel, you're not really adding germs to the towel. Why create a product that is only going to create more waste? Well, I know why they did. Money. You will buy more of their product. It doesn't make sense. What we should do is all install those jet hand dryers in our homes if you're worried about germs. (http://www.electrichanddryers.com/automatichanddryers.htm) You can even get the kind you put your hands in and it doesn't blow germs around. The new ones dry your hands in a few seconds! Have any of you seen them at amusement parks, etc? They're awesome. If I bought a home, I'd try and install one.

Apparently, I'm not the only one that thinks these options of wasteful products are ridiculous. http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2010/04/20/3-wasteful-products-and-their-eco-alternatives/

I'm trying to buy more natural beauty items, like the lotion my sister gave me. It's a body lotion made in Hawaii that is all natural items like oils, etc. It's great stuff.

Again, I still have a long way to go and if anyone has any small tips for me, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks to haunting images of caged chickens (which made me start crying my eyes out), I ALWAYS look for "cage free" on my eggs.

I wish I lived in a house sometimes because it would be so much easier to recycle and I could have a compost pile in the back. I think when my lease is up in September, I'm going to look at renting a house. I still don't want to buy, but I'd love to have the yard. :) Tiki parties!

Okay, kids. That's my soap box for today! Look at coupons and deals online! Use fabric shopping bags! Try and look for organic and natural products and ways to reduce the amount of trash we make.

Just like Christians say that our body is the temple of Christ, this planet was a gift from God and we should honor that by treating it right. Our wildlife, trees, plants, ocean life all deserve that from us.

Starting tomorrow and for the next week....picture me.....here:

Of on a cruise....but not the haze gray kind.....full report when I return.

The death of the Coroner

The death of the Coroner

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Click on the above link to view the actual article on www.examiner.com.

As coroner, I must aver
I thoroughly examined her.
And she’s not only merely dead,
She’s really most sincerely dead.

Singing those four lines, Meinhardt Raabe stood proudly in downtown OZ one day, wearing his big funny black hat and pronouncing the death of the wicked Witch of the East; who died suddenly when a little wooden farmhouse happened to land in her general direction. Her untimely death would incur the certain wrath of her nastier, older sister, causing the banishment of the meek and timid Dorothy Gale, to some far-off land called Oz.


I thought it would be nice to share a few things about Meinhardt, who sadly, passed away on April 10, 2010, at the Orange Park Medical Center in Orange Park, Florida, after suffering a heart attack. He was 95.
Meinhardt was an exceptional little man. Barely 4’ 7”, he never heard the word dwarf or midget when he was young; he just thought he was special. He was born on Sept. 2, 1915, in Watertown, Wisconsin and until he visited the ‘Midget village’ at the Chicago World's Fair he thought he was all alone. He worked there as a barker in 1933.

He received a bachelor’s degree in accounting at the University of Wisconsin in 1937 and obtained an M.B.A. from Drexel University in Philadelphia many years later. In 1938 he took a job as a salesman for the Oscar Meyer Company. Soon after they made him a corporate icon when he became the ‘Little Chef.’

*For those of us who may have forgotten, (I was one of these) the ‘Little Chef’ is the person who rides around in the Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile. Meinhardt traveled in the famed hot dog car, touring the country for thirty years.

In 1938 he decided to take a trip to Hollywood after reading that MGM was auditioning little people for a new film. His skills as a barker helped him, no doubt, to be selected as the coroner in the, ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ At 23, he was one of 124 actors that were cast as the ‘Munchkins,’ only nine had speaking parts.

Later he would join the Civil Air Patrol and became a skilled test pilot and spent the war years as the smallest uniformed pilot in US. History. After the war he married Margaret Marie Raabe who had once worked in Vaudeville. They were married for 50 years until her death in a car accident in 1997, near their retirement community in Penney Farms, Florida.

In 2005 he published his memoirs, “Memories of a Munchkin” (Back Stage Books, 2005; with Daniel Kinske) and on November 21, 2007, Mr. Raabe was honored with six surviving Munchkin actors at the unveiling of a ‘star’ on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


Meinhardt was the last surviving actor with a speaking part in the ’Wizzard of Oz,’ a movie which has captured the hearts of so many in the seventy years which have passed. His four lines were not credited, but they really don’t need to be. We all know them so well and today we fondly remember Mr.Meinhardt Raabe, who was a special little man


…whose credits are still rolling.

I saw this on the news this morning while I was changing my patient's bed linen and my patient stated he knew the man. I had no idea anything about any of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. My patient told me a lot about the guy and so, I did a search to read more. Interesting life! It's pretty amazing what he accomplished as "a little person" back in those years. Sounds like he lived an amazing 95 years!

To cheer everyone up on Monday morning.....

I posted a few good lol cat pics. OH, and also just think of me....asleep in my bed. Yes, I'm off the next few days. Yes, few days. Hey, I work hard and then they repay me. I deserve a few beach days. :)

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!" -LT Howll Forgy

Okay, so the quote was someone in the US Navy during WWII, but I thought it was a good one to use for an Easter post.




Combining two of my favorite things. Texas and Navies. I'm currently reading (well, started a few months ago, but haven't had time to read in a while) a book about the Texas Navy. It's pretty interesting because it's something I didn't know anything about. I had no idea about the things that happened off the Galveston coast between the American, Mexican and Texan Navies. Just thought I'd throw a short video out there...if anyone else is interested. :)