CUTE YOUTUBE POSTING

Quite by accident during one of my browsing sessions, I stumbled upon a dainty offering on YOUTUBE. It is called "Six and a half loves -- chapter one : goodbye". I think the graphics are very pretty and the story is sweet but this is only chapter one. Wonder what will happen down the line?
I am including the link to it below. Place your cursor on the address and double click. Hope you like it and do comment.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7vNAfmKCJg

EASTER

First of all, an apology to the blondes among you! My good lady wife, herself a blonde, passed the following to me. And may you all have a lovely Easter.

What Is Easter?

Three blondes die and arrive at the pearly gates of Heaven. St. Peter tells them that they can enter the gates if they can answer one simple question.

St. Peter asks the first blonde, "What is Easter?" The first blonde replies, "Oh, that's easy! It's the holiday in November when everyone gets together, eats turkey, and are thankful."

"Wrong!," replies St. Peter, and proceeds to ask the second blonde the same question, "What is Easter?" The second blonde replies, "Easter is the holiday in December when we put up a nice tree, exchange presents, and celebrate the birth of Jesus."St. Peter looks at the second blonde, shakes his head in disgust, tells her she's wrong.

He then peers over his glasses at the third blonde. He asks, "What is Easter?" The third blonde smiles confidently and looks St. Peter in the eyes, "I know what Easter is."

"Oh?" says an incredulous St. Peter. "Easter is the Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish celebration of Passover. Jesus and his disciples were eating at the last supper and Jesus was later deceived and turned over to the Romans by one of his disciples. The Romans took him to be crucified and he was stabbed in the side, made to wear a crown of thorns, and was hung on a cross with nails through his hands. He was buried in a nearby cave which was sealed off by a large boulder."

St. Peter smiles broadly with delight. The third blonde continues, "Every year the boulder is moved aside so that Jesus can come out... and, if he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter."

Ouch!!

END OF COMPUTER COURSE -- FOR NOW ONLY, WE HOPE

To-day, April 1st, is our last gathering at the Galway Education Centre under the auspices of the Galway Retired Teachers Asociation. We have had a most enlightening, and enjoyable computer course under the tutelage of Mr. Speedie himself, the fountain of computer knowledge (and much else) Brendan Smith.
Brendan we will miss the weekly session with you but hopefully we will get together again sometime in the future. Have a good Summer and again míle buíochas.

WOMEN CANNOT FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS, CAN THEY?

My wife, my dear one, e-mailed me this "story" the other day. I wonder if she was trying to tell me something!!!

The FBI had an opening for an assassin. After all the background checks, interviews and testing were done, there were 3 finalists;two men and a woman.

For the final test, the FBI agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun. 'We must be certain that you will follow your instructions no matter what the circumstances. Inside the room you will find your wife sitting in a chair .. . . Kill her!!

'The man said, 'You can't be serious. I could never shoot my wife.'

The agent said, 'Then you're not the right man for this job. Take your wife and go home.'

The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into the room. All was quiet for about 5 minutes. The man came out with tears in his eyes, 'I tried, but I can't kill my wife.' The agent said, 'You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home.'

Finally, it was the woman's turn. She was given the same instructions, to kill her husband. She took the gun and went into the room. Six shots were heard, one after another. They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes, all was quiet.

The door opened slowly and there stood the woman, wiping the sweat from her brow.

'This gun is loaded with blanks' she said.

'I had to beat him to death with the chair.'

And who says women can't follow instructions!!!

RETIRED TEACHERS GALWAY NEW WEBSITE

We have been gathering, all twenty of us, in the Galway Education Centre for the past year. We have progressed bit by bit until by now we are capable of "tangling" with blogs. Mary Kyne is our "Commander" and she has set up a Website for us, the Retired Primary School Teachers in Co. Galway. She has posted a number of fine articles and informative pieces. And we have added our "incisive" comments.
Come back early and often and keep up-to-date with us.

Easter Eggs

Easter Eggs were early in the shops this year. Lent hadn't even started when I spotted the boxes piled almost ceiling high. What a dazzling selection there is! Cadbury's plain chocolate, Tiffin, Mars, Maltesers, Buttons, Smarties and many more.




Easter Eggs did not mean chocolate at all in my schooldays. Easter Eggs were just ordinary hen eggs at Easter time after the forty fasting days of Lent when the consumption of eggs dropped in line with the religious restrictions then in vogue. There was usually a competition among my classmates as to who would eat most eggs on Easter Sunday. The count began at breakfast when the cooking method depended on the frying pan. The trick was to puncture the yolk and fry the egg hard and one could clock up maybe four or five in this way. On to Mass and the boasting began there. Now who is telling the truth and who is the bluffer? How many have I to catch up on during the remainder of the day? Easter weather then , if I remember correctly, was dry and crisp and sunny. The year I was in sixth class, I had arranged an egg-picnic with my neighbours. We kindled a fire of winter windfall wood, filled a billy-can with water and put on a batch of eggs. As at breakfast, the harder the eggs were boiled the easier it was to digest them. You'd be doing well to down four of five again. By now you wouldn't want to see another ovoid for a long time. However, when suppertime came and doubts set in as to whether you could claim victory at school the following day, you would order another egg or two against your better judgement. By some amazing feat of will-power you would manage to get them down. With a clear conscience you would claim the full dozen and it would take a first class bluffer to beat that.


Poaching and omelettes were not words in our vocabulary at that time.

Girls, of course, did not engage in this barbaric practice. Their competition was to see who could decorate the eggshell most colourfully. This was a perilous process because your time and trouble might be in vain if the colouring material failed to survive the cooking process.














Where does the custom of the Easter Egg come from at all? It is indeed an old tradition and possibly derives from the connection with the egg as the beginning of new life and Easter typifying the regrowth of nature in the new year. For some, the egg is seen as the symbol of the grave and the cracking of the shell denotes the renewal of life and the resurrection at Easter time.







FABERGÉ EGGS

The most valuable Easter Eggs are the Fabergé eggs, first commissioned by the Russian Emperor, Czar Alexander III as an Easter surprise for his wife, Maria, and were decorated with jewels. Some eggs are hollow and empty while others are hollow but contain smaller eggs, sweets or other surprises like miniature birds.



A favourite pastime at Easter is the holding of an Egg Hunt. This is when decorated eggs, either real, hard-boiled or artificial and filled with chocolate candies are hidden for children to find, and can take place outdoors or indoors depending on the weather. At the end there may be prizes for the child with the largest collection, or the largest or smallest egg.

FINALLY FOR FUN

The Augustinian Parish Newsletter publishes a pair of cartoons every week. One of this week's (March 22nd) is "eggstraordinarily eggsceptional" and here it is.

Sadly, it is too often, too common in society today.

Public Opinion No Longer A Force

When I was growing up, I was, I reckon, partly raised by my neighbours. Unlike today, they were not afraid to correct me when I stepped out of line. I remember the local shopkeeper would rush out to stop us when we "dared" to walk on the parapet of the river bridge on our way home from school. Now even decent people are too afraid to intervene in a similar situation. So the force of public opinion is very muted.
Young people are no longer ashamed to behave badly in front of their elders; in fact they revel in their contempt for society. Why has this drastic change come about? One reason may be that we then lived in smaller communities where everyone knew everyone else - seed, breed and generation and word of our misdemeanours got home even before we did. Now our communities have grown so large that sometimes we do not know even our near neighbours and we do not care for each other in the same old way.