Three thoughts on . . . zippers

 Three thoughts on . . . zippers.

1.  Teeth aren't shaped like teeth.

Despite their name, the teeth of zippers aren't really shaped like teeth. Each one is more like a spoon or a ladle, and they sit, one inside the other, like spoons whose handles alternate left and right.  

It's as though you're making those Matryoshka dolls, those nested Russian dolls, but instead of stacking the different sizes inside each other, they're all the same size and you stack them like a totem pole: each one sitting on,  and fitting into, the head of the one below it.

2.  Knitting with zippers.

A few years ago during Sock Madness, my daughter learned how to add zippers to knitted socks with no sewing involved. The technique is to make loops with yarn in the fabric of the zipper, carefully matching your stitch size (so I guess actually that part is like sewing), . . . so then when you're knitting the socks, you just knit the zippers right in, using the loops. I think that this is so clever, that it almost makes me want to pick up my knitting again.

3.  I love my saved zipper stash.

New zippers can be pricey, but old conference bags and cheapo backpacks often have really decent zippers that are perfectly usable for other good projects.  And the cheapness of the construction means that it's usually really easy to get that zipper out with 5 minutes and a good seam ripper. For some reason, this reminds me about old jokes about the "Yugo" brand cars; you can double the value of the car by filling the gas tank. When it comes to those cheap conference bags, the zipper off of the bag is often worth more than the bag with a zipper still in.

Three thoughts on envelopes

Me, I am some kind of a lucky person, in that I keep getting showered with riches of envelopes. People . . . . well, actually, companies  . . . send me all sorts of mail with return envelopes inside, even though I mostly pay my bill online. Not one to let these riches go to waste, I offer up three thoughts on envelope use.

Thought 1.
"Back of the envelope calculations" are famous for a reason.  Envelopes are really perfect for making lists: they are not too wide, so they force me into the column format, and they don't distract me with vast swaths of blank space or make you feel like a failure for not filling that space.  I use envelopes to keep track of attendance at office hours (my students get credit for visiting me early in the semester).  Apparently, sometimes I use them to jot down ideas for blog posts, too.

Thought 2.
Return envelopes are lovely for sorting smaller pieces of paper.  Historically, people have used them for budgeting; me, I use them to store receipts by month (for example, February 2021).   I don't need to go back and find receipts often --- in fact I can only think of, like, three times in the past three years when I needed to --- but those few times I've needed to find a receipt, it's been super easy to find them.

Thought 3.
Envelopes have this over phones or computers: they don't distract me by pinging me with texts or pointing me towards websites. I never look up from writing something down on an envelope and say to myself,  "Wait! where did that last hour go???"   Better yet, when I put an envelope down someplace, unlike emails or texts, they don't move around to make way for the next incoming envelope; so it's easy to go back and find them later.

Miser Family update: 32 version

Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Family household.  This week, we're celebrating 32 years of L1: someone who seems to always have a huge smile on her face, who loves to play hard and get dirty, who cleans up real nice, and who is ferociously loyal to family and friends.   

In binary, L1 ticks over a new digit: she's 100000 (base 2) which makes her seem really, really old.  And yet, as someone who's really really older than her, I can assure her that amazing surprises will continue to delight her for years yet to come.   So happy birthday, and many more, L1!

Here was one of my surprised delights this week:  soy-sauce hummus.  I was making my homemade no-tahini hummus recipe, and realized we were completely out of garlic.  I tossed in a splash of soy sauce instead on a whim and yummmm.   Score one for improvisation!

Here's another first for me.  I happen to have a lot of cows . . . and by "a lot", I mean "no really, a lot".  I have cow toothbrushes and cow staplers; I have cow mugs that moo; I have cow Christmas ornaments, cows made from leather, folded from paper by origami masters, fired in ceramic and cuddly plush toys.  I keep thinking I'm reaching the limit of cow creativity,  . . . and then along comes a new-to-me cow creation.  

This latest one is a cow that a student of mine 3D-printed as a thank you gift for me.  He dropped it off at my home.  He said he'd remembered that I said I live on [such and such] street, and that my front porch had a lot of cows.  He said he drove along the street looking at the porches to see if he could figure out which was mine, and "Professor MiserMom, you weren't kidding!".  Well, now I have a lot of cows plus one!

What else is going on?  I forgot last week to update you on recent political sock gossip; I-daughter just finished a pair that she modeled for me in a color called "Im-peach-ment"; she is particularly pleased with the timing of finishing these. 

I don't have pictures of this, but N-son and my guy have been bonding at protests; my husband says they were the two youngest protesters outside of Scott Perry's offices in Harrisburg yesterday.   Sock it to 'em, family!

At another extreme, one of N-son's friends very helpfully removed all his hair and poked holes in his ears.  The earrings lasted something like 14 hours; I think both the ears and the hair will return to the way they were before, but who knows?  Here's a bald hole-y N-son for your viewing pleasure.

And on the topic of hair removal,  K-daughter reports,

"A-child got a super cool hair cut! (See pictured) she picked it out herself- it's a side shave. Lookin fly! . . . A-child has mastered making scrambled eggs by herself. She is now helping me tonight in making the Indian dish, Chicken Masala (last pictured) "

And I'm sure you're all wondering how my half-marathon training is going.   Actually, I'm pretty sure you're not wondering about that, which is part of why I decided --- when the giant snow blew through our city this past week --- to go ahead and give blood.  I knew I wouldn't be able to get out on the roads to run, so might as well save a life.  Last Saturday, before giving blood, I'd had a delightful and strong 8-mile run.  Today, mildly de-sanguinated, I headed out for an easy 10-mile run that ended after 5.4 very slow miles.   Eh, N-son's ears will come back and so will my hemoglobin.  

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be 100000 wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

Four paradoxes of snow

Four paradoxes of snow . . . musings arising from this week's weather.  

Light and Heavy.

Snowflakes are so tiny.  So tiny and and so light.  But when they fall like they did earlier this week, they make so much, heavy work.  It's a bit of what I teach my students in calculus class: there are these tiny things we study that are so small that we call them "infinitesimals" (epsilon, dx, dy), but when you add them all up, they make ups something really big.

Dark and Light.

The storms that bring in the snow roll in on huge clouds that block the sun, and at night they block the stars and moon, and yet the nighttimes are brighter than ever because of all the reflected light off the snow.  I often wake up in the middle of the night after a snowfall, thinking it must be morning already, because the nights just luminesce with the snow on the ground.

Cold and warm.

Snow comes in because of cold weather storms, but it traps air to become one of the best insulators around.  I grew up loving to see the snow on my roof: it meant the attic insulation was working (so heat from the house wasn't melting the snow away), and the house underneath was staying cozier than ever.  And snow piles, with their amazing insulating abilities, can last months into warmer weather.  

Rigid and Free.

Snowflake Bentley was the most prolific early photographer of snow, and his fascinating pictures have always made me marvel.   It's amazing to me that a snowflake, starting with a grain of who-knows-what, picking up random water molecules as it falls through the air, remains so incredibly six-fold symmetric.  How do the water molecules on the north side of the flake know to match the ones on the south side?  There's so much variation from the center outward, that it makes the symmetry along the edges that much more stunning.

And yet, if you remove the freedom of falling through the air, and if you force snow to form under constraints (like frost on a windowpane), then you get structures that look almost alive: like ferns, or feathers, of things that can blow and move.  Snow that falls freely forms rigid shapes; snow that forms under conformity seems to finally have a will of its own.  

It makes me feel like there ought to be a metaphor in here somewhere, but I can't pull it together quite.  Mostly, I just love how snow up-ends the world (and my thinking) for a little while, until it melts away again.  

Three thoughts on . . . water usage

Thought 1.

Back in December, I paid my usual quarterly water bill.  In 2020, over the course of that crazy year, our household used about 22,000 gallons of water.  That translates to 60 gallons/day, or 30 gallons per person per day.  We don't take conscious, drastic steps to reduce our water usage ("conscious drastic" is mostly aimed at plastic and landfill-bound garbage in the Chez Miser), and yet we're way lower than the 300-gallon-per-household estimates of the EPA, or the 100-gallon-per-person-per day estimates I've seen elsewhere for US water usage.   I'm not really sure what we do (or don't do) to make this big a difference.

Thought 2.  

About the time that I was paying that bill, we got a letter from Zimbabwe, from the father of one of the children we sponsor through World Vision.  He says, in part

We live in a village which is about 420 km away from the capital city of Harare.  Our homestead comprises of four huts of bricks and thatched with local grass. Cattle, sheep, and goats. We also keep maize, ground nuts, sorghum and cotton.

Our school is 5 km away from our home. We fetch water from a borehole which is 2 km away from our home. Our area is partly hilly and mountainous. It is infested with mosquitoes and tsetse flies.

Whatever I think about our 60 gallons/day water habit here in our own home, I'm darned sure we'd be using a heck of a lot less if I had to haul it over the hills from a hole in the ground a mile or more away while flies were biting me.   I have so, so many reasons to be glad for faucets and water treatment plants.  So, so many.

Thought 3.  
My Christmas gifts this year were basically soap and water.  I bought soap for my family from a friend of mine who runs her own soap-making company out of a shed behind her house.  And I sent money to DigDeep, a project to get running water and sinks in the homes of Navajo families.   (Thanks, Revanche, for pointing me to that!).  Because, really, what the frigg is up with people in our country not having access to clean water?  Sheesh!  

I was a bit worried that my dad's wife would be a bit tetchy about that being my "gift" to her, but I got a really lovely thank you note back.   She loved the soap, and she talked about how when she and my dad combined households, she gave one of her extra desks to "Waterboys for Jesus" (who had posted an ad, requesting items for a yard sale).  They sold it for $150, and used that money with other yard sale proceeds to help build a well in India.  She concluded, "A different location than our American Indians, but just as in need of clean water".  So, yay for that, too.

Miser family update: we are artists; behold!

 Life continues to be rich and full in the Miser Family household.  This week, we are particularly full of art, and artistic-ness, and general art-i-tude.  Behold!

The theme ("I am an artist; behold!") was suggested by I-daughter to me so long ago, that she forgot she'd been the one to come up with it.  But the name of the theme was barely off my lips before my husband, the pun artist, shot back, "I know exactly what I'm going to do".  Hence, bee holding art. supplies.  Yes.

My sister-in-law was only milliseconds slower in responding; she says, "One of my best friends turned 65 a couple of years ago and rented a house out in the Berkshires for all the girlfriends. On Thursday night she had a woman who owned the local “Sip and Paint” make a house call. It was so much fun."   

This kicked us into a spate of wall art; a painting of a fish that L1 gifted to N-son, a painting of bottles that L1 painted long ago and gifted to me, a scenic painting that L1's father-in-law did, a commissioned painting of a tiger that K-daughter did a few years ago.  They are artists!  Behold!

The grandkids get in on the action; A-child has a blown-glass ornament she made (with a little help), and B-child artistically arranges a "rock formation mess".  I-daughter is a sock artist; behold!  K-daughter carved a wooden cow that likes to sit under its favorite tree in the living room, smelling the flowers just quietly . . . (just like Ferdinand!).  N-son is a much louder artist, but in a rockin' good way.  Y creates edible art; she says, "Mostly doing food art this past week- a surprisingly good first attempt at yakisoba!".  As for me, admitted to scrambling to contribute, and I-daughter chipped in a familiar photo with pies and the pair of us:  "You made me, and I'm a work of art!".  'K.  I'll take that!

We haven't had any exciting glucose monitor adventures this week, and my guy returned his trial hearing aids, so that wipes out any fun medical stories I might have had.  Teaching J-term is eating up pretty much all of my days, so I don't have any personally fun stories to tell you (oooh . . . except . . . I just signed a contract for a something-something-something, which will be officially announced Monday.  So I guess next week, I'll have a story to share then.  Cliff hanger, anyone?)

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our art-ventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

Talking Trash, 2020

So, the bad news for the 2020 Trash Tally in Maison du Miser is that we forked over $80 per trash can this year.  Our next door neighbors, in contrast, paid a much more reasonable $2-$3 per can.  

Which leads to the braggy part of the post: the reason we paid so much per can is because we pay a flat rate ($240/year) and because we put out exactly three trash cans at the curb this year.  That's "three" like magic wishes or Goldilocks's bears or like Dale Earnhadrt Sr.'s car number.   Or like our trashcan count this year!  This is our lowest volume of landfill-bound garbage ever, and I am happy to sit and bask in the accomplishment for a few moments.   Indeed, I'll offer up a graph just to show how far we've come, or just how low we'll go, as you will.

{here's me basking . . .  contented sighs of accomplishment . . . okay, I'm done.}

Most of my trash avoidance is passive: I just don't buy a lot of stuff that comes wrapped in garbage.  It gets easier and easier to figure out how to do this the more I do it, and I honestly don't spend a bunch of time or effort in this passive avoidance; nowadays it just happens.

But trash still does come into the house, and so every once in a while I have to get off my duff and do stuff to avoid stuffing the garbage can.   This past weekend, for example, I snapped photos and dusted off my Freecycle password, and posted the offer of about 6 months or so of padded mailing bags.  (And they were snapped up within 24 hours.  yay!)  A couple of other things went out via Freecycle this weekend, while I was on a roll.

In order to be able to do this Freecycle offer, we'd done the work when we moved into the house of setting up a sorting station for outbound materials.   The "Packing Materials" box is one bin.   We also have bins for things that are headed for so-called Thrift shops, construction stuff that will go to Habitat Restore, a HazMat box, several boxes for stuff that's recyclable at a nearby drop-off center but not accepted in our curbside bins, a bag of rags for a nearby thrift shop that recycles fabric scraps, a scrap-metal bin, etc.  So, that was a once-and-done chunk of time, and also a permanent chunk of sizable floor/shelf space in our basement  (our basement has an external door; it's kind of like other people's garages). 

I scored another win through sheer persistence.   First at my old house, and then at my new house, I made a point of asking our newspaper carriers to deliver the paper naked, with no plastic bag, and every Christmas I make a point of giving them a big tip and a thank you note for the naked delivery.  Today my carrier (and the carrier's dog) stopped by while walking past my house so that our dogs could say hello.  And my carrier told me that he's planning to write notes to his other customers asking if they, too would like a plastic-free delivery.  He says he's had a couple more already start returning their plastic bags to him, and he'd love to just reduce the number of bags he delivers.  So maybe I'm part of a small neighborhood movement heading in the less-waste direction.  That'd be really nice.