Round Up

This weekend is the SilverDocs, the Silver Spring, Maryland documentary festival. The festival is from June 16th-June 23rd. Here is the film list. Oh my, I wish I could see them all.

Urawaza is a Japanese term for everyday tips and tricks to make life easier. Lisa Katayama has written a book, Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan. Lifehacker has an excerpt from the book.

Look at these lovely literary pendants from Tartx.

To all of my teenage girlfriends who used to make fun of me for reading Jane Austen, I hope you have finally come around. See how popular she is these days. Told ya!!!!! Look at this handy-dandy Jane Austen timeline.

And guess what Sense and Sensibility, the 1994 Ang Lee production is on YouTube.

Love this memory trick. 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon. And so two "C's" fit inside a "P," two "P's" fit inside a "Q," and four "Q's" fit inside a big, enormous "G."

The New York City Public Library blog has an excellent post about Charles Dickens (it's the June 10, 2008 post). I totally identified with this post. It's like me and lavender. I should like lavender. It's purple, one of my favorite colors. It's beautiful. It's a plant. The scent is said to cure a host of ills. WHY OH WHY DON'T I LIKE THE SCENT? I feel the same way about Charles Dickens. Why can't I like this incredible author?

I'm glad someone thought to have Wishbook, The Christmas Catalog Archive. I can remember spending hours perusing the Sears Catalog when I was a kid. Where I grew up having this catalog delivered to your mailbox was big excitement. I always felt sorry for Pat our mailman (our RFD mailman of approximately 20 years-when he was sick his wife would drive the route)when he had to try and get the catalogs into all the boxes. And speaking of that everyone always would leave cookies and homemade goodies for him in the mailbox during the holidays. Oh, how I miss things like that. Anywho, I digress. When we first moved to the country, we were about 5 miles from the nearest town and the town quaint though it was/is, there weren't many stores. They also hadn't built the 2 malls, Laurel Mall and Uniontown Mall yet, so the catalog was in a way a necessity. Unless you wanted to drive the 40 miles to Pittsburgh to shop.

I am so envious. 60 Minutes went to the Doomsday Seed Vault. (i'm a bit paranoid about embedding the video here so I'll just provide the link).


I can remember making a clorox bottle piggy bank when I was a Girl Scout. These masks are such an improvement. Love that folks are using recycled products to make art. There's much more on the Folk Art South Africa website.

That's all for this week.

"Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us." Jane Austen