What's Making Me Happy: June 6

It's been three weeks since I've done a WMMH post! Two Fridays ago we were en route to an out-of-state soccer tournament, and last Friday was a Coffeehouse review, so here we are. 

Social networking can be pretty fantastic. Thanks to Facebook I recently reconnected with an old friend of mine, someone who attended university in Scotland with me. We'd stayed in touch for a few years, but then each of us moved several times, we both got married and changed our surnames, and eventually we fell out of touch. We had both tried, and failed, to find each other several times. Pam was persistent, though. Eventually, searching for my rather unusual maiden surname, she found my mother on Facebook and sent her a message. Luckily my mom didn't ignore the message, even though it was from a stranger ("she looked nice!") so Pam and I are back in touch, reminiscing about our hitchhiking trip from Inverness to Skye. Many very nice people picked us up and one even gave up his day to drive us around ... and then there were the two scary Spanish lorry drivers who locked us in the cab. I'd forgotten all about them till she reminded me, so I went back to my journal and reread my notes from the whole trip. Sure enough: scary Spanish lorry drivers. We felt lucky to get out of that one intact. I am hoping one of these days I'll get back to Scotland to see Pam, and maybe reprise our trip to Skye. Only this time, we will not hitchhike. Here are some photos (not mine) of some of the views we took in:

Eileen Dornan castle

Highland cows, which scared us

Roadway through Skye

I highly recommend, if you are thinking of traveling somewhere a little different this summer, considering this lovely corner of the planet.

Back home, in mundane-land, I decided my pooch needed a bath. I've always bathed her myself but I decided to let the professionals handle it this time. She is blowing out her coat big time and it's more fur than I really felt like coping with. Apparently she needed a nail-trim, too, because she could not navigate the ultra-polished floors of PetSmart. I had to carry her through the store to the grooming salon at the back. She's a shepherd-lab mix, not a toy poodle, so this was a) no small task and b) very amusing to everyone else in the store. She came out white as a baby seal, soft as a puppy, smelling of roses (actually, smelling of wet dog, but clean wet dog) and with nice short nails that allowed her to walk with dignity back to the car. 

Don't EVER do this to me again ...

Three pieces of dog lore I bet you did not know: 1. Just has humans have unique fingerprints, dogs have unique noseprints. 2. Dog's paws always smell like Fritos. Don't believe me? Go sniff your dog's paws right now. See? You will never eat Fritos again. 3. Your dog's face is hiding a secret:

Finally, some cool things from around the interwebz:

This photo collection from the time of Charles Dickens, showing a different (and lovely) side of Victorian life.

This new LEGO collection. As the mother of a future female scientist, I heartily approve.

This fascinating collection of clever marketing campaigns to raise awareness of social issues.

This article in the Economist. I'm happy to see the low-fat myth being destroyed, article by article, study by study, book by book.

Happy weekend, everyone!