Bits 'n' Pieces

R.I.P., Patrick - You made my life richer!

My heart goes out to Patrick Swayze's family and friends. He put up a valiant fight and made the best of the time he was here with us. His legacy will live on for many years. I might need to sit back and watch Roadhouse or Ghost tonight in his honor. I, for one, will miss him.

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As I always have a few mini-subjects stock piled that I want to share, I've gathered a few up for tonight's post. Hope you enjoy them.

Did you hear about the guy who robbed a bank just as an excuse to get away form his wife? In Ephrata, PA (near Lancaster), a man expressed a desire to end his marriage in 2007 but his wife threatened suicide if he did. A compassionate man, he robbed a bank instead in hopes of getting a jail sentence, and, in that way, to get away from her. Well, he got his wish, two-fold. He was sentenced to 3-6 years for armed robbery (he used a BB gun) on Monday and his wife divorced him within the last few months. She didn't want to be married to a criminal!!

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How about some trivia? We've all heard the stories about miners taking canaries into the mines to act as CO detectors since the toxic gases tend to build up in those tight confined spaces. The fact I never heard until tonight, was that the birds' respiratory systems adapted to the gas and the miners would pass out before the birds did! So much for those tales of super bird heroes!! I wonder how many canaries lost their jobs when this scandal broke! (Shot the heck out of PETA's arguments there, too.)

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Okay, now something for your tummy -
I ordered a "Cajun Sausage" from a festival vendor last week. It sounded good and I expected something like a nice grilled andouille. Instead, it was a regular, decent quality mildly spicy sausage link that was laid in the roll, had some somewhat salty Cajun seasoning sprinkled over it and some sauteed onions plopped on top. Not what I had in mind but fairly tasty.

Of course, that got my mind working. Since andouille is often hard to come by in this end of the woods, I liked the concept and may very well try this on my own with some changes. I would try a little better quality spicy sausage, some salt-free Cajun seasoning (I make my own), a true Trinity of onions, peppers and celery (the basis of many a Cajun dish) and maybe even a remoulade sauce poured over the whole thing. I may even try this next week with our beach crowd. I'll have to let you know how that goes over.

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At the same festival, I came across a really unique photography technique. The artist had managed to maintain really vivid coloring in his prints which featured extremely simplistic subjects against very plain backdrops - single flowers, leaves, food, fish, etc. He then enlarged them well beyond life-size and developed a system of printing the pics onto artist's canvases. It gave them the effect of an original oil painting! He did have to keep after folks not to touch the framed pictures as customers just felt compelled to feel the texture of the canvas. Almost everyone asked "How'd you do that?" To which he replied, "It's magic!"

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That's all for tonight, folks !!!