My Archives: October 2006

Monday, October 30, 2006

Vicki Rosensweig was making sorbet, and said: "My spurtle may be permanently blue." Huh? A totally new word to me. Apparently a spurtle is something cylinder-shaped to stir things with, especially your oatmeal. I don't cook whole oats often (mostly Quaker non-quick oats), so I'm not sure why you particularly don't want to tear the oats. More on this at Wikipedia, of course.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:00 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Kai Jones writes about finding the sweet spot between quality and pleasure of use, specifically regarding body lotion. What does it benefit a person if a product is pretty to look at and smells great, if the lotion doesn't do the lotioning job that well?

I've been noticing a lot of contrast in my life between products that actually work very well, and products that are far more pleasurable to use than the first set but don't work nearly as well. One example that I think about almost daily is body lotion, which I use a lot of because I have very dry, flaky skin.

The cheap, national-brand lotion I get at the grocery store smells a bit off (not too bad, just neutral instead of good). The container is, again, a bit off: not attractive, although I like the colors chosen for the pump and part of the text: a nice strong blue, somewhere between turquoise and teal. The design of the bottle is good in that you really can get almost all the lotion out through the pump. And the lotion works wonderfully: one application lasts roughly 24 hours--that is, my skin doesn't feel dry or itchy, and I have a lot less flakiness. I don't feel a bit sticky or greasy after applying it, either, and it's never stained my clothes.

I've had a lot of other moisturizing experiences (not all were lotions) in the last couple of years, including: custom-scented lotion that Twoson gave me for my birthday (he picked jasmine, one of my favorites), orange-ginger lotion from a hotel stay (I grabbed each day's tiny bottle and brought them home), and then there are the LUSH products.

I like to buy fancy soaps, but only when they are cheap! That's why I like to visit the Soap Box booth at the University District Street Fair most years. Great bargains there!

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Posted by Anita @ 05:10 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

On Parent Hacks, Hedra gives advice on Halloween (or dress-up anytime) costumes. "There are three main costume parts: Cape, Tunic, and Overtunic. A costume can be any one or more of those parts, plus other clothing they already have (solid or patterned pants, teeshirt or turtleneck, belt). Robin Hood? Tunic, belt, and bow. Knight? Tunic, overtunic, sword. Wizard or princess? Velvet cape, overtunic, belt (tunic optional). Pirate? Tunic, belt, bandana, sword. Evil-bad-guy? Cape with ends cut jaggedy, tunic, belt."

Little to no sewing involved. I want to start building up a stock of these!

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Posted by Anita @ 05:37 AM PST [Link] [1 Comment]

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Peter Rukavina has discovered what he considers the proper way to wash your hands. "Reasoning that this method might also have some application in the hand washing arena, or, more specifically, in the soap removal arena, I tried rubbing my hands together under the tap after the 'vigorous soaping up' period (my traditional behaviour to that point had been simply to place my still hands under the tap and let water rinse the soap off). Wow! Rubbing after soaping actually removes the soap. And so you leave feeling refreshed and content, leaving the sadness brought about by having half-soapy hands behind."

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Posted by Anita @ 04:28 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Raymond Chen went with some friends to answer phones at the recent KUOW pledge drive, and describes the experience for us. "Here's sort of how the evening goes: You'll be sitting there at the table chatting with your friends, and then a phone rings and the conversation instantly stops while somebody took a call. By the time the call is over, everybody had forgotten what they had been talking about and a new conversation starts up. There were a lot of conversations that just ended abruptly and were never resumed. Great for people with short attention spans. When the volunteer coordinator announces, 'Pledge break in two minutes,' it means things are going to get exciting soon. The calls arrive in waves. The moment the pledge telephone number is announced, the phones start ringing. A few minutes after the pledge break ends, the phones quiet down. (That's the best time to go for a bathroom break.)"

Raymond was volunteering during the Saturday night show, The Swing Years and Beyond. I think the phone answering might be more hectic at busier times like during Prairie Home Companion or All Things Considered.

The non-USA commenters naturally didn't know what "pledge drive" means.

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Posted by Anita @ 04:04 AM PST [Link] [Add a Comment]

Monday, October 16, 2006

A few links posted to the parenting section of the forum I hang out on got me into some parenting blogs. Parent Hacks seems full of good, varied ideas (how to keep a toddler walking when he begs to be carried), and points to lots of other blogs on similar topics. I hadn't read Moxie before, and I was impressed by her commenters' thoughts on helping your child have a happy childhood. From Menita on this: "I had a very happy early childhood, and then it all went to hell (really, HELL) in a handbasket, so this is on my mind quite a bit. I'd just add 'respectful playfulness' to what Moxie and Sandra wrote. What I mean by that is joining in on their interests and games on their own terms. It seems to me that this validates their ideas, it makes my daughter tremendously happy when she feels she is in charge of the games, and that I enjoy playing whatever she comes up with (and the thing is, I do). It means giving up thinking about what it is you are doing and submerging yourself in their point of view for a while. And it's pretty cool."

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Posted by Anita @ 06:43 AM PST [Link] [1 Comment]

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Wednesday, October 18, it's the Seattle Weblog Meetup! Start time is 7 pm, location is Ralph's Grocery and Deli, 2035 4th Ave (map and directions), in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood, diagonally across from the Cinerama. Free WiFi, food and drink available (you can buy anything in the store and consume it in the deli area, so that includes wine and beer if you want). Local and visiting webloggers talk about blog topics and lots else. Topic for the evening: tagging. I hope to see you there!

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Posted by Anita @ 04:20 AM PST [Link] [6 comments]

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Carl Zimmer, science writer and author of The Loom, reviews the current state of discussion about Homo floresiensis, the diminutive fossils found in Indonesia. "Recently there's been so much stuff coming out pro and con that I have had to skip a couple opportunities to blog on Homo floresiensis--mainly because I've been frantically deep in the first draft of my current book on a very different topic: Escherichia coli. (I assume Homo floresiensis carried Escherichia coli in its gut, but the overlap stops there.) [...] As we come up on the second anniversary of the initial announcement of Homo floresiensis, we're in a strange spot. Microcephaly turns out to be a very peculiar condition that makes it very hard to distinguish humans from a possible species of very small hominids. Many different genes can give rise to the same conditions, producing different shapes to the brain, as well as different changes to other parts of the body. Scientists actually have a lot to learn about microcephaly--for one thing, many studies rely on remains in museum collections, which almost never included anything below the skull. At this point it's not even clear if discovering more tiny hominids on Flores would make the case for a separate species. Under some conditions, it might be possible that a small population of islanders had a high proportion of microcephaly-triggering genes floating about. But that may be moot if nobody's actually digging in the Liang Bua cave."

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Posted by Anita @ 04:44 AM PST [Link]

Friday, October 6, 2006

We had fun at the East Side Weblog Meetup, with some new people attending! Dan the Deliverator Wannabee wanted to discuss which hosting options webloggers were using now, so we talked a lot about that. Other topics: the recent robot festival at Seattle Center, and gadgets recently purchased on woot. Tommy Williams wrote about an unfortunate soda spill in his report. I brought a new Lego racer kit (warning, sound file autoplays!) for grandson R to play with during the meetup, and he was totally occupied with building it. I think other folks got into watching him build, also! Those present:

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Posted by Anita @ 04:18 AM PST [Link]

Monday, October 2, 2006

Glenn Fleishman riffs on the consequences if sentient trains like Thomas the Tank Engine really existed: "In one recent five-day period, two Scottish engines destroyed the narrow-gauge winch, one green engine demolished most of our island's chocolate factory, another pushed recalcitrant--or as you term them, 'troublesome'--trucks into a duck pond, an express engine smashed through the wall of a new station, and a small blue engine wound up with fish in its boiler."

This also strikes me about Bob the Builder. Imagine bulldozers, steam rollers, cement mixers, all with the personalities and judgement levels of preschoolers! I wouldn't want big equipment learning life lessons while careening through towns, dawdling along country lanes, or bird watching instead of getting on with their jobs any where near me!

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Posted by Anita @ 05:57 AM PST [Link]

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