Did you know that the most successful pirate of ALL time was a woman? Yes, that's right. I find that to be awesome! I discovered this little gem of knowledge while reading this on CNN. Actually this original article is from a magazine/site called Mental Floss. Anyways, her name was Cheng I Sao and at the height of her reign as pirate queen she had 1,500 ships and 80,000 pirates at her command! That's crazy! Seriously, read the article. Also, she didn't have the horrifying death that many pirates suffer. She was so powerful that she was able to negotiate pirate amnesty with the Chinese government for her and all but a couple hundred of her men. And they got to keep all their booty! She retired and then in 1844, she died peacefully, a 69 year old grandmother.

She's so on my list of people I admire. I was going to say "people I'd meet if I could go back in time" but a) I don't speak Chinese, and b) although I admire her for being a powerful woman in a time where that was rare, I'm thinking she wasn't the type to just sit around and chat. She might just slit your throat. Don't mess with the pirate queen.

I was hoping to find a book or something interesting to read a little more about her, but Google has not turned up much. I think I'll see if I can find something in a library database. But seriously, read the article, you'll like it and you'll learn something new. Unless you're a pirate expert. Then you probably already know.

New Opportunities

I've decided that I'm going to try a couple of different things to ad a little revenue to my life. The first of which is starting up a little Cafe Press shop. You give them your designs and decide what products you want them on and how much you want them priced and you're ready to go! Actually I'm thinking it's not that simple and I'm going to have to upgrade my shop, but this is a good start, I hope. So these are my first two designs:

both images are copyright of Jennifer Hanley (me) and may not be reproduced without my permission

I'm working on several others but don't have them finished yet. I've recently learned that my school is going to try to take a trip to Italy next summer for a month and I AM SO THERE! Except that I need to do everything I can to earn extra moola for either that or some other semester abroad. I'm also thinking of setting up an Etsy shop with some fun beaded things that I've made. Anyhooo...if you like my stuff, feel free to let me know...or...buy it. That would be nice too. Thanks!

Flying Crackheads

When we first moved in we decided it would be fun to put a hummingbird feeder outside the dining room window so we could watch the birds while we ate our meals. At first we would get very excited whenever we saw a little green flittering bird sip at the nectar. It has been over a month since we had the feeder up and I have come to this conclusion: hummingbirds are the crackheads of the avian world.

These little boogers fight constantly over the feeder. We filled the feeder up yesterday and all day there were at least 6 hummingbirds fighting over the feeder. At one point four or them reached a shaky alliance and decided they wanted the nectar more than they wanted to fight and all four of them drank at the same time. The alliance was short lived, however and they were soon chasing and spearing at each other once again.

This morning, this little female has laid claim to the feeder and has decided the best way to protect the last few precious drops is to sit on the feeder. She's had to chase off a few competitors but she's been sitting there off and on for about a half and hour. I guess it's hers now. She was eyeing me rather suspiciously as I took her photo through the window. Silly little crackhead.

He could kick your ass

This Friday, I had the pleasure of viewing The Bourne Ultimatum. Let me just tell you firstly that I am a huge Bourne fan. I loved the first two and they are in fact, the only action movies I own. My DVD collection is surprisingly chuck full of chick flicks despite the wide variety of movies that I enjoy. Anyways, so I have been looking forward to Bourne 3 ever since I found out it was going to be released in like April. I knew that it would kick ass and it did, in fact, kick ass. I scanned a couple of the review headlines before seeing the movie and several critics thought that this was the best Bourne movie so far. I however, favor the first one. I liked the interaction between him and Marie (the girl he was on the run with for those of you who are not Bourne fans). Either way, 3 was still really great. Almost "non-stop, pulse pounding action", if I may use a movie cliche. I highly recommend it. Oh, and on a completely girly note, Matt Damon looks really hot when he's beating the crap out of people and out-thinking everyone in the CIA.

Neat...

I found this website called Meez and you can create this virtual avatar with all sorts of clothing and hair choices. There are tons of animation and background choices as well. Most of the stuff is free but some things you have to pay for with points. I'm not sure how you get the points, to be honest, beyond the creation of this skinny, big headed, virtual version of me, I probably won't do anything else on Meez. I had fun messing with all the features though.