Tea

Love my flowering Numi tea!

Fum and Gerba

Hola familia! I know, I know, I've been shirking my "virtual bonding" exercises. I promise to post more! Here's something I saw today that I really enjoyed and thought it was worth passing on...

This is Fum the cat and Gerba the barn owl, who clearly have a friendly relationship. I want an owl like this.

Prague

How cool is this...I think I've just found a way to keep my blog updated with my travels!! Email me with your thoughts.

Hero Worship

Wow...I just realized it has been months since I last posted! I had all sorts of plans for Christmas posts, none of which ever came to pass. Oh well!

I really should be running errands or cleaning the house or something productive, but instead I'll blog about the men I love. Specifically, men I love but don't actually know. Here are three of my favorites, in order of my devotion: Bela Fleck, Steve Martin and Tony Trischka. They are, among other things, supreme banjo players and I'm including a video of them playing one of my favorite pieces ever.

Some of you may remember a version of this song from my Belgrade posting last year; I used Tony Trischka's version (featuring Steve Martin) from the ablum Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular. Steve Martin's album The Crow also has a version (a bit self-evident), which I love as well. To the best of my knowledge, Bela Fleck doesn't have a version of The Crow on any of his albums, and I'm pretty certain about this as I think I own every last thing he has ever done.

If you enjoy this music, I strongly recommend either of the two albums I mentioned above, and anything from Bela Fleck (although his music spans a number of different genres and not just bluegrass).

Music, please!

Ouroborromean Rings

Over at New York Magazine there is an intresting look at doodling snakes and graphs in math class. Really interesting and worth sharing with the kids!

Fast Motion

Here for your enjoyment today is a fast motion video in slow motion by Graeme Taylor over on Capn Design. He's used a high-speed video camera on a fast-moving train.

Dog is in the Details

I subscribe to GoogleVoice and love it. I've had an account for years, going back to TBG (Time Before Google) when it was Grand Central. It does all sorts of nifty things, including allowing me to marry it up with Skype and get phone calls in Europe on a US number.

What I also love about GoogleVoice is its Entertainment Factor. All my GV voice mail get transcribed and end up in my email, allowing me to easily access messages on the road. And while the transcriptions are sometimes close, they're often way out in left field. Case in point: a call from my sister Jennifer, whose voice mail was transcribed as "Hey Boy it's Dad" (she actually said "Hey Lori, it's Jen"), or the one from Shelly, whose predictable "Hi Lori, it's Shelly" was transcribed as "Hi Tony, it's Shirley". In addition to Boy and Tony, I've also been called Doris; Laurie; Shhh and a Laurie; Prints; Princess, Laurie at screen; Cheery; Cherry...the list goes on!

To give you the flavor of a full conversation, here's one from someone who shall remain nameless. Suffice it to say the actual call sounds nothing like its transcription (it's about shaving a cat and a cat going bald--oh, and contrary to the transcript, the caller is NOT named Cheryl, she does not thank me, no Paul is involved, and there are no emotional balls at stake).

Princess, How are you never call me back. Hey, I just have a quick question, you know when you save your Cathy, Thank you. I just went out to get the deficit short, so I'm just taking my cat to get and saved and in the spring tonight. Students summer. Anyway, long story short, and she said to me. She's like you know if you can join the cats gonna go balls like it's gonna go. Paul so yeah give jana single ball like I have never had that before. Yeah. Bye. Oh alright. Yeah, I think I'll be careful. I mean, I'm, Cheryl and I'm like, Hi Yeah so I am calling is true story, like, hey, yes. This is an emotional balls. Anyway, I just kinda didn't believe it but so I'm calling you to see what you think. Bye.

Language Skills

Wot?!

Christmas Spirit

I generally don't get very excited by the more commercial aspects of Christmas. I'd rather make buy someone a hand-made doll than a Barbie doll, or buy make (this I can do!!) beautiful hand-made soaps as opposed to buying mass-produced, stinky Bath & Whatever Works soaps. So when I stumbled on this incredibly commercial Christmas bit for Nespresso, I was surprised and delighted by what I saw.

It is a little bit steampunk, a lot meringue, and entirely commercial. Still, I find it visually intriguing and I love the music that plays on the website. I'm including a video I found on YouTube for one of the three flavors and let me warn you that, while the video is nice, neither it nor the music is as lovely as what plays on the website. I've had the Nespresso website running this morning as I took care of other business just so that I could listen to the harps and flutes and angels fluttering around in the background.

Finally, keep in mind that this is the Belgian site I'm linking you to. I can not get to the US site, in spite of several attempts with proxy servers to get around Nespresso's routing. If you follow my links and can't get to the Belgian site, I can only hope that the US site is running the same thing.

Be sure to click on the arrows on the website on the right and the left of the screen, as these arrows take you to other activities and scenes.  Cadeaux Gormands (not sure what this will be in English;  Goodies, perhaps?) on the right-hand side will take you to various things like screen savers and some of the original concept art that was done to create this site.

Again, the video is below but the website can be reached by clicking here. Let me know if this doesn't work for you.

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