Night Lights

I have never been able to sleep throughout the night; I'm usually up and prowling around at least once, more often twice during a typical sleep cycle. Because of this I have three night lights placed in strategic locations. The one in the bathroom up and died recently, so I purchased a light sensitive LED plug-in unit to replace it. I quite like its bluish, icy glow. I also ordered some LED replacement bulbs for the rest of the night lights. I think that leaves me with just one light bulb I've not converted to CFL or LED. The last hold out is a bare bulb, suspended by an ancient cord, that lights the pantry. I've not changed that bulb in the six years I've lived here; I'm just wondering how long it will last at this point.

The weather forecast is calling for an ice storm and other assorted nasty weather tonight. The city is going to be trying out a beet juice formula on the icy roads tonight. Sadly, it's not going to turn the roads bright pink in the process.

I may take a snow day tomorrow, depending on the conditions of the not-pink roads and my overall mood. I've put some cranberry beans on to soak overnight - bean soup is on the menu for dinner tomorrow. I almost always make my bean soup with tomatoes; I'm going to try using tomatillos instead this time and see what the results are like. I'll report back.

Finally, Jim Butcher will be posting the first four chapters of Small Favors, Book 10 in the Dresden Files series, which is due out in April. Chapter One is up now, with a new chapter to be released over the next three Tuesdays.

Discovering the Theremin

Tonight I was reading a short story by Joe Hill (You Will Hear the Locust Sing, in 20th Century Ghosts) when I came across the word theremin. The Free Dictionary only had this to say:

An electronic instrument played by moving the hands near its two antennas, often used for high tremolo effects.

I didn't give it another thought until I saw a scrap of trivia on Soundscapes (a cable channel that plays ambient music) that said the theremin was developed in 1920 by Leon Theremin. Obviously, I had to do more investigation.

The theremin is "played" without actually touching it; moving a hand close to the vertical antenna increases the pitch, while closing in on the horizontal decreases the volume. The eerie sounds produced by this instrument made it a favorite in 1950s and 60s sci-fi films, including The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Here is a music sample: The Funeral March by Kevin Sinnott
Kevin wrote this song and performed all parts on a Kees Enkelaar theremin.



The photo and music are by way of Theremin World. Should you desire further information, that's the place to be.

Giving away what?

I boxed up a bunch of books to send to my sister today and took them to the post office. When it was my turn at the counter, I told the clerk I wanted to send the box via media mail, which is the cheap rate for books and other printed matter. She gave me the price and told me that media mail was subject to inspection and if the material inside wasn't media it would be returned. I said the box contained all the Harry Potter books and she looked absolutely crestfallen. "You're giving away all your Harry Potter books?" I quickly explained that I'd bought myself a nifty new boxed set and I was giving my old books to my niece and nephew, then she brightened right up again. We were quite chummy by the time I'd completed my transaction.

In other news, I'd really like to get my hands on one of these cheese making kits.

Finally, here's something really useful; how to stop that annoying "unused icons" balloon from popping up on your Windows PC.

Huckabee Burgoo

I'm only posting this because the video talks about squirrels and burgoo. For the record, I don't hunt and I've never eaten squirrel, nor do I plan to do either. Besides, what sort of person would choose a president based on whether that candidate ever cooked squirrel?

Wicked

As part of my personal effort to reduce my energy consumption, I've been hanging my clothes to dry rather than using the coin-operated dryer in the basement. Since I live in a one bedroom apartment, this does take up a fair bit of living space on wash day. I have one of the Frost drying racks from Ikea; I can get about one and a half loads of laundry on that, then I have a clothes line in the bedroom and another folding wooden rack. Since this takes up most of my bedroom, I turn on an electric box fan and aim it at the drying clothes to speed up the process a bit. On a normal day, everything but for the thickest socks and sweatshirts are dry in about four hours. This had me thinking about the energy savings (was I really saving energy by eschewing the dyer but using a fan?), so I used this calculator to tab it up. If I run the fan only for drying clothes, it tots up to 1.6 Kilowatt hours per month (about 20 cents worth at Duke Energy prices,) versus using the electric dryer for the same amount of laundry - 40 kWh/mo or $4.80. So I am saving both energy and money. That's cool.

I went to see the musical "Wicked" at the Aronoff matinée today. The stand-in for Elphaba was on stage today, Ms. Donna Vivino, and she was incredible. What a voice. Somehow or the other we scored box seats and it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon.

Signs of the Pileated

I managed to get in a hike at Caldwell Nature Preserve today. The ground was rock hard except where I was crunching through frost heave. I didn't see another soul on the trails, although it was a balmy 27^o today; a far cry from the 4^o it was just yesterday morning.

I came across this scarred tree trunk on the Pawpaw trail. The large, elongated holes and the massive damage were clear signs that a Pileated Woodpecker had been at work here. They are huge black and white crow-sized birds with a magnificent red crest. I didn't actually see any today, but just a couple of minutes after I'd photographed this tree trunk, I did hear at least one calling from across the ravine. They are shy birds and are much more often heard than seen, so learning what their calls sound like is most helpful when searching them out.

Edited to remove broken link.

Ninja Shirt Folding

This is so cool. I can't wait to try it out on my laundry this weekend:



If you head over to the fold-your-shirt website, they have step by step directions available. Or you could search YouTube for "Japanese Shirt Folding" and find a laundry basket full of other videos that slow down the action.

So cranky

It's been just an exhausting day, compounded by the fact that Neighbor Girl decided Wednesday night was a good night to stay up -loudly- until 4:00 AM. The topper was Neighbor Girl's Stupid Friend hollering for her outside my window at 2:30 AM. When he got no response (not surprising, since she lives on the other side of the building,) he started throwing things at my window. Who does that? He got yelled at and and Neighbor Girl got a nasty note on her door this evening. I feel like such a grump, but dammit, I did lose three hours sleep to her shenanigans.

I vegged out to Animal Planet for a little while this evening and learned a new word in the process: Patagium

pa·ta·gi·um (pə-tā'jē-əm)
n. pl. pa·ta·gi·a (-jē-ə)

1. A thin membrane extending between the body and a limb to form a wing or winglike extension, as in bats and flying squirrels.
2. An expandable membranous fold of skin between the wing and body of a bird.


[Latin patagium, gold edging on a woman's tunic, perhaps from Greek *patageion, from patagos, clatter, of imitative origin .]

pa·ta'gi·al (-jē-əl) adj.

Repercussions

Today I learned that one should not gloat about a day off work, lest one arrive at work the following day to find that one's assignments were not taken care of whilst one was frolicking in the park. Indeed, I paid for my hubris with a nine and a half hour day today. I should have stayed longer but I was really out of steam by dinnertime.

Apparently today is National Pie Day. I'm down with that. Pie is a good thing.

Lastly, here's an interview with one of my favorite people on the planet, Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Oh glorious day off work when everyone else was working

I grocery shopped, went for a short run, napped on the couch and read a couple of short stories. It was just heavenly.

Then I made a few dishes to get me through the rest of this short week: a Thai seafood and veggie salad, steamed broccoli with miso sauce and an Eastern European red lentil soup. I also made a South Beach (tm) version of turkey hash for breakfast (I'm so tired of eggs or oatmeal) that uses turnips in place of potatoes. It came out really good; turnips have an undeserved bad rap in this country. In this dish they came out sweet and delicate and not at all worthy of the sneers I tend to get when I mention I've cooked turnips.

As I was washing the many, many dishes I dirtied during cooking I got to wondering why tumblers are called tumblers. After all, they are usually a short, squat glass which gives them more stability than tall drinking glasses and are therefore less likely to tumble. According to the wildly unreliable sources I found, they are called tumblers because they were first made with a rounded bottom, so if they were set down they would fall over. Several image searches have yielded nothing of the sort and I can't even find an answer as to when these allegedly round bottomed drinking glasses were first used. A trip to the antique mall (which would be fun anyway) might produce a better answer.