Brain teaser

Okay, so I don't know where, exactly I stumbled onto this today or how. I really don't....but I found it, solved it and decided to post it here. I don't know if it's true that only 2% of the population can solve it, I don't think I'm all THAT bright...but it's a fun brain exercise....

The story behind Einstein's riddle is that Albert Einstein created it in the late 1800s, and claimed that 98% of the world population couldn't solve it. I am not sure of the true origin, but I have seen this one floating around the internet, and it is a good brain exercise. Here it is:

- In a street there are five houses, painted five different colors.

- In each house lives a person of different nationality.

- These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

Einstein's riddle is: Who owns the fish?

Necessary clues:

1. The British man lives in a red house.
2. The Swedish man keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Danish man drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The Blends smoker lives next to the one who drinks water.

NO CHEATING.
Enjoy!

In the cold November rain....er, snow?!

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

I know not all of my 30something readership is in Indiana, or even in the same parts of Indiana...and I personally didn't get any snow....BUT Chesterton got 9 inches today...my parents a little further south got about 5...seriously??? When was the last time we had a huge snowfall in November. My dad swears this happens...I honestly cannot remember anymore than a light dusting or maybe an inch around Thanksgiving.

It was the strangest.thing.ever to see delays and cancellations on the news already! Julie says it's going to get her in the Christmas spirit. I say bah humbug to that - it makes ME realize I need new tires. That and the Kev-head drove my car to St. Louis this past weekend to hang with friends and was complaining about my tires. Oy. I know I need them, I know winter is coming, OBVIOUSLY if it's already snowing...but to spend money on tires right before Christmas. Ew. Kat mat just had to do it and I said ew when she did it. Now here I am, looking up phone numbers for all the local tire places...calling to get estimates. Ew. Ew. Ew. I HATE car repair stuff. Hate it. HATE IT.

Speaking of cars...should we bail out the big 3? Bleeding heart democrat liberal that I am...I gotta tell ya...all these bailouts? Yeah, not so sure about all that. And I know my guy supports it, but where does it end? First AIG, then the banks, now the auto manufacturers. Who's next? And how do we (and by "we" I mean Congress) decide who gets money and who doesn't when they ask? And why?

No...I don't like this one bit. I'm not saying I want to live like my grandma saving every napkin and ziploc bag because of the depression....but I'm sayin' this country could use a good come uppance....

Just a quickie...

Hey guys...

Just a quick note to give you the link to the abbreviated version of the story on Owen that was in the paper...

Enterprise article

More later...

The "with love" movement...

I don't know how many of you have ever watched ze frank...have I talked about him here before? I love the guy...

Well, since the ze frank show ended, frank is still blogging and doing his thing...but now he's started a new project...from 52 to 48 with love. I find it terribly interesting and I'm sitting here pondering the ways I'd like to contribute to the project.

I'm amazed at the outpouring, not just from the blue, but from the red as well. I have feared for a long time that this country would never unite after the "hanging chads" and the vote that would be counted and recounted...and then the whole negative rampage with the swift boat deal...ugh. Let's face it, our politics lately have sounded more like elementary school playgrounds than educated adults. But this year? We sunk to new lows. Truly. And I'm frightened and horrified by the continuing outpouring of hatred. Is this really what we've become? Red state, blue state, he said, she said, socialism, anarchism, terrorism..."it's not that I condone fascism, or any ism for that matter. In my opinion, isms are not good. A person should not believe in an ism, he should believe in himself."

The response to this project from the right wing (yes, I do read right wing blogs, kiddies...I'm always interested in what they have to say)...is alarming at best. They are basically telling the lefties...no deal. Rather than at least concede that both sides said a lot of things that they shouldn't have, like ADULTS...they would rather tell us to kindly go fuck ourselves and take our blue crayons with us. They refuse to hold themselves accountable for fanning the flames of division for the last 8 years as well, and would rather perpetuate an attitude of hatred and accusation than change the rhetoric, change the tension, and start working together.

There are civil minded conservatives out there who insist that this drama is not what the conservatives are about. They insist that the right wing is supposed to be about state's rights and preservation of civil liberties. But all I can see out there right now are hate mongering, war mongering, Bible thumping, grandstanding right wing nut jobs. And I feel like their numbers have increased since the election.

So I ask you...will we ever recover from this? Does Obama have any idea, ANY idea the job he has before him? Are we just setting him up for failure? He needs an advisory committee including MLK, Ghandi, Churchill, FDR and Lincoln for pete's sake, because right now he has to be all of them in one to look at the huddled masses and say "Shhhhhhhh...enough now" and have them actually listen.

Can we possibly recover from this?

It's been a crazy week...

What a big week! Election week...AND I guess I kinda sorta went on a "double date" with my son and his 'girlfriend'???? Julie had tickets to the symphony last night at CHS (the NWIN symphony plays there on occasion)....so Julie and I took Alex and Mary. We went to dinner first....hence the "double date" classification in a non-traditional sense of the word.

Really? REALLY? I don't know if I'm ready for this whole girlfriend thing. It kind of sneaks up on you as your kids age.

On a completely different note...the video is posted on youtube from the debate. Not so timely, with the election being over and all, but you if you have an interest in viewing it, you can go here:

Rebecca's YouTube

Not to favor one child over another, you can also see videos of Alex's band from all sorts of gigs on my google video account here:

Rebecca's Google Video

All right - that's all for now.

Remind me to tell you all the "caw"-ing story....it's a doozy. Maybe I'll save that little nugget for Monday when we all need a laugh.

Yes we can! Yes we can!

I am moved beyond words. I am excited to see where we can go from here. I haven't seen a president elect look more presidential. The speech moved me to tears...and I can't listen to sound clips today without welling up.

Indiana looks DAMN good in blue.

I'm curious, as I usually am, to know who wrote his speech...I'm guessing most if not all of it was written by him, which is also amazing. I know he wrote his DNC speech.

Red States, Blue States, United States...anyone else want to join hands and grab Michael Jackson and Diana Ross and sing "We are the World?" no? that's just me? oh.

My bad.

Didja vote? Didja?

Get your butt out there and exercise your patriotic duty, people. Men and women have died for this right of ours, and I think some people treat it as a privelege to be wasted. It's not. Go VOTE. This might have been one of the first years I could have voted straight ticket, I never vote straight ticket. But this year I could have, but I didn't, because I really, really wanted to fill in that circle next to Obama's name.

Speaking of voting...I'm posting some pictures of Owen as Barack Obama from the debate on Friday. Remember to click on any image to enlarge it!
The set up at the school (see the laptop and the camera that put us live on the internet??):


The candidates and their running mates (And Mrs. K, who made the whole thing happen):


Barack telling us all about it:

I'd love to post the pictures of he and Senator Biden walking the line and shaking the hands of their constituents...but I know we have at least 12-15 kids at Lincoln who absolutely cannot appear on the internet, but I don't know who they are, so I can't post them here.