STRICTLY POSITIVE

Happy Friday, y'all. Here's hoping this finds you all floating above the morass and what follows is just gravy on your happy cake. But if you need a little perk, maybe something below will help.

Exhibit A: Starting the day off with a little inter-species love, one of my favorite things. This is the story of Guero the rescued lion and his new friend squirrel (which actually looks more like a chipmunk, but who's counting?)(Thanks to Cathy for bringing my attention to this bit of lovely)

Exhibit B: Sisters. What're you gonna do with 'em?





Exhibit C:  Every day for FIVE YEARS, this amazing artist has created a super cool mini diorama. Below are some examples, click the link for the full article and lots more photos of his work.

Exhibit D: Skipping over the part about this woman getting rid of her horse in the first place (not in her shoes, trying not to be judgey), this is a really cool video of three horses being reunited after several years apart:





Exhibit E: Lots of videos today, but that's just the way the cookie crumbled. This video was shared to my timeline by my friend Bev, and I wasn't really sure why when I saw it was a video from church. (Bev knows I'm a heathen). But this is a great one from the 'expect the unexpected' files. Plus this song always gives me chills.

A priest in County Meath has stunned wedding guests at the end of a ceremony with a pitch-perfect rendition of Hallelujah http://bbc.in/1hs0BW7
Posted by BBC News on Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Exhibit F:  This story may be the best, so it should probably be up higher, but just so's you know, I simply fill in the blanks as things come, there are no rankings here on the SP post. Courtney Holmes is one of my new social heroes. A barber in Dubuque, Iowa, he wants to support the idea of kids reading. So during the annual back to school bash, he gave free haircuts to kids who read books to him while he cut. The kids had to "earn" their cuts (and they wanted to look sharp for the start of the new school year), and some even got an assist from Holmes sounding out difficult words. Goodonya, Courtney Holmes.

Exhibit G: Things keep coming my way, so I'm going to keep adding. Haven't even had to dig into the archives of stored goodies this week. This comes courtesy of Gretchen, and it's aces. Little Jack was born with a cranial condition that required him to wear a helmet. His cool dad decided to spruce up the helmets by painting them with Star Wars themes. Now Jack has The Force with him.

 Exhibit H: This one can be filed in two places: (1) Lolo wants to kick some teenage ass and (2) not all young men are asshats. A couple of hooligans in Pendleton, Oregon, insulted a 75-year-old man over the condition of his house. They laughed at it, called it crappy, and said it should be burned down. Josh Cygnik works for Union Pacific Railroad and every day meets his co-workers across the street from the house. He happened to overhear the comments. Josh is a better person than I am, saying "sometimes anger is better left unsaid and I took a different course of action that ended up paying off more so than if I yelled at them." What Josh did was go to the local hardware store, where the owner agreed to donate materials to repaint Mr. Bullock's house. Josh then asked for help on Facebook and a renovation was born. As for those crappy commenters, I suppose karma has another item for her to-do list.

Exhibit I:  My sister asked me the other night if I had sent her a book. She received it in the mail direct from Amazon, no note or gift message. I told her it was not me, and since we thought the giver might wish to remain a secret giver, she posted a very nice note on Facebook thanking the sender. We decided it might be fun to "pass it on," and send books to our friends anonymously, including only notes to do the same, pass the gift by sending a book to a friend anonymously with the same note. Who knows how big the chain can become?

Seems I have outstayed my welcome, Blogger won't even let me see the last three items in preview mode (really, Blogger?). So rather than risk wonky formatting and links/video that don't work, I'll sign off and wish you all a pleasant weekend.