Footle and Grok

Messing about with empathy

Find happiness, even on the Ides of March

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Poor Caesar.

I like ides, because lots of months have them. Ides means the middle of the month. Today is the famous one.

Remember, no matter what happens with the coronavirus, at least we are not being betrayed and killed by our friends. At least, I hope not.

I was going to share some quotes from Shakespeare, but they’re all about death, and while clever, a little depressing in today’s world. (Well, one of them was about tongues and tails, but we don’t need to go there.)

I wanted something with a more hopeful message, so I turned to my all-time favorite author, Roald Dahl. If you ever need a feel-good book (and this seems like the perfect time), I recommend James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Matilda, George’s Marvelous Medicine, and first and foremost, Danny the Champion of the World*. In theory, these are kid’s books, but endearing, happy stories are for any age.

“Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.” Roald Dahl.

*Amazon affiliate link

Eat some pi

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Happy Pi Day!!!

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by Sandra Boyton

I’m running 5 miles today, but if I had planned it better, I’d run 3.14 miles. Darn, training plan. However, I’ll celebrate in other ways, like making Irish soda bread (it has a circumference!)

If you listened to the Footle and Grok podcast yesterday (I’d love for you to subscribe), you learned all sorts of fun pi facts. Have you ever wanted to learn more digits of pi? Me neither. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a song about it.

Check out this video by ASAP Science, where they sing one hundred digits of pi. I have this song on my phone, and no matter how often I listen to it, I can’t sing it. However, it’s a catchy and fun song. Today is the perfect day to share it with your friends.

Eat some pie, sing a pi song, and learn a few more digits of this infinitely interesting number. And remember pi are square, not round.

Don’t forget to wash your hands (or paws)

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Happy Friday the 13th.

I’m going to keep this short because I have to pet my black kitties and walk under a few ladders in honor of this superstitious day.

You’ve probably heard from a lot of people that you should wash your hands often for 20 seconds. Well, if you are curious about how to do a GOOD job that takes no time at all, check out this video put out by Big Picture Science. They got their information from the CDC, so I’m all over it. Plus, it’s a lot more fun to do more than just move your hands back and forth, trying to remember which song you are supposed to sing.

Happy Friday the 13th from Hela and Alfred, who wash their paws all the time.

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Pop! Pop! Pop!

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

It’s Popcorn Lover’s Day!

This is not to be confused with National Popcorn Day, which is in January. Popcorn is one of my favorite snacks, and my go-to treat when I’m at the Disney parks. I don’t like liquid butter on my popcorn, so I skip movie popcorn, but my favorite popcorn is found at Les Schwab Tire Centers.

I’m not alone in this love affair. Americans eat about 17 billion quarts of popcorn every year, more than any other country. I figured that was mostly movie popcorn, but only 30% is consumed outside of the home.  At home, I make my popcorn in an air-popper and only put salt on it, so it’s a relatively healthy snack. However, there is a great variety of toppings you can put on popcorn from caramel to chili powder.

When I was a kid, we gave out homemade popcorn balls at Halloween. This was in the 1970s before parents were concerned about tricks among their children’s treats. Our popcorn balls were a manageable size. The world’s largest popcorn ball was 12 feet in diameter and weighed 5,000 pounds.

Do you love popcorn? Do you eat it at home? What is your favorite topping? Enjoy some popcorn today in honor of Popcorn Lover’s Day. While you are at it, get your tires checked.

Go short

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I’m entering a fun writing contest.

This one is short, imaginative, and not expensive to enter. It also has great prizes. I hope everyone will give it a try.

To enter the Booksie 2020 Flash Fiction Writing Contest, write a 500-word story about the photo on the website. The deadline is May 8, 2020, so you have a lot of time to work on a story.

The entry fee is $6.95, which is an excellent bargain for writing contests. The grand prize is $500, so it is worth it to enter.

Flash fiction sounds hard, but it is actually fun to write. All you have to do is create one scene that tells a story. There are few characters and usually only one setting.  Flash fiction is a deep dive into a moment instead of a sweeping brush over a broad story. Who wouldn’t want to focus on just one instant in time? It’s a great way to bring out the emotions of the characters and impact the reader.

As you can tell, I’m a fan of flash fiction. The other advantage of short stories is that the editing is manageable. It doesn’t take long to fine-tune 500 words, and you can share it with lots of people because it is a quick read. Once you get the response you’re looking for, and your spelling is correct, go ahead and submit.

I hope everyone will enter this writing contest. We all may look at the same photo, but every story will be unique. What story do you see in this picture?

No complaining zone

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

This was originally a post about my daylight saving time blues.

But this blog has a no negativity rule, so I’m challenging myself to write something positive about daylight saving time (as opposed to the ten rotten things I could list if this wasn’t a no complaining zone.) Here I go.

My cats don’t know that we changed our clocks, so they still meow at the same time each morning, but now it is an hour later.

That’s all I’ve got.

A dusty beginning

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I love learning about old science, preferably billions of years old.

However, I never really thought much about the beginning of the Earth. My textbooks showed lots of small rocks smashing together to become bigger rocks. They eventually became planetoids and then planets. This took 10-15 million years, which is pretty fast in geologic time. Made sense to me.

An article I read reduces that number quite a bit. A new theory proposes that the Earth formed not slowly with rocks smashing together, but quickly with dust becoming planets. This process would have taken only five million years.

If the history of the Earth was a 24-hour day, the formation of the Earth would be five to fifteen minutes in the old theory and a minute and a half in the new one. That’s a lot faster.

If you want to learn the science behind these dates, the article goes into more detail.

What I found interesting was the conclusion. If it takes so little time to make a planet, then perhaps the number of exoplanets out there is higher than we first thought. And the more exoplanets there are, the better chance one of them has life, or even better, intelligent life. And wouldn’t it be cool if we found it?

Good soup

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Actually, it was great soup.

My husband likes to experiment with cooking a lot more than I do. I wrote in an earlier post how I followed a new recipe, and the results were blah. Well, when my husband cooks, usually without instructions, the results are sometimes better than others, but always bold.

When we went to Alaska last summer, he had pizza soup in a great restaurant outside of Denali National Park. I thought the soup was okay (the pizza was better), but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

A couple nights ago, he tried to recreate it, and it was way better than the restaurant’s version. It was like eating pizza with a spoon. So tasty.

Deconstructed Pizza Soup probably won’t be the same the next time he makes it since there isn’t a recipe to follow. But as long as it is saucy, cheesy, and filled with pepperoni, I’m sure it will be just as good.

Ships cats are so cute!

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Everyone should watch A Short History of Ships Cats – Floating Felines, Maritime Moggies and Kleptomaniac Kittens. This video is 27 minutes long and worth every minute.

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I knew cats lived on ships to take care of the rat problem, but I had no idea about all the other reasons they were needed. Most of the cat featured were on British ships; I would love to learn about cats on American vessels as well.

In this video, I learned that the British government has a medal for military animals who do great things called the Dicken Medal. The United States does not have a similar honor, and I think we should.

If you want a half-hour of cuteness and military history, check out A Short History of Ships Cats. It’s the cat’s meow!

Down to 300!

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

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Long-term goals can be, well, long term.

It can be hard to maintain your momentum when the end is a long way off. Whether your goal is losing weight, earning a degree, running every day for a year, or something else, the way to stay strong is to celebrate the small milestones.

I have run 66 days in a row. That means I only have 300 days left. That still sounds like a lot, but it’s a lot less than 366, so I’m celebrating. In just a hundred days, I’ll only have 200 left. I’m going to celebrate then too.

Break your goal into small chunks and celebrate every milestone. How am I going to celebrate? Go for a run, of course.