Two new whimsies

I've spent the last part of my week gardening, a pursuit that I never thought I would take up. This isn't because I don't love plants, or the (tamed) outdoors, but simply because I possess a black thumb. Every unfortunate houseplant that finds itself in my grasp quickly gives up its stake on life due to my overabundant bestowment of water and plant love. Perhaps plants of the outdoor variety will fare better? Time will tell, and I promise to post pictures of an impossibly lush garden (if there is one to be had).

Also, I've become hopelessly addicted to etsy.com. This replaces my previous preoccupation with ebay. This is a picture of my latest acquisition.

A chick and a duck!!!

Laura (my sister) brought home a chick and a duck last week. They're really entertaining! The duck is shockingly intelligent, and the chicken? Shockingly vapid. In a cute way. Hopefully we can get duck/chicken diapers (yes, they exist), so that they can be house pets!

Boxes in the Attic

One of my favorite pastimes is to study interesting subjects online. Some topics have been found merely by hitting the random button on Wikipedia. For instance, the other day I studied blood, and found that blood types are not the only differences between people's blood. Someone could be unable to accept a donor's blood of the same type because of an Rh factor! Fascinating! So O- really isn't the universal donor.
Anyway, the point that I'm getting to is that in my quenchless search for knowledge, I am starting to find that I am...running out of room. For instance, the other week I was looking up malapropisms and related devices, and I can't remember what they are anymore. This forgetfulness has never happened to me (I of the elephantine memory). So I wonder, am I running out of room? Have all of the memories and facts of my 25 years started to crowd the hard drive in my brain? Or are my facilities simply aging and am I unable to retain things like I once could?
My favorite literary figure, Sherlock Holmes, would side with my first theory. In the first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet, Watson tells Holmes some commonly held scientific knowledge, along the lines of the Earth revolving around the Sun, to which Holmes responds that he doesn't care! His brain is only filled with things that are useful to him in solving crimes, and everything else is inconsequential. Holmes states that a brain is like an attic, it can only hold so many boxes before it becomes full and you can't find anything anymore, therefore he is a better detective by staying wholly ignorant of everything that is not useful to him.
Is this how our memory works, like Holmes' attic? Or can our minds be infinitely elastic? Most would agree it's not that simple. Memory, in its makings and retrieval, is so interesting. As interesting, I think, as forgetting. Isn't it a mystery how and why we forget things? Or are things never really forgotten, just repressed?

Score!

I just bought my tickets for the 2009 Comic Con in San Diego! I'll be attending Thursday, July 23rd. I can barely contain my joy. For the last few years I've excitedly clicked through pictures of costumed attendees online, muttering promises to myself that I would be one of their number next year. After a few years of apparently empty promises, I've finally taken the plunge. Now all I have to decide on is a costume.

Kombucha!

If you hold credentials as a jholiday blog expert, you've probably heard of Kombucha.

Kombucha is a miracle tonic, created from fermented tea. To picture how it is made, imagine how an alcoholic beverage is made, usually by adding yeast to something with a sugar content (wine grapes, barley, potatoes, etc.) In the same way you can create kombucha, except in the place of yeast you use a kombucha "mushroom", which is made of mostly probiotic bacteria (think yogurt), added to a mixture of green tea and sugar. This creates a delicious, effervescent nonalcoholic beverage that is chock full of antioxidants, probiotics, enzymes and amino acids, and polyphenols.

Kombucha has had success with cancer patients, it promotes weight loss, body alkalinity, the immune system and is the best hangover cure I have ever found.

This post is in celebration of GT's (my favorite kombucha brand) release of new kombucha flavors! So far I've bought:

Botanic No 3- seen above. This has lavender and elderberry. A new favorite.

Botanic No 7- Has a gingery flavor. I like it, it tastes like a mellower version
of their "Gingerade" flavor.

Botanic No 9- I haven't tried this one yet!

Superfruits- includes all those trendy antioxi-berries like Acai and Gogi berries.

Yum

This is the jam!

I've reminded all of you readers about my super awesome how-to-find-music secret, the UK pop charts. At the top of their list is the booty shakin "Number One" by Tinchy Stryder. You heard it here first (in the USA, at least...)



If this video stops working, check out the non-bootlegged version on youtube here

reading list

I've been on a bit of a fantasy bender lately. I wrapped up the Mortal Instruments trilogy, and am now in the middle of Sabriel, the 1995 winner of the Aurealis Award for Fantasy. Next, I plan on reading Anne McCaffrey's The Dragonriders of Pern and finishing The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens. Anyone have any other recommendations? I've heard good things about Stewart's The Crystal Cave.