NOEXTEHO

• First, she's extremely attractive. That, sadly, always makes things awkward for me.
• Second, the whole online thing is weird. Before nerdiness was as accepted as it is today, I trained myself to avoid talking in public of anything remotely nerdy. I'm untraining myself these days, but still, if you mention a webpage to me in public, you might notice a quick flash of revulsion. Don't worry, it's (probably) not you, it's me.
• Third, she's not the one posting herself online. Her husband is the photographer. She's not the main subject of his photos. In fact, she's probably in only 5-10% of them, if even that. Only someone like me who's been following her husband's photography for a couple of years would really have seen enough photos of her to recognize her as quickly and certainly as I have.
• Finally (and this is the kicker): in several of the photos, she's (tastefully) nude. She's aware that her husband is posting nude photos of her and she's OK with it, but still...

1. There were too many posts per day.
2. The format changed from 'linkblog' to 'blog.'

Once again I am posting something that I've thought about posting ever since I first joined this list. I think you will all realize very quickly why I haven't posted it before this. To this day, even I'm not completely sure what is was that I saw. I know what it looked like, but I've found that it's better, for me at least, not to believe that it really was what it looked like.

This happened years ago. I really don't remember how old I was at the time, but I don't think I was more that about nine years old. That would put the time of this somewhere during the summer of 1984. My Grandparents ( My Mom's parents ) lived out in the country about fifteen minutes drive from home. I was spending the weekend with my Grandparents. The story that follows occoured on the Friday night of that weekend.

It was after dark. I was on the couch, turned around and sitting on my knees, looking out a large picture window. I was waiting on Grandpa to get home from work. Grandma and I were the only two people in the there at the time. As I waited, a dense for began to form. The fog began to grow thicker as time passed. Grandma was getting a bit worried. Grandpa was late getting home and she was afraid he'd have an accident due to low visability brought on by the fog.

Several more minutes passed. I was still kneeling on the couch, watching out the window for Grandpa. Then I saw what looked like two lights coming up the road toward the house. At first, I thought it the lights were from the headlights on Grandpa's car. Then I realized that the lights were not the right color. One light seemed to be a lemon yellow, while the other appeared pink. I watched, curious, as the lights moved closer. Then I yelled for Grandma to come to the window and look at them.

Grandma was busy preparing supper and didn't want to leave the kitchen. I took another look at the lights, which were still moving closer, and then went to the kitchen to try to convince Grandma to come and see them. At this point, the lights were still not much more than fuzzy colored blobs due to the thick fog.

I left the window and ran into the kitchen. I told Grandma that there was a pair of lights approaching the house. She said something along the lines of, "Good. He's finally home." I told her that the lights didn't look like they were from a car. I told her about the odd coloration. Finally, Grandma agreed to go take a look for herself.

Running, I got to the window before Grandma did. I resumed my former kneeling possition on the couch before really looking out the window. The light were still there, closer than before. They were just starting to take on a more deffinate shape, like something was imergeing from the fog.

Grandma leaned forward for a closer look at the solidifying shapes. I turned to her, asking what the lights were. She didn't know and was begining to act a bit scared by the sight. I turned back to the window.

The strange lights were almost to the house by that point. (**Thinking back now, I realize just how bright they must have been to have been visable at the first.** ) Then the lights finally took on a more tangable shape. (**This is the part that REALLY makes me doubt what we THOUGHT we saw**) What we saw looked to be two cows, both bulls, dancing along the road on their hind legs. (**No, this is NOT a joke.**) One was glowing yellow, the other was glowing pink. Each of the "bulls" had a front leg, "arm" draped over the shoulder of the other. They were heading toward the driveway.

At this point, Grandma fainted. I only remember giving her a quick look as she collapsed beside me on the couch, then I resumed staring in disbelief and shock at the sight outside.

The "bulls" danced along until they got to the driveway, turned as if to make their way up it to the house. Then both just faded away.

After some time (**I'm not sure how long exactally, but I don't think it was more than a minute or so**) I turned away from the window to Grandma. She was still unconcious. I had no idea how to revive her. I remember shaking her, as if trying to wake a sleeping person, and talking to her. I do not recall what I said. After a few moments, she began to stir. As Grandma woke up, she turned quickly back to the window. I told her that whatever we had seen was gone. I asked her what HAD we seen.

Grandma sat me down on the couch and told me that I was NOT to breath a word of what had happened to Grandpa when he got home. I asked why. Grandma wouldn't give me an answer. She just kept telling me to keep quiet about it.

A few minutes later, we heard a car door slam outside. Grandpa was home. Again, Grandma warned me not to say a word to Grandpa about what had happened.

Naturally, the moment Grandpa entered the house, I ran straight to him and told him everything that had happened.

Grandpa spared only a second to ask Grandma if she were okay. The moment she said "Yes" Grandpa retieved his shotgun and went outside. Grandma began to scold me, very loudly, for disobeying her orders.

Several minutes later, Grandpa came back in. He had found nothing.

To this day, neither of them will discuss what happened that evening.

If that had been the end of the matter, I would have convinced myself years and years ago that both Grandma and I had simply been hallucinating. In fact, not too long after the incident, I had convinced myself of that.

Several years after seeing the "bulls" at my Grandparents' house, a friend of mine who I grew up with came to me one day with a story. I'll call this girl "A". (**Both she and I were about twelve when she told me this**)

When I lived in Ohio this girl's Grandparents lived directly behind us. "A" lived mostly with her Grandparents during the summer months. Only a one lane alley seperated our two yards. Across this girl's Grandparents' yard was the railroad bed I've posted about a few times in the past. On the other side of the railroad bed was a small farm. (**We lived at the very edge of town**)

"A" came to me one day saying that she had seen something very strange the previous night. I asked her what she'd seen. "A" made a long speach about how I'd think she was crazy if she told me. I pointed out that she'd already brought up the subject, obviously, she wanted to tell me. "A" agreed.

She said that late the night before she had been unable to sleep and had been looking out of her bedroom window. It began to get foggy. In the fog, "A" claimed to have seen two glowing lights moving across the pasture back at the farm. One light was yellow, the other pink.

(**Please keep in mind that I had NOT told anyone about what Grandma and I had seen at this point.**)

"A" said that, as the lights got closer to the railroad bed, they began to take on solid shapes. At that point, I was starting to get cold chills. "A" said that she must have been seeing things and that she wouldn't waste time telling me the rest of her story. I insisted that she did. After a few minutes "A" said, almost in tears, that the lights took on the shapes of cows. Bulls. Each bull had a front leg draped over the shoulders of the other. Both appeared to be dancing along on their hind legs. They were moving toward the railraod bed. Toward "A" 's Grandparents' house.

"A" said that at that point she had turned away from her window and hid under the blankets until morning.

After "A" told me her story, I told her mine own, very similar one. As far as I know, "A" never saw the "bulls" again after that night. I've never seem them again, myself.

If not for "A" 's story, I would long since come to believe that what Grandma and I had seen was a hallucination brought on by the dense fog and car headlights or something like that. "A" 's story makes me think again. I don't know WHAT we saw, but I do know that we saw SOMETHING.

Anyone have any ideas?

• too many feeds -- Unsubscribe from some! Or, better yet, don't subscribe to so many in the first place!
• too much overlap across feeds -- Again, unsubscribe! Only keep the good, unique ones! If you notice that a lot of the overlap is just reblogged from one place, then unsubscribe from the rebloggers and subscribe to the source. (Or if you refuse to unsubscribe, then filter with something like Yahoo's Pipes.)
• too many posts in each feed -- (you guessed it) UNSUBSCRIBE! Seek alternatives with less posts per day. Most high volume sites are not so unique that there aren't at least 30 alternatives.
• not real-time enough -- Know this: it's not supposed to be! Do you seriously need it to be real-time anyway? Will the world (or your job, or your relationship, or... anything) end because you see a picture of a cute kitten as late as an hour or two after it was posted on the internet?
• don't like Google Reader -- Well, you're on your own there. I've tried a lot and believe that Google Reader is the best, so it's kind of all I know. I've heard good things about Helvetireader (a "skin" for Google Reader), Fever (a web-based reader that you install on your own server that costs $30), Times (a slick non-web-based reader for OSX that costs $30), and NetNewsWire and FeedDemon (free, non-web-based readers for OSX and Windows, respectively). BUT I still think Google Reader is better than all of those. Depending on exactly what you don't like about Google Reader, this might be the only valid complaint. But this is a complaint about Google Reader, not RSS.