Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Each Minute Sweeter Than Before














It's 51 degrees. Sunshine. Crocuses in the lawn and daffodils half-sprung. Birdsong. Peepers.

After a hideously extended winter, it feels like Spring.

"It is the first mild day of March,/ Each minute sweeter than before." William Wordsworth

Friday, March 25, 2011

No Diet Gingerale.

I went to the grocery store for diet gingerale. This is the row of soda. There was no diet gingerale of any brand whatsoever.

OK, I know this isn't a tragedy like tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear disasters etc. But, in the absence of these tragedies, is a little diet gingerale too much to expect?

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Just showed this picture to the COG


And he said 'My God, get me a drink. Quick!'

Not sure whether this counts as an offense to my feminist principles.

New Storage -

I'm a Storage Geek. Today I finished a project which I've been thinking about and working on for ages. It's a wooden thing for stacking the large platters which won't fit elsewhere. I am very happy it's done and it fits and it's doing the job.

This is not my proudest moment, carpentry-wise. However, it does the trick. I also made the shelf you can see at the back of the upper shelf. I make lots of these. It's simply a 1x4 inch board cut to the length I need and set on two upright pieces of the same board, glued, not even screwed. Very useful for finding extra slivers of storage.

Monday, March 14, 2011

National Geographic Channel Shows: Deconstructed

I"ve been watching waaaay too many National Geographic Channel shows lately. I get sucked in by the promise of some kind of awesome new information because of new Chromo/thermo/DNA/
imaging/ satellite/new discoveries and then watch the whole show which turns out to be a waste of an hour.

So to save you the trouble, here are some quick synopses.

Finding Atlantis: It might be mythical, or maybe not. It might be on Crete, or in Greece or maybe even under a marsh in Southern Spain, or maybe not. More research may tell.

D.B.Cooper, Who Was He?: No one knows. He probably died the night he jumped from the plane with $200,000. But maybe not.

Amazing Sunken Treasures of the Nile: Over the past several millenia many broken stone things and some amphorae have ended up in the water of the Nile. More research may tell us what they mean. Oh, and it would have taken 200 men 10 days to chip out about 2 inches down along the side of an obelisk. That's about 1/4 inch per man per day.

Finding Jack the Ripper: Who was he? No one knows, but it's an exciting hobby for retired detectives, involving foreigh travel and making tv shows.

Countdown to Catastrophe, Mega Quake Seattle: It's only a matter of time before the area from Vancouver BC to Southern Oregon (including Seattle and Portland) and up to 50 miles inland has a mega earthquake like the one in Japan, or even larger, followed by a catastrophic Tsunami. No one knows when.

Egypt Unwrapped: The Mystery of the Screaming Man: conclusion: He wasn't really screaming, he just looks that way.

The Real Cleopatra: What a scheming bitch! She had her siblings killed or exiled and when she died there was no one to inherit, so Rome took over. Ha Ha serves you right, Cleopatra.

The Real George Washington: You thought the Father of Our Country was a secular saint who never told a lie? Guess again. He so lied to the British when he planted false information to deceive them during the war. And he had spies and he used secret codes and invisible ink to communicate with agents. Plus, he was a not-entirely-benevolent slave owner. So there, America.

One really interesting show didn't disappoint; however, I can still save you watching it.

Revealing Tutankhamen's Secrets: His two fetal daughters were buried with him and both had Marfan's Syndrome,so they died at 7 mo pregnancy and 5 mo pregnancy. He didn't have it, so his Sister, who was also his Wife must have had it. She was not one of the two unidentified royal female mummies from the same period, but not buried in his tomb. His father- Akenaten - had Marfan's, too, which is why he looks so weird in the pictures of him. When King Tut died he had the worst kind of Malaria, also a serious bone infection in his foot (which was painful and certainly necessitated use of a stick), and a compound fracture of his leg just above the knee - probably a chariot racing injury. One of the unidentified royal female mummies from the same period had a serious foot deformity and was probably a sister or cousin of his, but she didn't have Marfan's so she wasn't his wife. Conclusion: DNA is wonderful.