Footle and Grok

I’m home!

I had a lot of fun visiting my parents for ten days, and now I want to spend time with my hubby and my cats. Tomorrow, I’ll have new goals and new blog posts. Have a great day!

Do you ever say “The best laid plans of mice and men”?

This is something I often say when things go awry. However, I never thought about where the phrase came from until it was mentioned in a book I was reading. That is when I learned the line was from a poem by Robert Burns called “To a Mouse.”

You can see the original poem here. It’s not easy to read. Here is the stanza with the line “The best laid schemes of mice and men.”

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

          Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

          For promis’d joy!

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!

I find it interesting that wherever I learned the phrase, it was “the best laid plans,” but the poem reads “the best laid schemes.” I wonder when it changed.

I hope you’ll read the entire translated poem. It is well done and quite insightful.

I’ve been reading a lot of nutrition labels.

Some foods have a lot of carbs—especially pizza. I love pizza (Wild Mike’s frozen pepperoni is the best!!!), but since carbs are being limited in my house, I needed to find a substitute. I didn’t want to give up pizza, just carbs.

Cauliflower crust pizza was an obvious choice, but I was hesitant. I once tried to substitute pasta with spaghetti squash, and that was a gross failure. I didn’t expect cauliflower crust to be any better.

To my great surprise, it was okay. Is it as good as my favorite Wild Mike’s pizza? No. But since it has a quarter of the carbs as regular pizza (no, it’s not carb-free, but it would probably be inedible if it was), I call it a winner.

The cauliflower crust frozen pizza I tried was by California Pizza Kitchen. I would compare it to a cracker crust. If you are looking for a low-carb pizza option, I’d give this a try. They have several topping options; I like pepperoni, mushroom, and sausage.

Do you have any favorite low-carb foods? Reading a bunch of nutrition labels has been an eye-opening experience. Carbs are everywhere.

Happy Ampersand Day!

I love punctuation and was going to write about some obscure ones. However, after an hour spent trying to find a way to type an exclamation comma, I decided that if MS Word, Unicode, and the internet didn’t want me to have this defunct symbol, I wasn’t going to write about it. (If you are curious what an exclamation comma is, check out this Grammar Girl post.)

I’ll get over my disappointment about the exclamation comma (I really want to use it), but in the meantime, let’s talk about the ampersand.

Why does a symbol that means “and” look like “&”? It turns out the ampersand we are all familiar with is a newer style called Carolingian. The older ampersand style was Italic, and it looks like a stylized “e” and “t.” Et was a Latin word that meant “and.” (click here to see the two different designs.)

I love it when questions have easy answers. I’m going to go use an ampersand in my short story of the day.

Hubby and I didn’t want to watch Mortal Engines because the preview looked horrible.

However, I have a soft spot for steampunk, so I checked it out from the library, figuring we could suffer through it.

Surprise, it’s a good movie. Not a great movie, but it’s visually interesting with a solid plot. We enjoyed it.

As I often do when watching movies, I googled to see if it was based on a book. Sure enough, it was. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve is book one in the Mortal Engines Quartet. The other three are Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices, and A Darkling Plain. The book is probably better than the movie, so I’m adding it to my TBR pile.

If you like futuristic dystopian movies with a steampunk flair, I recommend Mortal Engines. I’ll let you know how the books are later.

Happy Fight Procrastination Day and Read a Book Day.

These holidays seem to be opposites. I love to procrastinate by reading a book. Usually, I tell you not to procrastinate, but this time I think the book lovers should win.

Today is Saturday on Labor Day Weekend, so technically it’s a holiday. Holidays are made for procrastination, so don’t fight it. Forget that holiday.

Every day is a great day to read a book, so embrace Read a Book Day. I just finished Redwall, and it was awesome. I can’t wait to start book two. Completing all twenty-two books in the Redwall series is on my “50 Goals by 50 List.” Wait, does that mean I’m not procrastinating because I’m reading a book? Perhaps that’s the answer.

Find a book you have been procrastinating about reading and settle in for a lovely hour or so. You’ll get to enjoy a book, and you’ll feel good for not procrastinating. I guess there is room for both holidays.

I love dinosaurs, but I like Mesozoic marine reptiles too.

I also like crazy names for fossilized animals. Meet, Guizhouichthyosaurus, a fifteen-foot-long ichthyosaur. It had a body shaped like a tuna but breathed air like a dolphin. It swam in the ocean in the early Triassic, 240 million years ago.

This animal was thought to be an apex predator, and  in 2010 fossilized proof was found in Guizhou province, China. Within the abdomen of the Guizhouichthyosaurus, paleontologists found smaller bones belonging to a 12-foot long thalattosaur, Xinpusaurus xingyiensis. This marine reptile was more lizard-like and had four paddling limbs.

Very often in paleontology, entire ecosystems are interpreted from just a few bones. That is why complete finds like this hungry ichthyosaur’s last meal are so important. It was thought that mega-predators that ate large prey had long sharp teeth. However, Guizhouichthyosaurus had short peg-like teeth. Thus a new interpretation of predation needs to be examined. One more piece added to a puzzle with many missing pieces. 

I love to read.

In the past month, I have read some of the best and worst books ever. The books that I love uplift me, while the horrible ones cause me to scream and rave like a maniac. (You should pity my hubby that had to hear my how-did-this-book-ever-get-published rant.)

Luckily, I have read more wonderful books than ones that are a waste of ink and paper, but bad books seem to stick with me longer. To cleanse my pallet, I found some reading quotes. These remind me of why I read. I hope you read only amazing books.

• “I do believe something very magical can happen when you read a good book.” – J. K. Rowling
• “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” – Mason Cooley
• “The only thing you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.” – Albert Einstein
• “Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures anyone can have.” – Lloyd Alexander
• “That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri

Happy Skyscraper Day.

I love tall buildings, even though I haven’t visited very many. (I did make it to the observation deck of the Empire State Building in 2013.) It seems that buildings grow every year, but the current tallest structure has held the record for ten years.

Below is a list of the tallest buildings at the start of each decade since 1900 (click here to see a more complete list.). I’m sure this list will be added to someday, but for now, it gives me a new travel goal. I want to visit all these buildings.

• 1900: Row Building, New York City, NY, 390 ft
• 1910: Metropolitan Life Tower, New York City, NY, 700 ft
• 1920: Woolworth Building, New York City, NY, 792 ft
• 1930: Chrysler Building, New York City, NY, 1,046 ft
• 1940: Empire State Building. New York City, NY, 1,250 ft
• 1950: Empire State Building. New York City, NY, 1,250 ft
• 1960: Empire State Building. New York City, NY, 1,250 ft
• 1970: Empire State Building. New York City, NY, 1,250 ft
• 1980: Sears Tower, Chicago, IL, 1,450 ft
• 1990: Sears Tower, Chicago, IL, 1,450 ft
• 2000: Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, 1,483 ft
• 2010: Burj Khalifa, Dubai, 2,717 ft
• 2020: Burj Khalifa, Dubai, 2,717 ft

Poets must like autumn.

I had a hard time finding a nice August poem, but September has a ton. The changing of the seasons must inspire poets to go out and write about their surroundings. There were a lot of lovely poems to choose from.

William Wordsworth wrote many poems about September. I chose this one because I loved his attention to detail. It feels like I am standing on the bridge right next to Wordsworth. That’s what makes a poem enjoyable.

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

by William Wordsworth