Monday - Er, Friday - Stuff on the Way to Other Stuff

I've found so many amazing items on the Internet this week that the usual "Monday Stuff on the Way to..." is coming out on Friday! Our family is headed to Michigan for our niece's wedding, anyways, and there will be little time on Monday to post. You need to know this stuff early -- have a great weekend.
   P.S. The latest book giveaway, Super Simple Strips, only has a few days left to run. Pop on over to enter!

Here we go:

Avoiding spending traps at the grocery store. (Thanks, One Frugal Girl.)

A UFO hovers over Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock. (One of the spectators says, in a strong Southern accent, "Why, we've seen 'em in Mississippi lahk this!" You go, Lady.)

And in honor of our upcoming plane trip, six airline pilots who kicked butt. So to speak.

Workmen find just under $1 million in a broken pipe in an El Paso, TX condo. Hmmm...drug money?

This couple has worn matching outfits for 35 years. The Schwankes have been married 65 years. Joey, the wife, says that love and respect are the basis of their relationship. "To this day, if he does something for me I thank him, she says. "If we run into each other, we say excuse me. We fully respect each other and consider each other with every decision we make." Hey, I'll go for that, even if my shirt doesn't match the Brick's!

What it feels like to have your military man leave for duty -- by Diary of a Stay at Home Mom. I dare you to read this without getting a little choked up inside.

Arianna talks about austerity. This is Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post...so her opinion can pack quite a wallop. According to her, the darling phrase of 2011 is a pariah in 2012 -- and that's a good thing. She even quotes Mitt Romney:
   In an interview with Time's Mark Halperin, Mitt Romney was asked whether, if elected, he'd make big budget cuts right away. His reply:

Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5 percent. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I'm not going to do that, of course... I don't want to have us go into a recession in order to balance the budget.

This echoed his comments back in February, when he made the common sense observation that "if you just cut, if all you're thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you'll slow down the economy." 
    The Germans' levelheaded approach has been a huge failure, according to Huffington. And the public doesn't like it, anyways, because it means they have to -- gasp -- cut back.

And finally, one of the weirdest automated machines I've ever seen -- a c.1900 version of a mortuary! It's up for auction  at Skinner Auctions' Science & Technology Clocks Auction on June 2.

 Warning on the date given -- the mourners' fashions pictured in front of the clock sure don't look like 1900 to me -- I'm guessing this automaton is really closer to c.1920-25. But hey, fascinating, all the same.