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Actually, this is my national day times two every day. Tessa and Maxie, seen on my profile page. As my cover page on my website touts, they are #11 and #12 of my rich life with dogs, mostly rescues. Now cat lovers don’t get me wrong, cats are fine, they even have their own INTERNATIONAL cat day on Aug. 8th. The problem is that I am very allergic to cats. To my credit my dog Tessa is half cat. Yes, she is a Pomeranian, but she rubs her head around my legs when she wants attention, AND she has sort of a purr when I pet her. It is more of a low, continual groan; but it only happens when I am petting her. Never heard of anything like this before in a dog. Every one of them have blessed me beyond words. I have heard so many folks complain about pet’s short life span, but as I cry over my memories of them (a bittersweet feeling) it does allow me to give a home to a new precious baby and bond with another amazing personality. DOGS RULE!

Okay, I have had my share of second-hand wardrobe days, especially since I have retired. Soooo comfy. But did you know before the Industrial revolution (started in 1760) there was no such holiday, clothes where to expensive even the plain simple designs. With every aspect of clothing being mass produced, the closet hoarders were born. At this point clothing drives and subsequent sales began to help many charities coffers. It caught on with the opening of thrift stores. Today it is even more trendy. At this time an estimated 77% of Millennials part take in this lifestyle. And let’s not forget the attention social media is now having fun with this fashion. Have you seen all the “upcycle” videos that transform such clothing into trendy chic creations. 45 upcycle inspirations. Or just search #thriftflip, #stylehacks and #upcycle on Tiktok, Google, or any social media platform, but set an alarm clock because you will lose time. Then there is this 7 minute YouTube compilation that will turn this fashion trend into an obsession. Oh, Oh… and don’t forget to check out 30 ways to repurpose a scarf!

So I like waffles, especially with a side of cheesy scrambled eggs and some sausage. But when I started researching this delicious starch, I found it was helped along by the Catholic church. According to Jeff Wells in his article “A Brief History of Waffles” on the awesome MentalFloss.com website, in ancient Greece obelios (flat cakes or crackers) were roasted between two metal plates attached to a long wooden handle. Then in Medieval Europe, the Catholic Church made a large, unleavened wafer as a sort of companion to the communion wafer called oublies . Once the church gave artisans permission to make their own oublies, designs proliferated to include family crests, landscapes, .etc. Over time the oublie batter had spices and leavening added, and the plates got deeper so more batter could be added which is when it became the wafel. Around the 15th century, Dutch wafelers began using rectangular instead of circular plates, molding them into a grid pattern. Other uncommon facts are: one of Americas forefathers, Thomas Jefferson, brought the first waffle iron over; in 1904 at the Missouri State Fair a vendor ran out of cups for his ice cream stand, so he folded a waffle (from another vendor) to make the first ice cream cone; there is also an INTERNATIOAL WAFFLE DAY (March 25th); and finally when Eggo frozen waffles were first introduced Kellogg called them “Froffles“… no kidding.

Inter..what?! Of all the days listed to celebrate today, I have to choose Internaut day, it celebrates me! It probably celebrates you, too. Do you know what this is? Hint: I am one due to my devotion to computers and the subsequent plethora of devices that I use to immerse, gorge, and “surf” myself on that oh so amazing Internet daily. Technically the definition of an Internaut (seen left): a frequent or habitual user of the internet… i.e., a geek. I am proud of that moniker, but I must say I think Internaut is a bit classier sounding. You probably know the internet wasn’t built in a day, so today and this term is a creation of CNN… yep it debuted on a news broadcast. In fact, the first thought of a world wide web was only 33 years ago by a CERN scientist’s proposal. With a lot of thought and discussion, which includes many significant dates, the web went public in 1991! Whereas the actual source code was not available to the public until 1993. It is mind blowing what has happened to it in only 33 years. The great thing is that now the Internet, and its devices, are shorting the incubation time for many other things that benefit our daily lives. But the Internet wouldn’t be anything without us Internauters… or is it Internautites… or Internautists… or is it just Internauts? Or you can always play Google’s Interland game with Internaut.

As nice as it is to give special recognition to and making God’s Preeminence a national holiday today, once a year is a misnomer to God and us. The daily news shows the abomination we have made of our time and responsibilities here. Yet if this were sincerely and earnestly embraced and practiced daily, it may still be too late for us to undo to humanity and our earth all that we have damaged and neglected or allowed to be oppressed by those who don’t know any love. But making this a day we START focusing and dedicating MORE of our time, our energies, our thoughts, our prayer and meditation, ourselves in connecting to Him on a more intimate level will bring us the joy and peace He promised us in times like these. GBTG!

Here you will find me indulging my two passions God and the Internet (with all of its related devices and nuances). It will concurrently deploy two of my hobbies: writing and researching. I am no novice to either. At an early age I found writing to be a cathartic and enlightening skill. In fact, I became a professional writer. After college, I edited and wrote an in-house monthly newsletter [8 – 12 … once 20… pages long] for my Fortune 500 employer as a part-time job for 17 years, most of which I was paid an additional $500 a month by this major US magazine publisher. My primary duties for that employer were that of a Broadcast Engineer at one of their TV stations for 31.5 years. I received accolades for the Take5 newsletter from my co-workers, from headquarter corporate higher-ups (who order copies over most of the 17 years) and even was bestowed their Fortune 500 company 1st Quarter Annual Service Award (of which I proudly display above). Next, I learned how enthralling research is when I had my Web Assistant business. Researching helped me develop my website building and coding skills as well as ghost write for some of my clients on various, previously unfamiliar to me, topics. For now, this blog is reacquainting (and hopefully developing) my researching and writing skills. And I was exploring National Holidays for a while. Everyday there are a number of unique and sometimes bizarre “National Holidays”. I picked one, research it and posted it here (and on my Facebook page when the posting plugin works). With retirement becoming very busy with other things (including writing a book), I have set this aside for now. But I will write more when times becomes available. Feel free to Friend me on Facebook to be informed of all sorts of stuff. Here’s the link: Den Pikey’s Friends.