Misheru

My favorite part of this video, after the clapping? Ben strolling by in his Lightning McQueen undies at the end. He’ll never forgive me for that.

I meant to add these pictures to the post Hey, Little Sister but they languished on the camera instead. Here they are, with Maya letting it slip how she feels about this before she sees the camera comes out:

And my Wordpress theme is a thing of the past. I’m trying out this barebones theme now (I couldn’t take the Butterflies! and Lights! and Color! of my last one) while I decide what I’m going to use next. It’s about time for rearranging the site again, and I’ve just finished my last big project of the semester (I really am in grad school, despite ignoring most of my readings) so I have a little time before I start my pre-session class, which will actually require me to work.

Anyway, check back, I have a video of Maya pretending to be a rock star uploading this very minute. I know that parents shouldn’t jump to conclusions when kids are little, but Maya really likes music, in a way I haven’t seen in Ben, anyway. She sings with this horrible backyardigan karaoke machine she got from my brother at Christmas (thanks Nick), but she also sings and accompanies herself on the piano (with plinking, not pounding), and today she spent more than a moderate amount of time playing the harmonica. I’m wondering what is an acceptable time to start lessons on something? Or, to rephrase, what would a Japanese mother do?

Also, my ads went away with my theme, and I won’t be putting them back. Long have I cluttered my site with Google Ads, but after nearly 4 years of blogging I have made $99.74, which I won’t even see until it reaches a $100 (they don’t send checks smaller than that). That averages out to $2/month or so, which doesn’t even pay for the site hosting, and it’s a pain in my neck. So, until I make it big and can manage my own ads, I am completely ad-free and plan to stay that way. Enjoy.

I went back to this old theme in the meantime, until I figure it out. Did I really ever want this many butterflies?

I occasionally have days when I let myself just surf the Internet. I read an article, and follow the links, and then I read another one, and follow the links on that, too.

(from xkcd)

Today I went looking for this clothesline:
(from backyardfarming)

which I bought, but I found this great site about backyard farming linked to it. I love urban farming, even though it took 5 years for my poorly created compost pile to finally become dirt (in Arizona, you have to add water, something the books tend to leave out).

I also found this fascinating article about salmon farming. I’m always fascinated by practices that are supposed to help the environment and fail, which apparently salmon farming is good at doing (up to 95% of migrating juvenile wild salmon are killed by swimming past salmon farms and getting infections from them). It’s a philosophical problem, actually; why do some people try to do good, but actually create evil happenings in the world? And why do some purposefully do evil, but actually create good from it? (Consider Steve Levitt’s book, Freakonomics, which presents the theory that legalized abortion has reduced crime).

Lastly, I found this graphic, listing rates of obesity by state, really interesting.

Here’s a great post by Get Fit Slowly about an actual bill in Mississippi that would make it illegal to feed fat people in restaurants, complete with a new term: obesism.

And, by Googling the term, I found this great article on a fake NGO ironically called TOAST (The Obesity Awareness and Solutions Trust) that was supposed to help obese people, but was actually linked to the diet industry.

How’s that for a rabbit trail?