Footle and Grok

Messing about with empathy

A great quote from a great movie

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I’d like to share a smile moment I had.

I was at a charity barbeque (the same one where I noticed my broken shoelace) and saw a guy wearing the best T-shirt ever. It had a picture of John Wayne with the words “The hell I won’t!” around it. I didn’t get a chance to tell the man how wonderful his shirt was, but it made my evening.

If you don’t know, that quote comes from McLintock!, one of the best John Wayne movies ever. I own this movie, but you can see the clip that the quote comes from on YouTube (click here.)

Unfortunately, the clip ends before the part where everyone fights and they all end up at the bottom of a watery, clay pit including the well-dressed Maureen O’Hara. It’s a funny scene from a great movie, and I smile every time I see it.

I debated sharing this with you because I don’t know how many of you like John Wayne. But I’m just messing around on Footle and Grok and what better way to enjoy a fun Saturday than with John Wayne saying, “The hell I won’t!”

Getting a wellness check

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

My computer has been running slow for several months.

It’s not that old, so I thought that a computer guru could clean it and get get my speed back. However, I was reluctant to give it up for however long it would take. Plus, what if something went wrong? I use my computer for too many projects to take the chance of it being ruined.

And then, last Friday, my power button broke, and I couldn’t turn on my computer. I found a local place to take my laptop, and the guy there seemed to know his stuff.

The part that broke needed to be ordered. Since my computer broke on a Friday and Monday was a holiday, the part wasn’t going to arrive for several days. I had no choice but to use an older laptop for a while.

However, there’s always a silver lining. The computer guy could turn my computer on from inside the unit, so I asked him to clean my computer since he was going to have it for so long. It was the perfect opportunity to get some speed back.

I picked it up on Thursday afternoon, and it’s like new. The power button no longer feels like it will break if I touch it, and the overall performance is much better. Obviously, I could have saved myself some frustration if I had done a wellness check months ago, but like going to the doctor, it’s easy to postpone things even if they make us feel better.

Maybe you can learn something from my story and get something fixed that you’ve been putting up with. Or just wait for it to break, like I did, and then look for the silver lining.

So close, yet so far

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I love reading an article and repeating, “I didn’t know that.”

That’s what happened when I read a post about the Bering Strait from Alaska Life.

I know a little about the Bering Strait. I know it’s narrow and separates Russia from Alaska. I know that when sea level dropped, it became a land bridge, thus allowing animals and past humans to populate North America.

When I visited the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse, YT, I learned about all sorts of oversized animals that survived that far north because of a protected area that was not covered in ice.

What I didn’t know is that there are islands in the middle of the Bering Strait. If you want to know about them all, read the Alaska Life article (read it anyway because it has excellent maps.) Today, I want to talk about just a couple of those islands. Big Diomede and Little Diomede.

These two islands are located in the middle of the Bering Strait and are about two miles apart. Big Diomede Island is owned by Russia, and Little Diomede Island is owned by the United States. Since this are the closest point between these two countries, they really can see Russia from their homes.

Nobody lives on Big Diomede Island anymore, but the Russian Military still uses it. About 100 Native Alaskan live on Little Diomede Island.

Here is the most amazing part. The International Date Line goes between the two islands, so Big Diomede is twenty-one hours ahead of Little Diomede. Crazy!!! Big Diomede is sometimes called “Tomorrow Island,” and Little Diomede is called “Yesterday Isle.” That is one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard.

Please read the article to learn more about these remote islands. It’s incredible where people choose to live. If you’re looking to get away from civilization, Alaska is still the place to go. I don’t want to live there, but I’m sure glad I visited.

There’s still time left

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I missed an important countdown date.

As of today, there are forty-nine days left in 2019. Yowser! Not even fifty. How are your goals going? I, of course, am behind on everything but my reading goal (I knocked that one out of the park.)

As I always say, the year’s not over until the ball drops and kisses are exchanged. Even then, you can always work on your goals in 2020. But for 2019, the clock is ticking.

We all know that December is a crazy, busy month, so why not take these two weeks before Thanksgiving and pick one of your goals to focus on. With the help of my friend, Judy, I’m working on my weight loss goal by counting my calories. It’s annoying but necessary.

Did I mention that Thanksgiving is two weeks from tomorrow? (I’m talking about it today to make up for missing the fifty-day mark.) I have no idea what I’m doing for Thanksgiving, but I know that two weeks is a perfect amount of time to focus on a project.

In the next two weeks, I’m also finishing all my Christmas gifts, writing all my Christmas cards, and decluttering my Christmas decorations. This is all part of my stress-free, enjoy-the-holidays plan I have for December. Don’t feel you need to be as crazy as I am.

Whatever day it is, spend time on your goals. If you finish them in 2019, you get to make new goals for 2020, which is a lot more fun.

Every day is special

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Use something today.

Today is a random Tuesday in November. It’s not a holiday, and it’s not the weekend when you might do something special. But since every day is special, I want you to use something today.

What should you use? Serve a meal on the crystal you keep in the cabinet and only pull out once or twice a year. Burn the candle you’ve had for ten years and is getting dusty. Wear the shirt you feel is too nice for every day. Eat that food you’re saving for company.

I have a candle that has been a Thanksgiving decoration for probably ten years. It’s round, squat and pretty, but this year I removed it from my display, set it on my desk, and lit it. It has been intriguing to watch it burn as I write each day. I’m getting a lot more enjoyment out of it now than when it just sat on the shelf.

We all have stuff that is nice so we tuck it in a drawer to be used on a special day. Today is that day. It’s Tuesday! Don’t wait to use stuff that makes you happy. If you use it today, you can use it tomorrow; unless it’s the candle, but there are lots of candles in the world.  

Cute alien mousers

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Alfred caught a mouse!

I know cats have been doing this as long as there have been cats, but this is the first one our kittens have caught. I am thrilled that our cats are mousers. Since they are indoor cats, I can encourage their instincts and not have to worry about the birds and chipmunks.

I didn’t plan on writing about my cats today, but I’ve been trying to finish this post for the last fifteen minutes, and as you can see from the above picture, the cats have been very helpful. I’m convinced cats are aliens put on Earth to stop people from working. Their weapon is cuteness, and it’s very effective.

Instead of talking about my cats any more, I’m going to share some general cat facts. And no, my cats are not typing this post, they have their own Facebook page (Chapters and Cats) for their opinion.

Ten Crazy Cat Facts (from Care.com):

  • A house cat’s genome is 95.6 percent tiger
  • Cats are believed to be the only mammals who don’t taste sweetness
  • Cats’ claws all curve downward, which means that they can’t climb down trees head-first. Instead, they have to back down the trunk
  • Cats have 230 bones, while humans only have 206
  • Cats are crepuscular, which means that they’re most active at dawn and dusk
  • It turns out that Abraham Lincoln was a crazy cat president! He had four cats that lived in the White House with him
  • A cat’s learning style is about the same as a 2- to 3-year-old child
  • A cat’s purr vibrates at a frequency of 25 to 150 hertz, which is the same frequency at which muscles and bones repair themselves
  • A group of kittens is called a “kindle”
  • Collective nouns for adult cats include “clowder,” “clutter,” “glaring,” and “pounce”

Do the dinosaurs feel used?

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I tend to be a skeptic, especially about online items.

When I read the heading “Dinosaurs Lived On the Other Side Of the Galaxy,” I assumed it was clickbait nonsense. But then I noticed that it was sent by IFLScience!, so I delved deeper. This heading is both true and misleading, which I suppose is why it works.

Dinosaurs lived on the other side of the galaxy because it takes the Earth 230 million years to orbit our galaxy center. During the age of the dinosaurs, the Earth was on the other side of the galaxy from where it is now.

That is very cool and also very normal. If I go back 115 million years ago from today (when the Earth was opposite where it is now), we end up in the Early Cretaceous, during the age of the dinosaurs. If we go back another 230 million years, another time when the Earth was on the other side of the galaxy, we reach the Carboniferous. We could say that two-foot-long dragonflies lived on the other side of the galaxy.

If we do another rotation, we end up in the Cambrian, when trilobites lived on the other side of the galaxy.

So you see, dinosaurs were not the point of this article, just a sneaky way to get us to learn something. We now know that the Earth (and our entire solar system) rotates the galaxy center in around 230 million years. That’s really cool, but then so are giant dragonflies and trilobites.

It gets everywhere

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

I never know when I’m going to learn something cool.

A new exhibit is coming to the Morocco Pavilion at EPCOT. The Morocco Pavilion is my favorite place in the World Showcase, and usually, the displays show off the amazing art of the country. This new exhibit, “Race Against the Sun,” is about racing, one of my favorite topics.

Two remarkable races happen in Morocco and are featured in this exhibit. The Rally of the Gazelles is an off-road, all-woman desert rally. That sounds amazing, but the one that piqued my interest was the Marathon des Sables (Marathon of the Sands.)

This race may have “marathon” in the title, but it is actually an ultra-marathon. It covers six days and 156 miles through the Sahara Desert in southern Morocco. Since its start in 1986, it has been called the toughest foot race on Earth.

I love learning about crazy long races in insane environments. I hadn’t heard of this one before, so I searched around to see if there was a documentary about it. It turns out there were several. I watched one about the 2000 race that was unreal.

I love watching movies about unbelievably hard races, Barkley, Mount Marathon, Badwater, and others. It’s fun to watch humans push themselves to the limit. But the Marathon des Sables might just be the hardest.

I agree with Anakin Skywalker when he said, “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.” I would never do a race in the Sahara Desert. The three half marathons on three consecutive weekends that I’m doing next June is tough enough for me.

I do encourage you to watch the documentary on the Marathon of the Sands. It is quite moving how much people can do and how much support they give each other.

I hope the display is still at the Morocco Pavilion when I go to Walt Disney World* in January of 2021. That is how I want to experience that race, in Florida.

*I would love to have three or four people come with me to Walt Disney World. I’m going to run the Dopey, but we’re also going to ride a ton of attractions, and hopefully visit all four parks in one day (you get a certificate if you do.) It’s a lot of fun and January is a great time to go.

Gathering the dirt

Posted on by Jennifer Vandenberg

Let’s talk about dirt. Soil, earth, mud.

I don’t play in the dirt as much as I used to, but when we went to Alaska last August, our white truck turned brown from all the dirt on the roads we traveled. It was quite a transformation.

How interesting can dirt be? Very interesting is the answer. I have a new appreciation for it, and I’m going to go play in some as soon as I can.

Fun dirt facts (from audubon.org):

  • There are 70,000 different types of soil in the U.S.
  • One tablespoon of soil has more organisms in it than there are people on earth
  • It takes a minimum of 500 years to form one inch of topsoil
  • There are 5,000 different types of bacteria in one gram of soil
  • Fifteen tons of dry soil per acre pass through one earthworm each year
  • 1,400,000 earthworms can be found in an acre of cropland