Last night was the monthly AAUW meeting. This one was a little different; we were getting a tour of the local historical museum (the Three Valley Museum).

As is typical of many people, I think, I never go to see the attractions in my town. A couple other people had never been in the museum, either. (It's only been in its current home a few years).

It was pretty fascinating. I find any kind of "how people used to live" museum interesting, but it's even more so when it's your own town and you actually know people who are related to people featured in the museum. (I go to church with the grandson of Dr. Haynie, one of the well-known doctors here (in the 1930s, I think, was when he started his practice?)

It was interesting because I live in a pretty rural area and so a lot of the "old ways" (agriculturally and such) were hung on to for longer than in some parts of the country.

I was actually kind of gratified by how many of the old agricultural implements I recognized (and a few, I've actually used...we had one of the old "push" cultivators, my dad bought it at an auction somewhere and we used it in the garden).

And a lot of the other "older" stuff, I recognized from my grandmother's house - she had an old wringer-type washer (well, not gasoline powered like the one in the museum - hers was electric and was pink like Pepto-Bismol). And the rug beater. And the old Victrola that took cylinders rather than flat records.

Again - I'm really only 2 generations removed from a lot of this stuff, because my parents were older when they had me, and their parents were older when they had them. So I can look at a lot of the stuff from the 1910s and 20s and 30s and think, "Ah yes, I remember Grandma talking about that."

I'm also kind of a, what would you call it, social history? (where it's how people lived, what they wore, how they cooked, what kind of entertainment was popular) buff, so I knew a lot of the stuff already. But it was still cool seeing it.

They had everything on display - a series of model rooms from a house of the 1920s, old letter sweaters from the various schools in the area, agricultural stuff. They had a couple of cars - a model A from 1931 and a 1948 (IIRC) Buick straight-eight. (I think I impressed the other ladies because I knew the difference between a straight-eight and a V-8. I don't know where I picked that bit of knowledge up, but I have lots of bits of random knowledge like that. Maybe I overheard my dad and granddad talking about it when I was a little kid and I just remembered.).

The old Buick was particularly interesting; standing next to it I realized just how small passenger cars have become over the years - it was almost as tall as my minivan and I am sure it was longer. And heavier. I'm sure its gas mileage was horribly low but the thing was a tank, it looked like if it got into a wreck with a modern car, the modern car would just bounce off of it like a Nerf ball.

They also had displays on the three tribes (Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Caddo) that historically lived in this area. We were moving kind of fast at that point (it was a tour led by a docent) so I didn't have time to read all the information, I want to go back and look more closely at it. (Also, they had a Choctaw Bible, and I wanted to look more closely at it to see if I could figure out what book they had it open to...I don't know a word of Choctaw but it's kind of fascinating to look at a book you know well in a totally different language). So I want to go back at some point.

And if I ever have anyone visiting me from "away," now I know what to do with them that's interesting, even if it's raining. (There's a lot of interesting outdoor stuff to do, not as many things for when it's cold or the weather is bad).

And the museum is free - it's supported by members (I'm a member, it's only $15 for an individual for a year) and by donations.

"I love the whole world, in all its craziness" part I-don't-know-how-many:

vampyrellids (you need to scroll to the bottom)

Soil protozoa that, like their namesake, punch holes and "suck out the good stuff." Only they do it to fungi, including a disease of wheat roots.

"The perfectly round holes drilled through the fungal cell wall, much like the purported puncture marks on the neck of a vampire’s victim, are evidence of the presence of vampyrellid amoebae. The amoebae attach to the surface of fungal hyphae and generate enzymes that eat through the fungal cell wall. The amoeba then sucks dry or engulfs the cytoplasm inside the fungal cell before moving on to its next victim."

I bet the USDA person had fun writing that up.

I didn't even know of the existence of these things before doing a little additional looking-up of soil protozoa for my soils class.

This is for everyone who is sad, who is distressed, who is having a hard time.

I know it's been used a lot in ads and such, but it still makes me feel a whole lot better whenever I listen to it. It calms me down when I'm upset about something, makes me more hopeful about the world and people in it, and makes my shoulders drop back into their normal position when they've gotten squinched somewhere up around my ears.



Enjoy. And feel better.

I'll be back in a week.

This is one of those hilarious and wonderful things you find on the Internet:

(Edited to add: crap, it's apparently just a clever April Fools' joke from several years back. I suppose the temperature issue should have clued me in. Well, dammit. Maybe someone will make a USB port thing with a step-up transformer or something)

PC E-Z Bake Oven. It's a tiny version of the old E-Z Bake oven (you know, the lightbulb one) that fits into the "spare" 5 1/4" driver bay on a PC. And it plugs into the power source.

So you could bake little cupcakes, or muffins, or I suppose, tiny pizzas (just don't let the melted cheese get down in the PC) while you sit at your desk.

I will say I never had an E-Z Bake Oven as a child; when I asked for one, my mother said, "Why do you want to play with a fake oven? I'll teach you to use a real one, instead."

Still, you know? It would be kind of nice to keep a batch of refrigerator cookie dough on hand, and then at 3 pm (or whenever) bake yourself a single, fresh cookie.

Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh!

It came, it really worked!

Several months ago, I took a survey from - I think it was Elsevier, the scientific publisher? It was a fairly involved survey, and they said we would receive a "gift certificate" to somewhere in return for our efforts.

Well, first off they said they were going to give me a $75 Hallmark certificate - which is nice enough, I suppose, but as I buy maybe six cards in a year it would take me forever to use it up.

Then they changed the terms - would a $75 Amazon certificate be OK?

Would it be OK? Obviously they have not seen my wishlist on there. Of course it's OK!

So they said, "Expect it in 4 to 6 weeks."

And you know? I didn't quite believe it. I thought, yeah, they can claim that, but it won't actually happen. Something will come up, the offer will expire, it will turn out the fine print will say it was actually a DRAWING and I didn't win.

But mirabile dictu, it came last night.

I could not believe it. For someone who doesn't buy scratch off tickets, this is seriously as close as I come to winning the lottery.

I thought for a moment (but just a moment) and then went and used it up - so it wouldn't expire or get lost or anything.

What did I buy? Something off my wishlist, and something nicer than something I already had on my list.

From the wishlist: The first season of Campion. Because I love the Campion stories, and I love, love, love Peter Davison. (I still want the second series, but maybe I'll save my pennies and get that at a later date). I look forward to spending some cozy January evenings at home, knitting and watching Campion.

The other thing: a 5-CD box set of all of Django Reinhart's early work Something I've been missing and wanting in my collection.

(And yes, I realize: I got a gift certificate to "the world's biggest bookstore" and neither item I bought was a book. Well, I asked for a lot of books for Christmas...)

AND because I have the "Prime" option, they should be here Monday or Tuesday at no shipping charge.

So, I got two very very nice things that I had been wanting for nothing, all for doing an online survey. I really do feel a bit like I won the lottery.

(I love Amazon so much. It makes my life so much better, living in a town without a real bookstore or a video store with a large selection. And the Amazon Prime option is totally worth it to me. I have saved myself the cost in time and gas of having to drive to Sherman to look for something I needed (or even merely wanted) many a time thanks to it.)

Octopi are cool.

(Seriously: this octopus was apparently "annoyed" by a bright light shining into his tank, so he figured out he could blow the light by squirting a jet of water at it. Ha ha. The "You darn kids get off my lawn and turn down that music!" of the cephalopod set).

Fascinating: The First Sound Bites. Old phonographic recordings of Bryan and Taft from '08. (1908, that is).

Two things that strike me:

1. People spoke differently then. I don't mean they used longer words or more complex syntax (though that is arguably true); their pronunciations were different - it seems that regional dialects would be more pronounced in a less-mobile, untelevised era.

(Taft's voice is a lot higher than I'd expect it to be, just looking at the man.)

2. Bryan's speech is kind of startling, in that TODAY we are dealing with financial instability. It's a little different (He's talking about a sort of proto-FDIC), but I get the same sense-of-comfort mingled with sense-of-annoyance I get from reading Paul's letters: Comfort, because it seems that things have not got much worse over time; we are dealing with some of the same issues that our ancestors did. But annoyance that we cannot learn to act better.

Incidentally, Bryan is the person after whom the county where I live is named. I don't know much about the man other than the Scopes trial and the Cross of Gold speech and the fact that he was an early Populist.

Yay!

xkcd does its own, slightly twisted, take on the Discovery Channel "boom-de-yah-dah" ad.

Interesting set of paper ephemera and other items on Flickr.

Conceivably, one could print some of the "paper toys" (and the paper dolls like M. Epinard) out and actually assemble them.

(She also has a blog - en français - with lots of ephemera here. There are some of the paper-toys - like a neat set of c. 1920 racecars - there as well.)

I don't plan on (and well, it's probably biologically a little late now) having children, but I'm still tempted to buy a set of these ABC cards. Seriously: "N is for Neuron." I love that.

Two quick links:

From the sublime: A park pavilion that is perforated so that a poem is projected by sunlight coming through the holes (The really amazing thing is that the designer worked it so that at different times of the year - when the sunlight is coming in from different angles - you get DIFFERENT LINES OF POETRY. That blows me away.)

To the ridiculous: Bee boop boop-deedle-bee, be boop boop-deedle-bee, bee boop boop deedle-bee, deedly-deedly-deedly-deet (That's my best approximation of the opening music from Pac-Man. The link is to someone who sells little crocheted sets of Pac Man and the ghosts, but if you'd rather make your own (slightly differently looking) ones, there is a pattern here

(And a third link, spotted on the site where that last pattern was posted: Geek Crafts. While I'm probably not sufficiently geeky to be in the true fanbase of that site [in that I'm really NOT a huge NES fan, nor would I redo my house in a Star Trek/Star Wars/Monty Python theme, there's a lot of stuff on there that makes me kind of gasp with delight that someone actually tinkered it up...like the computer case modified to look like R2-D2])

More stuff from that "Official" (probably not, really) Star Wars blog I linked to the other day:

Star Wars: 1942. An Axis and Allies (well, Axis mostly N*zi Germany) variant on Star Wars. (oooh, Han Solo as a fighter pilot....and Chewie is also kind of amusing. Too bad they didn't do Princess Leia; she would have made an awesome resistance fighter in the mold of Josephine Baker or those other glamourous women who could also kill a man 15 different ways with their bare hands....)

And then there's the really awesome Steampunk Star Wars.

I love it when people riff on pop culture and it seems that Star Wars has become so iconic, that riffing on it is almost like taking a Shakespeare play and "resetting" it in 1930s Spain or the Wild West. (And yeah, some of those resets don't come off so well, but there have been some that have been very well done.)

Nobody told me Loobylu is back!

I missed her blog. I'm happy to see she's blogging again.

And linking wonderful things...like this Welsh low-impact woodland home. Which, though it probably would mean my changing my current "1940s cottage" style to suit it, is a lovely little house, sort of what you'd get if you had a construction and architectural team that had both Hobbits and Moomins on it.

Also, one of her "further back" (but still new to me) posts features a lot of interesting vintage crocheted blankets.

Also, from a link to an illustration blog she had on her site, this cover from the Moomin comics (wow, I'd love to find a set of those in English...)



Hahahaha. I like the cover, with the distressed-looking fillyjonk in the middle, on the phone, and all the other creatures being vaguely threatening around her - Little My either pulling a snake out or putting a snake in to the stovepipe, and Moomintroll looking angry with a pair of pliers, and some of the random Jansson-creatures dancing by firelight in the back. Perhaps the fillyjonk is calling the police on them ("Please? It's 2 am? And they're still making noise?") or perhaps she is calling someone to come and remove her from such a madhouse....

Sometimes, it's really hard NOT to anthropomorphize...

awesome picture of a praying mantis.

It just looks like that little guy is cheering.

hahahahahahaha Awesome!

purring cat website.

It does what it says. Simple, yet effective.

Steampunkified version of Pac-Man ("That's Pac GENTLEMAN to you" as the website says).

As I often say: I am amazed by the creativity of people. This one made me laugh. (From Craftzine Blog).

Also from Craftzine blog, a Do Not Want. There's a new book out with knitted patterns for dolls in the form of famous people (or famous characters played by people). They have a Borat doll (which you saw if you clicked on the link, and you are probably sorry for clicking now). "Borat" was one of those movies that someone I cared about said "You HAVE to watch this, it's hysterical" and then I spent the next several days watching Miyazake films trying to get the images (particularly one...a "chase" scene in a hotel...you will know what I'm talking about if you saw the movie) out of my mind. And unfortunately, it was unsuccessful.

And a question: In situations like that, are the famous people asked permission for their traits and images to be used? Can they request that their image not be used in the patterns? I mean, yeah, that Amy Winehouse doll doesn't look THAT much like her. But if I were famous, I'd be a little ooged out by the whole concept.

Oh, dangit, I LOVE "I Can Has Cheezburger" SO MUCH!

(References, for those unfamiliar: Cornell and Wikipedia versions)

(I also have to say I think "Schroedinger's Cat" would make an excellent band name. That is, if it's not taken already.)

And, people- there's evidence that cute is good for you!. Yays! (Or maybe that's LULZ!)

The end of the saga...


Out with the old



In with the new




(That was the best photo I could take; it's back in a closet and the guy had to build up a stand for the new heater so he could set it up with the appropriate emergency drain. It took him FOUR HOURS [including time running back to Lowe's to swap out a part they gave him the wrong size of]. I guess he earned his money today.)

And yes, it makes good hot water.

Have a most excellent weekend, everyone.

And Bess - very happy birthday to you.

Some of the stuff that the craftzine blog's featured lately has been either kind of "meh" or "man, that's a lot of work for something that ugly" but I have to say I think this pair of Chuck Taylors that have been painted in the Attic red-figure style are awfully cool.

The only bad thing is if I had a pair of those, I'd be afraid of wearing them, lest I damaged the paint job.

I HAS WIRELESS!

Yup...tech came out WHEN HE SAID HE WOULD (that has become a large issue in my life lately), inspected the computer, restored the sound drivers, and "synched" up the router.

I did need to buy a "Wireless G Notebook Adaptor" (or "wire-LESS Geeeeeee! Note-BOOK a-DAP-tor!" as I sang it to myself on the way to the store, so I'd remember what I needed.)

He assured me it would be no problem to get it working - and he set up a good security level, so someone nextdoor can't piggyback on my signal. And he was right - I got it working on the first try (getting this to work on the first try is a large issue in my life, lately, also).

So, yay local computer techs. And yay, me.