In the realm of the unusual are the various ways that people choose for their final send off. Wanting to have a great final good bye is probably at least some of the motivation behind the unusual memorial services and items chosen. After all today's traditional funerals which can be huge celebrations of life with lots of food and music and the practice becoming less common of having a loved ones ashes in an urn on the mantle were probably considered, at one time,unusual. So getting your ashes shot into space in a Memorial Spaceflight , sent up in a balloon , used as part of a fireworks show, sunk to the bottom of the ocean for a memorial reef, encased in a paperweight or made into a diamond may not seem to be too much of a stretch for those who look for the unique way to do things. James Doohan's, (Scotty of Star Trek) send off will be a space launch, a fitting final gesture which highlights another reason to choose an unusual memorial service.
This month's "What's the Story?" page at Therapy Resources has a Ukrainian folktale called "Why the Old are no Longer put to Death" on it. Talk with your group about the story and the values presented in it and segue into a conversation about funerals and memorials to take the discussion in another direction.

Here in Washington the new baby panda at the National Zoo has managed to grab some headlines. I was watching the news this am, he was on and looking very cute. The National Zoo does not have the little guy on display and people who go to the zoo are only able to see the dad. The panda area is under construction, plus since the baby is doing so well and his mom such a good job with him the zookeepers don't want to interfere. However we can all follow his progress online via the Panda Cam.
The little panda will be named when he is one hundred days old with one of the names voted on by the public in the panda naming contest. The names were selected by China National Wildlife Conservation and the National Zoo. One of the voters will be selected at random to receive a trip to Washington to visit the little guy when he is on exhibit. Awww so cute.
I think I'll look into an activity page with this theme for the Therapy Resources INC site.

It seems that in the interest of the environment more and more emphasis is being place on making do with less and downsizing. Since hurricane Katrina and with the rising energy prices increased interest has been generated in fuel efficient cars and homes. More participation in sustainable and healthy environment activities may be a positive outcome of all this. So when I saw an article about small is the new big I was intrigued. Turns out that Tumbleweed Tiny House Company makes tiny custom shelters, some just big enough for a bed and shelves. The owner /designer Jay Shafer has been living in a tiny house since 1997 mainly because of his concerns about the impact of a larger house on the environment and his interest in sustainability. Downsizing takes on a new meaning when you see these homes.

Seems like a nice idea, order flowers from Organic Bouquet and some of the money goes to a charitable organization to support social justice, wildlife preservation, animal rights and the environment. The flowers they use are grown organically which helps to protect the farmer and the environment.

The Therapy Resources INC site will be updated with a summer look for our little house on the web tomorrow! Summer is here and tonight someone said that the heat and humidity will be back tomorrow as well, at least in our area. So you might be thinking that this is a good time to be concerned about food safety. Along that line of thought check out the surprising shelf life of some of your favorite foods and household items. Amazing that honey never goes bad isn't it? I wonder how that was figured out.

Some friends and I get together on a regularly irregular basis for tea and conversation. Mainly we catch up with each other and chat about what's going on. So I have an interest in tea. Today I came across references to jeweled sugar and sugar dust and pebbles. It all started when I was visiting someone's wedding site and among the gift list they had items for their tea table listed. Unusual, request I thought and I checked their links to the gift suggestions and that's where the jeweled sugar came from. They also had requested sugar cubes and when I was looking at them I saw the sugar dust and pebbles. I wanted to find out more about what exactly sugar dust and pebbles was and I came across SKIL, Sugar Knowledge International, I skipped the references to the sites with information about sugar dust caries, but did you know sugar dust can explode?

I am artsy/crafty and I love to see what others are doing, learn about and try different crafts and art forms. Craftster is one of my favorite sites to visit for ideas and fun. Today I saw an awesome art piece Adam Kempa's bottlecap mosaic of his brother Chris and a great art project The Art O Mat. They are both inspiring. Adam spent many months collecting caps, planning and creating his mosaic and wrote all about it. The Art O Mat is just so unique and a great recycling idea for old cigarette machines.

The Therapy Resources INC site has been updated, the newsletter has been sent and the brochure has been updated as well. Now we might have a little time/space to get working on the new pages we're planning and continue the search for new items for the store. This month Happy Birthday plays an important role in the Amiable Activity, Computer Capers, and the Get a Game activity pages on the site. Then water, rivers specifically, play an important role in two other pages; Off the Bench and What's the Story? June is National Safety Month so the Healthy Hints page has activities focused on that theme. There are a lot of brand new pages and more to come.

We were at the Perkiomenville flea market this week and one of the tables was all milk bottles. They caught my eye because the owner had filled them with what looked like styrofoam beads making them look full. He had a customer when we went by and I was thinking there's a collector out there for almost everything. This group of collectors has an association NAMBC. Today I glanced at the Philly Inquirer and there was a picture of the same guy and a story about milk bottle collecting. Well, it seems that NAMBC has it's convention this coming weekend in Hershey.

Since I am interested in Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) this picture touched my heart. global photo contest winner.... I really think that some animals are sensitive to people's feelings and supportive in their way. while you are there take a look at some of the other pictures entered in the contest.

The number of drugs that older adults are taking is mind boggling and boggling their minds probably. Ten different drugs for some is not uncommon. I know someone who is taking six. He has two antidepressants and an antipsychotic among them. I can understand the antidepressants but not the antipsychotic which his wife said she thought was for helping him get to sleep!! He seems to be getting worse in his gait and movement and I'm worried. I asked if he had an assessment done for abnormal involuntary movement or if the primary doctor even realized that he was taking all this (he sees several docs), no I don't think so she said. Some of my colleagues (health care professionals) don't go to the doctor or take any drugs. Thinking that it really makes no difference in the end and may make things worse. They may have a point. Nurses should be stepping in if they aren't already and helping their patients keep track of the meds, reasons and looking out for side effects. This has inspired another Healthy Hints page about drug safety for the near future on the Therapy Resources INC site.

Finding projects that can be done by a mixed age group or a mixed ability group is not easy. I need something that is easy enough but not so easy that it's boring or childish. Everywhere I go I'm on the lookout for ideas. The library, the craft stores in my area, the book store, any craft show that I go to and the craft programs on TV are just a few of the places. The Therapy Resources INC web site has just been updated and two new products that were added, The Sensory Garden and The Biblical Garden, are something that seems to meet the need. I haven't tried them but they seem just easy enough and would be usable for more group activities after they are started. We'll see how they do, they're on special until April 15.

I am so glad that I went to see the Smithsonian's Orchid Express exhibit. It was lovely to see and smell all of those beautiful orchids. The other exhibit that we saw when we got back here on Sunday was one of the remaining copies of the Declaration of Independence ( there are 23 left). It was on display until Sunday as part of a larger exhibit about the Presidency. People didn't really seem to notice it in the display case or paused only for a moment before moving on. I thought that it was pretty amazing that there was a print in such pristine condition. It looked new. It was how the news was spread then, printing copies and posting them in various places and reading the copy aloud at some prominent public places.
The Therapy Resources site has been really busy this month so far. The Healthy Hints page and the Mexican paper flowers page are vying with Amiable Activities and Cook Create Cultivate for the most visits. But as St Patrick's Day approaches I think that the What's the Story page will bubble up to the top because this month it has an Irish Folktale to try for a group storytelling activity.

I am reading the Angry Houswives Eating Bon Bons (Lorna Landvik) book after all since I ended up going to Washington for a couple of weeks. That takes me out of my usual schedule and once the business of the day is done provides me with some downtime. Things have changed around here a lot since last year. There are several news buildings going up and new stores are replacing the old ones. The results are mixed; the buildings are not adding to the landscape but taking away from it and the new stores are nice but I miss the old ones. The other nite we went to a preview of a musical that has been off Broadway, Betty Rules it was a fun lively show. A couple of people actually climbed over the seats and danced in the aisle in front of the first row.

I've wanted to get back to painting, which I haven't done for years. I was just talking about it on Monday. Well today I visited another blog and thought what a neat idea, what discipline, go Duane. What he is trying to do is a Painting a Day and he is posting them on his blog. The pictures are really good and it should be fun to follow this blog.

The book club that I am involved with meets about every four to six weeks. I have a lot on my plate right now and I have not finished the previous book Night Fall by Nelson De Mille even though we already met and discussed it. Although I really want to read the next one Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik I think I'll take a pass and try to catch up on things. The site Reading Group Guides where I found info about Angry Housewives looks interesting maybe at the next meeting I get to I'll let everyone know about it.

The Therapy Resources web site has been updated, and it's interesting to see which pages turn out to be the most popular. The Mexican Paper Flowers page is always popular but at this time of the year so is the snowflake page. They are both pages that have been posted for some time because of their popularity. The ones that I like to watch are the new ones to see how they fare in the standings. This month there's quite a variety of activity pages and because the great backyard bird watch is coming up Off the Bench is attracting a lot of visitors, so is the Computer Capers page with its treasure hunt theme. Get a Game is at the top and closely followed by Healthy Hints , Amiable Activity, Cook Create Cultivate and What's the Story?. Well it's too early to tell but still interesting to watch.

It's snowing up a storm here and thankfully our little snow baby and her parents got home safely before it got really bad. However we ventured out into the snow and cold to see a movie at the Ambler Theater. We could do that in this weather because we can walk there, Ambler is great for that. The snow wasn't very deep when we went into the movie but on the way home, big difference in only a couple of hours. The movie House of Flying Daggers directed by Zhang Yimou is dazzling the artistry, and cinematography wow and the story, beautiful, exciting, violent and sad ends appriately for us in a snow storm. I won't say anything else go see it for yourself.

The North Pole has been moved! The earthquake in the Indian Ocean that caused the Tsunami was powerful enough to move the north pole an inch. Scientists indicate that this happens but is more noticeable because the quake was so powerful.

We a went to see Trans Siberian Orchestra on December 26 it's an interesting combination as one of our group remarked 80's hair metal meets Beethoven, along with a light show and fireworks. We all had a good time and the show seemed to be a crowd pleaser but it wasn't, as it turned out, my cup of tea. We didn't know what to expect when we went and I thought the light show was very interesting. I'm glad everyone likes to try going to different things. Earlier in the month we had been to see Beatlemania Again and the group did a great job with the Beatles songs and a couple of us enjoyed singing along to the ones that we knew (while others rolled their eyes). I didn't get into it as much as I would have liked though the mood wasn't there in the staging and in me. They were a real crowd pleaser to and we all really did have fun.