Miscellany: February 2006 Archives
-A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
-A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
-A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
-A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
-A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
-A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
-A shark is the only fish that can blink with both -eyes.
-A snail can sleep for three years.
-Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
-All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
-Almonds are a member of the peach family.
-An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
-Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
-Butterflies taste with their feet.
-Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
-"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
-February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
-In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
-If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
-If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
-It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
-Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
-Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
-Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
-Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
-"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.
-The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
-The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
-The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
-The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
-The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
-The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
-There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
-There are more chickens than people in the world. (or there were before the bird flu and the West Nile virus!)
-There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
-There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."
-There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.
-Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
-TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
-Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
-Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
-Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself (Yech!).
It's been a busy last ten days. Not quite sure where to start. I had a long post already to put up, and hit the wrong button and whoops, it's gone. Kind of emblematic of things lately.
That sense of forboding is still haunting me. Even with all the stuff happening, I am getting the sense that there is still more to come. I know that God won't send more than we can handle (with His help), but somedays I wish He didn't have quite such a high opinion of me!
Weather has been just plain weird. We've also been dealing with car issues. February looked to be a light month for births, only 8 due dates in the midwife practice, but I attended 2 on Wednesday (within 2 hours of each other, too!) and one yesterday that was just plain a long and tiring labor for all involved. The weather related power outages have meant that our phone keeps ringing at home, at all hours, as the remote alarms from various sites call my husband the engineer. So we're all a little sleep deprived and more than a little grumpy. It's at times like this that I realize that the marriage of engineer and midwife is a little more stressful than most. BTW - our 32nd wedding anniversary is coming up next Thursday. Pix from our 30th anniversary party here. Wedding picture here. No plans that I know of for celebration - our funds have been rather diminished by a couple of the other items from the last 10 day. Car stuff.
Almost exactly 2 years ago John's Bronco was decommisioned. It's been sitting in our driveway since. The body is in great shape, the interior is less so. Since it came out from the West coast, it didn't have the body rotting salt exposure that kills cars in New England and other snow zones. Last year, after youngest daughter got her driver's license, we briefly discussed resurrecting it for her use vs getting her a newer used car, when she took matters out of our hands and purchased a beat up but running car from a friend. Our mechanic (and fellow parishioner) told us that the rust level on that car was such that investing in major repairs was probably not wise, but that for as long as it kept running the car would be safe and reasonable as a basic transportation.
A while back, the car started to go through coolant at a pretty fair clip - and on the way to the mechanic it became obvious that the engine was blown. Scratch one car. Daughter has been in mine and I've been in a rental, while the Bronco is getting resurrected. Hopefully this set of repairs will keep it going for at least the next few months. She's now driving a car that is older than she is. Now that she's had a year driving experience in a car with standard transmission I am a little less uneasy about her in the Bronco - it's not the best car for a novice driver but she's not a novice anymore. The low gas mileage will be tough for her to deal with, though.
Back to the weather. We got the fringes of the snowstorm that buried NYC last weekend. It buried the car that we'd decided to junk, in the parking lot where it had been left with a windshield note. Local police did call to tell us that it needed to get removed, which has been done. The snowstorm caused cancellation of the confirmation class - so we'll be tackling that topic today. It's the chastity talk, with teaching on Catholic Christian sexual ethics. I offered to speak, but the DRE wanted to bring in outsiders for the big group. My turn to speak will be next class - when I get to speak on the Church. (Why be Catholic when there are so many other choices?). Part testimony, part didactic teaching, part get them to think.
Friday we had those windstorms. Power outages. And when I was getting ready to sit down and catch up the blog, we lost our cable/telephone/internet connection. It's been real.
Thanks for all the prayers. Time to get off this keyboard and head to Mass.
