- Name and Aliases: Benjamin “Bennie” Galipault, aka “Bennie Boo,” “Mr. Boo,” “Ben-Ben,” “Bunny Boo,” and “Mr. Tubs.”
- Distinguishing Features: Patches of red fur that remind you of a little red-headed kid with a buzz cut; fat white paws; tubby belly; hind legs that appear a bit stiff and are only good for jumping onto furniture no taller than two feet (and usually he crawls his way up anyway) and that cause him to run with a careening sort of half-hop, much like a kitten.
- Place of Birth: Unknown. (My husband believes he belonged to the neighbors down the street and that I’m guilty of catnapping—and not the sleeping kind of catnapping.)
- Age: The vet says three years old.
- Sex: Male, neutered.
- Education: The School of Hard Knocks, Pigspittle, Ohio. (more…)
Last Saturday, I stopped by my favorite antique store in Pigspittle. Incidentally, I had to cross the street to get to the store and as I did a Christmas parade (featuring, among other decidedly non-Christmasy vehicles, a red, white and blue festooned cement truck) was stopped at the stoplight. When does a parade stop at a stoplight? Only in Pigspittle, but I digress…
And he calls them “creepy-crawlies”? Scientists found a gigantic claw, presumed to be part of an eight-foot [astonished italics mine] sea scorpion, in a quarry near Prüm in Germany recently. In today’s Science Daily, Dr. Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, co-author of an article about the find, is quoted as saying, “This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realised, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.”
Filed under: Science
My geno-journey is complete. Not a big surprise, but I come from the haplogroup U2. Here’s what is known:
Family Tree DNA’s haplogroup description of U2:
The mitochondrial super-haplogroup U encompasses haplogroups U1-U7 and haplogroup K. Haplogroup U2 is found distributed in the Near East and Europe, though it is maintained a rather low frequency throughout. This sparse, yet widespread, dissemination, when combined with the presence of an allied haplogroup found in India, suggests that haplogroup U2 is very old, and was likely an early lineage of the super-haplogroup U, which arose greater than 50,000 years ago.
Filed under: Life, in general
One of my dad’s favorite catch-phrases: Life is short. I can’t tell you how many times I rolled my eyes when he said that, mostly because he also used to warn me about “burning the candle at both ends.” Well, life is short, isn’t it? Better to burn the candle now, while it’s in front of me.
Life is short. And it all depends on what candle you’re burning. (more…)
