Karen
Posts by Karen Kaminski:
Friday Unrelated Information
1. I’m putting up a Christmas tree this weekend. As we decided, this doesn’t make me a hypocrite, it makes me a homeowner. But I’ll still sing this song from MST3K:
2. Opportunity, the rover that’s already on Mars (not Curiousity, which is on route to land next August) has confirmed the existence of “a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water” on Mars. This is big news–so of course there’s more LOLSpace to go with it:
Space Jokes
For your Thursday, I give you two funny space things, as found on It’s Full of Stars:
1. First, the Unimpressed Astronaut meme. It’s fantastic. Go see all of them.
2. Second, as you (should) know, the Kepler observatory has found its first planet in the habitable zone of a star like the Sun. But did you know that the planet has a Twitter account? The first tweet is brilliant.
Big Day
Some big historical events happening today, courtesy of The Writer’s Almanac:
1. The 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
2. Willa Cather’s birthday.
3. The anniversary of the first fully clear photograph of the Earth from space, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, and known as “The Blue Marble.”
Tuesday Project Roundup: The Cute Doesn’t Stop
Fruitcake!
Yesterday I made fruitcake, the kind where you raid the Whole Foods bulk aisle for fancy dried things and then soak the cake in booze and age it for a month. The Anne of Green Gables-reading part of me likes doing something so “old fashioned” (if not downright medieval); the drinker in me likes the booze part; and the adult reader in me thinks of Laurie Colwin:
Lately I have begun to think less of holiday and have turned my attention to the idea of winter, of trying to fill the house with good things… I want to make a gesture toward that longed-for simpler time by producing something that is made only once a years.
(from the essay “How to Face the Holidays,” in More Home Cooking.)
Also: BOOZE!
Friday Unrelated Information
1. I found a Salinger quote (I think from “Hapworth 16, 1924”) in the blog archives that is encouraging:
“I find it magnificent how beautiful loose ends find each other in the world if one only waits with decent patience, resilience, and quite blind strength.”
2. This video from the Shelter Pet Project has been making the rounds, but it’s hilarious:
3. And in other old-but-new-to me news, I’ve discovered the Hobbit Name Generator. It’s hours of fun (and there’s an Elvish Name Generator, too!).
Advent Calendars In Spaaaaace!
Now that it’s December, it’s time once again for my favorite part of “the holidays”: The Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar. It’s at the Atlantic this year (I guess its creator went there from the Big Picture blog?) but it will give you an image from the Hubble telescope every day from now until Christmas. And we all know how I feel about space pictures.
Here is today’s image, the unpoetcially-named UGC 1810:
And here’s something to ponder while you look at it, from the Upanishads:
The little space within the heart is as great as the vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun and the moon and the stars. Fire and lightning and winds are there, and all that now is and all that is not.
Something To Remember
Tuesday Project Roundup: Getting Things Done During Long Weekends
This weekend made me realize that maybe I haven’t lost my crafty mojo; maybe I just need four-day stretches of time to make things. (Hm, how can I work that?)
I finished a tunic dress that has been cut out for a couple of weeks:
It’s the same pattern as this one from June (adapted from the Built By Wendy Dresses book), with longer sleeves to make it more cold-weather appropriate.
And the owl sweater for Skyler is just waiting to dry so I can sew on all 32 little button eyes:
Hoot hoot!