Footle and Grok

I love visiting new places.

I have taken some amazing trips, and one of my favorites was visiting New York City with my Aunt Patti in 2013. We saw so many wonderful things, but my favorite part was the day we spent at the American Museum of Natural History.

I’d live in New York City just to volunteer at this museum. The dinosaur display is the best I’ve ever seen. I didn’t want to leave.

The entire museum is remarkable, and I hope that everyone can visit someday. However, while we’re all stuck at home, we have the unique opportunity to visit the AMNH without buying a plane ticket.

This Facebook Watch episode is a tour of the Hall of African Mammals. The volunteer, Pat, is quite knowledgable and it’s fun to get a personal tour.

If you are involved in your library’s spring reading program through Beanstack, you earn a point for going on a virtual tour of a museum. This one is ideal.

Many museums are sharing virtual tours. Check out your favorite one and see what they offer. Or visit a museum you have always wanted to see. I recommend the American Museum of Natural History. It is a national gem.

It is precisely twenty-seven weeks until my birthday.

This matters to nobody but me, but I’m taking it as a sign that I need to improve my diet. Easter is over and the next big holiday is Memorial Day, so there is no need to eat like every day is a party.  I might have come up with a fool-proof way to control my portions (my biggest food problem) — I’m using my mom as my accountability partner.

She has more will-power than anyone I know, so I will write my food intake down and let her look at it. Rather than face a lecture, I’ll hopefully eat properly.

It’s obvious that I am desperate to resort to this, but I am ready to change. There are lots of funny memes about gaining the COVID-15, but I’d like to end this weird situation healthier than I started.

Good luck to us all.

Happy Easter!

Feel free to share this free Happy Easter picture that I colored. No copyright, no royalties, just spread the joy.

Coloring eggs is an Easter tradition.

This year I had a lot of fun coloring paper eggs with crayons. Since they are flat and can’t break, I sent them to friends and family in Easter cards. If you would like a non-messy way to color some eggs, sprint out this coloring page and use your imagination.

These eggs can be used as decorations or even hidden for a fun hunt. One way to make a paper egg hunt more interesting is to write the letters of each child’s name on the back of the eggs. The kids then have to find the eggs that spell their names. Or decorate them with different colors, and each child can collect different colored eggs.

Whatever you do with them, these eggs are fun to color and fun to play with. It is a nice way to keep a tradition alive.

Sometimes a small task can grow in wonderful ways.

I was listening to the Geologic Podcast (it has nothing to do with geology), and George Hrab (the host) suggested that everyone should clean out their pen container. We all have a can or a mug or a jar filled with pens that may or may not work. Why do we keep dead pens? It’s easier to put the pen back in the mug instead of it throwing away.

George asked that people send him pictures of their organized pen containers, so after my morning run, I grabbed my mug of pens and tested each pen. However, my pen mug sat on a very messy counter. Instead of ignoring the mess, I cleaned it as well.

Hey! I have a yellow counter. It was so lovely to see it again. It won’t stay clean, but at the time, I was pleased.

I sent a picture to George and thought I would share it here too. I encourage you to clean out your pen holder. It might lead to bigger and better things.

Today I say thank you to my loyal readers.

Between the old Footle and Grok and the new Footle and Grok, I have written 1,000 posts and never missed a day.  It has not always been easy, but it has been fun, and that’s why I continue.

Also, on those days when I don’t write anything else, I know I will write this, and like all good streaks, it erases poor excuses. I hope you will someday attempt a streak too. The best day to begin is today.

“Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”

Lao Tzu

Thank you for reading my blog and occasionally commenting. I hope I get to write a thousand more posts, and I hope you will continue to read them.

A lot of zoos are doing virtual tours and animal videos.

I love visiting zoos and seeing the animals, but it is even cooler when one of the handlers teaches you about a certain animal and you get to see the animal up close. And it’s even more cool when it is an animal I’ve never heard of before.

I’ve never been to Wildlife Safari in Oregon, but after experiencing a South American porcupine with a prehensile tail wandering around, I really want to visit. I can’t go now (obviously) but I had a fun time learning about this clever guy and his cotton-top tamarin friends in a video put out by Wildlife Safari.

I was so overwhelmed by how cute they were that I wanted to see other animal videos. It makes me happy to know that zoo employees are caring for these important creatures. For many kids, this is the only way they can see wild animals outside of a video.

(Or live animals at all. At the Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn, New York, they have a farm area with sheep, cows, and chickens. Where I live, these animals are everywhere, but this is the only way a lot of city kids would see them.)

If you want a bit of cuteness in your day, check out this video on Facebook. I hope Wildlife Safari shows off more of their zoo residents.

I made social distancing curtains today.

Actually, I would have made new curtains for my office no matter what was going on in the world because my eight-month-old kittens tore down my old ones. And to be clear, my old ones consisted of a green table cloth because I didn’t want them to hurt the curtains that came with our rental.

My three cats love to look out windows but the only curtains they scratch are the ones in my office. With that in mind, I went looking for cheap replacements. I didn’t find any that fit my window so I figured I’d make my own.

Since I know Alfred, Hela, and Chewie are going to play with them, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on fabric. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of time making them since the cats were only going to be admiring them with their claws.

I was thrilled when I found fleece for $4 a yard. So what if it was pink with flamingos all over it. Flamingos are just pink dinosaurs and I love dinosaurs.

Arms with a measuring tape, scissors and a hot glue gun I had new curtains in about an hour. I’m so happy with them that I hope my cats just ignore them. They won’t, but until they pull them down, I’ll be smiling every time I see them in my office.

Pink dinosaurs are a new favorite of mine.

I love Cadbury Creme Eggs, mostly because of the commercials.

My splurge while social distancing has been Cadbury Creme Eggs. I have just one a day, but they make me smile. When I was a kid, I didn’t like these creamy eggs as much. However, I loved the commercials where various animals tried out to be the Easter Bunny. Too cute.

My tastes have improved, and now I love these chocolate treats. The eggs we eat nowadays were invented in 1963. They are called Cadbury Creme Eggs but are produced by different chocolate companies around the world. Hershey owns the production rights in the United States. Some say that the taste changes from country to country. I’d love to try eggs from around the world.

500 million Creme Eggs are sold every year, so it makes sense that various chocolate factories would pump them out. I better have another one and improve their numbers. I wouldn’t want the Easter Bunny to be unemployed. Bok! Bok!

Today is National Dandelion Day.

I was going to give you some facts about this flower/weed (depending on where it’s growing), but the tidbits I found were too ordinary. However, one list mentioned a Ray Bradbury book that I’d never heard of.

Dandelion Wine is a novel about a group of people who live in a small town during the summer of 1928. It is not science fiction, but it is Ray Bradbury, so it has gone on my TBR list. I think I will read it during the hot days of July or August.

Have you ever read this book? Do you read books outside of your comfort zone because you enjoy the author? I have done this often, and I am rarely disappointed.

I put this book on hold at my library. By the time my library reopens, summer will be here (cross my fingers), and this book will be waiting for me. It’s nice to have something to look forward to.