Footle and Grok

This is something I work on. Often, my decision is to wait. However, creating my YouTube channel has shown me that not waiting can be a lot more rewarding. I’m glad I made a decision. 

Don’t be a squirrel.

After four months of scanning papers and photos, I finished the last pile. I’m so glad to do something else. All told, I scanned 5,300 items. I had no idea that I had so much paper in my life. 

The funny thing is that I didn’t know I had most of the paper and probably could have just tossed it. However, it felt safer to scan it first because I have no idea what the future holds. 

I have a new process so that I’ll never have to do such a large scanning job again. All the cards and letters that I receive I put in my inbox. At the end of the month, I scan them and save them with my digital photos from the month. Most months, I only have to scan five or six items. Simple and fast.

So what’s next on my decluttering list? I have a ton of tools to organize and two storage rooms to go through with the Hubby. It’s a good thing I’ll have more time now that the scanning is done. 

I was in the mood for a good quote, so I went looking for one about spring. I meant spring, the season, but most of the quotes I found were about spring, the verb. I was about to try another word when I found a quote I liked by Pliny the Elder. (A fan-favorite for those who listen to the Sawbones podcast [everyone should listen to the Sawbones podcast.]) 

So here is a spring quote that has nothing to do with the seasons but is pretty wise for a guy who lived almost 2,000 years ago and died during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD.

From the end spring new beginnings.

Pliny the Elder

(If you can’t see the video, click on the post title. It will take you to the Footle and Grok site.)

In 2019, I spent a month in Alaska. I really wanted to see a grizzly bear in the wild, up close but not too up close. I saw my bear on a TV inside a bus on a very rainy day in Denali. I’d love to see a bear as this guy did. The ears are too cute!

Camp Nanowrimo is halfway done, and my book is progressing wonderfully. It helps that I’m posting my YouTube write-ins every day in April, so I’m writing at least ten minutes every day. This consistency keeps the story from being buried in other thoughts, so I have no problem writing it each day.

While writing every day is a joy, doing a video every day is a combination of work and fun. I’ll be glad when the month is over, and I can create other types of writing videos. 

A friend of mine who is subscribed to the channel says my videos are improving. I’d say, like working daily on a book, creating a video every day gives me a chance to improve the new techniques I’ve learned. 

You can see for yourself if my videos are improving by checking out Jenn’s Writing World. My cats make a lot of appearances, and I’ve added a helpful quote at the end of each episode. My next step is to do some marketing (which I’m horrible at) to grow my writing community and create a space for people who want to write.

Thank you to everyone for supporting me in this project. It’s a grand adventure.

I’ve been watching a lot of vlog brothers videos by Hank and John Green (it’s nice that they’re only four minutes long.) I knew of Hank first because of his science videos, but John Green is well known because he writes YA books that everyone reads.

Except me.

And that is what I find interesting. I don’t read the books he writes, but when John did a short video of eighteen books that he liked, I enjoyed learning about new books I would probably never read. He didn’t list them because I might like them. He listed them because he liked them.

I read a lot of books, but I don’t talk about most of them because they’re not books that I think would interest anyone else.

So I went through my Goodreads list and made a list of the books I gave five stars in 2020. This list only covers new books I read last year, not all the books I reread. They’re not listed in any order, but they’re all books I loved.

Fifteen books I loved in 2020:

1. The Gift of the Magpie by Donna Andrews (I read every book in this series)
2. Next to Last Stand by Craig Johnson (I never miss a Walt Longmire book)
3. The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte (A marvelous dinosaur book)
4. The Boy from the Woods by Harlen Coben (I hadn’t read this author in years)
5. The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli (A Newberry Award winner that I’ve loved for years)
6. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (A book I loved from a genre I never read)
7. Emergency Skin by N. K. Jemisin (The best story I read in 2020)
8. Running with Sherman by Christopher McDougall (I didn’t expect to love this book, but it was delightful)
9. In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka (It’s a good thing this is short because I read it several times)
10. 26 Marathons by Meb Keflezighi (I love running memoirs, and this was filled with unexpected insights)
11. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin (This is one of the best children’s stories ever!)
12. Broken Places Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor (I read several TED books in 2020, and this one was the best)
13. The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats up the Marvel Universe by Ryan North (From the most fun and well-written graphic novel series ever)
14. We Don’t Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins (A funny and fun picture book [with a good lesson])
15. Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss (A well-done book about how food companies make processed food that isn’t good for us [surprise!])

There it is. Fifteen books I loved reading. 

Happy Scrabble Day.

I love words, but I don’t love Scrabble (I prefer Trivial Pursuit.) I get frustrated when I don’t have the letter I want or when someone beats me to the perfect location on the board. I guess I like to be in control of my words.

However, Scrabble does have an interesting history, so in honor of today, let’s explore this wordy game with the help of Mental Floss.

• Alfred Mosher Butts created the first version of Scrabble in 1933. He decided how many tiles to use and their points by calculating the letter frequency in the articles on The New York Times’ front page.
• Butts originally called the game Lexico, and then Criss-Cross Words. 
• The game hasn’t changed much. It still has the same number of squares and tiles.
• When you use all seven of your tiles to spell a word, it’s called a BINGO. 

For more fun facts and scandals, read the entire Mental Floss article. 

It may not be my favorite game, but I find it fascinating what can be done with a few letters and a game board.

The best way to get me to do something is to tell me I can’t. (I wonder if that could work with my diet?) I inherited a stubborn streak from my dad, and he inherited it from his mom.

Once I get an idea in my head, I figure out how to do it. I think that’s why I run. This June, I plan to run three half marathons on three consecutive weekends. I will definitely take pictures.

***It turns out Ingenuity will not fly today. The flight date has been moved to April 14, hopefully.***

I was listening to a local morning radio show, and he was talking about why we celebrate April Fool’s Day. He said that New Year’s Day was in April until 1582. That confused me because I was pretty sure Julius Ceasar moved New Year’s Day from March to January. It turns out we were both right.

The new year was celebrated around the beginning of spring until Julius Ceasar officially moved it to January 1. It stayed that way until the middle ages (This is the part I didn’t know.)

Having January 1 as New Year’s Day was considered pagan, and in AD 567, the Council of Tours changed it. New Year’s Day was celebrated on different days from March 1 to March 25 to Easter and other religious holidays.

In 1582, the Gregorian calendar re-established New Year’s Day as January 1. Of course, not all countries adopted this calendar right away, so I imagine New Year’s still wandered for a while.

There you go. It might sound strange to talk about New Year’s Day in April, but I guess people in the middle ages thought it was a good idea.

NASA is planning to fly Ingenuity tomorrow. Can you imagine? Humans are going to fly on Mars. I assume that Perseverence is going to record the event even though the rover is far away from the little helicopter. There will be a lifestream report from NASA early on the 12th that you can watch here.

Whether or not Ingenuity successfully flies in the thin Martian atmosphere, we will learn something. This test gets us one step closer to putting boots on the red planet, an event that I am all for. I can’t wait to see what happens.