Footle and Grok

Apologies to dog lovers.

Just as I was about to type this, Chewie jumped on my lap. Since he weighs twenty-three pounds, he displaced everything, including my laptop. To appease him, I promised I’d find some good cat quotes. That research turned out to be entertaining for me too.

I hope you enjoy these quotes even if you prefer dogs. All pets are wonderful.

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In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

Terry Prachett

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When Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time.

Seanan McGuire

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A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Mark Twain

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A lie is like a cat: you need to stop it before it gets out the door or it’s really hard to catch.

Charles M. Blow

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If cats could write history, their history would be mostly about cats.

Eugen Weber

There are too many awesome videos out there. I promise not to share them all but, this one that I saw today is too good not to share.

I learned about Vsauce from watching Veritasium. The Vsauce videos tend to be longer, but this one is short and has a lot of amazing science. About halfway through, it explains atomic clocks in simple, understandable language. It also shows why we should be thrilled the earth spins.

Check it out here. It’s ten minutes of wonder and wow. I love it when I discover something new that makes me just a little smarter.

Happy Old Rocks Day.

This is one of my favorite holidays. In the past, I have talked about books and facts about rocks and geology. Today I want to share some geology jokes.

Most rock jokes are dumb, even by my standards. When I was a geology student at Humboldt State University, our geology club sold bumper stickers that read:

I had this on my truck until I killed it in 2004. It was a great conversation starter. 

The following jokes aren’t as good as my bumper sticker, but I hope they get a chuckle out of you. I tried to include jokes that didn’t have weirdly pronounced words (how would you pronounce wacke?) so that everyone can enjoy the puns.

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Q: Why did the geologist take his girlfriend to the quarry?

A: He wanted to get a little boulder.

Q: Did you hear about the geologist who was reading a book about Helium?

A: He just couldn’t put it down.

Q: What do you do with a dead geologist?

A: Barium

Q: What fruit contains Barium and double Sodium?

A: BaNaNa!

Q: Why was the sedimentary rock extra cheap?

A: Because it was on shale.

Q: Mountains aren’t funny….?

A: They’re hilarious.

Q: Where do geologists like to relax?

A: In a rocking chair 

I’m easily influenced by YouTube videos. It’s a good thing I don’t watch too many, or else I might do crazy things. Instead, I focus on videos that match my goals.

One of my goals is to super-declutter my house in 2021. Reading decluttering books helps me work on this goal, but books can take a while to finish. YouTube videos are quick and motivating.

A declutterer that I follow on Facebook (she developed the “2021 Items Gone in 2021” chart that I love) created a January YouTube playlist with a bunch of other declutter YouTubers. You can find the list of videos here. I watched them all in one morning and then removed more than 100 items from my house in the afternoon. Score!!

This week’s playlist is about decluttering the kitchen, but I didn’t do anything in my kitchen. I share the kitchen, and Hubby has strong opinions about what needs to stay in that room. I decluttered my craft binders and a shadow box instead. I also looked inside a random box that was sitting on a high shelf. It turned out to be filled with binders. Gone!

As you can tell, decluttering makes me happy. If it makes you happy, but you need a little motivation, check out this YouTube playlist. These declutterers are doing a different topic each week in January. I look forward to reaching my decluttering goal.

Happy National Bird Day.

Whenever I think of birds, I think of dinosaurs, because as we all know, birds are dinosaurs. However, what came to my mind today was a question often asked by paleontologists. Why did avian dinosaurs survive the K-Pg extinction (the one with the asteroid) while non-avian dinosaurs did not?

(My actual question is how did any animal survive the extinction event, but in honor of National Bird Day, I’ll focus on birds.) 

There are many theories, but I learned of one possibility from a book I read and a paper written in 2018. The ancestors of birds today survived (even though Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops didn’t) because they burrowed underground.

Birds that lived in the trees or walked around on the ground would have faced devastation when the asteroid hit, just like all the other dinosaurs. However, birds (and other animals) that burrowed were able to survive. As the world recovered, they filled empty habitats, like trees, water, and land. But burrowing was the key.

When you hear or see a bird today, remember that they are dinosaurs, and they all evolved from birds that burrowed. It’s fun to think about as they soar over our heads.

I love memes. I like funny ones, snarky ones, and happy ones. I especially love inspirational ones. Each year I go through all the memes I have saved and print out some to motivate me in the new year. I thought you might find some motivation from them, too, so I’m sharing some here.

I’ve also been having problems with WordPress, and this is a test to see if I can get the gallery to work. I hope you get inspired by these, no matter how I display them.

Well, 2020 didn’t end with thousands of people in Times Square or large parties with lots of kissing at midnight, but there were still some amazing celebrations.

I watched Midway and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and was asleep by 11 p.m. On New Year’s Day, we visited the same friends we’d had Christmas with. They had recorded the New Year’s Eve Seattle virtual display sponsored by T-Mobile, and we watched it that afternoon. Remarkable!

With the Space Needle as their focus, programmers created an uber-creative, ten-minute, computerized show. You can see it here on the K5 website. I have watched it over and over.

I like that people found unique ways to bring in the new year. We could have moped that things weren’t the same, but instead, people used the opportunity to bring new ideas to light.

I don’t use T-Mobile and don’t intend to, but I love their New Year’s show and gladly share it. I hope everyone’s year is as magical as this display.

William Carlos Williams is one of my favorite poets, and that list is pretty short. I read a picture book about his life that was fascinating. While he wrote poems that were hundreds of pages long, he mastered short, descriptive poems called imagism.

This poem about January is a good example of his short style. I have been pulled out of my writing by the wind rattling my office window. I’m always surprised by the weather, but I never let it stop me. I think that is a good attitude for a new year. Never let the winds of life stop you.

January

by William Carlos Williams

Again I reply to the triple winds
running chromatic fifths of derision
outside my window:
Play louder.
You will not succeed. I am
bound more to my sentences
the more you batter at me
to follow you.
And the wind,
as before, fingers perfectly
its derisive music.

I love to declutter my email and social media at the start of the year. It’s easy to do while watching TV, and I notice the difference immediately.

I end up with a lot of junk email thanks to giving stores my email address and subscribing to newsletters for various reasons. Most of the time, I ignore them, but now is a good time to delete them instead.

The only social media that I spend any time with is Facebook. Like my email, it gets cluttered with all sorts of groups and pages that I’m no longer interested in. I never cared about some of these groups, but many of them, like my running streak groups, were important to me in 2020 but not in 2021. It’s time to part ways.

As with all decluttering, only delete or unsubscribe from items that no longer help your life. If you use the coupons from the emails, keep them. If you have made friends on various social media sites, stick with it. 

The point of decluttering is to remove everything that is a distraction to clearly see and use that which is important to you. When I unsubscribe from my unwanted emails, I spend more time dealing with the ones that matter. 

In 2021, I hope we all get to spend more time with what matters. It’s a beautiful day to start.

Happy end of 2020! My last hurrah of the year is dealing with annoying website issues, but I’m smart enough to get my blog out no matter what happens. Even 2020 can’t stop me.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year’s Eve. Take some time to remember all the good that happened this year. There was a lot, even though it seemed overshadowed by the pandemic. I had friends get married, friends have babies, and many friends and family graduate. All of these are events to remember.

My marathons were canceled, but I did run/walk every day in 2020 and finished 1,051 miles. That’s worth celebrating. 

Things will not change immediately in 2021, but the pandemic will end and that is something to celebrate too. Happy New Year’s Eve!