Friday Night Miscellany

Hola! I've been home all day, posting away (in between naps). I developed a horrid sore throat and ear-aches yesterday and, despite my best care last night and going to bed at 9 p.m. for a long and fairly good night's rest was for the naught this morning when I woke up with nothing but a "croak" for a voice! Fortunately, the fever I was running last night has disappeared along with the various body aches and pains; now I'm left with this annoying "frog in my throat" and plugged up, achy ears, and nothing for a voice. We've also been the recipient of - thus far - a good 10-11 inches of snow. A couple more are expected before it's all over. Sigh. After most of the season's snow had already slowly (ever so slowly) melted away, leaving behind tons of debris and snow-mold (yech!) The winds are strong and the snow is whipping about, creating very large drifts and hazardous driving conditions. We have now passed the 4th and 3rd snowiest Wisconsin winter on record, and are fast moving into the #2 spot. Dozens of cars have experienced spin-outs and landed in ditches or, worse, expressway concrete sidewalls. CRUNCH! The airport closed down before 10 this morning. It's reopened now, but the first flights won't be going out until about 7 p.m., an hour from now. Hundreds of people were stranded, waiting to fly out for the Easter holiday. Of course, Milwaukee isn't the only city affected by this early spring snowstorm. There are thousands of people all across the country who have been affected. I haven't checked the latest news, but I expect that Chicago, 90 miles to my south, got hammered a lot worse than we did here! Since I've been posting a lot today, I'm going to skip the usual Friday Night Miscellany, and go take a long hot soak in the tub, scented candles burning and homeopathic remedies circulating in my bath water. Ah ha - faked you out! I can't say good night without just a few more tidbits. First off, 10,000 year old "structure" found in Canadian Lake. Is it real or a put on? The mystery of "ball lightning" - see my comments about balls of fire (oh my!) etc. in the entry on Mari below. I don't remember if I posted about this earlier or not - it's from a story that first appeared in November, 2007 and has cropped up again: Music encoded in Leonardo's "The Last Supper" painting. This may be a story we posted at Random Round-up at Goddesschess. Anyway, enjoy! Scary stuff: Imagine this: You’re lying on the operating table, apparently unconscious. The surgeon is cutting. But you’re still awake. Not only that, you’re paralyzed by the anesthesia and can’t speak out. That horrifying experience happens to between 20,000 and 40,000 Americans every year, leaving many severely traumatized. Severely traumatized? I'd say! Ohmygoddess! I swear to Goddess I will NEVER voluntarily submit myself to a major operation! Geez, I had a mole removed from the back of my neck a few months ago and THAT was traumatic! Even though the doctor shot me up with enough local anesthetic to knock out an elephant, I could still feel her scraping away with the scalpel (it took forever) at that darn mole (turned out it was a slow-growing, common skin cancer). It would be just my luck that I'd be one of those 20,000 to 40,000 people who would be left wide awake but paralyzed by the anesthetic and unable to scream out as the unbearable pain from the scapel flashed through hundreds of thousands of nerve endings....