Things I Learned in July

1 GADS in Bowling Green- best blueberry cake donuts ever! A hole in the wall, yes... but mmm.  I never would have known about The Great American Donut Shop if my sister Kami hadn't tweeted about wanting some Krispy Kreme donuts, and one of her friends who lived in B.G. said she had to try this place.  So, being as Jenna and I are all about our education, and part of that is broadening our horizons away from Cheddars and Gigis on our on-campus weekends, we ventured off to find the donut shop, and I'm glad we did! We'll definitely be stopping back by here one weekend.

2. Middlesboro, Kentucky is built in a meteor crater...
According to the historic marker, "Sometime in the past 300 million years..."  a meteor struck earth and left a crater, and Middlesboro was built in 1889 right smack in the middle of it.  Mindless trivia courtesy of Kami G.

3. I'm grateful I wasn't born into the royal family in England because I would never understand it.  The talk of America these past couple of weeks has been the new baby, and we held our breath as we waited for the name.  And Kate Middleton was bashed because of her new baby body- hello!  She looked stunning to me, as they left the hospital... but anyway, this led to a lengthy discussion on the way home from Green River lake as to who was alive and dead and who takes over the throne and whose title is what... and I'm still confused.  I do know that Princess Di would have made a lovely grandmother.

4. Tubing is just as fun as I remembered.  Day 2 on the lake was spent at the beach and then on the boat as we took our turns tubing.  Many Sundays growing up, my Uncle Mike would load up his boat and we would head off to the lake after Children's Church.  Most of the time we'd watch him fish and then he'd let Jen and I hop in the lake, but sometimes we would tube and they would water ski (I never was coordinated enough).  Good times... and this brought back good memories.

5. Priorities are in people, not things or tasks, and when I figure this out, I'm a whole lot happier. We had a week long extension on a paper, yet I still procrastinated and turned it in right under the wire, with only a couple of hours late... but the week was full of family time and that is the most important thing, anyway. 

6. The Sound of Music was a broadway musical before it was a movie.  I grew up on the Julie Andrews classic, and knew it was based on a true story of the Von Trapp family, but for some reason I just thought the play was based on the movie and not the other way around... and it kind of was.  A German film.  And get this. That dramatic ending where the Von Trapps escape over the hills to Switzerland?  Um... never happened. Instead, the family left Austria via train into Italy, then travled to London and then the United States (courtesy of Wikipedia.  And I'm adding the memoir to my wish list so that I can verify these details).  And the song Edelweiss, about the Austrian national flower, was written for the production... but despite these facts, the play was just as good as I remembered. 

7. Honeybees can, and do, in fact, sting each other at times.  However, if they sting another bee, they are usually able to remove the stinger themselves.  Bees are also immune to the toxins of other bees. I found this out yesterday when my son's friend stayed at the house last night, and we were sitting out watching the bees swarm around my mother-in-law's flowers.  He asked me, and of course I had to look it up. I think I found the answer on a USDA website. I guess I could have just called my Uncle Granville, as he is the expert on all things bees =)

8. Candy Crush Saga is still addictive.  I'm on level 112... and I dream about it at night.  You can, however, get a lot accomplished in 25 minutes while waiting to get more lives.

9. Penguins have knees... last night Caleb asked me this so today I had to go look it up, and yes!  Penguins have knees, femurs, tibias, and fibulas- wow!  Who knew?  And who ever thought of that... I would say only Caleb but when I googled it I typed in "Do penguins" and google finished my search with "have knees" so apparently other people have googled it, too... Here's the page where you can see more for yourself =) http://penguins.neaq.org/2010/07/faq-do-penguins-have-knees.html