Category: Life Page 3 of 30

I’m posting this a day early because I want to give you some lead time in case the weather cooperates wherever you are. Here in California, it is unlikely that we will experience the eclipse.

At the Sun's Edge. Credit & Copyright: Catalin Beldea (Descopera Magazine). From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Click through for more information.

Happy Winter Solstice! And we get to celebrate it with a total lunar eclipse. It will last a whopping 72 minutes! It starts at Monday night, December 20th, 10:33 PM PST (or 1:33 AM EST on Tuesday morning, December 21st).

How rare is that? The last total lunar eclipse was February 21, 2008. We have one in 2010 and two in 2011 (June 15th and December 10th). But the last time a total lunar eclipse that occurred on Winter Solstice? 1638 (*). And the next one will be 2094. So this definitely falls in the “once in a lifetime” category, if you are lucky enough to witness it.

For more information about the lunar eclipse, check out the article at Science.com.

(*) There is some confusion out there as to whether the last winter solstice total lunar eclipse occurred in 1378 or 1638. See the update at the bottom of the page for more information. There is also a Facebook page with discussions on the confusion. The confusion seems to stem from conversion from Julian to Gregorian calendar.

I missed a step last week, and came tumbling down the stairs in the middle of the night. Nothing broken, but I broke the fall with both hands and my (bad) knee. Ugh. It’s been a week and the right wrist is still painful. Do you know how much you use your dominant hand’s wrist on a daily basis? Everything seems to aggravate it.

Tonight, I broke down and bought a matching set of stylish wrist braces. (not!) These are make in anti-microbial grey fleece that is supposed to be soft. Guess what? They itch like crazy. Definitely not the polwarth I’ve been knitting nor the merino/silk I’ve been spinning. Yeah. Those 2 activities aren’t helping my wrist any either. I’ve changed from picking to throwing. The minute twist/flick of the wrist when you pick gets painful quickly.

Back to the itchy wrist braces…I think I’m going to have to make some fingerless mitts as brace liners a la Knitsarina.

(Today’s post has nothing to do with fibers. So, skip as you wish.)

I smiled when I saw these LunchBots at the health food store today.

Why? They reminded me of the metal bento boxes we had while growing up in Taiwan.

Each evening, leftovers are packed in tight into these metal boxes and tied with string.  There’s usually some sort of tag (think dog tags) tied on with the string. Then they are placed in the refrigerator.

In the morning, we would carry our boxes to school. Once at school, we would toss them in a pile outside of the class room. Yup. Just tossed it in a pile.

After school has started, the janitor would come by and pick up all the bento boxes and they would disappear until lunch time.  At lunch, they would magically reappear, steaming hot.  I’m not sure where he took them, or what kind of device he used, but I imagine that it was some sort of large steamer. All the metal boxes would be tossed in, steamed, and brought back in time for lunch.

As lunch time progresses, our ears are tuned for the sound of the janitor coming by and the clatter of metal boxes. The sound of lunch — better than the bell! And the aroma of steamed food.  It’s an odd, indescribable smell of all sorts of leftovers being heated up together.  Not exactly harmonious, but not unpleasant either. But, perhaps it’s just olfactory memories tied with hunger and the promise of food.

At lunch, there’s the big scramble to find your own lunch box (this is where the dog tags come in), and you would have a nice hot lunch.*

LunchBots would like you to think that they are into something new, but to me, this is old technology at its best. And lots of pleasant memories to go with. I may have to buy one just for that!

* And this is why, to this date, I can’t face a cold sandwich or salad for lunch. To me, lunch is supposed to be hot, darn it!