It is true that the early worm gets the worm. Or I got really lucky.

I’ve been switching between staying at a hostel in Bozeman and camping at a state park* near Three Forks as we hunt for a rental. The state park campground is small and popular. I get off work at 9 p.m. so I knew I needed to get a site Thursday morning before I went to work.

I got to the campground at 7:30 a.m. Every site was occupied, but I hoped someone was leaving. I talked to the wonderful rangers and they told me the people at site 4 and 7 might be leaving.

I walked through the campground and met the nice woman and her dog at site 7. They we’re leaving and I snagged that site.

By 7:40 I had a site and headed back to Bozeman. What a lucky break.

I love staying at this campground am glad I’m an early riser. I’m also glad the rangers and the nice lady and her dog are early risers too. It takes a village get a worm.

*The Headwaters of the Missouri State Park is marvelous, and if you are ever traveling through Montana, you should stop. It has trails, a lovely picnic area, a swimming area, and a sweet campground with helpful and friendly rangers.

Nothing is as simple as it seems.

I like to share interesting trivia, but I always do some research first because facts shared on the internet are only about 60% trustworthy.

Recently I read that you can’t count to a billion in your lifetime because even if you counted night and day, it would take you about 125 years.

This is true but not the entire truth.

If you counted one number a second without stopping, it would only take you 31.69 years to reach one billion. That is certainly within your lifetime. However, this number is not doable for a human (computers are another story.)

Assuming you are counting aloud, it would take you more time to say them as the numbers get longer. For example, it takes no time to say “two” or “thirty-four,” but it takes much longer to say “fifty-five million, four hundred seventy-six thousand, eight hundred ninety-one. And you would have to say that over and over again as the numbers counted up.

So it might take you 125 years to say all the numbers between one and one billion out loud, but that would also depend on how fast you talk and when fatigue sets in. So I would say this trivia is more of an estimate than a fact.

This is Alfred. He is a cat. I have no idea what he is thinking. I need your help.

Let me know what Alfred is thinking. I’ll post the answers in a future post. Thanks.

Happy Vesuvius Day.

It seems strange to say “happy” since we’re commemorating a volcanic eruption that killed a lot of people. Most people have heard of the 79 AD eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and seen pictures of the casts of the dead. However, I was curious about a different part of this famous event. How do we know it erupted on August 24?

As I have discussed before, there have been many different calendars, and they don’t match. We say that Mt. Vesuvius erupted at noon on August 24, 79 AD; I believe we have adjusted that day for our modern calendars (at least, I assume so.) But how did they find a date to adjust?

Pliny the Elder was a famous man back around 79 AD. He wrote a ton of books and was a learned man. Unfortunately, he died during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius while trying to rescue some friends. His son, Pliny the Younger, wrote about his father’s death, giving us the date of the eruption.

However, that date has been questioned by some scientists. Seeds have been found that date the eruption later in the fall. In 2018, an inscription was found on a wall in Pompeii that places the eruption around October 17. This is not conclusive evidence (it’s tough to disagree with Pliny the Elder), but this makes sense to me. Dating an event that happened almost 2000 years ago can’t be easy, if for no other reason than calendars change all the time.

Vesuvius Day is still celebrated on today, but perhaps we could change it to Pliny the Elder Day to commemorate his death, although if he did die in the eruption, his death day might be up for debate too.

I like holidays like this one because it makes us ask questions, something I love to do.

When I saw this meme in my Facebook feed, I had to save it. It is me to a T.

I’ve had to meet a ton of new people this week at work. It seems like everyone but me is a returning employee (which is sad because we are seriously short-staffed.) I get a lot of training from my co-workers, but socializing with them at meal times is hard because they are comfortable with each other, and I am the new element.

So this week, I’ve been the top picture of Dumbo. Friendly but quiet. However, as my friends and family know, I eventually find my ears (like the bottom photo), and then I talk all the time.

Luckily, I work with some extreme extroverts (every introvert should have extrovert friends), and they have kept me involved with everyone. I like my job a lot (although when school starts next week, the work pace will go to plaid.) The best part is the people I work with. Even my boss is a great guy.

Anyone who has been to my house has seen a rather large plant in my family room. I rescued this umbrella plant from the trash can of my boss in 1996. He was packing up his office, and the plant was almost dead, so he was going to chuck it. I was still in a stage of life when I thought I could grow things, so I took it from him. My boss’s name was Tom, so I named the plant Tom.

As it turns out, I killed all the plants in my life and finally gave up my dreams of being a gardener. However, Tom kept growing. I would forget to water him, and he would grow. I’d ignore him, and he would grow. Twenty-six years later, he is still growing. Lucky for Tom, my hubby does water him when needed. Otherwise, Tom just sits in the window and grows.

I met another plant with a name at a nice, clean, and busy laundromat in Bozeman. I probably would not have noticed the plant I was sitting next to if there had not been a sign above it. I read signs when I see them, and this one I found charming.

The plant’s name is Lillian. That is a wonderful name for a peace lily. Since the plant looks rather healthy, I think the signs must work.

I once had a Stetsonia coryne cactus that I bought in Jerome, Arizona, so I named it Jerome Stetson (yes, I killed it.) I had several spider plants with names, but I don’t remember them (yep, all dead.) I grew a redwood seedling in college and planted it in the forest. It had a name, too, and I wish I could remember what it was. (As far as I know, I didn’t kill that one.)

Naming plants makes them more special. I know better than to try and grow a plant, but if I ever get a yen (please talk me out of it), I would definitely name it.

Do you name your plants? Let me know if you do and what the name is. Tom and Lillian need more friends.

If you said “spinosaurus” when you read the title of this post, then you keep up on dinosaur news. If you said, “Jennifer, you said dinosaurs were land animals,” thank you for reading my blog.

Dinosaurs do live on land. They were not full-time aquatic creatures like whales or sharks. However, one dinosaur was built to swim, and that was spinosaurus. (If one dinosaur can swim, I assume others did too, but we haven’t found them yet.)

I’m not a huge fan of spinosaurus because this guy has gotten a ton of press (which it probably deserves), and I like learning about many different types of dinosaurs, but the story of how the spinosaurus was discovered is remarkable.

I talk about the Shortwave podcast a lot because it is often my favorite. If you haven’t listened to this short form science show, I recommend starting with this one. The amount of luck and perseverance that went into locating the spinosaurus is almost unbelievable.

I have now been in Montana for two weeks. With any luck, we will have a rental soon, and Hubby and the kitties will join me. Hubby sent me a picture of Chewy being uber cute. I now know that my cat is seven wine bottles long.

In honor of my three kitties, I’d like to share some popular quotes that Mark Twain said about cats. Apparently, he was quite fond of them.

A man’s treatment of a dog is no indication of the man’s nature, but his treatment of a cat is. It is the crucial test. None but the humane treat a cat well. – “Winter-end Excursion to the Sutherd” (1902)

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction. – “An Incident,” Who Is Mark Twain?

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. – Pudd’nhead Wilson

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat. – Notebook, 1894

When I got married in 1995, I received a five-year diary as a gift. If you don’t know what a five-year diary is, it is a small book with a page for each day of the year. But instead of each page being for one day, the page is split into five sections of about four lines each. All you have to do is fill in four lines each day. When the year is over, you start over on the second section. At the end of five years, you have a wonderful record of your life.

I didn’t completely fill out my first five-year diary. So many days were just repeats and quite boring. But it’s fun to read previous years’ sections, even the boring parts.

The day I arrived in Montana, I bought a new five-year diary. We won’t be in Montana forever, so it will be fun to record our adventure here. (I bought mine at Barnes and Noble but this one from Amazon is the same one.)

If you have someone in your life (or yourself) who is starting a new stage of life, a five-year diary makes a lovely gift. I appreciate the one I got at my wedding and know I will enjoy looking through my Montana memories in years to come.

More trivia showed up in my email, and I had to share it with you since it is about my favorite Disney character.

Since birth, I have liked Winnie the Pooh (possibly before since Mom got her picture taken with the silly old bear at a mall while she was pregnant with me.) I like both E. H. Shepard’s and Disney’s pooh bear and have many items decorated in all things Pooh.

Did you know Winnie the Pooh was named after a real bear? This bear traveled more than most bears. Her name was Winnepeg, but everyone called her Winnie. (Check out the entire article here.)

Harry Colebourn was a Canadian soldier during World War I. While on his way to meet his troop in Quebec, he bought a bear cub for $20 at a train station in Ontario. (This seems bizarre to me, but perhaps it was a common practice to buy a bear in Canada back in the day.) Harry named the bear Winnepeg after his hometown, and she was nicknamed Winnie.

Winnie became the mascot of Harry’s troop, and when they headed to England, Winnie came along.

The little bear was very popular and quite tame, but when Harry’s unit was sent to France, he couldn’t take Winnie with him. Luckily, the London Zoo agreed to keep Winnie. This temporary situation became permanent because Winnie was so popular with the children who visited the zoo. 

One child who visited the zoo and Winnie was Christopher Robin. When A. A. Milne wrote about his son’s stuffed animals, Edward Bear became Winne the Pooh in honor of a sweet Canadian bear who found a home in London.

Where did the name Pooh come from? That is a story for another day.