A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Finally, took a picture of my April coffee cup. I’m back to a big cup. This one holds about 14 oz. My March cup was smaller about 6 oz. which meant making far more frequent trips to the coffee pot. So, I decided to find another big cup. Of course, I’d cut down from a pot of coffee a day to about 1/2 a pot. Everyone keeps telling me how bad coffee is for one — stresses the system, makes you nervous, on and on and on…. I’m sure you’ve all hear the drill.

However, today I also came across a news article on BBC News and a similar article in Science Daily about a new study that shows that caffeine can offer some protection to the brain by helping reduce the permeability of the blood brain barrier. A quote from the article by Dr Jonathan Geiger of the University of North Dakota:

Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilize the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders.

Seems to indicate that maybe drinking a moderate amount of coffee each day is a good thing. Of course in this study they gave one cup of coffee per day to rabbits. So how this will effectively apply to people is another nest of rabbits. I’ll hope my half a pot or about 2 1/2 large cups per day is not out of the question for protecting me from neurological disorders (especially the big scary one — Alzheimer’s).

Well, it’s a new month. I do have an April cup but haven’t had a chance to take a picture. In fact the past week has been a whirlwind of business. Last night around 1AM so maybe I should say this morning, the new April issues of SFRevu and Gumshoe Review went live. TechRevu also turned into a monthly ezine and went live with new reviews and articles.

Today, I took a break. Taking a break means I washed the kitchen floor, cleaned the stove, scrubbed out toilets, and swept all the floors, watered the plants, and read a book. I hope to post the review here soon since it’s not mystery, science fiction, fantasy (well, maybe…no…not really). It’s a Pride and Prejudice from Darcy’s point of view. I won’t give the title of which one right now.

So the weather is warming up, April is here and maybe, just maybe, spring is on its way for real and we won’t have 70 degree days followed by 30 degree days and back and inbetween degree days, until we don’t know what season we’re in.

[Hyperion here.  I’ve seen the forecast for the next couple of days.  50’s tomorrow, 40’s the day after.  I don’t think I’m going to tell Gayle though.  She looks so full of hope at the coming of spring.  I’ll just let her believe for a while longer.]

Tonight we plan to turn off our lights for Earth Hour. My husband and I do care about our environment and try to do the right thing. We recycle even though where we live we have to drive it to the recycle center because we’re not on a pick-up route. We plan all our travel in loops to avoid needless miles. Make Do. Recycle. ReUse. Simple sayings to live by.

Here’s more info about Earth Hour:

If you haven’t Googled anything yet today, take a look. The Google logo that changes with holidays and special occasions hasn’t changed but Google turned out the lights on the website (background is black) to help bring Earth Hour to the attention of their users.So, if you care about Climate Change and our environment — Earth — join us in turning out your light between 8 PM and 9 PM tonight, March 29th, 2008.

The Earth needs all the help it can get.

The weather has been pretty good the last couple of days. Today, I walked down to the mailbox and then decided to take some pictures of the yard. This one is just down from our side yard and after the fruit trees. As you can see we’ve got a lot of clean up to do.

I’m always surprised when the perennials come up. There’s a hyacinth struggling out of the leaf cover under the azalea. The peonies are starting to shoot up out of the ground. The strawberry plants we put in last year look like they’ve survived. My husband’s rose bush is getting new leaves, as are the two hydrangeas just off our front steps.

For many that may be just spring as usual but we live in the woods. We have a small plot that gets sun — the side yard garden area is about 20 by 50 feet and gets between 4-7 hours of sunlight and about 1/4 of that is our herb garden. Every where else gets partial to full shade. We’ve been here three years going on four and each year we try new plants in a test area to see if it will grow. Most is a bust. The Endless Summer hydrangeas did survive so now we have three of them. We tried another type.  It lives, but never blooms.

Since we have 5 acres tucked behind a lot of about 20 acres and next to another lot of 5 acres and bounded by a farm it is land with lots of trees and thus some pretty acid soil. Last year we moved some of the plants to containers and actually got some tomatoes, peppers, and a few cucumbers. We hope to do more containers or home-made earth-type boxes and see how that goes.

The house came with a fruit orchard: apple, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries. We’ve lost a few of the really young trees, all apples. The rest seem to do fine. They bloom, they actually get fruit, but so far in three seasons we’ve managed: 1 peach and 2 cherries. We bought a plastic owl with a head that turns in the breeze — no luck. The squirrels and deer just laugh at us. Last year a squirrel sat on the fence post eating an apple and when we yelled at him, he looked up at us like we were some sort of exhibit and shambled off with his apple tucked under his arm to eat in peace somewhere out of sight. And we won’t even discuss the bird.

This year we’ve got plans for shiny ribbon and cayenne pepper, container planting, and lots of hope and wishes along with the water and tender loving care.

What better way to celebrate the Monday blues than with a blue rose. Got to thinking about blue roses in a round about way and found science has managed to create a true blue rose. Last year sometime there was a big thing about rainbow colored roses — horribly expensive and they looked more like melted crayons in all the pictures or that scene in What Dreams May Come when the Robin Williams character is in the painted landscape and the colors are being smeared as he walks through.

Today was a cool blue day. Did the minimum on the PC that I had to do. Then I curled up and read all day (with of course a break to make the traditional Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner). Finished reading Murder is Binding by Lorna Barrett (the review will be in Gumshoe Review for the April issue). Then I started another mystery, Poison Pen by Sheila Lowe, also for the April issue. It was really nice to just sit with a warm afghan and coffee and read. I think I’m coming down with a cold or something because it was just so hard to move today to start anything — maybe I’m still trying to gather spoons.

I did manage to search some of my stash areas and find a spare bobbin for my Majacraft Rose. Now all I have to find is my Lazy Kate and I can ply my singles and finish the blue yarn I’ve been spinning up. The thing is I’ve been spinning and spinning and I’ve now got 3 bobbins full and there’s just as much wool in the basket as there was when I started. Honest, it sure looks that way anyway. I think it’s breeding in there — the problem is I’m now getting sick of all these shades of blue. However, next I have a lot of white wool that I plan to spin and then dye. Now I’m wondering if I should dye and then spin. What do you think?

I really don’t know how it happened. I’ve been doing so well. I even managed with the zine work to actually clean the upstairs bathroom, do the floors, and pick up and organize another big chunk of my fiber stash. I’ve also started the sleeves on my sweater and spun up a spool of singles (next is plying and picture will follow).

Today, we headed out to my favorite yarn store, The Yarn Garden, in Annapolis, MD. They have a sale every year with fantastic prices and door prizes. Unfortunately, today was the last day of the sale and while there was still a lot of wonderful yarn — I took a pass. Having just partially organized my stash of yarn and fiber, I just couldn’t find anything that I need just now since I have so many partial projects going. So, I touched and dreamed and walked away — it was so hard to leave without buying anything at all, not even the yarn that I fondled and priced and dithered over. Sigh. Such is the decisions of life.

Next, we stopped in to Homestead Gardens. Homestead is just a beautiful oasis of spring. They had some small areas of landscaping that were so peaceful and calm. We wandered through the displays, picked up some vegetable seeds, some seedling pots, and a few herb plants. We have a perennial herb garden to the side of the house and have been adding to it each year. But the annuals we either have to start from seed ourselves or buy as plants. I tried to winter over my scented geraniums this past winter and lost 4 of the 5. At least the lemon grass made it through the winter.

Tomorrow we plan to get outside and make a big start on clearing out the garden area to get ready to turn the soil and ready it all for the spring planting in a few more weeks. That’s where the problem starts with the missing spoons (see earlier spoon post), I have been so lucky all week and today started strong but somewhere between Homestead and home I seem to have used up all but one and I need that one to finish this and get to bed.

I’m reading Charlaine Harris’s Three Bedrooms, One Corpse so I think I’ll just go curl up and hope that tomorrow brings me enough spoons to get a start on some of my grand plans for spring cleaning.

In between all the other things I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been working on these socks. I turned the heel last night. I was going to knit plain until one inch from top but just switched to 2×2 ribbing since I want to make them a bit higher and I hope the ribbing will help them stay up.

But, alas I’m not a one project kind of person so I have a pair of traveler socks in the bedroom that I’ve done the top pattern and just started the second pattern. The pattern is by Nancy Bush in her book, Knitting on the Road. I’ve made a couple of pair of socks from this books and I just love the simple clear directions.

I’ve also finished the body of my sweater I was working on. Now I just have to pick up for the sleeves and knit down to the wrist. No finishing required since it’s top down and I used an i-cord for the bottom. Hopefully, that one will show up here in the blog with a week or two. Depends on my knitting time. I’ve about finished the follow up to all the zines going live — now it’s gearing up for the 1st of April — and that means lots of reading time. I found one of my book holders and I bought a weighted bookmark so I’m going to try reading and knitting (at least the plain knitting).

I’ve spun up a bobbin of wool/angora mix that I bought a few years ago. I’m not caring for the color as much as I did when I bought it but it spins up nice. I’m hoping to get a cardigan from it when I’m done. It’s sort of scratchy so I’m thinking outer garment not next to the skin.

Lots of plan. Little time. But full of joy at the thought that soon spring will be here.

I’d almost forgotten it was March and time to move to a new cup. I was so enjoying the February roses and love cup. This month, I’m using (starting today — this first week has been overwhelming) a cup I picked up at the Maryland Renaissance Faire last fall. I fell in love at first sight when I saw it in the Shore Fire Pottery booth. Shore Fire Pottery is owned and operated by Dan & Rhonda Heinecke. I wanted to ad a link to them but couldn’t find a website. (If anyone knows of one let me know and I’ll add it in). They do wonderful work and it’s really different. A lot of it is organic, meaning there are impressions of leaves and flowers in the pottery along with other elements. They also have the usual dragon and fairy pottery — but it’s this mug (the only one in the booth) that called out to me.

If you happen to be in Maryland during festival season, you should stop by and check out their pottery as well as the festival (which starts August 23, 2008).