The Wisdom of Spock

On the Romulan Empire:

"...any system which fears new ideas as this one does is destined to self-destruct.
"New ideas are essential to growth. And growth is essential to the survival of any being or system. Not the sort of growth that the Empire pursues, with conquest after conquest, and world after subjugated world---but the growth of the spirit."

-from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Crossover by Michael Jan Friedman

"I am happy!"

It's Cold Outside!

Only TWO days left to Spot the Black Bat and Win!

I don't have much to blog about today other than how cold it is outside. Okay, so for those of you in the North, you would probably be wearing shorts and tank tops in this weather. But for us wimpy Texans, it's been quite chilly! I'm wearing wool socks and a hat in the house!

Opening Night Gala at the Conroe Symphony Orchestra

Spot the Black Bat and Win!

Conroe is a small town. You'd probably never guess that the city had a Symphony Orchestra. A rather decent one, at that. Last night was their openining gala. I dragged DH and DD kicking and screaming.

Here is a shot of DD and I before we left. Notice how happy she looks. Not.

The musical line up included Camille Saint-Saens Carnival of Animals. This was my first exposure to the work of Saint-Saens. I was disturbed that the movement entitled "The Tortoise" was just a slowed down version of Offenbach's "Can-Can." During the movement called "The Aquarium" I leaned over to DD and remarked, "Sounds like 'The Little Mermaid.'" To which she replied, "It's 'Sleeping Beauty.'" I stood corrected.

Before each movement, a narrator read verses from the Ogden Nash poem inspired by the Saint-Saens work. I've included my favorite verse here:

Fossils
from Carnival of the Animals by Ogden Nash

At midnight in the museum hall,
The fossils gathered for a ball,
There were no drums or saxophones,
But just the clatter of their bones,
Rolling, rattling, carefree circus,
Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas,
Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
Sang ghostly prehistorice choruses,
Amid the mastodonic wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil,
"Cheer up sad world," he said and winked,
"It's kind of fun to be extinct."

DH's favorite peice of the evening was Hector Berlioz's "March to the Scaffold." I always knew he was morbid. DD and I both enjoyed the encore performance, "The Storm of the Century." Conductor Dr. Don Hutson, explained he selected this particular peice in response to Hurricane Ike. The storm was just a few weeks ago! Since the encore was not in the program notes, I do not know the composer. I'm going to have to do a little research.

Best Tortilla Soup Ever

Spot the Black Bat and Win!

Diane wanted the recipe to my best tortilla soup ever. I do not usually follow recipes but this is what I believe I did:

4 chicken breasts

can of corn with juice

can of olives with juice

can of chili beans

2 celery stalks diced

1 carrot diced

1 garlic bouillon cube

1 tomato bouillon cube

2 chicken bouillon cubes

paprika

chili power

cilantro

mexican oregano

bay leaf

half a small jar of mild salsa

water to fill the pot

I threw it all in a crock pot on low for 9 hours. Garnish with grated cheese, tortilla chips, avocados and sour cream as desired.

What if it's true?

Spot the Black Bat and Win!

I belong to Toastmasters International. Toastmasters promotes public speaking skills. Members take turns practicing the art of speech craft at weekly meetings through short prepared speeches or 2 minute extemporaneous responses to questions (Table Topics).

Recently, one of my fellow toasties presented a speech entitled: "The End: Are you Ready?" He talked a bit about how the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world will be on December 21, 2012. Then he challenged his audience to live the next 1531 days (as of 10/12/2008 at 11:21 am CST) as if they really are our last days; To write our own eulogies and then fulfill our highest expectations of ourselves.

Then, yesterday, a potential client phoned to inquiry about a table. We ended up chatting about the current "economic crisis." This client is a financial advisor who has studied the history of economic depressions. His research has shown that the world suffers a depression every 50 years - in the 30's and 9o's. He says our current recession began in the 90's and that the US would be in a depression if the Feds hadn't played games with Social Security, etc. Those games have caught up with us. He gave me a little free advice: take my money out of the bank and store the cash in a home safe, buy a years supply of groceries, plant fruit bearing trees and a vegetable garden.

So, what if it's true? What if we really are about to have an economic meltdown? Does it really matter since the world is going to end in 2012?

I don't know if it's true.

I do believe that we should set high expectations for ourselves and then do everything in our power to exceed them. We could die at any time. Why not live each and every day as if it were our last?

Fun with Animals

Let's have some fun with animals today. On the 2nd Thursday of each month, I blog over at Design Style Guide. Each month I try to pick an interesting top, or I chat about furniture construction.

This month, in honor of Leonardo, the mummified duck billed dinosaur I blogged about on Monday, I choose Dinosaurs as my theme. The quilt pictured is Raptor by bbusbyarts. Click over to see the other groovy dino art I featured.

My very dear friend Gail, whom I have known for over 15 years, forwarded this photo via email to me last night. It gave me a chuckle, so I am sharing.

The original email read: "So, there I was . . . just relaxing in front of the T.V. and then the kids yelled, 'Hey Daddy, come see the kittens.' " Kittens, indeed! If you can't see what they really are, click on the photo and a bigger photo will magically appear.

And from my dear friend Diane, custom clothing embroiderer extraordinaire, came this beautiful video. See the copy below for the low down. I didn't feel like editing the poor grammar, so just bear in mind that I did not write it:

"The attached video is of dolphins playing with silver colored rings which they have the ability to make under water to play with. It isn't known how they learn this, or if it's an inbred ability. As if by magic the dolphin does a quick flip of its head and a silver ring appears in front of its pointed beak. The ring is a solid, donut shaped bubble about 2-ft across, yet it doesn't rise to the surface of the water! It stands upright in the water like a magic doorway to an unseen dimension. The dolphin then pulls a small silver donut from the larger one. Looking at the twisting ring for one last time a bite is taken from it, causing the small ring to collapse into a thousands of tiny bubbles which head upward towards the water's surface. After a few moments the dolphin creates another ring to play with. There also seems to be a separate mechanism for producing small rings, which a dolphin can accomplish by a quick flip of its head. An explanation of how dolphins make these silver rings is that they are "air-core vortex rings". Invisible, spinning vortices in the water are generated from the tip of a dolphin's dorsal fin when it is moving rapidly and turning. When dolphins break the line, the ends are drawn together into a closed ring. The higher velocity fluid around the core of the vortex is at a lower pressure than the fluid circulating farther away. Air is injected into the rings via bubbles released from the dolphin's blowhole. The energy of the water vortex is enough to keep the bubbles from rising for a reasonably few seconds of play time."