cookin time.

“The Compleat Housewife, or Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion, written by Eliza Smith and originally published in London, England, in 1727, is considered the first cookbook ever to be published in the United States. The Compleat Housewife contained not only recipes, but also directions for painting rooms, removing mildew, and home remedies for treating ailments, such as smallpox”

Oh what i would give for a copy of this book. J

peanut butter jelly time.

The fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth is called Arachibutyrophobia ...
hehehe, i cant even say it.... perhaps its because of all the delicious peanut butter in my mouth. seriously this has to be one of the saddest fears ever.

this could cause a bit of confusion in the drag show...

"Women Don’t Have Adam’s Apples.

In fact, it’s actually not that terribly uncommon if you were to look close enough to most women’s throats, though “man sized” Adam’s Apples are somewhat rare in women. The “Adam’s Apple” is really just an enlarged larnyx which becomes big enough to be visible in your neck. For those of you who don’t know, the larnyx’s primary purpose is as a voice box. It also has an alternative purpose in aiding in the process of closing off the airways in your throat when you swallow. This is why it generally seems to disappear when you swallow, as it is being pulled upward to aid in this process. Around puberty, both men and women’s voice boxes get bigger. This in turn makes their voices deeper, with men’s larynges growing more than women’s and thus making for a deeper voice, typically."

crazy...

thank you todayifoundout.com

jewish!

last saturday we were discussing the difference between a yamaka and kippah. you know the little hat jewish men wear, gladys was saying it was the same thing and frankly i had never heard of the word kippah, but she works with a bunch of jewish kids so I believed her and she asked one of the students and he said they're the same thing. But yamaka is the Yiddish word and kippah is the Hebrew word. well i feel 10 times more enlightened, this also just made me realize i know zero jewish people...lame. I need to expand my friend horizons!..lol

thanks for the warmth lil hoodie

Its spring hmm, I didn’t realize it because as I’m running my daily route, its cold, like super cold, so I’m thankful for my lil purple hoodie, so I got curious, what’s up with hoodies, where did they come from how did they come about.

“The hooded sweatshirt was first produced in the United States starting in the 1930s. The modern clothing style was first produced by Champion in the 1930s and marketed to laborers working who endured freezing temperatures while working in upstate New York. The term hoodie entered popular usage in the 1990.
The hoodie took off in the 1970s, with several factors contributing to its success. Hip hop culture developed in New York City around this time, and the hoodie's element of instant anonymity, provided by the accessible hood, appealed to those with criminal intent. High fashion also contributed during this era, as Norma Kamali and other high-profile designers embraced and glamorized the new clothing. Most critical to the hoodie's popularity during this time was its iconic appearance in the blockbuster Rocky film.” -- wikipedia

dont pick elephants for your jumprope team.

oh elephants, I love them, so large and cuddly, sure it can trample you at a moments notice but who would be able to resist that big trunk while feeding it an apple, ummm no one, and what about dumbo, name one person who didnt cry when he went to visit his mom when she was all caged up... yea mega sobs. but did you know that elephants are the only mamal that cant jump? so sad. so if you ever need to play leap frog or jumprope, totally dont count on them...womp womp.

fiiiire starters!

work is tough right now and no one is very certain of where we'll be for the next year, so today as i was thinking of things as i ran i wondered why the term to get "fired" came along, my theory was that fire hurts and it hurts to get fired, so bam, common sense...but nope, i was wrong,

as it turns out, Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired." so unwanted folks got burned out, that kinda sucks and seems very inefficient, i would just build my house again! jokes on you fire starters, jokes on you....

a tale of two continents

Istanbul, Turkey is the only city in the world located on two continents... nw i have to travel there to stand exactly on the border and hop from one continent to the next!

ribs, not just for eating...

ever since i lost over 100 lbs, i can feel my ribs, haha i know this sounds wierd but i was so big i could not feel them on myself so now that i can i find it facinating that we have an internal structure thats so sturdy... we are magificent creatures..lol

so in any case today i found out that one out of every twenty people have an extra rib, called a cervical rib which is located close to the top of the rib cage or the neck so sometimes its called a neck rib.
crazy!

common sense, life changing!

potatoes, i love them, but i hate peeling them once boiled it takes fucking forever and i dont like peeling them before hand cause it doesnt taste the same, yes i know im picky. So today when i found this my life changed completely, and frankly yours will too... youre welcome.

icing cookies doesnt mean puttin' em in the freezer.

today falls under the category of trying something new. For someone that really likes to bake, i love taking short cuts, so whenever i have to ice cookies, i seriously just go and buy the one thats squeezable and ready to go, but today since i have an abundance of eggs and a lot of powdered sugar, i made my own royal icing and i must say i was very proud of myself, one egg white, some lemon juice and a bunch of sugar = amazing! i dont think i'll ever buy it ready made again! glad i took a chance and tried it! i got it just into piping consistancy and piped a cookie to check it, let it dry and i was amazed at how good it looked! very proud of myself!

the lil owl looked super smart in his lil glasses...

so i love tootsie pops, yea who wouldnt love something sweet with a chocolately center...i seriously remember the lil commercial with the owl that was like how many licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop. and i tried several times to count, but seriously, when youre a kid youre just happy someone had a lapse in judgement to give you candy in the first place so you devour it and fast....so today i found out that actualy scientific studies have been done in order to find out how many licks...and no, unlike the lil owl suggests, it doesnt just take 3.......

as a result of 4 studies provided by major universities in the U.S. the result was an average of 508 licks when licking both sides evenly and the Purdue student’s results of an average of 252 licks when concentrating on one side are remarkably consistent, so it would seem for an adult it takes around 250-ish licks to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop if only licking from one side and about twice that when licking both sides evenly.

awesome!! :D so now you know, about 500!. thats a long as time, but totally worth it!

a blonde moment......

"the words “blond” and “blonde” are not wholly synonymous.  So what’s the difference between the words “blond” and “blonde”? The difference is simply in what gender the word is referring.  When referring to a woman with yellow hair, you should use the feminine spelling “blonde”.  When referring to a male with yellow hair, you should use the spelling “blond”. This then is one of the few cases of an adjective in English that uses distinct masculine and feminine forms." - todayifoundout.com

awesome...although i dont know to many blonde people in general... its cool to know theres words like this in english!

every girls bff at one time...

every girl i know who was a normal super girly, loved having barbies and yes, i was one of them, i had so many accessories  it was ridiculous, a pool a livingroom a bedroom and tons of clothes and shoes...so today i found out that barbie is in fact not the dolls real name butBarbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. awesome. it personifies my childhood bff...yea i was that lonely as a child...lol its oki! :)

i remember drinking at a super young age, well lets not even say.

today i learned that the united states has the highest drinking age of the world, along with two other countries, sri lanka and pakistan.... seriously i dont know why they dont just make it 18...everyone drinks at 18 anyway...or younger, just saying.

and just to counter balance the youngest drinking age is jamaica, armenia, and viet nam....cause they totally dont have any legal age, so toddlers with alcoholisim, youve found your home.

ikea and jesus.

i love coming home opening my mail box and seeing the most amazing lil catalog ever staring me in the face. IKEA. i love flipping through the pages and imagining myself in each and every room and wondering about what fabulous potential my apartment could have, if only i could afford it. So today when i found out that the only book in print with more copies than the bible is the ikea catalog, i could totally relate. i have 4 ikea catalogs, earmarked and circled, but 0 bibles in my home...lol

panda bears!!

Ive always wondered how animals that dont make noises communicate. like giraffes or turtles or pandas, but today i learned that Pandas don’t make a scary roaring sound like most bears. Instead they make friendly bleating and honking noises to communicate with other pandas kinda like goats do! facinating :)

just wanna hold hands.

Sea otters.

Today I learned that sea otters hold hands while sleeping so that they don’t float away from their lil pack. If that’s not the most adorable thing ever, then I don’t know what is. heres proof:

youre welcome...

Guilty by association.

pablo picasso and the mona lisa

I know we all have friends that have done odd or strange things. Jail time? Hmm not that I know of…well, okay maybe but today I found out that at some point when the Mona Lisa went missing from the Louvre in 1911 they totally arrested Pablo Picasso, yes THE Pablo Picasso because his friend Géry Piéret, accused him of doing it. His “friend” turns out was a renown arts and antiques thief, so the police automatically suspected him and Pablo because Pablo had purchased old Iberian head statues from him at some point. Anyhow, Turns out it wasn’t either of them but an employee of the museum. I’m guessing they weren’t a friend afterward, that’s just a guess…

stick em up!

Stickers

Today when I was going through some stickers and ribbons for my friends house warming party I started to wonder where the first sticker came from. Turns out there are a few theories of where the first modern day sticker came from.

“It has also been suggested that Sir Rowland Hill, in 1839, invented the modern sticker when he created and introduced an adhesive paper that became the first Postage Stamps.

Then there are those who believe that the sticker was invented in the 1880′s by European advertising gurus, who came up with the idea to help consumers identify (and ultimately purchase) products by use of colorful paper “labels.”  These colorful paper labels were stuck to various types of fruit and fruit packaging with a simple gum paste.  Apparently, there was massive competition in European orchards at this time in history.  These inventive stickers were used primarily on the sides of the fruit crates to help make their containers “stand out” from their competitors.”

So there you have it competitive fruit vendors or some guy that liked licking paper. Awesome!

blood what?

Today I found out what a blood chit is, yea a blood chit. It sounds crazy and scary and frankly I thought it was some kind of beef product….apparently it’s something that military personnel carry around with them in different languages so that just in case they get lost, they will be able to seek help from the people around them even though they don’t know the language. The blood chit usually has a message that promises the reader a reward if they feed and take the military person somewhere safe.

Pretty awesome and smart. The first letter that was like a blood chit was issued by George Washington to balloonist Jean Pierre Blanchard who was flying the states in a ballon and since no one knew where he would land, George Washington issued a reward to anyone who would help him on his letter.

and just in case you were wondering "Chit is a British English term for a small document, note or pass; it is an Anglo-Indian word dating from the late 18th century, derived from the Hindi citthi." -wikipedia

spicy spicy pepperoni!

Pizza, I have French bread, salami and cheese in my fridge so I’m totally gonna make a pizza, but today I learned something interesting, did you know you can’t get a pepperoni pizza in Italy? Yea, seriously keep on reading.

“The term pepperoni is a corruption of peperoni, the plural of peperone, the Italian word for pepper (the vegetable, not the spice). The first reference using pepperoni to refer to a sausage dates to 1919. Throughout continental Europe, peperone is a common word for various types of capsicum, including bell peppers and a small, spicy and often pickled pepper known as peperoncino or peperone piccante in Italy and peperoncini or banana peppers in the U.S. Unlike in Europe, the English word pepperoni is used as a singular uncountable noun.
To order a very similar food in Italy, one would request salamino piccante to get a spicy sausage made only of pork and beef. Usually the Italian name for a pepperoni pizza is pizza alla diavola (pizza devil-style, very similar in appearance to the pepperoni pizza).” – wikipedia

How funny, I’ve always wondered how awesome the pizza in Italy would be. Now if I ever go I’ll know how to order them!

at the pump.

I pump gas quite frequently; yea I love in California when gas costs an arm a leg and a little bit of scavenger hunting. You mean you saw gas at under 4 dollars, im on it, and you scour the city searching for this elusive pump, all the while ironically wasting more gas…in any case have you ever wondered why gas is “unleaded” and why would it ever have been leaded, isn’t it super dangerous, yea it is.

So in the early 20s some snazzy general motors scientist added Tetraethyl lead to their plain old gasoline and low it behold it was awesome, it solved all kinds of old timey car problems and pretty much just made everything run smoothly. So they figured hey why not mass produce it. So they did and workers started to drop like flies, seriously you guys its lead and super poisonous. So no one really cared until the summer of 1924 when over 45 employees became super duper sick and 5 people died. So in 1925 they held a summit and pretty much decided people dying wasn’t enough to have em stop producing it, kinda like the benefits for society outweighed a few deaths… sucks I know, but it wasn’t until 1974!, yea it took that long, for them to finally say, hey seriously you guys, no more lead, and It was completely phased out in 1995.

And there you have it, healthier happier earth friendlier gas. J

Common sence sometimes escapes me.

All sodas are referee to as soft drinks. Why? Well because they have no liquor and therefore cannot be called hard drinks like those with it.... When I read this simple fact I was in awe! Like of course! It makes sense.

if only there was an eraser for life mistakes...

Erasers

We all make mistakes, some of us more than others I know I should not have worn a dress that short, I know I should have had the 3^rd piece of chocolate cake and remember that guy from college, seriously what was I thinking and wait where was I going with this, oh yes erasers, no matter what kind of mistake you make, you always will have a use for a trusty eraser.

When I was younger and in elementary school I had a kerroppi eraser that I would use until I got down to the big googley eyes but I never wondered where they came from. Turns out that prior to the eraser people would use bread, yea white rolled up crust less bread to erase their errors. Once someone mistakenly picked up a small piece of rubber thinking it was a bread scrap and low and behold the eraser was born from a mistake, how ironic. This guy was Edward Nairne

In 1770, Edward Nairne, an English engineer, is credited with developing the first widely-marketed rubber eraser for an inventions competition. He reportedly sold natural rubber erasers for the high price of 3 shillings per half-inch cube. Incidentally, that was the first practical application of the substance in Europe, and rubbing out the pencil marks gave it its English name. which is why they’re called rubbers in other countries…insert several LOL’s here.

piggy banks!

Louise, posing stoically

Piggy banks

Oh coinstar, how many times have you saved me from unexpected money uh ohs?...well, more than I can keep track of now, but still you’re only half the battle, Louise my lil piggy bank does the rest of the work, she keeps my pennies and sometimes buttons safe and sound. But when and where did the first piggy bank come from?

“In Middle English, "pygg" referred to a type of clay used for making various household objects such as jars. People often saved money in kitchen pots and jars made of pygg, called "pygg jars". By the 18th century, the spelling of "pygg" had changed and the term "pygg jar" had evolved to "pig bank." Once the meaning had transferred from the substance to the shape, piggy banks began to be made from other substances, including glass, plaster, and plastic.”

The oldest piggy bank type thing dates from 2nd century B.C and was shaped like a little Greek temple. Those ancient Greeks were super crafty and I guess thrifty!

All and all Louise and I will continue to collect our spare change and turn it into lunch money during summers…lol…. I feed her and she feeds me. It’s a symbiotic relationship and it works!

short attention spans beware.

My attention span is short, at least when it comes to movies, I always admit that to myself, so when someone asked if I wanted to go see the re-release of titanic, I cringed, first of all, I thought it was a blah movie, secondly its long as fuck. There’s only so much cheesy Leonardo Di Caprio one can take in one sitting and this is definitely more than humanly possible. So then I wondered, what’s the longest movie ever made?

“The Cure for Insomnia, directed by John Henry Timmis IV, was officially the world's longest movie, according to Guinness World Records, as of its release in 1987. Running 5,220 minutes (87 hours, or 3 days and 15 hours) in length, the movie has no plot, instead consisting of artist L. D. Groban reading his 4,080-page poem "A Cure for Insomnia" over the course of three and a half days, spliced with occasional clips from heavy metal and pornographic videos.
It was first played in its entirety at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Illinois, from January 31 to February 3, 1987, in one continuous showing. It was never released to the public, but had it been made available on DVD, it would have been about 22 discs” – wikipedia

Of course some artsy dude would be responsible, but I’m curious, I wouldn’t mind seeing a chunk of it.

not only does it sound adorable, its useful!

Jiffy

I’ll be back in a jiffy is a common phrase I use frequently sure im not some 1930s 10 year old, and yea it sounds really juvenile but whatever I like the word, so today when I learned that a jiffy is an actual unity of time smarty mc smart smarts use, mind blown.

In physics a jiffy is the amount of time it takes light to hit a predetermined thing. So if I shined a flashlight onto my wall a jiffy is the amount of time it would take… awesome!

dream a little dream of me....

Today I learned that the percentage of people dreaming in black and white decreased significantly after the widespread use of the color TV. I find it super fascinating that before then people were dreaming in black and white…imagine, only very few times have I ever dreamt in black and white. And I woke up thinking how weird that was. Short and sweet but informative!

how can you think about animal crackers without singing the shirley temple song!

I was deciding what to have for breakfast this morning and staring at me from the top of my fridge was my lil bucket of chocolaty cat crackers. And it made me nostalgic for animal crackers in the little box with the string. So I wondered when those came around.

Turns out that in the early 19^th century they came around in barrels to the U.S. from England where they were very popular and then once in the states became popular here as well.

“Animal biscuit crackers were made and distributed under the National Biscuit Company banner. In 1902, animal crackers officially became known as "Barnum's Animals" and evoked the familiar circus theme of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Later in 1902, the now-familiar box was designed for the Christmas season with the innovative idea of attaching a string to hang from the Christmas tree. Up until that time, crackers were generally only sold in bulk (the proverbial "cracker barrel") or in large tins. These small cartons, which retailed for five cents at the time of their release, were a big hit and are still sold today.” -wikipedia

Also over the years there have been at least 45 different animals portrayed in the lil barnum box. The latest one added was a koala in 2002 to celebrate their 100 year anniversary!