Many people have, at one time or another, described their jobs as "shovelling manure." Last week, this was literally true for me. A local mushroom farm sells their leftover compost by the truckload for a you-can't-afford-to-pass-this-up price. Our neighbor has a pickup truck. Hence the need for an extra shower that day.
Changing lives one soda bottle at a time: Filipino entrepreneur Illac Diaz brings light to darkened homes.
My afflication has a name: earworm. According to this WebMD article: They bore into your head. They won't let go. There's no known cure. Earworms can attack almost anyone at almost any time. More prosaically, it's "stuck song syndrome," a song or song fragment that takes over your brain and will not go away.
On Sunday, our otherwise wonderful pastor, in an otherwise wonderful sermon, reiterated his determination to have us sing simple "praise choruses" at all our services, even the most traditional, so that they will stick in our heads and we'll have them handy in times of need. I've complained about this before, because what is apparently comfort to him is torture to me.
Stuck song syndrome annoyed, frustrated, and irritated women significantly more than men. And earworm attacks were more frequent—and lasted longer—for musicians and music lovers. Slightly neurotic people also seemed to suffer more.
Well, there you have it. Female, music lover, and slightly neurotic. My own perfect storm.
With a hat tip to Liz, I pass on this Salon article by Kate Fridkis, A Home-Schooler Goes to College. I read the article, and thought it well-written and an accurate description of some of the shocks that await an unschooled child who goes off to college. I thought it might be an encouragement to homeschoolers, and help others understand them a little better. But after reading the comments below the article, I'm no longer sure. It's almost always a mistake for me to read the comments to major blogs or newspaper articles: they generally make it very difficult for me to remain in my little bubble of isolated naïveté, where people actually care about listening to and trying to understand those who are different from themselves.
Our grandchildren are growing so fast. Joy (seven months) has progressed to crawling, sitting, creeping, and now pulling herself up since we saw her in August. Joseph (15 months) clearly shows that he understands much, and is beginning to communicate, in three languages. The older children also seem to have changed significantly in the two months since we were last together. How miserable it must have been to be a long-distance grandparent in the days before blog posts, Skype, videos, and digital cameras! I suck in newly-uploaded media like a camel at an oasis.
Tomato with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for.... Here's good news for gardeners with young boys.
A team of Finnish researchers found that sprinkling tomatoes with human urine mixed with wood ash was the ultimate eco-friendly fertiliser. It worked just as well with cucumber, corn, cabbage and other crops. The mixture produced bumper harvests when compared to untreated plants. ... The university study ... found using nitrogen-rich urine does not carry any risk of disease.
Hmmm. Two young grandsons whose home is heated by a wood fire. And I thought their record-breaking harvest this year was due to their new watering schedule.
We had a taste of autumn a week ago, but after a weekend that would have inspired the original Noah—nearly doubling the rainfall record set in 1954—summer is back. The foretaste is a promise of more pleasant days to come, however. October is a lovely month in so many places!
For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!
Once again I forgot that Google Reader doesn't catch embedded videos. Now I've added the link to #2; if you were confused by what your feedreader showed you, please try again. It's a story not to miss!
Our new church doesn't do hymns, either, and so I generally have a different modal minor Hebrew-sounding earworm every week. It's one minor reason to look forward to Sunday: chances are the earworm will be replaced (though it usually takes a day or two for an earworm to take hold). The jury's still out if last week's earworm will make it two weeks in a row...
The rationale for deliberately implanting earworms falls apart in the face of my poor lyrical memory. I'm stuck with fragments of a piece and a few words, if that. There's nothing comforting about that.
Noah asked if thew soda bottle light was real. When I said yes, he wanted to put one in our house.
It would be pretty cool for their playroom. The only problem is cutting a hole in the roof. That and the fact that you probably don't get quite as much sun as in the Philippines. And they don't have to worry about wintertime cold. Still, I'm with him. :)
I wish our "praise songs" were "modal minor Hebrew-sounding." Sounds like the kind of earworm I'd enjoy for a little while. Though even the best gets really tiresome. I didn't mind last weeks choir anthem much the first three dozen repetitions, but it even wakes me up in the middle of the night.
