Monday, July 6, 2009

One man's trash is another's treasure...

It really is all about perspective when it comes down to it. I've decided that is the secret to life - it's all in how you look at it. Yesterday I got up and walked dogs at the MSPCA as usual and after showering off six dogs worth of appreciation for treats, I gathered my things together to run a couple errands. One glance out the window canceled the trek to Target and instead sent me on an odyssey to the Berkshires. I'm not entirely sure who else would drive two hours each way on a whim, but I guess that's what makes me me. : ) Anyway, I decided on my destination after looking on the bright side of all this rain - the Bridge of Flowers located in Shelburne Falls, Mass., had to be beautiful now. So off I went and I was not disappointed

Speaking of the MSPCA, I went into the cat room yesterday for the first time since stationing my cat at my parents' house. It appears I've turned into more of a cat person than originally thought. I spent the last 15 minutes of my shift cuddling homeless kitties. One feline who recently made news, even all the way out west in the LA Times blogs, was Postina. She was found by a Boston mail carrier after being dumped in one of those big blue mail bins. After some TLC at the animal hospital she was adopted by the same mail carrier who found her. 

Recently I was listening to Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" on CD in the car. It tells, in language I can understand, how the universe was created and thus the rest of history. Part of it is devoted to prehistory and dinosaurs. In his imitable style, he does mention some of the more ludicrous examples of ignoring or misidentifying dinosaur bones. Recently, Australia has had no such issues. Yahoo! News reported paleontologists have found three new large species of dinosaurs in Oz, including one bigger, even-more-scary Velociraptor-type creature. These are the first dinosaur bones found in Aus since 1981 and seem to point to a more complex past than originally thought.

And in a perfect example of things not turning out as one may have thought at the start, porcelain created for an emperor in the Chien Lung dynasty (during the middle to late 1700s) has turned up in the hands of an average American woman. Reuters says that woman has scored the first $1 million appraisal on the TV show "Antiques Roadshow." Her father bought the pieces while stationed in China in the 1930s and '40s. Previously the highest estimate had been $500,000 for artwork. 

(Photo courtesy of LA Times blogs)

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