Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged awesome, books, disaster preparedness, home, libraries, literature, NPR, public libraries, quotes, Thoughts, TS Eliot, Writers on August 20, 2014| 1 Comment »
The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.
― T.S. Eliot
Posted in Food and..., tagged beef curry, cinnamon, cucumbers, dinner, food, home, inspiration, Tasmania, Thoughts, Vietnamese food on July 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Things learned while perusing Tasmanian recipes for the Vietnamese beef curry I will not be having for dinner (why must you torture me with your delicious culinary aromas, o neighbor who is also an excellent cook?)
Posted in Writing, tagged creativity, home, inspiration, persistence, sff, work on July 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Ah, Friday! I am coming to the end of this week’s work and so have the time for efforts of a less, shall we say, prosaic nature. My project for this weekend will be to build a Museum of Lost Things.
I imagine it will be just as difficult and interesting as one might expect:)
Posted in Other, tagged awesome, Canadian citizenship, citizenship, home, o canada, yay on July 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »
That’s right, Canadian citizenship! It’s officially official. Break out the poutine!
Posted in Holidays, tagged America, Erma Bombeck, Fourth of July, Harry Emerson Fosdick, home, independence day, quotes, Thoughts, USA, yay on July 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
And also:
You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.
— Erma Bombeck
Posted in Likes, Science!, tagged 92 minutes, awesome, Chris Hadfield, Earth, home, inspiration, ISS, NASA, orbital sunrise, orbital sunset, space, space exploration, yay on May 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »
ISS HD Live Streaming Earth
Sometimes the cameras are off, but when they aren’t… wow.
Black Image = International Space Station (ISS) is on the night side of the Earth.
Gray Image = Switching between cameras, or communications with the ISS is not available.
No Audio = Normal. There is no audio on purpose. Add your own soundtrack.
For a display of the real time ISS location plus the HDEV imagery, visit here: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ForFun/HDEV/
On watching orbital sunrise, from NPR:
Circling Earth at 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour) every 92 minutes, the crew members aboard the International Space Station “experience 15 or 16 sunrises and sunsets every day,” NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Project Office describes.
“The whole station glows with the light of dawn,” Canadian astronaut and former ISS commander Chris Hadfield told NPR in a recent interview. “You can see the dawn come across the world towards you.”
“Then you go back to work and wait another 92 minutes, and it happens again. It’s not to be missed, and I tried to watch as many sunrises and sunsets as the work would allow,” he said.
Posted in Funny, tagged all good things, birding, Droll Yankees, funny, home, squirrels, wishful thinking on April 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Some years ago my father (an avid birder) bought me a bird feeder from Droll Yankees. It’s fantastic, sturdy and big enough to hold a lot of seed. The Dipper is also designed to be squirrel proof, with perches that collapse under too much weight. Each metal bar will hold chickadees and goldfinches with no trouble, or even a very juvenile cardinal, but not a squirrel. With a metal cap capable of withstanding squirrel teeth (ask me how I know) it has been the perfect foil for the fluffy yet gluttonous neighborhood Sciuridae. It’s not that they haven’t tried, coming at the thing from all sides, but their best effort was to throw themselves at the feeder to make it swing enough to drop a few extra seeds.
Until now.
A black squirrel was the first to figure out a way to secure a hold using multiple perches. It grabs on using its back paws and chows down with the front. I had hoped it would keep the secret to itself but no, the new knowledge is spreading. (Information just wants to be free, I suppose:) A red squirrel, smug and fat, hung upside-down from the feeder this morning.
Chalk one up for the Animal Kingdom (and I don’t mean me).
I’d better go get some more bird seed.
Posted in Holidays, tagged home, o canada, seasons, snow, Spring, yay on April 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Sometime after Christmas I decided to leave our holiday wreath up until the snow melted. Not just road snow or even sidewalk snow, but the snow that lurks by the cedar hedge, sheltered in the shadows of the house.
How long could it take? I wondered. (Oh, the naiveté of one new to the North.).
This long:p The snow is finally gone, and the wreath is coming down:)
My next goal is to spot a flower. Outside. Growing!
Posted in Other, tagged cherry blossoms, DC, home, persistence, snow, Spring, weather, winter, yay on April 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »
My holiday wreath remains on the door because there’s still a little pile of snow out in the front yard. Impressively, the snow survived yesterday’s 70F weather. The house shades that section of the yard from sun most of the day, and layers of traction control sand provide the snow with a bit of a buffer, a turtle-like defense against Spring. I’m almost rooting for the little guy, persistent as it is.
Almost:) Happy Spring!
^ Not my front yard, but oh so pretty all the same.
Posted in Likes, tagged artists, arts, creativity, free images, home, inspiration, Nina Paley, originality, Rijksmuseum, work on March 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »
I’m home from a trip and happily catching up on work. Lots to do, so I will leave you with this link to Nina Paley’s essay on The Cult of Originality:
The trick is, what’s completely obvious to you isn’t obvious to anyone else. Many people can tell exactly the same story about exactly the same event, but if each speaks from their authentic point of view, each story will seem “original.”
Well, that helps take the pressure off. Now to see if I can’t apply some of that originality to my current projects. In other news, this weekend I discovered the Rijksmuseum’s terrific online digital library, learned to stack wood, and can now tell a male partridge apart from a female.
J.R. Johnson 
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