Well, dammit….

NOW I may be back??

I was logging into a non-existent account? ugh.

So, all the typing I just did is lost. And it was a long one. I’ll try to recreate…. ‘tay??

ONTO ALL MY NEWS!!!

Oh I have missed y’all!!! It’s been such a whirlwind since August!

First, I went to NC in August, but I think I told y’all about that already…?

I retired September 30th. What a JOY that was. Retirement party and everything! It was awesome. Three of us with a combine almost 100 years of experience all retired on 9/30. It felt good. I had a part-time job lined up that I planned to start January 1st. Well, I started Oct 1st. LOL. But it’s a fun job. I’m a courtesy shuttle driver for a local dealership. I am enjoying it. We all have a good time.

I went to Texas in October. It was fun until the insecure wife decided she didn’t want me there. ‘Nuff said about that.

California in November was amazing. It always is when I spend time with Allison. We went to the Japanese garden in SF again. Has ice cream and watched a bit of ‘Moon Alice’ band near the DeYoung Gallery. We went to Pacifica Beach and sat at the ocean for hours. SO peaceful. I sent my friend Jason a map of where we were and out of all the stuff on the map? “OH LOOK!! A Taco Bell!!” I facepalmed him. A long weekend with her is never long enough.

Life is going well. My bills are paid. Stella, Louie, Sprint and Bynx are all healthy. I got a clean bill from the breast clinic. The funky things that were going on are gone now and no, I don’t have breast cancer. THAT was a load off.

The best part of this year so far?

My friend Jason and I went to my friend Jodene’s house in early March. We had a great time. Spent till 3am talking about us and there’s been a breakthrough.

Jason is an amazing, fun, sincere, kind, generous, compassionate, patient, funny, loving, caring man. He broke thru that wall of grief, frustration, and fear that had built up around me. It feels amazing to love and be loved again. I have missed being happy and Jason makes me happy. He is a great guy. WAY different than when we dated 3 years ago and I am way different than I was then too.

So, life is pretty good. I am happy. Healthy and loving the best guy….

Tuesday Tidbits…

*interestingfacts.com

People have been celebrating cherry blossoms for over a thousand years

Few trees are more beautiful than cherry trees when in full bloom. Although millions flock to see cherry blossoms around the world, the trees have a special resonance in Japan, where they are known as sakura. During Japan’s Heian period (794 to 1185), when art and poetry flourished, sakura became associated with the ephemeral beauty of life, since the blossoms last only a few weeks before wilting. The Japanese aristocracy ate and drank tea under sakura during events known as hanami (cherry blossom viewing), a tradition that’s still observed in Japan today. Throughout the centuries, sakura continued to play a role in Japanese society, especially during the Edo period, when the pink blossoms became the subject of many woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e. 

One of the most famous collections of cherry trees in the U.S. is in Washington, D.C.; it was sent as a gift from Japan in 1912. Although some people considered digging up the cherry trees at the absolute nadir of U.S.-Japanese relations during World War II (and four trees were vandalized), the sakura survived and are now the central attraction of the capital region’s National Cherry Blossom Festival. Held every year in March and April, the festivities showcase the full bloom of these amazing trees, the likes of which have enchanted generations of onlookers for so many years.

Monday meanderings….

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Children grow faster in the spring

If you think the son/niece/grandchild in your life is sprouting before your eyes now that the winter clothing has been shed, you’re probably not imagining things. Researchers have long studied the connection between seasonal changes and youth growth patterns, with substantial evidence pointing to higher rates of growth among children in the Northern Hemisphere during the spring and summer months. While we might question results drawn from, say, a 1930 publication, newer research has validated these older findings: A 2015 study of 760 Danish students aged 8 to 11 revealed the most growth recorded around April and May, while a 2022 paper, which tracked the development of thousands of Texas kids from kindergarten to fifth grade, confirmed strong growth rates in spring and early summer.

But while we have the numbers to show that children shoot up like springtime onion stalks, the science is less definitive when it comes to determining why. One possible explanation is that exposure to longer hours of sunlight may stimulate bone growth and hormone regulation. Other potential factors, which can vary according to location and financial means, include increased access to fresh foods and healthy activities come springtime. Whatever the reasons, the onset of warmer weather should provide a signal to parents that Junior will likely grow out of those pants and shoes sooner rather than later.

Friday Farmyard Fun

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Pigs don’t sweat

Although not the most glamorous of methods, sweating is a biologically ingenious way to keep cool. Our sweat glands employ energy — in this case, heat — to evaporate water off our skin, which in turn cools us down. Humans, along with some monkeys and all of the great apes, use a similar cooling technique, but sweating isn’t as ubiquitous throughout the animal kingdom as you might expect. For example, pigs don’t sweat — well, not really. 

Pigs dohave some sweat glands, but they’re insufficient to play a significant role in regulating the creatures’ body temperatures. Instead, some of a pig’s internal body temperature is regulated by a thyroid-produced hormone, but the most fast-acting method for keeping cool is simply wallowing in mud. When the mud evaporates, it takes some heat with it, just as when human sweat evaporates. Pigs will also seek shaded areas, lie flat on cool ground, or even pant similarly to dogs. The fact that pigs don’t sweat (a lot) has created an inaccurate idea that eating a pig is unhealthy because they can’t release toxins through sweat — but that’s just a myth. 

Friday Fun….

Friday Fun Fact

Many of the earliest flight attendants were nurses

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Flight attendants make our journeys through the sky safer and more comfortable. Yet they do more than just serve peanuts and soda; they’re trained to respond to safety and medical emergencies, necessary skills for cruising at 35,000 feet. However, modern flight attendants don’t have to have in-depth medical training the way the first American in-air staff did — the earliest commercial airlines equipped with flight attendants required their staff to be registered nurses.

The first flight attendants to board U.S. commercial flights were led by Ellen Church, a nurse who was also a licensed aviator. Unable to find work as a pilot due to gender discrimination, Church found another way into the sky by pitching airlines the concept of the “flight stewardess,” who could use her nursing skills to aid sick or injured passengers while also easing nerves at a time when flying was still somewhat dangerous and often uncomfortable for passengers. Boeing Air Transport tested Church’s idea in May 1930, hiring Church and seven other nurses for flights between San Francisco and Chicago (with 13 stops in between). In air, the attendants were tasked with serving meals, cleaning the plane’s interior, securing the seats to the floor, and even keeping passengers from accidentally opening the emergency exit door. After a successful three-month stint, other airlines picked up Church’s idea, putting out calls for nurses in their early 20s to join the first flight crews — standard requirements until World War II, when nurses overwhelmingly joined the war effort, leaving room for more women of all backgrounds to enter the aviation field.

Friday Fun Fact…..

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It can take two weeks to make one jelly bean

The next time you pop some jelly beans into your mouth, you may want to take a moment to appreciate just how much effort goes into producing these bite-sized delights. As explained by industry giant Jelly Belly, the process begins by heating a sugar, cornstarch, corn syrup, and water mixture, known as a slurry, and adding fruit purée, juice concentrate, or other ingredients for flavoring. From there, the mixture is squirted into cornstarch-coated molding trays, and left to solidify into the chewy jelly bean centers.

The following day, the bean centers are sent through a steam bath and a sugar shower to keep them from sticking. They are then loaded into a spinning machine for a process known as “panning,” in which sugar and syrup are manually applied over the course of two hours to slowly build each bean’s candied shell. Following another settling period, the candies receive an additional syrup coating, before being polished with confectioner’s glaze and beeswax. Upon earning a final thumbs-up by way of visual inspection and spot taste-testing, the beans are stamped with the Jelly Belly logo and shipped out into the world.

It’s a lot of shower, rinse, rest, and repeat for a process that takes seven to 14 days to complete. And while that might seem like an outsized increment of time for such a tiny edible, the Americans who gobble down an average of 16 billion jelly beans every Easter seem to think it’s worth it.

Tuesday Tutoring

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Oxford University is older than the Inca empire

While you might associate the development of modern universities with intellectual movements like the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, the first universities predate those major periods in history — not by years but by centuries. One of the oldest universities in the world is Oxford University, where teaching began back in 1096. That’s much older than Harvard (established in 1636) or Yale (1701), and it’s even older than some well-known Indigenous civilizations in the Americas, including the Incas, who lived in the Andean region of South America from around the 13th century CE to the mid-16th century. (Other groups and empires have occupied the Andes since at least 10,000 BCE.)

The first universities were not like the sprawling campuses of today. Instead, they were more like guilds devoted to certain subjects or crafts. Slowly, the influence of these schools grew throughout the High Middle Ages (1000–1300), and many of them became hot spots during future intellectual movements. Meanwhile, as Europe was busy cementing the importance of its universities (and fighting in half-a-dozen Crusades), the Incas were building sprawling road networks and reliable postal systems — they even had highly skilled brain surgeons.

Monday Meanderings….

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Sharks have been on Earth longer than trees

Some species of trees that line city streets predate the dinosaurs by millions of years, but when it comes to the truly ancient, you need to look to the oceans. Sea-dwelling creatures have a many-millions-of-years head start on any terrestrial life-forms. Take, for instance, the shark: This apex predator of the sea has been stalking the world’s oceans for upwards of 450 million years. Meanwhile, the very first forests filled with Earth’s very first trees, in the genera Wattieza and Archaeopteris, likely didn’t sprout on land until the mid-Devonian period some 385 million years ago. However, it’s worth noting that the animals some scientists consider the first “sharks” likely didn’t look like the magnificent predators of today. First appearing in the Late Ordovician, these creatures sported shark-like scales, but likely didn’t yet possess the species’ most memorable trait — a terrifying set of teeth.

Surviving that long as a species is no easy feat. Only a few million years after the shark’s appearance on the world stage, these proto-sharks (along with the rest of life on Earth) suffered through the Late Ordovician mass extinction. This event was the first of five major extinction events in Earth’s history, and sharks survived them all; not even trees can add such an impressive accolade to their resume. So the next time you cross paths with a shark, whether behind the glass of an aquarium or on-screen in the act of devouring the residents of Amity Island, don’t forget to marvel at this amazing animal’s incredible story of survival. 

Friday Fun Fact

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Venus spins backward

There are entire websites devoted to whether or not Mercury is in retrograde at any given moment, and all the while Venus is spinning backward (compared to most other planets) while few of us on Earth even notice. As a result, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east on the second rock from the sun. Though no one’s entirely sure why our fiery neighbor rotates to the beat of its own drum, it’s been theorized that it originally spun in the same way as most other planets (counter-clockwise when viewed from above), but at some point flipped its own axis 180 degrees. So while its rotation appears backward from our earthbound perspective, it might be more accurate to say that Venus spins the same way it always has, just upside-down.

Some scientists think the flip might have been the result of a situation arising from the planet’s extremely dense atmosphere along with the sun’s intense gravitational pull, though the scientific community has yet to reach a consensus. For all that, Venus has often been referred to as Earth’s sister planet — even more so than Mars. We’re the two closest neighbors in the solar system, have similar chemical compositions, and are roughly the same size. One crucial difference: Venus probably cannot support life.