life is an hourglass glued to the table
I would say the highlight of my week so far has been my Sunday morning worm composting talk at synogogue's Tu B'Shvat ecology program. (When M. and I bowed out of salsa dancing after Rachel's b-day party on Sat. night, I explained I needed to go home to sleep so I could get up for the worm talk.)
I had:
A flip chart with my own magic marker illustrations of the Food Chain( with representations of organisms aka critters) , composting = recycling of living things (with recycle symbol), a brief, highly simplified illustration of the nitrogen cycle, with atmospheric N2, nitrogen fixing bacteria and the importance of nitrogen to plant growth, and menu of stuff I put into my compost (and stuff I don't)
I also had an newspaper clipping of a story about the Johnson County (Ks) landfill with a great picture captioned "two days of trash". It was a lot of trash!
I have a freezer baggie full of the coffee grounds, orange peels, banana peels, egg shells and apple cores that I feed the worms (being stored in my freezer over the course of the week as I gathered them for the presentation.)
I had a mason jar full of worm "castings", aka worm poop, but indistinguishable from really high quality potting soil.
And of course, I brought in a tupperware contained of my worm friends, who I displayed under some wet newspaper on a paper plate.
The kids (and a few adults, too) LOOOVED it, especially the worm. "ooh, can I touch them?" I told them they could touch the dirt and the sticks/egg shells in it (from my bin) but avoid handling the worms (I think the salt on human skin is not particularly good for them, and rubs off their protective mucus). Even the kids who were "Eeeeeww...worms!" were all, "Let me see, I wanna see! ooo, they're teeeny!"
the rest of the week has been kind of blah. Today, at work I gave blood to the vampires at the American Red Cross, feeling more like the snuggly-chicken than a snuggly-llama. (To my chagrin, the phlembotomist did not start peeing frantically so she would be light enough to fly.) I did get pretty woozy, so they made me stay and elevate my feet and drink apple juice before letting me go back to my desk. The novelty of napping at work was enough to save the experience :)
The rest of the afternoon,alas, was double-blah, so I went over to the Borg so they could cheer me up. (they did! Yay Borg! Parent llamas are now home and very, very happy to be there. Even the dog was happy to see me.)
Then I came home and M. introduced me to the FAILBlog, brought to us by the nice people at Icanhascheezburger.
Speaking of which, Mr. Horowitz, this one goes out to you:
more animals
I had:
A flip chart with my own magic marker illustrations of the Food Chain( with representations of organisms aka critters) , composting = recycling of living things (with recycle symbol), a brief, highly simplified illustration of the nitrogen cycle, with atmospheric N2, nitrogen fixing bacteria and the importance of nitrogen to plant growth, and menu of stuff I put into my compost (and stuff I don't)
I also had an newspaper clipping of a story about the Johnson County (Ks) landfill with a great picture captioned "two days of trash". It was a lot of trash!
I have a freezer baggie full of the coffee grounds, orange peels, banana peels, egg shells and apple cores that I feed the worms (being stored in my freezer over the course of the week as I gathered them for the presentation.)
I had a mason jar full of worm "castings", aka worm poop, but indistinguishable from really high quality potting soil.
And of course, I brought in a tupperware contained of my worm friends, who I displayed under some wet newspaper on a paper plate.
The kids (and a few adults, too) LOOOVED it, especially the worm. "ooh, can I touch them?" I told them they could touch the dirt and the sticks/egg shells in it (from my bin) but avoid handling the worms (I think the salt on human skin is not particularly good for them, and rubs off their protective mucus). Even the kids who were "Eeeeeww...worms!" were all, "Let me see, I wanna see! ooo, they're teeeny!"
the rest of the week has been kind of blah. Today, at work I gave blood to the vampires at the American Red Cross, feeling more like the snuggly-chicken than a snuggly-llama. (To my chagrin, the phlembotomist did not start peeing frantically so she would be light enough to fly.) I did get pretty woozy, so they made me stay and elevate my feet and drink apple juice before letting me go back to my desk. The novelty of napping at work was enough to save the experience :)
The rest of the afternoon,alas, was double-blah, so I went over to the Borg so they could cheer me up. (they did! Yay Borg! Parent llamas are now home and very, very happy to be there. Even the dog was happy to see me.)
Then I came home and M. introduced me to the FAILBlog, brought to us by the nice people at Icanhascheezburger.
Speaking of which, Mr. Horowitz, this one goes out to you:
more animals