A Very Merry Christmas, Vacation and New Year 2011 to You All

This is my last scheduled post of 2010.  Blogging will resume at the usual five-a-week (yeah, that’s minimum) pace on January 3, 2011.  Stopping by between now and then might earn you a surprise or two if something happens that I can’t keep quiet about, but generally speaking, I’ll see you next year. Since this post will stay visible for a while, I thought I’d leave you with a mixed bag of greetings, wishes and a few lessons learned from 2010. The Greetings Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Bon-Whatever-You-Celebrate to you all.  May you, your relatives and your friends have

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Next Time I’m Hiring a Hit Squad.

As most of you are probably aware, I received a box with water and rocks in it as an early Christmas present.  As an unexpected bonus, two of the rocks came with living inhabitants.  The first a peacock worm, is a rare and beneficial filter feeder.  (Due to some ham-handedness on my part, I actually have three instead of one, but more on that another day.) The other creature was an aiptasia anemone, an aggressive, carnivorous critter that would like nothing more than to eat the peacock worm and everything else I ever put into the tank.  The worm is

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Should This Be On Your Christmas List?

The last minute gift for that person on your list who has saggy pants everything? The Sags Gadget. An inventor in Harlem, New York has finally solved the “saggy pants problem” once and for all.  After noticing that neighborhood teens had problems keeping their oversized pants from hanging to their hips without falling around their ankles, Andrew Lewis invented a garter belt-style contraption that fits around the waist and holds the pants at the “proper” height. It’s even adjustable. Those of us who continue to cling to the obviously mistaken belief that pants should be worn around the waist (and

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A (Very) Little Christmas Humor

Behind the 8-ball today, trying to finish up work at The Job Which Must Not Be Named before taking some time off for Christmas.  That said, I know your day would be ruined without something to read, so in honor of your fifth-to-last day before Christmas, may I present a very little Christmas humor: How do you know when a snowman is mad at you? He gives you the cold shoulder. What does a snowman eat for lunch?  An Iceberger What do you call a polar bear wearing earmuffs?  Anything you like, he can’t hear you. Those of you not

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Do You Know Where Your Bicycle is?

I’ve suspended my Friday review posts through December in favor of Christmas memories shared, in the hope of inspiring myself (and the rest of you) to share your own stories with others.  (Or here, in the comments.  That’s always welcome too.) The Christmas I turned nine, I wanted a ten-speed bike more than anything in the world.  As a newly-minted third grader, the school rules permitted me to ride a bike to school and I couldn’t wait to join my friends at the bicycle racks.  I’d been riding my purple banana-seat wonder for many years, and had even taken it

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Why Poinsettias, Anyway?

Easter has lilies and Valentine’s Day without a rose would never smell as sweet.  In similar fashion, poinsettias are the flower (well, plant) of Christmas. But why? Aside from needing some brilliant vegetation for the cats to eat and throw up on the carpet (because it’s not really a holiday ’til somebody pukes on the rug) I never saw the connection between poinsettias and Christmas.  That said, the bright red-and-green leafed plants have appeared in florists and grocery stores every November that I can remember, in numbers that suggest either a solidly-planted tradition or an imminent vegetative takeover of the

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On Rocks, and the Things We Can Learn From Them

Last Sunday I received my Christmas present: a 59-gallon salt water aquarium which will become a species-specific soft reef for seahorses and pipefish. As of 5pm Monday night, it looked more like a box of water with rocks. Reef tanks start with a sandy bottom and live rock, which needs time to cure in salt-water before anything more can be added.  You take a big glass box, put sand in the bottom, fill it with water and stack the reef….and then wait two to six weeks for the microscopic inhabitants to get their party on. I’m still at step 1.

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Almost Meaningful

I spent most of last night playing with my early Christmas present – the 59-gallon salt water reef tank I’ve wanted since I was eight.  It has no seahorses yet, but that doesn’t make it any less fun. I intended to write a much longer post about rocks and the things we can learn from them, but I’m late to work, on four hours’ sleep, and I’m not sure I can do justice to the post.  Check back tomorrow and I guarantee you’ll have something nice to read. In the interim, I’ll leave you with an overheard exchange between Tesla

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Welcome to New Zealand! (Now Go Home.)

December 13, 1642: Abel Tasman discovers the island of New Zealand.  Unfortunately, his attempt at landing was repulsed by native tribesmen when the Dutch navigator’s trumpet signals (used to coordinate ship movements) were misinterpreted as war horns.  After losing several crewmen, Tasman turned his ships around and left without setting foot on the newly discovered land. Several weeks before, Tasman had discovered another island off the coast of Australia.  He called it Van Diemen’s Land, but history got the better of Tasman when it came to naming that discovery. Historical geography question of the day: what is the modern name of

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History is Personal Too.

It’s easy to think of history as “things that happened to someone else, most of them now long dead.”  Most history has to be studied in that way.  Time moves in linear fashion and education lends itself to macro-scale views. But history is also the cumulative experiences of one person at a time. millions of unique lives combining to create the ebb and flow of tribes, cities and nations.  Viewed from a great enough distance they combine into large-scale events, such as “Allied soldiers in World War II.”  Break that down a little more, and you have the landing at

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