Category Archives: Mysteries

2023, Mysteries, Science, space, Weather

Da Vinci Glow

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Photo credit:  Forrest Boutin, Getty Images

Ever heard of a Da Vinci Glow?  I hadn’t… even with my dad’s interest is all thing astronomical!

It’s a real thing… It’s happens around sunset when a crescent moon is on the horizon, but the outline of a full moon is visible.  It’s called a DaVinci Glow because… wait for it… Leonardo was the one to hypothesize why it occurs.

The glow is caused by light reflecting off the Earth onto the moon.  Sounds weird, right.  Earthshine is light emitted by the Earth after the sun has gone down.  Because Earthshine is actually brighter than moonlight, the reflection “fills in” the crescent.

Although Da Vinci Glow is not rare, there are a few requirements.  It’s easier to see when there is a waxing or waning crescent during clear skies.  The fly in the ointment is that enough of the Earth needs to have cloud-cover to get the best view.  Apparently Earthshine is reflected more by the clouds of our planet than by the land or water. 

Since we have a waxing moon starting later this week, we’ll have the best chance of seeing the Da Vinci Glow this month!

Have you ever noticed this phenomenon?  Anything else in the night sky interest you these days?

2023, books, home, Mysteries, Words

Bookmark That!

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Last week when I stopped at the library, I noticed a basket on the little table inside the door, filled with bookmarks.  A sign on the basket said “A Year’s Worth of Bookmakrs. Please take one.”   Turns out it was a collection of all the bookmarks found in returned books over the last year.  Apparently they do this every year; I must have just missed it before. 

There were a good 40 bookmarks in the basket and I was tempted to look through them all to see if any of them were mine.  I expect with the number of library books I borrow that one or two bookmarks might have found their way to the library!

I have a cannister on my dresser that is filled with my bookmarks.  I will always pick up a bookmark if one is being offered.  (Ask Chris, I have several of his!) One of my latest favorites is a cutout of Smokey the Bear that I got at the state fair last year. 

You’d think that with at least 25 bookmarks in my cannister that I wouldn’t need to take another one from the library basket.  Well, you’d be wrong, I flipped through them all and picked out a striking one from a publisher with brightly colored book spines on it!

Do you have bookmarks?  Do you have a place to keep your bookmarks?

Fantasy, Food, Movies, Mysteries

Six Hours Down the Tube

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Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.  Yesterday, after listening to the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes song (thank you, Wes), I went out in search of the movie and found four of them. I watched them all so that you never have to. The first one (Attack) got terrible reviews but the cast and crew had their tongues stuck in their cheeks so firmly that it was hard not to warm up to the film.  I’m not even sure I can recount the plot (there just barely is one) but suffice it to say that tomatoes start killing people and are eventually overcome by a song named “Puberty Love”.  The movie is filled from beginning to end with sight gags, bad puns and atrocious over-acting.  I can understand why it has attained the status of “cult classic”. 

The second film in the series is Return of the Killer Tomatoes.  Two notable cast members stand out – John Astin as the mad scientist who supposedly was behind the killer tomato attacks in the first movie (although Astin was not in Attack).  The other is a very young George Clooney who plays a pizza jock who is also a bit of a horn dog.  Return, although made by the same crowd as Attack, takes itself more seriously which makes the movie not even remotely fun.

Killer Tomatoes Strike Back.  John Astin is also back, this time trying to gain control of the world using brainwashing and thought control.  Rick Rockwell plays the main character and the only redeeming thing about him is the wild assortment of Zumba pants he wears throughout.  Oh – and the tomatoes get faces in this one.  I will admit there is one very funny scene in which the bad tomatoes and Astin attempt to make a BLT with the female lead instead of slices of tomato.

Killer Tomatoes Eat France is thankfully the last of the series.  This time John Astin escapes from prison and tries to take over the world by re-creating the French Revolution and proclaiming his minion Igor as King.  Why this would result in world domination is never made clear.  The most noteworthy thing about this one is that the tomatoes have gotten seriously ugly with bad teeth, the occasional eye patch and tongues (ick) and finally after all this time, they finally have the power of speech. There is one monster fire-breathing tomato but he/she doesn’t get much film time.  Too bad.

I’m not recommending that anybody else waste their time watching any of these except maybe the original Attack of the Killer Tomatoes – if it’s cold out and you have an hour or so with nothing else planned.  The others?  Don’t even bother.  They took a fun quirky idea and ran it straight into the ground.

Tell me about your favorite tomato dish!

2023, Family, Food, Mysteries

A Bit Corny

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YA made popcorn on Sunday.  She always dumps it into one of our big yellow bowls which she carries around with her until she is finished.  Most of the time she brings the bowl into my room and offers me some.

On Sunday, she was shaking the bowl as she picked out a few pieces for me and the sound made me think she had a lot of un-popped kernels.  I asked her if she had a lot of old maids and she looked at me as if I had frogs jumping out of my ears. 

She did not know that the un-popped corns were called old maids.  In fact, upon further discussion it turns out that she also did not know that old maid was a derogatory term used for unmarried women.  While it’s probably a good thing that old maids is fading from our consciousness, it took me by surprise.  There is so much that I consider common knowledge that just isn’t anymore.

How do you like your corn?  Air-popped, kettle, plain or buttered?  Creamed?

animals, Fantasy, gardening, Movies, Mysteries, Nature, TV

Bad to Good?

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The first real day of gardening for me includes attacking my creeping charlie.  While I was working, I remembered the Godzilla comparison I wrote about a couple of years ago.  But since getting rid of creeping Charlie is a good thing in my world, how could I be Godzilla, a horrible, scary, destructive monster.

I was thinking through all the Godzilla movies (yes, I’ve seen them all, even the Matthew Broderick) and it occurred to me that in the Japanese films, Godzilla went through a “nice-ification” over the years.  In a few of the movies, Godzilla actually comes to the rescue by fighting off worse monsters (Mothra, Ghidorah, Gigan, Megalon, etc.)   When Godzilla became a father in Son of Godzilla, he really mellowed.

This is a more common occurrence than you realize.  I can think of a lot of characters who morph from the bad guys to good guys.  M.A.S.H. is the best example; although Frank Burns never redeemed himself, Colonel Blake started off as a lame head of the unit before he sobered up and became beloved of this staff, then Charles started off as a pain-in-the-patoot and gradually became just one of the guys.  Diagnosis Murder had a string of hospital administrators who started out as impediments and eventually became supporters of Dr. Sloan.  Hamilton Berger, the DA on the first Perry Mason series eventually toned down his attitude and even asked Perry to represent a friend of his at one point.  Lots of long-standing series went through this.

I’m glad I can still be Godzilla in my creeping Charlie battles without feeling guilty for destroying Tokyo!

Any bad guys that you actually like? Or morphed into someone you could like?

2023, gardening, home, Mysteries, Nature

Greening of … the Twin Cities

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As of Sunday morning, I am re-retired!  Although I’m doing a few hours a week of finish-up, my programs ran last Friday and Saturday and were a big hit, so I’m done.  Phew.

I knew before I went to bed Saturday night that one of my treats to myself would be a trip to Gertens.  YA and I got most of our plantings already (we’re big Bachmans supporters) but there were just a couple of things we still needed.  I slept in, had a late breakfast and then headed out.  I knew that it would be crowded; it was a gorgeous morning and the first nice weekend day we’ve had to far this “spring”.  And I was correct, it was very crowded; even the overflower parking lot across the street was full, with folks waiting for others to leave in order to snag their parking spot.  It felt as if everybody in the Twin Cities was there shopping.  All 12 outdoor cashier kiosks were open with lines at each one and the place was crawling with customers and employees.  I saw at least four different young men retrieving carts from all over the place.

I only needed plants for 3 baskets, including Dragonwing Begonias (which I adore) and I also wanted to check out raspberry canes.  The winter was not good to our canes and I thought I’d get a pot to fill in a sparse spot.

As you can see from the photo, I came away with much more than I intended.  A pretty yellow peony, a beautiful dark purple iris and two dual-color dianthus jumped onto my cart while I was pushing it around.  And the raspberry canes looked good, so got three pots instead of one.  I texted YA to say I shouldn’t be allowed to go to Gertens by myself!

Any places you are too tempted by to go by yourself?

animals, home, Kids, Mysteries, Nature

Chirp!

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Several years ago, YA came home with an unpainted plywood birdhouse; I don’t even remember where she found it.  It sat for a couple of years before she dragged out some of my paints and made cheery design in bright colors.  Then it sat for a couple more years until I put a layer of marine varnish on the outside of it and finally hung it up in the backyard. 

I only hung it up for decoration but was amazed last week to see that there are birds using it!  Assuming there are or might be baby birds; I’m terrified of what might happen if baby birds end up in the yard during their in-flight training.  So far I’ve been searching the back of the yard for any signs of life before letting Guinevere out.  

Never have I ever had birds in a birdhouse to contend with.  I’m happy but anxious.

Any advice?

2023, books, gardening, Mysteries, Nature, Seasons

Mulch Madness

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I’m doing my Menards mulch runs this week.  I like to go early in the morning (think 6:30 a.m.), before it’s too busy; that way I don’t have to fight anybody over a big flatbed cart.  I can only fit 6-8 bags in my little car (depending on how badly I want to see out the back window) but 6-8 bags definitely needs a flatbed cart!

As I was loading up the car on Tuesday, it occurred to me that I don’t come by my love of gardening naturally.  Nonny likes her garden neat and orderly but there were never any carloads of mulch or flats of annuals.  For a few years, we had a small vegetable garden but it was pretty much only tomatoes – although I do remember one year with corn but not sure if we actually got any corn off the stalks. 

Nonny didn’t enlist either my sister or me to help in the garden or even harvest anything.  Cutting the grass on the riding mower was the extent of my yard work growing up; this was only in high school as we never had a big enough yard for a riding mower until then. 

In my first house here in Minneapolis I didn’t do much yardwork – the house has evergreen bushes in front and they didn’t require much.  Wasband cut the postage-stamp sized yard.  I did do a vegetable garden a couple of times but we had slug issues and Irish Setter-stomping-all-over-the-plants issues.  I’m not sure what clicked in my brain when I moved to my current home.  The more flowers/less grass plan was hatched fairly early on and the hanging pots and mulch madness followed pretty quickly after that. 

My straw bale gardening got going about a dozen years back after reading Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook.  I won’t bore you with this again since I know I’ve already talked about it (probably repeatedly), but straw bales have brought my gardening full circle (or so it feels to me).

Not sure how the gardening got into my blood, but this week as I start to prepare my bales and do my mulch runs, I’m feeling happier than I have for a few weeks as winter has dragged on.  Maybe spring really is coming.

Do any or your hobbies or passions surprise you?

2023, animals, Fantasy, Health, Mysteries, News

The Newest Tsar

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The word on the streets of New York is that there is a new “rat mitigator”; the headlines are screaming “A NEW RAT CZAR”.  Her actual title is City Director of Rat Mitigation but it hasn’t taken long for the czar moniker to have grabbed ahold of everyone’s attention.

I know that czar gets added to a lot of titles – Bird Flu Czar, Climate Czar, Energy Czar.  My favorite is Elliott Abrams title of Democracy Czar during the GW Bush administration.  Czar and democracy seem like odd bed-fellows to me.

I feel a little sorry for the new Rat Czar; it can’t be an easy job and it’s hard to imagine that in a contest between rats and humans, that the rats don’t hold most of the cards.  But you never know!

What do YOU think we need a tsar of these days?

2023, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Mysteries

Holiday Over-Do?

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Photo Credit:  Tatanisha Worthey

One of Renee’s questions yesterday struck a chord with me.  I am definitely a “bite off too much” kind of person.  And before everybody says “you need to learn to say no” – all of my biting off too much is self-imposed.  I’m actually pretty good at saying no to someone other than myself!

Case in point.  With Easter just a week away, I have a lot of plans.  The big event is on next Saturday, the World’s Most Over-Engineered Egg Hunt.  For that we are taking taco tortilla roll-ups (or pinwheels) and blondies w/ M&M eggs for the buffet.  Then I’m also making pastel eggs filled with jelly beans and marshmallows for the kids.  Did I mention there are 13 of them?  And then a couple of dozen plastic eggs filled w/ candy to add to the hunt.

For my co-workers I’m doing dipped Oreos w/ spring-y sprinkles (1 chocolate and 1 golden per co-worker).  These will be packaged in little cello bags and delivered with miniature Happy Spring notes.  I figure as long as I’m still officially part of the team, no matter how part-time or temporary, it’s still a nice thing to do.

For the neighbor kids I’m doing lemon bunny cakes.  I have a wonderful bunny pan that I bought a few years ago and I just love it.  And it’s easy.  Batter into pan.  Bake.  Bunnies into cello bags with pretty ribbon.  Voila!

Of course, I will also do a basket for YA – this will be a challenge because YA has said she only wants chocolate/pb items in the basket.  I normally can’t hold myself to these kind of requests.  We’ll see.   I have extra eggs for dying.  Again this is something that YA says we don’t need to do but she always joins in when I have the eggs and dye and glitter out. She always happily eats the devilled eggs that eventually come out of this project.

AND, I am making sugar cookies for a friend – I always do this for her and this gives me an excuse to make a few spring cookies for YA and myself.

This is enough projects that I’ve put the various things on my to-do list for next week.  When I think about the fact that I’m only working 3-4 hours a day, it doesn’t seem that daunting.

Any special plans you’re prepping for in the next week?