NatureJunkie's Blog (51)

For BlancheNoeE, because I love you, Blanche.

1. Go to the video you want to embed. If it's at Vimeo, then look in the upper right portion of the frame. For the most non-intuitive icon ever selected to represent share, Vimeo picked a paper airplane icon. Click on the paper plane icon.

2. You'll be given three options for sharing, via URL, email, or an embed code. Click in the embed field. This selects the embed code. Then copy…

I just happened to have encountered a lot of mentions lately about how people in the 18th and 19th centuries were fearful of the very real possibility of being buried alive.

Then, while researching something else entirely, I came across this plate o' shrimp today.…

I've used this trick for ants. Turns out it works for squirrels,…

Why do those pernicious earworm songs pop into your head unbidden? Usually just catching a melodic drift from a café or someone else’s radio will lodge the worm in me for the rest of the day, but sometimes, like today, one will pop into my consciousness for no apparent reason at all.

This morning on the shuttle to work, it was a looping repeat of Henry the…

In a couple of videos I posted in November, I was investigating the history of an odd coin I found among the possessions of a great uncle. In October I inherited four boxes of photographs and documents that had belonged to a second cousin I never met. Gary and I shared a set of great-grandparents and when I inherited his things, I was hoping to uncover a lot of information about the ancestors he and I shared.

But probably eighty percent of the material pertained to Gary's…

Okay, Arkians, big wake up call.

Syd, out of the kindness of her heart and the depth of her pocket, forks out a few bucks a month so that the rest of us can play here and have fun. And yet no one's playing these days except...

Doris Anne Beaulieu.

That's right. Doris. Doris who will never read this blog, and so therefore I don't have to worry about hurting her feelings. Because she only dumps her content here from YouTube as she…

It's been a long time since grade school, when our principal would haul the school's only television set into the cafeteria and call an assembly so that we could watch the Apollo astronauts. Nothing since then regarding the space program has elicited the same level of excitement, thrill even, I used to feel at being a witness to history.

But I felt a little tiny bit of it again today when the Space Shuttle Endeavor buzzed the Bay Area at 500…

It's a beautiful autumn Sunday morning here in California and I slept late this morning. Just before waking up I had a dream in which Marie made a guest appearance.

I was sitting around a table in a kitchen with my adult family and hers and we were watching a parade on a flat screen TV. But at the same time, the parade was happening live right outside the house and all the children in the neighborhood, including my little brother (who in real life died 4 years ago at the age…

In the intervening decade I have not read any of the hundreds of books written about it or watched any of the documentary or Hollywood movies made about it, because even after ten years I still don’t have enough emotional distance from the…

Before I left on my hundred-mile journey to pick up Mister, my latest foster dog, I was asked by the rescue organization if I would mind transporting a dog on my way. Terry was a 15-year-old dog who was being surrendered by a couple in…

Just before I rolled out of bed this morning, I had a dream that Lima and Brad Pitt (Spacemonkey?) showed up at my house unannounced for dinner. And wouldn't you know it, my house was a mess and I was completely unprepared. But they brought a house gift with them... puppies!

Brad, who had long golden locks, Chig-style, was holding a black-and-white pit bull puppy. The puppy's skin was decorated with black numerals that Brad…

In response to Spacemonkey's blog (http://lovevideoplayhouse.ning.com/profiles/blogs/this-was-fun), here is the CD cover for my fictitious band, Heligoland. I tag Pyper.

And what the hell, I tag you in the name of BlancheNoE. Five dollars, little…

Today is the day that the campus I work at will be billowing with caps and gowns. I feel a compulsion to greet every student wearing a gown with heartfelt congratulations, even though most of them are self-absorbed on

this day and don't even make eye contact. Their parents follow them around

toting floral arrangements that probably cost what I spend on groceries in a

month. I love this day, because I love my job as an academic advisor and seeing

those…

As an update to the blog and video I posted on March 3 ("You Can't Put a Good Dog Down"), I want to share some good news about Gemma, the German shepherd I’ve been working to find a home for.

A dog trainer in Marin County (just north of San Francisco) saw the video of Gemma and has volunteered to provide her with a foster home until she finds a permanent home. The trainer has several acres of property and…