The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as 'Euro-English'.

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favour of 'k'. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replaced with 'f'. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' with 'v'.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

If zis mad you smil, pleas pas on to oza pepl

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because,

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day.And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes . After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem..

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms.......

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

If YOU are one of us CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

http://www.chicoer.com/lifestyle/ci_15097272?source=rv
By LAURIE KAVENAUGH - Style Editor
Posted: 05/16/2010 12:16:36 AM PDT

CHICO — "They told us it would take 10 months," Jason Peterson recalled while his daughter Mackenzie leaned against his knees and balanced on her wobbly toddler legs.

That's how long it might take to get a donor heart for little Mackenzie who was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy at the age of 3 months.

Yesterday I took the boat over to Les Schwab in Livermore to have new ST215 75R14 tires put on the trailer. The staff was excellent and the facilities were easy to navigate with the trailer in tow. It took a little bit of planning to make all of the turns with the boat, but there was plenty of room to maneuver the truck and trailer.

1) No one will kill you for not drinking beer.
2) Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
3) Beer has never caused a major war.
4) They don't force beer on minors who can't think for themselves.
5) When you have beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
6) Nobody's ever been: burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured to death over his brand of beer.
7) You don't have to wait 2,000+ years for a second beer.
8) There are laws saying that beer labels can't lie to you.
9) You can prove you have a beer.
10) If you have devoted your life to beer, there are groups to help you stop.
Cheers!!

The previous owners of our house had some interesting ideas for the photinia plant in the back yard. The plant is a common bush on roadways in cities. The previous owners decided to turn a bush into a tree. Normally the photinia flowers after the last rain of the season, but 2010 has been a very wet year into April. The explosion of flowers coupled with the rain nearly toppled the photinia into our house. The long branches were dropping from 30 feet down to 15 feet and the weight was incredible. I had to do some emergency trimming at 10:30 pm one night in the rain to keep the tree from breaking.

Over the last two weekends my wife and I have made huge transformations of our backyard. We had planted grass (sod) a few years back, but the ground has too much clay and compacts very tightly. The grass was nice a green for the first two years, but the past three years the grass has looked spotty and weed-choked. Using a digging mattock and shovel, we tore through the remaining grass and removed the sod's plastic grid. We dug holes twice as wide and 50% deeper than the plant's original pot and fill the extra space with either potting soil or "Paydirt". We also bought a tub of lady beetles (lady bugs) to place on all of our new and older plants to control aphids.

Saturday night was our friend Lynda's birthday celebration. Part of her celebration included tickets to Cirque du Soleil's Ovo. Her husband had invited us to join them for the show and we eagerly accepted. The show was fantastic as all Cirque shows are--lavish costumes, amazing feats of agility and flexibility, some moderately erotic performances and fantastic music.

For our friend Lynda's birthday, we celebrated at Horatios in the marina in San Leandro. The dinner was fantastic. I had the prawns and scallops skewers over yukon gold potatoes. Delicious.

Well, I just hit a milestone in my life. It is silly, but today I had a pen run out of ink while writing. I have never kept a pen long enough for the ink to run out. I usually lose the pens long before the ink runs out.

I remember thinking to myself long ago in school, when the teachers finally allowed the students to use ink instead of pencil, would I ever write with a pen until the ink runs out? Well, that has come to pass.