it was also a star wars original trilogy weekend
today i was going to look for bookshelves and maybe check out some shoes while i was out there, but it was such a nice day that i couldn't bring myself to spend a chunk of it either in the car or getting lost in furniture stores. not that i did a lot otherwise, but at least i got outside.
yesterday was the fluff festival, which celebrates the invention of marshmallow fluff in somerville in 1917. next year it will be 100! i went with tamalinn and lbmango to eat food (lots of local restaurants, plus fluffernutters to support the somerville high school band) and drink beer (pumpkin, natch) and go "puppy!" at all the dogs. ok, so that was just me. it was a nice day to be out so there were consequently A LOT of people. it was a great day to eat tamales and fluffernutters and drink pumpkin beer. after that i went back to tamalinn's to help her decide what she still had to pack (she's moving in a week) and also pet her dog.
i also learned from the guy who owns my local comic shop that ray bradbury didn't wear pants around his house (apparently the first owner of the comic shop was a huge bradbury fan and got to be friends with him, and half of the guy's pictures of the two of them together show bradbury wearing a button-down shirt like a normal person and... his boxer shorts) and he used to walk around his neighborhood, occasionally freaking people out so they'd call the cops. i guess the cops would drive up and bradbury would explain who he was and where he lived, and they'd drive off. how weird, tho, not just that people would call the cops because there was this random guy walking down the street when no one walked anywhere, but that he lived in suburban la (i assume by choice) and didn't drive.
i'm not totally excited about going to work tomorrow, but let's be honest, who ever is?
a dc school bus was kitted out so kids could ride around as if they were taking a road trip on mars. how cool is that? SO COOL.
and speaking of other planets, here's an article about percival lowell, who founded lowell observatory in flagstaff and thought there was both water and life on mars. he was also convinced there was another planet out past neptune and uranus, and in 1930, clyde tombaugh, who worked at the observatory, proved him right. the name "pluto" was suggested by an eleven-year-old english girl, and was adopted because the first two letters were lowell's initials.
archaeologists discover 3000-year-old pot with burned cheese in the bottom. it isn't definitively cheese, but that seems to be the best bet. proof that people have been burning dinner for (almost) as long as we've been cooking.
chinese skeletons found in ancient roman cemetery, in london of all places. no one's totally sure how they got there - like, how/why would a couple of chinese folks end up in london during roman times? it was a very long trip - but they got there somehow. soooo many questions raised.
the untold stories of japanese war brides - why would these women choose to marry american soldiers and move to the most random places in the us? they didn't really talk about it.
apparently some british jews are considering acquiring german citizenship post-brexit. this is weird partly because we're talking about people whose families fled nazi germany in the 30s and 40s. (the article is only slightly about this, and the rest of it is photos of the kindertransport and other folks fleeing the nazis.)
and in other interesting jewish news, chinese jews come under government scrutiny, as judaism isn't one of the state-approved religions. i'm honestly more interested in the fact that there are chinese jews at all.
and in other chinese news, watch the world's largest elevator carry ships over a dam. it's faster than running the ships through the dam's locks.
yesterday was the fluff festival, which celebrates the invention of marshmallow fluff in somerville in 1917. next year it will be 100! i went with tamalinn and lbmango to eat food (lots of local restaurants, plus fluffernutters to support the somerville high school band) and drink beer (pumpkin, natch) and go "puppy!" at all the dogs. ok, so that was just me. it was a nice day to be out so there were consequently A LOT of people. it was a great day to eat tamales and fluffernutters and drink pumpkin beer. after that i went back to tamalinn's to help her decide what she still had to pack (she's moving in a week) and also pet her dog.
i also learned from the guy who owns my local comic shop that ray bradbury didn't wear pants around his house (apparently the first owner of the comic shop was a huge bradbury fan and got to be friends with him, and half of the guy's pictures of the two of them together show bradbury wearing a button-down shirt like a normal person and... his boxer shorts) and he used to walk around his neighborhood, occasionally freaking people out so they'd call the cops. i guess the cops would drive up and bradbury would explain who he was and where he lived, and they'd drive off. how weird, tho, not just that people would call the cops because there was this random guy walking down the street when no one walked anywhere, but that he lived in suburban la (i assume by choice) and didn't drive.
i'm not totally excited about going to work tomorrow, but let's be honest, who ever is?
a dc school bus was kitted out so kids could ride around as if they were taking a road trip on mars. how cool is that? SO COOL.
and speaking of other planets, here's an article about percival lowell, who founded lowell observatory in flagstaff and thought there was both water and life on mars. he was also convinced there was another planet out past neptune and uranus, and in 1930, clyde tombaugh, who worked at the observatory, proved him right. the name "pluto" was suggested by an eleven-year-old english girl, and was adopted because the first two letters were lowell's initials.
archaeologists discover 3000-year-old pot with burned cheese in the bottom. it isn't definitively cheese, but that seems to be the best bet. proof that people have been burning dinner for (almost) as long as we've been cooking.
chinese skeletons found in ancient roman cemetery, in london of all places. no one's totally sure how they got there - like, how/why would a couple of chinese folks end up in london during roman times? it was a very long trip - but they got there somehow. soooo many questions raised.
the untold stories of japanese war brides - why would these women choose to marry american soldiers and move to the most random places in the us? they didn't really talk about it.
apparently some british jews are considering acquiring german citizenship post-brexit. this is weird partly because we're talking about people whose families fled nazi germany in the 30s and 40s. (the article is only slightly about this, and the rest of it is photos of the kindertransport and other folks fleeing the nazis.)
and in other interesting jewish news, chinese jews come under government scrutiny, as judaism isn't one of the state-approved religions. i'm honestly more interested in the fact that there are chinese jews at all.
and in other chinese news, watch the world's largest elevator carry ships over a dam. it's faster than running the ships through the dam's locks.