Send In the Clowns!

Personally, I don't like clowns. I think they are very creepy. But, clownfish are cool. So are these keychains from Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Along with checking out the Clownfish Keychain you can read a short piece I wrote about clownfish

here. 

By the way, if you put my name in the search box you can see a lot of other stuff I have written about there as well as some of the Sandi's stuff they are selling to help fund her cancer fight. Shipping on those items comes straight from them as they are holding  inventory to make things a little easier on us.

Extinct Elephants-- The Deinotherium.

One of the fun things about my freelance gig writing for the Tapir and Friends Animal Store is getting to write about extinct animals. Not recently extinct stuff thanks to mankind's continuing stupidity, but creatures from long ago at the dawn of humanity and further back.

Such is the case here with the Deinotherium who lived from ten million to about two million years ago. If things had worked out just a little differently evolution wise......

SALAMANDERS

You would not know it to look at me now, but I used to be quite the outdoorsy type. Daylight hours as a kid were spent outside. As an adult I spent as much time as possible outdoors where I hiked, fished, and did lots of other things. If I wasn’t trapped inside working or sleeping, I was pretty much outside year around. One of the real hard aspects of being sick with whatever the heck it is I have is the fact that my mobility is totally gone. It takes a lot of pain and effort simply to go drag myself out on our porch. How much longer we can hang in here is anyone’s guess, but I am really going to miss the creek and its creatures.

 
One of my recent writing projects for the Tapir and FriendsAnimal Store was on Salamanders. I mention in the piece how scientists are researching how they can regrow their tails and more after sustaining an injury. I have also seen other things in recent days that indicate they may have some ability to help control pain. Either one would be very cool for many folks including people like me.

Considering they date back at least 164 million years ago and there are approximately 655 living species of them, I just scratched the surface with what I wrote here. Hope you check it out. Share it with your kids as I kept my off the wall humor out of this piece. Therefore, it is totally 100 percent family friendly and is safe to use in classrooms.

The keychain is also very cool.

Still Holiday Shopping?

In case you are, I ask that you think about a couple of things.....

If you are buying at Amazon please consider going through the blog here to do your shopping at Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate and that means I receive a few pennies on each sale. Those small amounts don't affect your price or bill at all. They do add up for me and when I cash out I can buy the occasional book for me along with medical supplies for Sandi.

And, speaking of my better half, in addition to what she has available online at Tapir and Friends Animal Store Sandi still has her iOffer store should you be looking for a homemade teddy bear, walker caddy, chemo hat or something else with a personal touch. This is most likely the last holiday season her iOffer store will be available. As always, sales go to pay something towards her mounting cancer bills as there is much her insurance refuses to cover despite our appeals.

Thank you!

Holiday Shopping

If you are buying at Amazon please consider going through the blog here to do your shopping at Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate and that means I receive a few pennies on each sale. Those small amounts don't affect your price or bill at all. they do add up for me and when I cash out I can buy the occasional book for me along with medical supplies for Sandi.

And, speaking of my better half, in addition to what she has available online at Tapir and Friends Animal Store Sandi still has her iOffer store should you be looking for a homemade teddy bear, walker caddy, chemo hat or something else with a personal touch. This is most likely the last holiday season her store will be available. As always, sales go to pay for her her mounting cancer bills as there is much her insurance refuses to cover.

Thank you!

Three Weeks Out

And do you have your candy canes? Do you need more? I think the beaded candy cane from Tapir and Friends animal store is very cool. You can read about them here.

Mandatory Science Fair Season

It is that season again that always brought so much dread to us and other parents. Mandatory Science Fair! Regardless of whether or not the student wanted to participate, they had to participate under penalty of all sorts of negative consequences for failure to comply. I always wondered, both as a parent of two kids who wanted nothing to do with it as well as an employee of the school district, how many kids were totally turned off of science because they absolutely had to do the fair each year.


Unlike a lot of parents who seemed to feel they had to do it for their kids with money and adult talent, we stayed out of the way and let the kids develop their projects on their own.  We provided the tools and resources and let them develop the project.

Sheryl Todd and the good folks of Tapir and Friends Animal Store have some items that might help with the science fair this year. Check out the Brain Cell, as well as the lifecycle of Monarch Butterfly and Green Bean kits among other items.



Good luck!

Palm Trees and Sandy Beaches

We don't have sandy beaches here...let alone any real beaches of any type at all with the way the lakes are dropping. We do have palm trees. They look really cool until the killing freezes happen. After things freeze hard for days on end, what you see are giant trees with brown or black fronds waving in the breeze.

Seems to me a Palm Tree Beaded Keychain makes more sense. Fortunately, you can get one via Tapir And Friends Animal Store. I recently wrote about them and further added to the body of work there.


Hope you kick on by and take a look.
 

Hey, You! Three Horned Face!!

Like westerns, I have always had a thing for dinosaurs. I think they are very cool. Awesome, in fact, and would love to have the ability to do the time travel thing. Of course, while folks can land things on comets now (so very cool), time travel is still not possible. Instead, I have to settle for really good books such as CarnosaurWeekend (Kyler Knightly and Damon Cole Book 1) by Garnett Elliot (somebody you should be reading in all his flavors) and live vicariously.


Fortunately, at this point in my life, I have big time skills in living vicariously.

I recently wrote about those three horned face dinosaurs known as Triceratops for Tapir And Friends Animal Store. No one knows what they went through on the dino playgrounds, but it could not have been easy.  While I did not address that issue at the link above, I did address a few other things including the fact they apparently did not have jet packs and were not used by space aliens in galactic rodeos. 

Bring on the Ladybugs!

For several months now I have been doing some freelance writing for Tapir and Friends Animal Store. Not only do I like it becuase I get paid --- a very rare occurance writing wise --- it gives me a chance to educate folks and have a little fun in the process. Unlike the book reviews which need to focus on the book and that is it, the stuff I do for Tapir and Friends allows me to let a little bit of me show through whether it is my sense of humor or something else.

One of my recent pieces involved their Ladybug Keychain where I shared a little bit about growing up in Northeast Dallas, gardening, and a couple of other things.  Hope you go take a look at that as well as lots of other neat stuff on the site.

Sandi's iOffer Store

Despite some recent setbacks in how she physically feels Sandi decided to try and keep her iOffer store open through the holiday season. What she has at her iOffer store is in addition to what she has available at the Tapir and Friends Animal Store for direct shipping from there. In January Sandi will see how she feels and how sales were and go from there regarding iOffer.

You can check out her current offerings here.

Remember, what she makes there goes mainly to her cancer treatment costs. While she does have medical insurance, what is being covered is much, much less than 100 percent despite the fact she went far beyond her assorted deductibles by late February of this year. While I rarely beg here and elsewhere we are on the hook for literally thousands of dollars. Everything and anything helps.

Via Tapir and Friends Animal Store (Realistic Stuffed Animals and Plastic Animals): Very Special Teddy Bears

Tapir and Friends Animal Store (Realistic Stuffed Animals and Plastic Animals): Very Special Teddy Bears

Via Tapir and Friends Animal Store: Get Your Paraceratherium Replica Here!

 One of my recent freelance writing efforts. I really wanted to add something about how primitive humans rode these things bareback as they dueled with clubs and that is how medieval jousting eventually came to be, but somebody would take the deal serious and things would not end well. 


Tapir and Friends Animal Store (Realistic Stuffed Animals and Plastic Animals): Get Your Paraceratherium Replica Here!

The Great Sphinx of Giza and Tapir and Friends Animal Store

Anyone that knows me at all knows I have a very deep and often seriously warped sense of humor. What I think is funny tends to get me in trouble from time to time with those who are so clearly humor challenged. An accompanying problem is some folks take what I come up with very seriously and then get outraged when they are shown to be a little misguided in their belief. Clearly, I need a satire tag like Facebook had to do with The Onion. Both of those deals were often issues at the jobs I worked at over the years and can be a problem with my freelance work.

Sheryl Todd owner and grand poobah of Tapir and Friends Animal Store allows me a little leeway, but she is also aware of the problem of those who don't get the humor or believe everything. When I wrote the piece for the Great Sphinx of Giza she thought a small part of it was a bit problematic. My idea that I could state that scientists have never determined one way or another whether the nose of the sphinx was actually lost in a great battle between an alien robotic creature of huge proportions reminiscent of a Mr. Potatohead and the Sphinx given powers by the alien race of Illumanti in an attempt to save mankind and keep the stargates open might not be as funny as I thought it was.

So, it was lost to the editing room floor. In wake of another recent piece, this time on pufferfish that should be up soon, Sheryl (aka @tapirgal on twitter) suggested that maybe I should start sharing such tidbits here under the moniker "Tapir Outtakes."  Seems like a heck of an idea......

Via Tapir and Friends Animal Store (Realistic Stuffed Animals and Plastic Animals): Plastic Monkeys

Tapir and Friends Animal Store (Realistic Stuffed Animals and Plastic Animals): Plastic Monkeys

Going to the Birds

Been doing a number of pieces on birds lately for Tapir and Friends Animal Store. Such as the Ring-Necked Doves, Crested Pigeons, Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers, Pileated Woodpeckers, Hornbills, and Kingfishers.

Have not had to write on Ravens yet and  really not looking forward to them after what they are doing to my Cowboys tonight.

Into Sharks?

As part of my freelance writing gig for Tapir and Friends Animal Store I have written about a lot of things. That includes sharks. To this point I have written about the colossal Megalodon, the big Great Whites, and the seriously cool Blue Sharks.

Check out them out!

Remember, laser beams for world domination are sold separately. 

Crazy Free Shipping at Tapir and Friends Animal Store

Go buy some stuff as the below was posted on Facebook earlier today.....

CRAZY FREE SHIPPING! http://store.tapirback.com/ This is so crazy I'm almost shaking. In order to stay competitive with the big online stores, we are giving FREE SHIPPING a trial run! TO MAKE THIS WORK, we need to increase sales to help cover our costs. HELP US SAVE YOU MONEY! Shop early for the holidays, SHARE, spread the word, and let's make free shipping last forever!!! (Our domestic and overseas minimums to get free shipping are minimal . . . check it out!) http://store.tapirback.com/

 So, make the boss happy and go buy some stuff. Heck, if you know another Scorpio besides me (and you would now if you did as we are intense) you could pick them up one of these Scorpion beaded keychains.  These are bark scorpions and I recently wrote about them in the piece on the site here.

Those are not the only things I have been writing about. You can see an updated list of my longer pieces by putting in my name in the search box onsite. While I have written a lot these past few weeks, I have not posed and am not the model for the "Scuba Diver Kevin (Underwater Adventurer Toy)."

I have more Texas Grade A Beef and far less hair.

Gila Monsters

Growing up I watched a lot of those old science fiction movies and learned that really big creatures were often very dangerous. One of those was the Gila Monster. I recently got to write about Gila Monsters for the Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Blue Sharks and the Tapir And Friends Animal Store

Back in High School when just about everything seemed possible I seriously thought about pursuing a degree in marine biology. Life had a different plan so that didn't happen. Even though I am very much land locked these days and there is no way I can ever learn to scuba dive like I always wanted to,  I'm still very interested in marine life. One of the fun things about doing the freelance writing for Tapir and Friends Animal Store is that every so often I get to write about stuff that really interests me.

Such is the case here with blue sharks.