things I won't try plus one I already did

Today I learned that:

• If you don't want plastic in your eyeballs when you have cataract surgery, you can instead choose to have cataract glasses, aka, coke bottle glasses.
• The way car companies give people 0% financing is by giving people with cash a rebate equivalent to what amounts to a big finance charge.
• Pressure cookers are remarkably easy to operate without reading the directions if you used to run a dilution refrigerator. All you have to know is cooking pressure is usually 15 PSI.

And aged diet soda will kill you.

how to blow it out your ear

Today I learned that some people try to use oral irrigators on their earwax. I imagine the result is a proper lesson on why you should not shoot water in your ear.

five-day wrap-up

Recently I learned that:

• In late August on a weekday, you can find the Bagby Recreation Area campground completely deserted except for the ranger, so you get your own personal bathroom, complete with a shower. Given how close together the campsites are, I wouldn't want to see the place on a weekend, but for wildlife, you get turkeys:

• Yosemite Valley has deceptively poor air quality. It looked clear enough, and it didn't feel like particulates or ozone, but there came a point fairly early on where it was quite obvious that I wasn't going to make it without my respirator, and by then, any leak around the respirator was a complete disaster. I blame combustion products from campfires and car exhaust, but I can't prove anything.
• The town of Bishop, CA, is a surprisingly nice place to be a tourist, and in related news, the German car repair place on the north end of town has two helpful assistant mechanics, one of whom is kind of old and mostly lies down, but the other one is young, filthy, and enjoys chasing sticks. When he retrieves one, he likes to chew it to bits, then roll over on his back and fiddle with the remnants, which he clutches between his front paws. His name is Axel, and he is a character. Also, the local tire store displayed the following sign:

• Panamint Springs Resort in Death Valley changed hands about 2 1/2 years ago, and it reportedly used to be a dump. I can only report on the current tent camping conditions, but it was an excellent place to tent camp, plus you could get a beer and talk to the European tourists. Apparently all the factories in Italy close during August, so August is Italian season. Also, you can amaze the other tourists with your enormous drink until they find out it is just iced tea, which it turns out really will keep you up at night, and I realize that everybody else already knew that.
• The Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton is closing on September 1, and it may well be worth $35 per person for two 20-minute reality rides and a chance to see the museum, but if you don't have a lot of time, you will never know. I do know that Quark's bar next door looked terminally cheesy, and it was really great to see our ex-houseguest for a little while before we all hit the road in different directions.
• The KOA in Seligman, AZ is far enough off the freeway to be safe enough, but there are trains that go by a little way away about every half hour. They only make exhaust fumes for a minute or so, so it went fine. I actually felt better there than anywhere else, with the possible exception of Death Valley.

It's kind of nice to be home, but now I have to figure out how to camp in colder weather because we didn't get to see the Grand Canyon yet.

more road stuff

Today I learned that surveys in and around Silicon Valley report increases in solo drivers on roads where HOV lanes were added, widening the road. Apparently, it sucks bus riders back into their cars because they figure the traffic must have gotten better.

In other road-related news, there are a bunch of campsites still available right in Grand Canyon village in Mather Camp in the middle of this week. I didn't expect any vacancies until after Labor Day, and if I remember correctly, those campgrounds are usually pretty smoky anyway, so this information is pretty academic. Also, the Grand Canyon is not exactly on the way home.

As you may have surmised, the homemade, chemical-free tent is going for another ride. We'll have to see where it ends up.

hopeless nerditude

Today I learned that Microsoft is letting people with .edu email addresses buy Office Ultimate for $60. Also, you can blame Buffy the Vampire Slayer for lower church attendance by young women if you think it made Wicca look cool. The only problem here is that the episode where Willow tried to join a Wicca group made the Wiccans look hopelessly clueless, not unlike the researchers trying to blame Buffy the Vampire Slayer for lower church attendance.

mixed bag

Today I learned that:

• I can hike 11 miles up and down a 1375 ft hill. I thought I was much too out of shape to even attempt such a thing, but I think the slope saved me. Biking muscles will get you uphill, so you're only really on your own going downhill.
• In paragraph six, this article (warning: bad news) is only one more spelling error away from having an actual supervillian as the perpetrator.
• If tour buses continue to deliver nervous tourists to the Castro district in San Francisco, where they stare at people like they're a zoo exhibit and don't even buy anything, they will likely start being met by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

arsenic, chickens, and an owl watching tv

Today I learned that low levels of inorganic arsenic gives people Type 2 diabetes. Organic arsenic apparently doesn't do that, so if you're going to consume arsenic, it's better if you methylate it first, or maybe just get it at Whole Foods.

Not that Whole Foods really carries arsenic, but that link goes to a long article about how conventional chicken farming will give us all cancer, or maybe just diabetes, except there was some bad publicity around 2004, so places like Tyson caved and stopped feeding their chickens arsenic to make them big and strong. Also, I do not really feel like reporting that chickens only get to live for six weeks, but it said so in the article and I learned it, so there you go.

So since we haven't uploaded any pretty pictures recently, have a story about a dog and a baby owl, complete with a video of them watching tv.

there be whales

Today I learned that there are gray whales migrating south along the California coast right now because we walked along parallel with one for probably 20 minutes at Pescadero State Beach. It was moseying along out where the swells formed, surfaced every minute or so, and looked like it was covered with pink splotches that were probably its barnacles. We saw a few other sprays of water where other whales were surfacing, but they were quite a bit farther out. There was a seal out there, too, but we only saw that once, and a dead jellyfish washed up and back out. Fun was had by all, except probably the jellyfish.

In other beach-related news, lots of EIs I've talked to say that they do great at the beach, and standing in the water seems to make everybody feel great. I felt ok, but definitely not great. I never feel all that good at the beach. I don't know why, either, except my mom reports that the beach always gives her a runny nose, so maybe it just runs in the family.

playing with toys

Today I learned that if you hang around a four-year-old for a couple of hours, you can accidentally teach him archaic exclamations like 'for goodness sake,' also starting a debate as to whether or not 'sake' should be plural. (I know, I swear like I'm 70. Sue me.) Also:

• Legos are still fun when you're old.
• Kentucky Fried Chicken passes out wipes with their spork sets.
• If you're four and have never before heard of Kentucky Fried Chicken, 'Kentucky fried' is a terribly entertaining sounding set of syllables.

road trip

Recently I learned that if you break a 14-hour drive into two days, you can make it into an 18-hour drive. Apparently we are entirely too willing to stop and look at stuff and check out nearby gas prices. Thus I can report that campgrounds around Lake Havasu appear to be glorified parking lots in a water-filled gully, which you could almost not design to better trap exhaust and barbeque fumes. In contrast, the Hole-in-the-Wall campground in the Mojave National Preserve was practically deserted, had great air, and fantastic views. We even got a little chilly during the night, despite the fact that we were deliberately hanging around the desert in August.

road-related information

Today I learned that there's a fire near Lake Isabella outside of Bakersfield, so that would not be a good place to camp on the way to visit my parents in the San Francisco Bay Area. Joshua Tree National Park looks like it's been fairly polluted lately, so that leaves Mojave National Preserve if we want to camp overnight. Otherwise, it's about a 14 hour drive, and that isn't any fun. Also, a good way to locate non-RV oriented campgrounds is to check recreation.gov, where you could make government-owned campground reservations, but you could just use it to find out where the government keeps all its campgrounds.

In other news, a young rabbit running full out across the road right in front of your car and wiping out would not be funny if you hit it. If you didn't hit it, and it apparently made an error during a course correction, thereby crashing and skidding part way across the road, that is pretty funny.

giant beasties and a frayed leash

Today I learned that depending on which researchers you ask, people may have killed off the big prehistoric animals, so people might kill you!

In less lethal news, as of this afternoon at about 3:30, I have an untreated, fully functional nylon dome tent, except for the part where I got tired before I made the fly, so the current fly is a canvas shower curtain. It was really hard to make, particularly on Saturday, when I was a huge idiot, and the part involving attaching bridal veil material, which is stretchy, to the nylon, which is slippery. That was a total (bad word). But it looks like a tent, and it acts like a tent, so I have regained the ability to go backpacking. I am so going to walk away from all my worries as soon as I figure out what I'm going to use for bedding, what tolerable foods I can carry easily, and if I tolerate my pack.

Details, details.

spatial relations and tidbits

Today I learned that when you are making the door in the front piece of the nylon dome tent you're making, you shouldn't make your seam allowances too big when you sew in the zipper, or the door frame will be too big and your door will be too small.

Also, apparently there are some secret shopper jobs that aren't scams, and cornstarch has a particle size of 0.1 to 0.8 μm.

I was going to leave it at that, but on the topic of digital drugs:

For binaural beats to work, you must use headphones. Different sounds are played in each ear. The sounds combine in your brain to create a new frequency. This frequency corresponds to brain wave frequencies.

There are different brain wave frequencies. These frequencies are related to different states like relaxation and alertness.

Digital drugs supposedly synchronize your brain waves with the sound. Hence, they allegedly alter your mental state.

I think it's very enterprising of young people to have figured out the mechanism behind that machine on Star Trek that made people crazy and the 'brown noise.' I'm impressed.

good and bad

Today I learned that if you boil intolerable nylon zippers for roughly four hours, they turn out ok. Now I'm wondering if that would work on my smoke-related laundry contaminant, but boiling sheets and comforters sounds kind of hard. Except it dawns on me that I know somebody with an enormous pressure cooker pot, but it still sounds hard.

Actually, everything sounds hard today. My brain hasn't worked at all today, so hopefully it'll work tomorrow.

Also, when the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

religious fervor and nerds

Today I learned that there are reportedly 50 or 60 people in West Virginia who do not want their digital drivers license photos hanging around because they will essentially be numbered, and that is kind of like marking, and, as I understand it, they are worried about those numbers potentially being the mark of the beast, heralding the arrival of the Antichrist.

I hope those people do not have Social Security numbers.

In other news, scientists say they have discovered evidence of empathy in dogs because human yawning is contagious to dogs. It's not at all clear to me that contagious yawning is an indication of empathy.

When I was home from college once, the dog I got when I was ten years old and I thought was my dog, but it turns out I was her kid, came to check on me when I laughed until I cried and had to go splash water on my face. Is that empathy, or is that just looking after your kid?

the new tent

When you're making a flame-retardant-free ripstop nylon dome tent so you can go backpacking again someday, the right sewing machine makes all the difference. Every machine I've had except this one has argued vehemently with anything other than a couple layers of cotton. In related news, I have some of Seattle Fabrics' nylon coil #5 zipper-by-the-yard soaking in actual conventional milk (2 gallons for $5.88). If the milk doesn't make that stuff tolerable, and I don't think it will, I won't have double-pull zippers, and that will be a bummer.

I spent $5.88 on milk*. These are going to be the most expensive zippers ever.


* Milk makes me really sick, so, ew.

grammar and monsters

Today I learned that 'set foot' really is correct, and I'm allowed to be annoyed by 'step foot.' I feel better now.

Also, the Montauk monster appears to be a raccoon.

all about wormy things

Today I learned that maggots make antibiotics. Also, some microscopic worms have genetic defects such that they can't move unless you shine UV light on them, so there you have it: light-activated mutant worms.

broken physicist covers culture

Today I learned that a hip-hop icon said hip-hop got started when black people got widespread access to hi-fi equipment stolen during the 1977 blackout in New York City.

In style news, after watching an episode of Maverick from 1957, I felt concerned about the state of humanity and had to reassure myself that women only had cone-shaped boobs in the 50s. Thus I came across the following quote:

One all rubber garment that women over 50 can always recall is the rubber Playtex girdle of the late 1950s early 1960s. It left an imprint of tiny spots all over the buttocks. The spots were from the evaporation holes in the girdle rubber. Yes, it was totally rubber. Cream rubber. Think of a very thick rubber glove or windsurf suit with pinhead size holes. After wearing the girdle for an hour the buttocks appeared to have developed a rash akin to German measles.

dead in the water

Today I learned that an EI I know who has been living in an untenable situation has all the symptoms of frontal lobe brain damage mentioned in this article about people getting struck by lightning.

Two things:

1. Some people wonder if chemicals can cross the blood-brain barrier.
2. I wonder what this person is like when she isn't all screwed up.

Also, someone keeps telling me that life is not your to do list. It appears that life is how many bags you can fit in your car.