Pure Nerd

Here are the results from my The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test. Well, I'm a bit of all of the above, but since I "scored better than half in Nerd" (65% Nerd, 26% Geek, 43% Dork; obviously, this isn't additive), I earned the title of

Pure Nerd.

The site provides the following definitions:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

Be seeing you.

Sugar

Gum: Bazooka Joe has new characters, including a nerdy black kid who likes reptiles! When you get to the Bazooka site, click on "Comics."

Cookies: We had Tim Tams (Arnott's) in Australia (one of our tour leaders loves chocolate, sugar, and fat, and he loves to share, so each day on the bus he gave us soda and cookies). I saw them at the grocery store on Sunday; the American version is made by Pepperidge Farms, not Arnott's, and I found a detailed comparison of the two versions here.

On-line Hand Embroidery Exhibition: Living Organisms

Check it out!

Back from Australia, or I heart Solo

We returned from Australia (New South Wales and Queensland) on Friday, and I'm not sure if I'm over the jet lag yet. We took a nap on Friday afternoon, and at about 7:30 that night, my husband woke up and microwaved some burritos for us; after eating, we went back to sleep and slept for 13 hours straight.

Because of my collapsed lung, I didn't know if I would be able to go, but one week before we left, I got the go-ahead from my doctor. Flying with a collapsed lung is a very dangerous thing to do, but mine had "fully resolved." After an incident-free 15-hour flight there, I felt like I really was in the clear.

Highlights include about 300 species of birds (most of them new), including Birds of Paradise, Bower Birds (and their bowers!!!),Cassowaries, Emus, rainbow-colored everybodies, and pied everybodies; platypuses, koalas, wallabies, kangaroos, bandicoots, dragons (forest and water), battling monitor lizards (goanas), green sea turtles, and the rainforest. I might have seen a flying fish. I also fell in love with lemon squash, specifically Solo, the thirst crusher. I must find something like it here.

My husband and I caught a cold a few days into the trip, but the wildlife and landscapes were great distractions from the pounding sinus headache and coughing (I was constantly afraid that I would cough at the wrong moment and scare away some much-desired bird). Our tour group included 12 participants and 2 leaders, and 6 people came down with the cold.

I took an enormous quantity of crappy photos (the rainforest is dark).

My biggest disappointment is that the pelagic trip was canceled because of bad weather, and we could have seen heaps of albatrosses (one of my favorite groups of birds). We'll just have to go back :-) And, I really want to see flocks of wild budgies, and they are found west of where we were on this trip.

OK, enough of the stream of consciousness.

Good night,
Sylvie

Remake of The Prisoner

I just watched the 9-minute preview of a new AMC miniseries -- a re-make of The Prisoner. This is wrong on so many levels:

• Never re-make a classic.
  
• James Caviezel plays Number Six. WTF? An American?
  
• Far too many American accents.
• In conversations, the characters call each other "Six" and "Eleven-Twelve," as if they simply had flaky parents who gave them numbers as names. It's supposed to be "NUMBER Six."
  

Gay, atheist, vegetarian Sir Ian McKellen plays Number Two. From everything I've heard, Caviezel is a pretty conservative Catholic.

Patrick McGoohan, the star of the original series, died earlier this year.

I am not surprised that they re-made The Prisoner, but I am pissed off. The only silver lining is that this may lead more people to watch the original -- catch it on Fridays on IFC.

Be seeing you.

My Punishment

This is what greeted me when I pulled my oft-used Tilley hat from the washing machine. I've washed it in the machine before, without any damage, but I guess that I waited too long between washings this time, and that the rot that sets in from too-little washing occurred.

Why is it beloved? Well, first of all, it comes in a size large enough to fit over my dreadlocks. I look like a total dork, of course, but it fits. Plus, it was very durable and shielded me from the sun, rain, and bird poop on many an outdoor adventure. Next time, I promise to wash my Tilley hat more often.

I am so green

"A recent study by statisticians at Oregon State University concluded that in the United States, the carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives - things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs."
Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/07/oregon_state_researchers_concl.html