Fun Facts

My favorite new channels are National Geographic and Animal Planet. I'd already liked Animal Planet for Meerkat Manor - if you haven't seen this show, I invite you to watch. I was quite skeptical when I first heard about it, but once I watched it, I was hooked. Lately, they've been having shows about bears - all kinds of bears. Polar bears are my absolute favorite bear, and probably animal, to watch and learn about, but last night, there was a show on baby panda bears, and they were sooooooo cute. The little baby panda was just learning how to walk, and sometimes she would fall over on her head, but try to keep walking. And then she got to toddler age, like around 6 months, and she was a handful, climbing trees and chewing on her handler. D-A-R-L-I-N-G. Today on National Geographic, I watched a show on polar bears, and if you think global warming is just some made-up concept, come here so I can slap you. Hard. Scientists predict that by the end of THIS century, there will hardly be any polar bears left because their ice is melting too quickly. Being from the middle of the States, I've never seen a polar bear except in zoos, and they are magnificent. In Norway, you can go on an excursion to see them in their natural, shrinking habitat. I would love to do that, but I think it's probably a bit far away from us at the moment.

Besides having shows on animals, National Geo has this show called "I Didn't Know That". Rather than being the beginning of a joke, like "What you don't know could fill the size of Guam..." they explain some interesting facts. Today, I learned that you cannot shatter glass just by singing - glass is just made too well these days. But if the glass is somehow flawed, such as chipped, then you have a shot of shattering it. If it's perfect, it ain't gonna happen. So you can stop wasting your breath.

The other thing I learned about was escalators. You know how you always tell little kids to jump at the end so their laces don't get caught in the stair as it goes flat? Well, the mechanism is designed to not be able to pull anything down, so if a shoelace is untied, then it's just untied and is not supposed to get caught. In the event that something goes awry and it does get caught, the mechanism automatically stops so people aren't sucked down. Neat, huh? The longest escalator is in Washington DC, and the shortest is in China, at 83 cm.

I also learned that the less you put in your washer, the quieter it washes. Our washing machine here is a beast. We really need these in the States. It spins your clothes so fast, they're just barely wet when you take them out. This is to facilitate faster drying on the line outside. Well, a few times, the washer started making this thumping noise, kinda like our washers in the States when the load is unbalanced. Unfortunately, once you shut that door, it's locked until the cycle is over. So you can forget about helping out the washer. It sounded just awful, and once the washer even started moving across the floor, so I've been worried about washing clothes. We have yet to find a laundromat near us, and our landlord didn't seem to be in a hurry to fix our toilet, so I can't imagine him being in any hurry to fix a washer should it break. So today, grudgingly, we did laundry...put in smaller amounts of clothes, and lo and behold, after two loads, it didn't make any thumping noises at all! Yay!!!!!!! It's the little things that help one stay sane.

My nose is still bothering me...well, actually, just the left side. I finally broke down and took an Advil Cold and Sinus tablet, and while it's cleared, it's still very tender. I have no idea what the deal is. I can press on it and it makes a squishy noise, like there's a bubble in there. How odd. I didn't have sinus problems in the States, no allergies....sometimes getting used to a new place really makes your body go through the motions. Ah, well, that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger.