One of the critters to go viral in recent weeks is Emmanuel the emu. Perhaps you saw the video:

Thank you so much for featuring Emmanuel❤️ lots of love from Knuckle Bump Farms! https://t.co/AqMTzdreq1
- eco sister (@hiitaylorblake) July 16, 2022
This came up around when I was in a funk, and this amusing emu really lifted my spirits. Shockingly ( Read more... )

For years, I've sort of joked with myself about one of my quirky skills: I can figure out what days of the week on which things happened. I do it on my fingers, and it's all sort of based on when my birthday falls, but yeah. In a couple minutes, I can tell you where a date fell in a particular year. I think of it as my Rain Man savant talent ( Read more... )

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the Pacific Northwest has had blisteringly high temperatures recently. In catching up with a paper from a couple weeks ago, I saw a startling weather forecast: 106F for Las Vegas, 107F for Portland, and 108F for Phoenix. Can you imagine, the high temp for Portland was higher than for Vegas, and just shy ( Read more... )

I'm a big fan of Robert Feder and his media column. It's generally pretty interesting and has its finger on the pulse of the who, what, and where of the entities (currently and formerly) in Chicago. Sometimes it's happy news, sometimes it's news that raises people's hackles, and sometimes it's just downright depressing ( Read more... )

Work has been pretty slow lately. There's simply not much to do. I mean, I can find things to do if I really look, and I have regular tasks to keep up with, but there's a fair amount of downtime at this point ( Read more... )

One of my oldest notes goes back to last July, based on a post from Jen at Epbot. She linked to an article about highly sensitive people--a term I hadn't heard of, but that I relate to. I ended up copying the entirety of the article and saving it for later, since I knew I wanted to get back to it. I hadn't re-read the article in months, but ( Read more... )

I'm a big fan of Robert Feder's blog. He's been reporting on the media for decades. (This week's big news was CBS laying off a bunch of people company-wide, including on-air personalities at Channel 2. The shocker was that longtime investigative reporter Pam Zekman was included in that group ( Read more... )

I have a thing for tiny houses. I like the idea of simplifying one's life enough to be able to fit into so many square feet. I know I wouldn't be able to do it personally, but I could see myself in a small house, for sure ( Read more... )

Anyone who pays attention to Chicago media knows Robert Feder. He's been keeping everyone abreast of the happenings for decades now. Need to know what's up with a missing anchor on your favorite newscast? Check with Feder. Want to know where your radio station fell during last month's ratings? Check with Feder. I started reading his blog last ( Read more... )

There have been a few things rolling around in my head, stuff that I meant to write up in the past few weeks and it just never happened. Here you go.

Easter--This could well be the biggest news, which I actually didn't realize until just then: My father quit smoking. Mom made an announcement to her mother that dad stopped several weeks earlier ( Read more... )