The sun is out and while it’s not exactly warm, the world is bright and beautiful. I’m working on a number of project ideas and am about to help Mr Man dissect the fridge.
(brief break for said dissection)
Yep, we need a new fridge. Or rather, the fridge needs a new compressor and it doesn’t make sense to replace that one thing. I shall now spend a not-insignificant amount of time imagining a world in which incentives for engineers are structured in ways that make designing modular, easy-to-repair systems the goal.
So I’m a little sad today, because having to get rid of a mostly fine appliance is a damn shame.
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That said, I am also reading. I just finished Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. It’s a good book but not, like so many others, an easy one to ingest. I stuck with it and am glad I did. The language is challenging, any name or title under four syllables is rare, and the author does an astonishing job (I realized about 10% of the way in) of putting the reader in the place of the awkward, out-of-his-depth, confused main character. It adds an extra, internal dimension to the act of reading an external book.
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And here’s to my parents, who raised me with the belief that no day with a book is ever truly wasted.
Instead of writing an adventure-filled epic saga for your lunchtime perusal (or whatever it is I originally planned to post today), Mr Man and I are shopping for a new refrigerator. Because that’s fun.
The bad news? Compressors break. The good news? Our options are no longer limited to preserving our milk with frogs!
Click a starting point and the site will calculate a route and then do a visual fly-over. I wish it covered places outside the US but it’s still a fun and impressive window into data from the always excellent USGS.*
* Ah, the USGS, font of so much maptitude! Wait, is that a volcano webcam? Stop browsing, woman, you have work to do! But remind me to tell you my volcano story someday:)
For no reason whatsoever, I decided that I would be much more productive if I had a new mug. When one is writing or slogging through the data mines or sailing with a letter of marque on the Great Internet Seas, a mug is a friendly, forthright, supportive companion. Choose right, and it’s a burst of good cheer on a cloudy day.
Sure, it’s a weird fixation, but it’s cheaper than drugs. And it works.
I got these mugs from Roy Kirkham in Staffordshire, England. The good: the colors are rich, the designs pretty, and the china delicate. The bad? Shipping. And duties. That said, I really like these.
The one in the middle with the robin is my new favorite.
It can be fun when your own life becomes something of a treasure hunt. There I was, looking for Thing A when I stumbled across Thing 2. I went through a book binding phase and one of my experiments was with leather and copper. It’s been buried in my book collection ever since.
I’d be more precise now, but I still like the little leather map on the fastener.
* * *
made with glove leather, copper sheeting, and cotton paper
I drafted four possibilities for today’s post and wasn’t quite happy with any of them. I made bread and was distracted by the cat trying to eat said bread (claws were involved), which lead to me doubling the amount of butter. (Still delicious.) We picked up herbs and other plants from a local farm. Then Mr Man asked for a haircut. I do a decent job but it takes me forever. And now it’s time to start thinking about making pizza for dinner and I’m wondering where the day went.
So today, a not terribly original thought about whales. It’s really just an excuse to use the image I spent some time playing with yesterday.
What do whales think of the ridiculousness of humans naming this planet Earth?
When it comes to writing, I try to study the substance behind the story, the skeleton that supports the larger whole. Novels have time to throw curve balls, and short stories can just upend everything because they don’t always give you all the information up front, but television and movies? I find that they tend to be much more predictable.
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One thing I’ve noticed is that the more closely I study the structure of fiction, the easier it is to predict the course of any particular show.
This is useful because it helps me better study and understand story structure. It’s also less helpful because it leads to me muttering things like “Yep, you’re definitely going to die,” and “Oh yeah, he did it,” or “Well, if you didn’t want to die a horrible death, you shouldn’t have had that heartfelt moment with the main character. Did your mother teach you nothing?!”
This is also why I love shows like Resident Alien and Sherlock and Wynonna Earp and Killjoys. Great characters and humor, plus creative, often unpredictable storylines and dynamics. And they’re just fun.
Dear Industry of Entertainment, please do not underestimate the power of fun.
Especially after the year we’ve just had.
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This brings me to my apology: Dear Mr Man, I am sorry for the ongoing commentary (ok, heckling, let’s just call it what it is) during shows. Please understand that it is a natural extension of my ongoing writerly education.
Also, we bought that high-capacity PVR for a reason. We can always rewind:)
A plant is running a casino in my yard. Also, yesterday was World Bee Day, so let’s talk about the intersection of the two.
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As I’ve mentioned before, lawns are a pain. Right now our lawn is an interesting mix of grass, ground ivy, and wild strawberry, with a few dandelions thrown in for good measure. It actually looks quite pretty, with green grass and purple, white and yellow flowers.
The ground ivy, or Creeping Charlie, is particularly good at spreading.
We’re moving in, see? And there’s nothing youse guys can do about it.
It’s also good at bringing in the bees. Right now there are several big bumblebees happily flitting from flower to purple flower. Watching them fly, I noticed that they bounce from plant to plant before settling on a flower. Curious, I did a bit of research.
It turns out that Creeping Charlie is playing those bees like a fiddle.
“Creeping Charlie employs a unique strategy to attract some bee visitors, such as sweat bees, bumble bees, and honey bees, that is tied into how the flower produces nectar. The flowers have a unique strategy for rewarding visitor pollinators, commonly referred to as the “lucky hit” strategy. Creeping Charlie flowers produce an average of 0.3 microliters of nectar per flower, but the amount of nectar in any one flower varies greatly, ranging from 0.06 to 2.4 microliters. “
Like the psychology of gambling, such random reward mechanisms keep those bees coming back for more. The good news is that on average, these flowers are worth the bees’ time and energy.
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I’m all for pollinator planting, but before you sign on to the Creeping Charlie train, let me say that it is considered invasive in many places and is most certainly difficult to remove.
“While Creeping Charlie could be a good nectar source for bees, we are not recommending that you let it take over your lawn.”
(It’s a bit late for that, but at least the bees and I can look on the bright side.)
Consider a turf alternative like this Bee blend, or plant clover instead. Bees love it, and they aren’t the only ones.
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