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Gah! Why do I keep forgetting about this blog?!

Thursday I learned some stuff about rabies. One interesting things is that, the one episode of Scrubs where Dr. Cox kills a bunch of people by transplanting rabies-infected organs into them? That has really happened. Skunks and raccoons are two of the big rabies carriers in the US. Remember when Matthew's girlfriend Ingrid got rabies and died on Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman? That was hilarious.

Today I learned about www.abebooks.com and their "book sleuth," which is where you can post a book if you can't remember the title or author and people will help you figure out what it is. One day I will get around to posting my stupid horror story about the tiger (or whatever it was) and somebody better be able to help me.

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Man, I had 2 good ideas for this blog today, but my attention span is not up for it. Instead I learned that the big black birds we saw on the rocks in La Jolla were Great Cormorants. They live in all kinds of different places around the world.

I also learned that chameleons don't really change their color to match their surroundings. They do change color, but they do it in response to their mood of physical state (temperature, health, etc). So, no purple chameleons with orange stripes like you see in the cartoons...unless he's in a purple with orange stripes kind of mood. Or wearing a sweater.

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Today I learned about a store called Muji. It's everywhere in Japan, and has stores in Europe, but is just now planning to open 2 stores in the US (in NY). It sounds sort of like Ikea in that it's supposed to be nice, well-designed stuff at a low price, but their big thing is that everything is as simple and neutral as possible. This article gives an example of a typical cutting board with a handle and a groove around it vs a Muji cutting board which would just be a block of wood. It seems like they sell everything from clothes to furniture to housewares. It sounds interesting.

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Friday I learned that "balaclava" is another name for a ski mask.

Saturday I learned that "shandy" is a type of beer flavored with/mixed with lemonade (or pop or something of that nature).

Today I learned that the Canon Elph is like the size of a pack of Trident gum. Waaaant. I am looking at new cameras b/c I want to ask for one for Christmas. It will be exciting.

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Yesterday I learned that there are like, official levels of security for paper shredders. We got this awesome new shredder at work (nickname: the beast) that shreds CDs (yes, I tried it) and for some reason people keep having me shred stuff; I must clearly be pretty immature if everyone in the office knows how excited I'll get about putting stuff in a shredder. Anyway, ours is very nice and my boss said that it's a high security level; he said it was a level below the CIA level. I guess he was probably joking about that, but there are 6 different security levels for shredders. Ours looks like a level 3 or 4; it makes cool confetti. I have shredded 247 library card applications and a bunch of volunteer apps with private information on them. Also, if you stick your tongue to the outside of the shredder, it stops shredding b/c it knows you have your tongue on there. Yes, I'm sure.

Today I learned that a previous blog on Skybus was wrongers. They announced 4 new cities today, but none of them were Cancun or Nassau. Skybus is now going to be flying to Biloxi, Ft Myers, Chattanooga, and Milwaukee. I think they're flying to way too many places in Florida; I was hoping for something like the SC/Georgia area, or Texas or something. Somewhere I've never been.

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Today I learned what a "denier" is, and also other ways to measure textiles.

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Saturday I learned that one explanation for why "the clap" is called "the clap" is that guys would clap their wang in between their hands in order to expel pus out of the urethra when they were all grody and infected. Yikes. Grossest thing ever. (Other less terrifying explanations include a shortening of the old French word "clapier" which meant brothel. Yeah. Let's go with that one.)

Sunday I learned why DVDs and CDs always come out on Tuesdays; or, I sort of did. There are a lot of explanations (see here and here): the timing of sales figure releases, slow business on Tuesdays, not having to stock the shelves on a busy weekend night, etc. I think, in the end, that it's all of these reasons combined with the fact that Tuesday has been the release date for many years now and it's just when people know to look for new stuff.

Today I learned that Skybus may start selling tickets to Cancun and Nassau beginning in October. Hmmm. I can has spring break?

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Brusha brusha brusha....Today I learned about toothpaste: this is a very informative article even though it is obscenely outdated. Who knew that baking soda doesn't do anything and that Colgate Total is an awesome toothpaste? I'm a fiercely loyal Crest buyer (for...no actual reason) but I may try the Colgate Total. I am so obsessed with toothpaste. I once had someone think I was reenacting the scene from Home Alone where Kevin buys a toothbrush because I was standing in the aisle at WalMart for like 20 minutes all, "Is this one approved by the American Dental Association? I don't see it on the label."

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Today I tried to learn about "dewpoints" and "frostpoints" and stuff, but that was confusing. Instead I learned that the singer Mika is younger than me, born in April of '83. Dammit! Quit being younger than me, successful creative people! God. That's just rude.

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Today I learned about cabbage. I'm sort of obsessed with cabbage and coleslaw lately. I did not like coleslaw until 2004, when all of a sudden I did like it. Cabbage is very high in vitamin C...maybe I am lacking vitamin C and that's why I think about cabbage all the time? And want to eat copious amounts of KFC or Bob Evans coleslaw? I do not know.

Cabbage is related to broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, and some other vegetables that you probably would have figured it was related to. You can make sauerkraut or kimchi with cabbage. You can also make coleslaw. Did I mention coleslaw? Because that comes from cabbage too.

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Today I learned about the different types of fillings you can get in your teeth. I do not want to talk about it. You can read here if you really want to.

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Yesterday I learned what a "haruspex" is. A haruspex practices haruspicy, or the study of the entrails of dead animals that have been sacrificed. Being a haruspex is an ancient Greek thing. Also, a gross thing.

Today I learned that the population of Columbus is over 700,000. Include the metro area and you'll add a million onto that. That's a lot of people.

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OMG, I totally went reference librarian on today's blog. Twice in the past couple of weeks, this guy has come in (once with a younger lady and once with an older lady) to my work to make copies. They speak a little English but speak to each other in a different language. Before I really paid attention I just assumed they were speaking Spanish, but when I tuned in I realized that it definitely wasn't Spanish. At all. It also wasn't Portuguese or any language that kind of sounds like Spanish. It totally started driving me nuts and I HAD to figure out what language these people were speaking.

Well, I had only one real clue to go on...the stuff they were copying was documents from Oaxaca, Mexico. So just now I went to a Wikipedia article on indigenous languages of the Americas. On that page I found a map of Mexico with different regions colored in to show what languages are common in which areas. I then opened up a new tab and went to the Wikipedia article on Oaxaca, Mexico to see where in Mexico that is. I compared the two maps, and the most widespread native language in the Oaxaca area is Zapoteco. Finally, I went to the Wikipedia article on the Zapotec language, where it's confirmed that the majority of Zapotec speakers live in the state of Oaxaca. Woohoo! I feel very smart. Obviously I have no way of confirming that this is the language that my customer speaks (without, um, asking him, but that seems kind of overly nosy), but I think it is a good guess. I think this was some pretty slick librarian work, if I do say so myself. Somebody give me a damn job.

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Ok, first of all, do not read this and PLEASE do not click on the links if you are squeamish/super sensitive about tiny baby animals. I have a decent tolerance for hearing about gross things but this one almost puts me over the edge.

Today I learned about balut, which is a Vietnamese delicacy. Balut is a fertilized duck egg where you take the egg, boil it with the baby duck growing inside of it, and then eat the egg and the dead baby duck--beak, bones, tiny feathers and all. It looks like some weird, veiny testicle/eyeball/fetus blob. People might have heard of this because I guess they ate it on Survivor and Fear Factor (I could never watch Fear Factor b/c I was afraid the people would vomit), but I saw it on a travel show or something a year or two ago. For some reason it came up earlier today (why?) and I re-looked it up. This really grosses me out. I know there's nothing wrong with it and eggs and meat in general is all just as gross, but for some reason balut is too much for me. You can read about eating one here.

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Today I learned about the iPod Touch. I don't know how long people have been talking about it but I only heard about it today. It basically looks like the iPhone except it's just an iPod, not a phone. It does look pretty cool and I like how skinny it is. Jared assures me that it is highly scratch-proof even though it looks fragile to me. They come out on Sept 30, in 8 and 16 GB. I mean, I'm not getting one or anything. They just look neat.

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Today I learned about Ferdinand Magellan, mainly that he took 270 people with him on his journey to circumnavigate the globe, and only 18 made it back to Spain alive. Yikes. (Magellan was not one of the 18, by the way.) Also, he took five ships with him initially: Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria, and Santiago. Three years after they left, only Victoria made it back.

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Today I learned that the back seat in the Civic hybrid doesn't fold down, because that's where the battery is. One sentence blog entries suck, but that's all I got.

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Saturday I learned the etymology of the word "lollygag," because it is a funny word. Etymonline.com says "dawdle, dally," 1862, lallygag, Amer.Eng., perhaps from dial. lolly "tongue" + gag "deceive, trick." The Word Detective has this to say:

Unfortunately, the origin of "lollygag" is unknown, but there are clues from which we may, perhaps, be able to extrapolate the roots of "lollygag." ("Extrapolate" in this context, by the way, is a fancy word for "guess.")

First up in the batting order of possible "lollygag" clues is "loll," which is a very old word originally meaning "to droop or dangle." We use "loll" today to mean to relax or pass time idly, the sort of behavior that vacations are designed to encourage. There seems to be a plausible connection between this "utterly relaxed" meaning of "loll" and the "wasting time" sense of "lollygag."

Another bit of evidence might be found in the fact that "to loll" also means to let your tongue hang out, and that "lolly" is an English slang term for tongue (quite possibly the source of the name of our friend the lollipop, by the way). Perhaps "lollygagging" arose from the perception that lazy lollygaggers were adept at exercising only one muscle -- their tongues.

Sunday I learned about the Waffle House. How did I learn that? BY GOING THERE. Oh yes, I am a Waffle House virgin no longer. Despite scary numbers of flies and the possibility of getting a breakfast meal completely covered in cheese, I have to say that my food (pecan waffle and a side of bacon) was actually super good. I love waffles and I love pecans. I want all my waffles to have pecans from now on. Um, as for a specific learning, I learned that you pay up at the register and not at your table. That was a funny night. Nice meeting you, Waffle House.

Today I learned about sushi. All I did really was read the article on Wikipedia, but it had a lot of information in it. I learned about the different types, like nigiri-zushi (the blob of rice with a piece of fish sitting on tip of it) versus maki-zushi (rolled sushi). I learned about some things that can go in sushi such as "gobo" which is a type of vegetable and "masago" which is a type of fish egg. I actually do not eat sushi mostly because of the different vegetables like cucumber and raw carrot that are always showing up in there. There is almost no raw vegetable that I like, and cucumber is especially heinous. Other than that it all sounds pretty good.