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Posts Tagged ‘#365Ways’

A recent NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day featured an excellent version of the Periodic Table highlighting not just elements, but also those elements’ origins.

The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events…

— Astronomy Picture of the Day
Origin of the Elements in the Solar System by Jennifer Johnson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

And the fact that the author and I share a name? An astronomical coincidence.

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Photo by Franco Antonio Giovanella on Unsplash

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Making Space

I had plans for the day, most of which involved relaxing before returning to work tomorrow. Instead, we spent a good chunk of the day sorting out the piles (and piles and piles) of boxes, bags, electronics, cat toys, random kitchen implements, old CDs, and a MacBook G4 with old family photos no one has seen for more than a decade. We now have a pile for recycling, a pile for the trash, and a pile for Goodwill.

We’ve also reclaimed a good bit of room, and I’m looking forward to filling it with more constructive things, like the boxes cluttering up my writing office. Or more space for the cat.

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Photo by Tran Mau Tri Tam ✪ on Unsplash

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We’re having friends over for dinner for the first time in (what seems like) decades, and I’ve apparently forgotten everything I knew about giving a dinner party. So lots to do, but I did take the time to update my chocolate volcano recipe to metric.

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Photo by Alain Bonnardeaux on Unsplash

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Apropos of nothing: how to make béchamel, one of the classic French mother sauces.

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Photo by Diogo Fagundes on Unsplash

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On a typical day, I usually have X number of words in me. On days when I use those words for, say, an epic treatise to friends on the efficacy of my experimental new toothpaste, I turn to the words of others. Time to make a start on 2023’s to-be-read list.

“Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.”

― Harvey Pekar

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Photo by Pickled Stardust on Unsplash

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Today, an old tool with a twist I find useful: the visual thesaurus. My Writers of the Future editor asked for some last updates, and I got stuck on one that should have been simple but was not. 

The problem was that beta readers didn’t quite understand the meaning of the phrase I used, and I had to replace it with a completely different word that still captured a complicated feeling. I don’t usually use a thesaurus, but sometimes needs must. My computer’s built-in options don’t handle phrases well, so online I went.

A quick search led me to stumble on one with a visual, as well as a list, interface. (Has this been around forever? Probably, but it was new to me. Perhaps to you too?) Here’s an example:

Care synonyms, care antonyms – FreeThesaurus.com

Each word’s multiple meanings are clustered with related words, antonyms and links. I can always read the options as a list, of course, but I found this presentation surprisingly helpful when it came to brainstorming options.

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Photo by Aedrian on Unsplash

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On the road again today. Strangely, I find I come up with some of my best ideas while distracted by traveling.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?… If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”

― J.R.R. Tolkien

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Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

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To A New Year

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

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Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash

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Last Thoughts

We’re enjoying the holiday but our time this week has included a funeral. It left me with a thin veneer of sadness, and what better time to shake that off than the last day of the year? And so, a haiku to siphon those thoughts away and make room for the new.


Your first accident

first break first loss first body

and if becomes when.

Now, on to better days.

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

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