It's Easter Week - Where's My Chocolate Rabbit ?

It's Easter week and it brings back memories of my childhood years. One of the things that I happened to notice was the many pictures of Easter egg hunts on the Internet. The problem is that they have no idea how an Easter egg hunt is done.

I saw a number of kids lined up in a football field and as they started the hunt, the camera panned to show what seemed to be a million plastic eggs strewn all over the field. While I understand that plastic eggs are more logical and sanitary, it sort of killed my idea of an Easter egg hunt. As for the eggs seemly tossed out in plain sight of the children, I would agree that this is fine for children under five years old.

I was fortunate enough to be able to join my family as we boiled, dyed and otherwise decorated the eggs. I remember using a white crayon to write my name on my egg and once finished, each kid had an egg with his or her name on it. All of this activity was done the night before Easter and besides the fun of preparing the eggs, our visions were also focused on Easter morning and our Easter egg baskets filled with jellybeans, candies, Peeps and most importantly, the large chocolate Easter bunny.

After church on Sunday (another experience I will tell you about this Easter week), we came home to do the Easter egg hunt. My parents were very involved in these hunts and to an extent, my father always found real good hiding places. To me at the time, his hiding places were borderline crazy. The funny thing is that we never found all the eggs and we pressed Dad to show us where the other eggs were hidden. Unfortunately, Dad had already had a few beers and some of the eggs weren't found until the odor of rotten eggs betrayed their hiding place.

Next, the neighborhood kids would come over and we'd take turns hiding the eggs and searching for them. After an hour or so, we finally quit and begin eating some of our Easter eggs. The other candies came next and the chocolate bunny was always the last one we'd eat. We always saved the best thing for last......

This Easter week, the main topics will revolve around my Easter experiences. To be continued....

The News As I See It: President Obozo was at a bookstore in Iowa recently and he bought a $37 pop-up book for Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ son. Gibbs said, "It’s a little expensive, sir" and Obama said, "I can handle it." Then he called the president of China and said, "Can I borrow 37 bucks?"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was down in Mexico last week. Nothing important. She has to go down there every year at this time to drag Bill back from spring break. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced today that the Pentagon will ease up on its enforcement of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. He said homosexual behavior will still be against the rules, but nobody will actively enforce it. You know, kind of like the ethics regulations in Congress.

According to Men's Health magazine, 21 percent of men surveyed would rather have a sexier nurse than a more competent doctor when they're in the hospital. I say, why not have both? The government's paying for it now. Who cares?

This Date In History: 1848; For the first time in recorded history, Niagara Falls stopped flowing. An ice jam in the Niagara River above the rim of the falls caused the water to stop. 1867; The North America Act was passed by the British parliament, creating the dominion of Canada. 1951; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of passing atomic secrets to the Russians and were sentenced to death.

1971; Lt. William Calley was convicted of murdering 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre. 1973; The last U.S. troops left South Vietnam. 1999; The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 10,000 for the first time, at 10,006.78. 2002; Israel declared Yasir Arafat an enemy.

Picture Of The Day: Easter is a special time for children and this week, I'll be posting Easter pictures. Of course, I couldn't resist the picture of 'da prez and his oval office picture with his cronies.

Printable Things I Never Told You: 1) Baloney is flattery so thick that it can not be true and blarney is flattery so thin that we like it. 2) Those of you who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand. 3) Between two evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before. 4) Have you ever wondered why they use sterilized needles for lethal injections? 5) A liberal is just a conservative that hasn't been robbed and beaten yet.....and that's five !

Birthdays: John Tyler, American president 1790, Cy Young, baseball player 1867, Eugene McCarthy, politician 1916, Sam Walton, retailer 1918, John Major, politician 1943.

The AREA 51 Retirement Home Bar and Grill: A little boy was playing with a worm one day at his grandpa's house. Grandpa jokingly tells the young boy that he'll give him ten dollars if he can stick the worm back into the worm hole. After a few minutes of trying the boy leaves then returns with a can of hair spray. He sprays it all over the worm and when the worms becomes stiff he pokes it back down in the hole.

A few days later the boy is at his grandpa's house again when grandpa wheels out a shiny new bike and gives it to his grandson along with ten dollars. The boy says, "But grandpa, you only promised me ten dollars." The grandpa replies, "I know, the bike is from your grandmother."

An elderly man went to his doctor and said, "Doc, I think I'm getting senile. Several times lately, I have forgotten to zip up." The doctor replied, "That's not senility. Senility is when you forget to zip down."

The Hits Just Keep On Coming:

At one point during a game, the coach called one of his 7-year-old hockey players aside and asked, "Do you understand what cooperation is? What a team is?" The little boy nodded in the affirmative. "Do you understand that what matters is not whether we win or lose, but how we play together as a team?" The little boy nodded yes.

The coach continued, "So, I'm sure you know, when a penalty is called, you shouldn't argue, curse, attack the referee, or call him a pecker-head. Do you understand all that?" Again the little boy nodded. He continued, "And when I call you off the ice so that another boy gets a chance to play, it's not good sportsmanship to call your coach a dumb asshole, is it?" Again the little boy nodded. The coach said, "Good, now go over there and explain all that to your mother."

A man was taking his wife, who was pregnant with twins, to the hospital when his car went out of control and crashed. Regaining consciousness, he saw his brother sitting at his bed side. He asked his brother how his wife was doing and his brother said, "Don't worry, everybody is fine and you have a son and a daughter. But the hospital was in a real hurry to get the birth certificates filed and since both you and your wife were unconscious, I named them for you."

The husband was thinking to himself and asked with some trepidation, "Well, bro, what did you name them?" Whereupon, his brother replied, "I named the little girl Denise." The husband, relieved, said, "That's a lovely name! And what did you come up with for my son?" The brother replied, "Denephew."

In the middle of a forest, there was a hunter who was suddenly confronted by a huge, mean bear. In his fear, all attempts to shoot the bear were unsuccessful. Finally, he turned and ran as fast as he could.

The hunter ran and ran and ran, until he ended up at the edge of a very steep cliff. His hopes were dim. Seeing no way out of his predicament, and with the bear closing in rather quickly, the hunter got down on his knees, opened his arms, and exclaimed, "Dear Lord, please give this bear some religion!"

The skies darkened and there was lightning in the air. Just a few feet short of the hunter, the bear came to abrupt stop, and glanced around, somewhat confused. Suddenly, the bear looked up into the sky and said, "Thank you, Lord, for the food I'm about to receive...."

That's it for today my little chicken pluckers. Remember, even a woodpecker owes his success to the fact that he uses his head. More on Wednesday.

Stay Tuned !