Tuesday, March 26, 2019

April 2019


TO's March was a regular slumgullion
of lions & lambs...

So many lions! So many lambs! The pic for this month is from one of the more lion-y days. My balcony was in a cloud and even my balcony buddha couldn't see a thing. I had to shoot this through the window because the wind was so strong I couldn't even open the balcony door. Other, more lamb-y days meant nice walks on ice-free sidewalks and wearing only a jacket and no boots, hat, or gloves!

Looking at this picture and thinking about the goulash/ragout of this March's weather stew had me searching for a word that started with a nice lion/lamb-y alliterative L. But no! Instead, I found one of my dad's favourite words: slumgullion. I always thought he had made it up. When I was a girl, he always brought me to giggles saying it. I knew it was a mixture of a bunch of stuff thrown together without rhyme or reason. I knew that because that's what he told me, but I still thought he had made up the definition along with the silly word.Guess my funny daddy wasn't quite so original as I had thought. Seems "slumgullion" has a history mostly referring to stew-type foods enjoyed by the poor. Here I'm enjoying using it more like Good Old Fred Forester might have done.

And that made me think of Good Old Fred's favourite word for an undefinable colour: "muckle-dee dun." So I looked that up, too! Seems it's a real colour used in various forms to describe tan horses. My daddy was a farm boy, so my guess he knew that. And he was just having fun with the word... and my giggly reaction to it.
 


I managed to make it through all the lions and all the lambs and now I'm lollygagging—and giggling.
...
If this isn't nice, what is?

              ~ Kurt Vonnegut, of course

Monday, March 11, 2019

Happy Pi Day 2019

You know you want to celebrate...

Bet you didn't know this though: Pi is represented by the lower case Greek letter, π, because it is the first letter of the Greek word περίμετρος, meaning perimeter. You pronounce it "per-REEM-eh-tos." Go here to hear it pronounced.

Some math nerds at MIT have a way to start big. HERE

Here are some other PI celebration ideas for the rest of us.

1. Curate your own Pi Playlist. Here's mine. Contents (OK you already know how old I am):

2. Crack some PI jokes:
  • 3.14% of the sailors around the world are “Pi”rates.
  • Divide the circumference of the sun by its diameter and you will get a Pi in the sky.
  • I tell you, do not talk to Pi. He never stops.
 3. Watch some PI movies:
4. Eat some circular PI foods:
  • Pies, sweet and savoury
  • Cookies
  • Pizzas
  • Sliced Pineapples (they've gotta be sliced to be circles!)
5. Click HERE below for a higher resolution of this Pi Day graphic to decorate your desktop for the day! 

How ever you decide to slice it, have a great day honouring how math is always looking for ways to explain nature.

The circle is just the beginning.
...
If this isn't nice, what is?

              ~ Kurt Vonnegut, of course