Have you ever been mislead by someone in a chat room? I don’t go to the traditional chat rooms to meet people, but I have been in chat situations during multiplayer online games. I can’t believe the way people act when they can hide behind a screen avatar and be relatively anonymous. If you chat – be careful out there!

A new film is out starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. I must admit that neither one of these guys is anyone I follow. But they are good actors in that they have a great way of delivering their lines with the mannerisms and speech inflections that make you believe that they are really the character who they are playing.

“The Soloist” is based on a true story of a reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a gifted musician who suffers with severe mental illness, which destroyed his promising career and put him on the streets as a homeless man.

I heard about it on tonight’s “Sixty Minutes” TV show and with their segment’s glimpse into the background of this movie, I am now determined to watch the movie and also learn more about fighting mental illness.

When I was growing up, buying particular brands was very important to my family and we were willingly brainwashed by commercials and their jingles or slogans.

We didn’t use facial tissues. We used Kleenex. We didn’t ask for a cola. We asked for a Coke. Or in the case of my baby sister who had to be different, she asked for a Pepsi, please. We bought Del Monte canned vegetables at the grocery store because for some reason my mother did not like the Green Giant brand. We saw commercials for P F Flyers and wanted those shoes until we saw the commercial for Keds and then we wanted those, instead.

Kids are the same way today, and even a lot of adults. The commercials and the packaging have a huge impact on their desire to buy certain products. Marketing has become a science and an art form.

There were answers to the Irish quiz that I wanted to go back and reflect upon, so I tried to find the Chicago Tribune’s quiz on their website this morning. I was dismayed to find a different quiz displayed when I clicked the link on their home page. So I will have to do my Irish research another way. However, since there was a different quiz on the site, I decided to try my hand at that one.

I did much better! I got almost all the answers correct, although I admit that a few were pure guesswork. If you want to try it, here the link for the new St. Patrick’s Day Quiz. I only missed 2 out of the 9 questions, #2 and #6. I knew two of the bands were Irish and I have seen both of them in concert. The other two were not on my radar so I had a 50/50 chance of guessing it right – but didn’t. LOL

They say we are all a little bit Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Well, the Chicago Tribune wants to test your claim by giving a 10 questions quiz, “How Well Do You Know Ireland?”

I have to admit that I did not get all 10 correct. In fact, I only got 2 of the 10 correct. I got #5 and #9 correct. I’m so ashamed! I haven’t failed a test this badly since high school Chemistry class. OMG!

So I challenge you to take the test and report back to me which ones you got right. That will be a shorter post than which ones you got wrong . . . ha ha.

Today is Friday the Thirteenth – again. We just HAD a Friday the Thirteenth last month and because February has exactly 28 days, the same dates in March fall on the same days as in February. So we have two Friday the Thirteenths in a row. Lucky us!

This year we again start Daylight Savings Time early in the year. I’m a big fan of Daylight Savings Time, so I don’t mind losing just one hour of sleep in return for an extra hour of daylight in the afternoons. I can get over the loss of sleep fairly quickly, and then enjoy some late afternoons out on my yard swing with my dogs.

I love the longer days of summer. I wish there was a way to add an extra 2 hours to my nights, though. I think a whole lot of people would benefit from an extra two hours of sleep each night. The 24 hour day is just not long enough to get everything done that needs to get done plus have time left for a full 8 hours rest.

We have had the last of the cold weather ( I hope! )and the temperatures have been in the 70′s the past couple of days. That is warm enough to bring out people in their shorts and sandals. The scarey past is all these lilly white legs that people are sporting under those shorts. OMG! I have seen legs so white that they surely must glow in the dark!

I think that my own legs will stay hidden under my jeans for another month or so before I subject my neighbors to the whiteness of my winterized skin. I might put on shorts while tinkering about my own backyard for a few weekends, but I can’t subject the good people at the grocery store to this level of whiteness.

With this last snow on everyone’s mind, I had the chance to talk with a good friend in Chicago. If anyone knows harsh winter weather, Chicagoans do! That is the only reason I have been reluctant to move there, despite several recent, really lucrative job offers.

Every year Chicago has a festival downtown called “Snow Days Chicago” and part of the festival involves a world class competition for snow sculptures. This is serious business to teams of artists who travel all over to enter these types of competitions. This year’s festival is already over and they have a web site with photos of the winning entries. There are some great sculptures, including a magnificent eagle. You should check out their photo gallery if you are interested in seeing some great winter artwork.

This is one that I thought was very imaginative, and it kind of goes along with my neighbors theme of bugs.

This sculpture was not one of the winners this year but it’s one that I liked and I think I could actually do something with this if we had enough snow on the ground to work with. Unfortunately, the little bit of snow that we got is already melted and gone, with the brunt of the storm headed for the East Coast today.