"Do penguins have ears?"

This question has been echoing in my head since last week when I was loosely part of a presentation to 1st and 2nd graders about life (and/or lack thereof) in the Antarctic. Other questions included, “Are all penguin eggs white?” and “How long does it take to get to Antarctica from New Jersey?”

I don’t know why the ear question has stuck with me. I think I just like it linguistically. It seems like a great title for a book. (Or a blog post.) Or maybe it’s just the notion of an adorable little tiny penguin ear that appeals to me.

Penguins are so vogue now, and their rise to popularity seems to have coincided with someone close to me taking a six-month job in Antarctica (hence the presentation noted above), which I find so funny. Before his trip, I will confess that when someone said, “penguin” to me, I had no idea there was more than one kind. I simply thought a penguin was a type of bird, like a robin or a blue jay. Are there multiple kinds of robins and blue jays too? How ornithologically challenged am I?

Just in case you are curious: yes, penguins have ears; I don’t know if all their eggs are white; and it takes about 20 – 30 hours of flying depending on layovers.

And here's a picture I took in New Zealand of some elusive yellow-eyed penguins scampering along a cliffside.

Flash! Word Girl Notices Numbers!!

I’m not one of those people who gets all excited about numbers. In fact, I can often be caught saying things like, “I’m not number girl, I’m word girl; Don’t ask me to calculate the tip.”

But today is one of those fun dates with all the same numbers: 02/27/2007. Or, if you’re anywhere outside the US, 27/02/2007.

Nifty, no?

Yes, I know, I missed the REALLY cool one on my very first entry in this blog: 02/07/2007. Still have 07/02/2007, 07/07/2007, and 07/27/2007 to look forward to. OK, who am I kidding? "Look forward to" is a BIT of a stretch for me. Just sitting here typing out those dates actually made me kind of dizzy and nauseous. Reading them again does the same. Well that's definitely the end of that.

Views from the BDO: Snow

It snowed again last night.











It was suppose to snow all day today, but it didn’t. If I squint, I can see a fine mist of something coming down out there, but I don't know what it is. Not snow. Could be ice. Could be rain. Could be some of each/all.

I think snow is beautiful … when I don’t have to drive in it (which is often since I work from within the safe and warm embrace of this old house).

Five best things about snow:
No school
Snowmen
Hot cocoa
Pretty tree branches
No school (this counts twice – once for students and once for teachers.)

The pros and cons of working on the weekend

Pros
> No phone/email interruptions (primarily those with last-minute/urgent/must-be-done-now requests).
> No obligation to keep “regular hours.” If I feel like strolling into the bdo at around 11.30 or noon, who cares? If I sneak downstairs for an extended snack or feel like wrapping it up around 2, I can.
> I can turn off email entirely for hours at a time, without feeling guilty or worried that I am missing an important message (see first bullet above).
> I am definitely more productive and able to get more done in less time (see first and third bullets above).

Cons
> It’s still the freakin’ weekend and I’d rather be outside playing, watching a silly daytime movie, catching up on chores, ANYTHING other than working.

Conclusion: Even in the fabulous bdo, with all the comforts of home just one flight of stairs away, working on the weekend is still: working on the weekend.

Yuk.

I’ve got to stop boiling the water

When I was in China I learned that you’re not really suppose to boil water before cascading it gently upon your tea leaves. If the water is too hot it will actually damage the leaves resulting in a less than ideal taste. The water, I was told, should be just shy of a true boil. That’s a difficult moment to catch. Often I’m making tea (as I was just now) and I run off to do other things while I wait for the kettle to boil. Then I come back when it whistles at me and, in a hurry, I just splash the scalding water onto the tea. Not good.

But really, isn't this just obvious? Isn't it a universal truth that extremes are never good - too much fat, too much salt, too much belief, too much anger, too much medicine, too much loneliness, too much dust on the floor, too many potato chips, too many cupcakes...

OK... well... that last one... I have to recant. I don't think there is such a thing as too many cupcakes. In fact, I'm a big supporter of the Legalize Frostitution movement.

“There’s only one thing worse than being homeless…

“… and that’s being homeless with cold, wet socks.”
– John (homeless man)

>> In an average city, a minimum-wage worker would have to work 89 hours each week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at 30% of his or her income, which is the federal definition of affordable housing.

>> Nearly 40% of the homeless population is comprised of children under the age of 18.

>> Families with children are among the fastest growing segments of the homeless population.

>>Research indicates that 40% of homeless men are veterans.

Learn more about homelessness in the US here: www.nationalhomeless.org
Donate socks here: www.mychalsmessage.org

Thanks once again to my amazing new friends at Lehigh for the information and inspiration.

Yay, yay, YAY!

File under “news.” It’s official. I’m going to be working with Hancock Habitat in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi for a week this summer. We’ll be staying at the Lagniappe Presbyterian Church.

check
it
out:

• Habitat for Humanity/Metro Jackson Hancock Project
• Lagniappe Presbyterian Church

The operative word here is “fat”

It’s Mardi Gras time and I have food on my mind. Fat Tuesday. What’s not to love about a day focused on gluttony in the face of a long period of abstinence?

I’m trying to decide what I want to cook tomorrow. (As if I need an excuse to be thinking about food and scouring web sites and cookbooks for new recipes.)

In the running right now:
Chicken-Andouille Casserole
Creole Vegetable Jambalaya
Shrimp Creole Risotto >> This is the one I really want to make, but I live with a seafood-hater. (How can I really love him, I know. It’s a struggle.) Maybe I can make it with chicken? It won't be the same, but I think that's what I'll do.

There. Decision made.

The lost art of letter writing

I’m trying to remember the last time I wrote a letter. I mean a REAL letter. Actual writing – with a pen or pencil in my hand. I scribbled a short note to be included with some material I recently mailed to a colleague. I don’t know if that counts. I don’t think so.

I’ve recently met someone who has actually self-published a book of letters he began writing when his daughter left for college. He started writing these letters – every 7 to 10 days – not only because he wanted her to have news from home, but also – and perhaps more importantly – because he wanted her to have an actual hand-written letter. Family and friends learned of the letters and asked for copies until his “mailing list” grew to something like 50-plus people.

I used to write letters. A lot of letters. In fact, I think I may be among the last generation to have had actual “pen pals.” We found each other in the back pages of pop culture magazines and were typically aligned by love of a similar band. For several years I corresponded with a woman in Oregon who also loved the Police. Then there was my Australian pen pal. I have no idea which band we had in common, but boy-oh-boy did I have a crush on him. Which only intensified when he sent me an audio tape – thick Aussie accent. Yum-my! But I digress… the point is that we all wrote letters to each other. Long letters – sometimes four or more pages.

And then my family got cable. And MTV. And that was the end of all that.

And now we blog. Writing to no one and everyone. Or we email and IM and text. I want to reserve judgment, but I am inclined to think the loss of letter writing is a bad thing. I asked the gentleman mentioned above if he had considered bloging - if for no other reason, but to save on postage and paper expenses. We were on the phone at the time, but I could almost see his disappointed expression. He said simply, “no,” and he didn’t need to say more. Despite what he probably thinks, I do get it.

Nothin' says lovin'...

... like something from the (pizza) oven.

Happy Random Acts of Kindness Week

February 12 – 18

“The Random Acts of Kindness™ Foundation inspires people to practice kindness and to “pass it on” to others. We provide free educational and community ideas, guidance, and other resources to kindness participants through our website at http://www.actsofkindness.org/.”

I snooped around this site and actually believe this organization has no interest in money. The sole purpose seems to be encouraging and celebrating kindness. Wow. Can you imagine what might happen? (I like to.)

Thanks to Tiffany at Lehigh for this tip.

I want to be the Mac.

You’ve got to love those Mac commercials. You’ve just got to. Who can watch those commercials and NOT want to be the MAC? The PC is older, slower. The Mac dresses better, and looks like he’d be much more fun on a date. What’s more, the Mac so clearly sees how dorky and behind the times the PC is, and is so sweet to him anyway. Even when the PC gets a little snarky, the Mac rises above. The Mac is the bigger man, the better human being.

It is really brilliant, near-perfect marketing. It makes the viewer WANT to be the Mac.

Or does that just happen to me?

I used to be a Mac girl. Around 1989 or 90 I bought my first Mac. It was a Mac Plus – had no hard drive. When trying to run the first version of Word, I would have to play a game we called “disk roulette,” exchanging the program disk and the disk we were trying to save the file to four or five times to complete an “Apple+S” or “save.” I eventually bought an external hard drive with 4 MB of RAM, because, as the sales guy told me, “You’ll never need more than that.” My dad (who helped finance this significant purchase since I was still in college) was a bit skeptical: “You’ll never being using a Mac in business, honey.” Ha. I showed him - the first two companies I worked for used Macs (first seven years of my career).

When the very first iMac came out, I bought it right away – before they even came out with all the fun flavors (a move I would later regret, because lime is much more my color than Bondi blue).

Now I am a PC girl. Have been since about 1998. Last year I needed to invest in a new laptop and a few people suggested I look into an iBook. But I didn’t. It was before this ad campaign. And now I’ve blown my budget for probably the next several years on another PC-based system. And those commercials are actually making me feel like I’ve made a mistake. Did I?

Mac ads.

Too green or not too green

Have you heard? Toyota is going to offer additional incentives for people to purchase their hybrid model, the Prius. Something along the lines of two-years, no-interest financing and prices closer to the actual sticker, vs. a few thousand dollars over, which is what eager buyers were paying in recent past. That is, when they could get a hold of one of these sleek little enviro-gems.

I looked into purchasing a Prius in the summer/fall of '05 and was told the waiting list was over a year. My local dealer didn't even have one for me to take out on a test spin. I was so gung-ho on the idea (and so vocal about it, as I tend to be) my sister bought me a great bumper sticker in anticipation: "This car gets 40 mpg. So who's the patriot?"

For several reasons, my new car purchase has been put off, and I'm still driving my 1999 little black Toyota Tacoma pick-up. (Just took her to the car wash to get rid of all that nasty salt, which, I'm sure, was stinging her delicate paint job. Now she's napping on the street in the sun, all clean and shiny. Curled up next to the curb like a giant black kitty cat.) Not-for-nothin' she gets a good 30/35 mpg.

So do I really NEED a Prius? I work from home so I rarely drive, and when I do, I'm in a fuel-efficient car already. I'm NOT really contributing all that much to ozone depletion. But does my lack of emissions come close to making up for all the evil SUVs in my extended family? Or is it a wash? Should I get the Prius anyway. Every little bit helps.

We have a friend who drives a tow-truck who tells us hybrid cars can be troublesome when they breakdown. Something about having to let the battery drain before someone can even touch it to charge or tow it. My regular mechanic told me that as well. With a road trip planned this summer, there is a reluctance to put our faith and trust into this big UNKNOWN.

But c'mon... a bargain's a bargain.

And I REALLY want to put that bumper sticker on something!

ny times:
Waiting List Gone, Incentives Are Coming for Prius

“You gotta do what you gotta do.”

I had the great good fortune of recently visiting a classroom in which struggling readers are participating in an amazing program that is not only improving their reading skills, but their lives. Clearly.

One of the sixth graders we were speaking with explained to us that although he sometimes finds the class materials boring, he knows his reading isn’t what it should be and it’s going to take work and - as he so eloquently put it - “You gotta do, what you gotta do.”

Sixth grade. What is that - twelve years old? I was just blown away. This same young man used the word “atrocious” to describe “some kids’ reading skills.” He told us the best book he has read so far this year was about a sports figure of some sort (my brain hears gurgling water every time anyone speaks of sports… this is MY point of struggle, on which I need to work), and he liked it because it made him realize he needed to get a scholarship so he could go to college to play football... because, “You know, I’m on the [town] football team, and some day I want to play in the NFL.”

When later I asked a follow up question about whether or not he thought NFL players really needed to have strong reading and writing skills he told me he definitely needed them so he could be a good speaker. I asked if he thought NFL players were good speakers and he responded: “Well. You know, some of them are and some of them aren’t, but when I’m on TV, I’m not going to be talking all that slang.” He then launched into an example to show me he knew the difference.

Yes indeed. You gotta do what you gotta do.