Eye Speye

Overview:

Two women born a world apart find a common ground; each other. The disappearance of a political figure, and dear friend, ties their careers and lives together in a mysterious adventure where they find romance in unlikely places, mystery in the far realms of mankind, murder, mayhem, and the opportunity of a lifetime.

Saskia Devyani lives a quiet life in the bay region of Dublin where she works as a professor and scientist specialized in chemical compounds. Returning from a science conference at the university she finds her home in shambles. The police have no leads, but the one secret Saskia keeps could be the answer.

Zenevieva—also called Zen—Dubvronik is an electronics genius. Running her business, Speye Wear, and working with the U.S. government training and assigning agents; she is called to duty when a team looking for the missing political figure goes MIA themselves. Knowing her designs and their flaws this was not supposed to happen. Under new orders she is sent back to the feild to find them and is thrown into an adventure with a stranger that collides the past with the present and threatens both of their futures.

Changing Latitude: 1st page

The evening air hung heavy. Her hair clung to her face in damp wisps. Her heart pounded in rhythm to her stride as she jogged down the rocky path that led to the clearing of campground sites. Just a bit further and she would be okay.

The noises of the forest were common to her; it was the silence that nudged her fear. The shadows always lurked in the foliage or behind the limbs of the massive trees, but this time she sensed someone or something watched her every move. She was cautious to keep her pace as not to alert what or who watched. A few more yards to go and she would be in the clearing.

Just as she came to the bank of forest that lined the campground, she heard a loud rustle of tree limbs and snapping twigs. The earth moved underneath her. She took a deep breath as if diving into the ocean she braced herself, then everything faded to darkness.

She awoke in a cold sweat. The dream so vivid in her mind, Cadence glanced at her alarm clock: 4:20. "Ugh, I've got to get some sleep," she said. This was the fourth night of having the dream.

I'm April...Fool!

The origin of April Fools' Day is obscure. One likely theory is that the modern holiday was first celebrated soon after the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar; the term referred to someone still adhering to the Julian Calendar, which it replaced. In many pre-Christian cultures May Day (May 1) was celebrated as the first day of summer, and signalled the start of the spring planting season. An April Fool was someone who did this prematurely. Another origin is that April 1 was counted the first day of the year in France. When King Charles IX changed that to January 1, some people stayed with April 1. Those who did were called "April Fools" and were taunted by their neighbors. In the eighteenth century the festival was often posited as going back to the times of Noah. An English newspaper article published on April 13th, 1789 said that the day had its origins when he sent the raven off too early, before the waters had receded. He did this on the first day of the Hebrew month that corresponds with April. A possible reference to April Fools' Day can be seen in the Canterbury Tales (ca 1400) in the Nun's Priest's tale, a tale of two fools: Chanticleer and the fox, which took place on March 32nd.

The frequency of April Fools' hoaxes sometimes makes people doubt real news stories released on April 1.

• The April 1, 1946 Aleutian Island earthquake tsunami that killed 165 people in Hawaii and Alaska resulted in the creation of a tsunami warning system (specifically the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre), established in 1949 for Pacific Ocean countries. The tsunami in question is known in Hawaii as the "April Fools' Day Tsunami" due to people drowning because of the assumptions that the warnings were an April Fools' prank.
• The death of King George II of Greece on April 1, 1947.
• The AMC Gremlin was first introduced on April 1, 1970.
• On April 1, 1993, NASCAR Winston Cup Series Champion Alan Kulwicki was killed in a plane crash involving Hooters of America executives in Blountville, Tennessee near the Tri-Cities Airport. The party was traveling to the Food City 500 qualifying scheduled for the next day.
• The 2005 death of comedian Mitch Hedberg was originally dismissed as an April Fools' joke. The comedian's March 29, 2005 death was announced on March 31, but many newspapers didn't carry the story until April 1, 2005.
• Gmail's April 2004 launch was widely believed to be a prank, as Google traditionally perpetrates April Fools' Day hoaxes each April 1 (see Google's hoaxes.) Another Google-related event that turned out not to be a hoax occurred on April 1, 2007, when employees at Google's New York City office were alerted that a ball python kept in an engineer's cubicle had escaped and was on the loose. An internal e-mail acknowledged that "the timing…could not be more awkward" but that the snake's escape was in fact an actual occurrence and not a prank.
• The merger of Square and its rival company, Enix, took place on April 1, 2003, and was originally thought to be a joke.
• The announcement of the anime version of the Powerpuff Girls, Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z, was on April Fools' Day causing many to think it was a joke.
• The game Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games was announced only a couple days before April Fools' Day. Forums were flooded because so many thought that the two rivals since the 90's, Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog, appearing together in a video game as an official 2008 Olympics game was a joke.
• British sprinter Dwain Chambers joined English rugby league team Castleford Tigers shortly before 1st April 2008. The athlete was attempting a return to top flight athletics at the time following a high profile drugs ban, and his apparent unfamiliarity with rugby led many people to assume this was an April Fools' Day prank.
• On April 1st, 2008, it was reported that UEFA would require the Swedish fast food chain Max to close their restaurant at the Borås Arena during the European Under-21 Football Championship due to a conflict with official sponsor McDonalds and a requirement that only official sponsors may operate around the arena. The arena was later replaced as a tournament site.
• On April 1, 1984, singer Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his father. Originally, people assumed that it was a fake news story, especially considering the bizarre aspect of the father being the murderer.
• On April 1, 2008, Christian Persch announced that the GNOME desktop web browser Epiphany would be switched from Mozilla's Gecko engine to the WebKit engine used by Safari and KDE's equivalent application Konqueror.
• In the United Kingdom, 1 April is the start of the new police and local authority year, meaning many new organisations such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency in 2006 and the creation of new unitary authorities in 2009, may be seen by some as April Fools jokes.

How are you spending your April Fools' Day and what prank would you pull?

**Special thanks to Wikipedia for the daily dose of fun!

Cast Away

Today marks five weeks of having this blasted cast on my right arm, and tomorrow will be the unveiling. Or as I call it, my Tom Hanks experience--hence, cast away. I am placing myself on a "deserted island" so I can bang out the edits, pages, and newsletter that have been vying for my attention since February.

I had to have X-rays last week that my doctor should have in hand tomorrow morning. I have no clue as to whether or not I'll require surgery--hopefully not--or have to wear a brace--better than the alternative. Either way I am going to push for NO CAST! Keep your fingers crossed, send good karma, and pray for me!

Five lbs of This Makes 20 lbs of That

For my birthday, my dad sent down a 5 lb Hershey's Chocolate bar. He knows my *addiction* need for chocolate is so I *keep from choking people* stay sweet. Mind you, 5 lbs of this:



Makes 20 lbs of that:

And Hershey’s Chocolate really stands for:

Enjoy. I know I will.