Crescent
The moon the other night. But it wasn't just a crescent. It was a kind of lower crescent. Like a smile. Odd. I wondered if it looked like that a lot (vs a "side" crescent, that looks like a thin letter "C".) and I never noticed, because I don't see moons nearly as much as I'd like.
Popcorn
A staple :) Cracker Jacks when I was little (I still have some prizes!), my lime green "lightbulb" kids popper at home, then air poppers ever since.
Since I talked about the UK yesterday, I'll continue a bit here. When I lived there, nobody made popcorn in their homes. It wasn't done. They didn't know it *could* be done! People bought popcorn at theatres, but they had no idea it started out as hard little kernels.
It took me a while to find a bag of un-popped popcorn to make on the stove. I had to special order some through an International store (which happily got me a few bags, then asked what in the world I was going to do with them? They thought the wrong items had arrived.) Later, when I made popcorn in a student kitchen at my school, people gathered around like I was doing a magic trick.
"Is it safe?" they'd ask, as they heard the kernels exploding in the pan. "What's happening in there? Can we look?"
"Sure" I'd say, "but the popcorn will fly out."
I'd lift the lid, a few kernels would pop out of the pan, and everyone would scream!
The "Popcorn making show" was a big hit. I was often asked to give repeat performances.
(FYI, "Bagels" were also unheard of there, back then. - And good luck trying to get hummus in Canada.)
Lift
Elevator.
I've been speaking with several people recently about the differences between UK English and USA English. They're different in just enough ways to get you into trouble if you use the wrong words.
The odd things is, even with the different accents, in the UK, people don't usually think "They MUST mean something else. I'll bet there's a different word for that in the US." - They think Americans actually meant whatever strange thing they said. (I think that outside of large cities, the same may be true here. But in the UK it seems to be true everywhere!)
BLAST!!!!!
I just got back from visiting the Space Center. So much fun for me. Totally touristy. I don't usually do this when I'm here, but other family members were in the area, they had a kid with them, they were going, and I thought "Space? Can I go too? :) "
Saw lots of cool things (Cool to me. Maybe boring to someone else!) Touched a moon "shaving" - That's what I called it. It's supposed to be a moon "rock" and they talk it up a lot. But it's a small flat triangular sliver. They probably replace it with a new sliver after it wears down.
Re "Blast," I saw a rocket launch. It sent a new satellite into space. Kinda neat. You can see it from other areas miles away, but it was neat to see anyway. There was also a simulation of the control room during an Apollo launch, and everything shook, and I couldn't help thinking that, although I wasn't nervous during the simulation, if it had been real, and the ground and control room and windows had shaken like that, I think I would have been freaked out by the extent of the power and the ground shaking.
Lots of things made me far more nervous about space travel instead of more comfortable with it. We/they must be out of their minds to do these things. They said the reason viewing areas are 3 miles away, is because the amount of explosives in a rocket was the same as a nuclear bomb. How insane is that for everyone involved?! And we do this regularly??? Is 3 miles even far enough away to escape a nuclear-type blast?!
The more I learn, the more I fear for these people. I don't think it's cooler and I don't think more along the lines of "Gee! I wish I could do this!" I think "HELL NO!" But there are people who know all of this, and more, and think "Cool!" - Must be out of their minds!
Loss
I am bad a this. Any kind of loss. You'd think I'd get better with it over time. Certain kinds of losses anyway. I don't. They're all horrible. Loss due to death being the worst of course. But other losses too. Friends moving away, loss of trust, loss of faith, loss of items... I don't do well with loss. I want the people and things I love to be around me forever.
Medical
Oh boy....
Too much I can't say. But I will say this: Make sure your elderly family members have all their documents in order, so that if there is ever a medical emergency, someone has the authority to help them and advocate on their behalf. Without papers, no one has the authority to view their records, to talk to doctors, or to make decisions on their behalf. Being related by blood does not automatically give you that right. Get durable medical power of attorney papers. Get health care surrogate papers. Get HIPPA forms for individual doctors at the very least. We should all have these filled out for ourselves too. The younger we are, the less we think we need them, but the reality is, tragedy can strike anyone at any age at any time.
The site that hosts this template's images went down. I have no idea if the outage is temporary or permanent. I've re-uploaded the images to Blogger and I think I've fixed them all. If anything looks "off" with this page (re missing or wonky looking background images) let me know.
* Note: This isn't a One Word post! All the template images really did go *Poof!*
Gallery
I had to go to a gallery once for a class. I still don't understand what the purpose was. We were probably supposed to feel a deep connection of some sort. - I get bored in museums.
After the class trip, a bunch of us went out for lunch, and the teacher joined us. Everyone was sitting around, talking. Most were fawning over the teacher and asking her lots of questions, which she answered. I don't think I asked anything, but I listened. At one point, a guy in the class started talking about something. I think he may have been enthusiastically telling a story. Eventually the teacher interrupted him and told him that here she was, with us, a rare opportunity for us to ask questions of her and learn about her and her insights, and here he was talking about himself.
- This teacher was a piece of work.
I also remember that, at one point, she said she liked stuffed grape leaves. She had some on her salad. I had some on mine too. I was saving mine for last because I also liked them. After she finished hers, she asked if I was going to eat mine. I said yes. I just hadn't gotten to it yet. She paused, then asked me again, as if I hadn't answered correctly. - I gave the same answer again. She seemed shocked that I didn't give her my grape leaves. - She had her own!
Balloon
The Red Balloon. I remember the red balloon and then lots of balloons and being sad for the kid who lost his balloon. I'm not sure I'd want to watch it again now. I don't like movies that made me sad. But I did like the movie. I bet it's on youtube somewhere. (Yup, it is.)
Shelter
Did you know you can be blacklisted from adopting animals at all major shelters? There's a central database shelters can check to prevent them from adopting out pets to people who are hoarders, neglectful, or abusive to animals. I'm not sure if this database is nationwide or citywide, but check with your local shelters if you know of someone who should be on that list.
Track
I remember the day someone I know very well figured out a sport they excelled at. Track. Ironic I thought, that the one sport they did better than anything else, was running as fast as they could, trying with all their might to get away from, and be ahead of, everyone else. Running... in circles. A great big circle. This was the sport they did best.
Ants
Wow, again, a 5 year old memory. What is it with childhood stuff always popping straight to mind? I guess that's when I thought about ants. Now, not so much. Red ants and black ants. And ant hills... and ant farms!
Have you see the ant farms with the blue stuff? The blue gel? That seems wrong to me. I know most people considered them to be "just ants," but still... that can't be healthy. It seems mean.
Carnival
I loved carnivals. I only find them creepy now, as an adult. I still like them though. Amazing what we don't notice as kids.
Remember the McDonalds do it yourself carnivals? Those were cool. We'll never see giveaways like that again! I remember EVERYBODY having one at my school. Lots of mini carnivals with bean bag tosses, roll the ball into the cans, and knock down the cup games ... with turnouts of 3 or 4 people!
Maze
♫ "It's a maze this garden it's a maze of ways..." ♫
You know the best way to do a maze is from the end to the beginning right? No? Now you do :)
* Some people say pick one directly and always turn that way. That doesn't always work for tricky mazes, but it's another strategy to try. Or you could do what the family who got stuck in a corn maze did when it started to get dark. Call the police on your cell phone.
Once again I think I've done this one before. Probably due to a different word that makes this same song come to mind:
♫The King is holding a Festival! I wish to go to the festival! And the ball!
I miss my kingdom up in the sky...
More than anything...♫
That's what comes into my head first. I could write about other festivals, of course, but my 60 seconds is up!
* AH HA! I'm right!!!! "Festival" was the word 11 days ago (2/1/12)! - Well at least I'm consistent.
Pony
"... stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni."
Um... what? I'm going to have to look that up. There must be a story behind it.
* Ok got it: In the 18th century, "Macaroni" was British slang for a type of overdressed high society person. The Yankee Doodle song was meant to insult colonists by suggesting that Yankees were so clueless and backwards that they could stick a feather in a cap, and believe that simple addition would elevate the cap (and themselves) to a level of high fashion comparable to the "Macaronis." Rather than take offense, colonists embraced the song and sang it with pride.
My guess is the colonists did that to annoy the British during battle. It's kind of funny if you think about it. Imagine the insult was something more relatable to today. Imagine a warring country called the other side a bunch of clowns. Then imagine that other side dressed themselves up as clowns as they pummeled their opposition!
So... completely un-pasta related. Who knew?
Butterflies emerging from cocoons... ugly ducklings transforming into swans... What about someone who's already beautiful? What happens when a beautiful person goes into a cocoon? I've never known one who came out again. What happens to them?
Walls
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Camera
My first camera used 110 film. I loved it. I also loved learning how to develop my own pictures in school. I think I wrote about that already. Using the dark room and the chemicals and the special paper and tongs... We only developed black and white photos. I don't think I ever developed color film.
Photos... negatives... I wonder, in the future (let's say 20 or more years from now), if we want to get copies from negatives someday, do you think it will even be possible?
Sacred
I remember a teacher I had, who was intrigued by the power of words and symbols. About how people could revere a symbol but behave entirely differently towards the actual thing it represented - and see nothing wrong with this.
She gave the example of a group of men who were outraged by the burning of a flag. They shouted at reporters about how the people who burned the flag had disrespected this country. All the while, these shouting indignant men were chewing tobacco and spitting on the ground between sentences.
So we have:
1) People burning a piece of cloth. - Forget what it symbolizes. They didn't physically harm anyone or anything of our country. What they burned was a piece of fabric.
2) Indignant men standing around actually spitting ON our country as they spoke.
Chief
Big Chief Steve
We had a summer carnival type of thing at my day camp when I was very little. About 4 to 6 years old. I can't remember the name of the carnival. I want to say "Color Wars" but I think that was something different involving competitions. This was like a carnival or fair. We got a certain amount of "Wampum" (different colored paper that represented money) each day, and we could earn extra by winning certain sports or games or doing well in our activities at camp. Then we could use our wampum to play games at the carnival.
I remember we called the head of the camp "Big Chief Steve."
I also remember a kid saying their parent took their wampum to work and copied a whole bunch of extras onto colored paper using the office's machine (- Basically printed a bunch of fake money for their kid!) So that kid was then super rich in wampum and could do whatever they wanted. Smart parent ;)
Wagon
Didn't have one. Can you believe that? I never had a red wagon to ride around in as a child.
I also think of covered wagons. Remember how people sometimes had a single wagon wheel as a yard decoration? Maybe leaning against a tree? I remember, several times, thinking about locations where I'd seen lone wagon wheels and imagining gathering them up to make new wagons.
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