Learn Or Do

It’s Throwback Thursday!  Staring at my blank computer screen this morning, I realized I had no idea how this popular meme got started so I did some digging.

Sports Illustrated magazine attributes the first use of Throwback Thursday to a sneaker blog named “Nice Kicks.”  In 2006, the blog started posting pictures of old basketball shoes and titled them Throwback Thursday.  The popularity of the pictures went viral with the hashtag #TBT and a meme was born.

While #TBT is used across social media, it is arguably most popular on Instagram where according to Wikipedia it has been used more than 200 million times!

If you don’t like posting your old pictures using #TBT, maybe you’d like to participate in the similarly themed Flashback Friday (#FBF)?  Or if you want to get off memory lane entirely, how about a post for #MondayMotivation with an inspirational quote or story to get the week off to a good start.

I’m in the spirit of #TBT so here’s my throwback to 2008:

I’m lucky – I outgrew my allergies.  But I know a lot of people are starting their annual season of suffering as the pollen counts rise.  All the sniffling and sneezing, coughing and itching isn’t fun so while you’re waiting for your allergy medications to kick in, let’s think about other ways to help alleviate the misery.  Here are some tips I’ve heard are helpful:

• Stay indoors when you know the pollen counts are going to be high.  Local news broadcasts are pretty good about warning you on high pollen count days.  While pollen counts can vary widely based on plant activity, weather and time of day, on average the pollen count is lowest right before dawn, peaks around mid-day and then falls through the afternoon/evening.
• Keep up on the housecleaning.  Vacuum more than once a week and don’t be stingy with the Swiffers.  Anywhere dust can build up, pollen is hiding too.  And don’t forget to change the filter on your furnace/AC regularly too!
• Try a saline nasal spray or neti pot.  Twice a day nasal rinses help clear the pollen from your membranes.  And a salt water gargle can help with a scratchy throat too!
• Take a shower at night to get all the pollen off of you and out of your hair so you don’t deposit it all in your bedding.  Change your clothes after you’ve been outside – and leave your shoes at the door.   And don’t neglect your pets either – your dog may be a regular pollen ball if you aren’t making sure it is groomed regularly too.

Do you have a favorite trick to minimize the agony of allergies?  Let us know in the comments!

 

Top of my to-do list today?  My lawn looks sad.  Now that we have finally left winter behind, it’s time to get to work outside.  The winter – or the neighbor’s dog – wasn’t kind to a couple spots in my front yard and now I have bare patches.

I’ll be making a trip to the hardware store for some grass patch – and maybe I’ll throw in a bag of plain grass seed to overseed the rest of the yard as well.

Have you ever used grass patch?  There are several brands, but basically, it’s a blend of grass seed, fertilizer and mulch.  You loosen the soil in the bare spots down about an inch or so and then spread the patch over it.  When you water it, the patch turns into a sort of paste that keeps the seed in place and holds moisture in around it.  Water at least once daily for a week to 10 days and you should have grass filling in those bare spots.  It’s easy!

Overseeding is putting seed over a lawn that is thin or uneven.  To prep for my overseeding, I’ll rake the yard gently to loosen up any thatch so the seeds can get down to the soil.  If your seeds stay in the existing grass or in the thatch, they aren’t going to grow so this is an important step.  I have a handheld seed/fertilizer spreader so I’ll put the seed down with that and then follow up with a little more light raking to make sure the seed gets down to dirt.  Then it’s just a matter of watering regularly until my lawn fills in and isn’t so sad!

Want a guide for spring lawn care?  I like this one from Today’s Homewoner.

You might think electric cars were a relatively new thing – but you’d be wrong.  The first practical, production electric car was actually built in 1884 by a man named Thomas Parker in London.

Sometimes described as the “Edison of Europe,” Thomas was a machinist by trade, but his insatiable curiosity lead him into chemical engineering where he developed improvements to lead-acid electric batteries and designed his own “dynamo” which is an electric generator using direct current.  Parker’s dynamo was capable of generating enough power to run the whole electroplating department at the factory where he worked – a first for the time which earned him a silver medal at the British Smoke Abatement Exhibition of 1881.

After this, Parker started a partnership with Paul Bedford Elwell who ran a family factory producing nails and horse shoes.  Elwell-Parker began producing dynamos that lead to the first electric lighting in mines, the first electric trams – and the first electric cars.

As the world moved into the 20th century, electric cars were the preferred type of motorized vehicle with over 30,000 of them on the roads at the beginning of 1900.  But improvements in the internal combustion engine lead to gas powered cars having an advantage over electric with greater driving range and lower refueling times.   The rapid expansion of the petroleum infrastructure and introduction of the electric starter motor for gas powered cars meant no more hand cranking and demand for electric cars faded away.

But in the 1990’s electric cars started to make a comeback fueled by regulations on fuel efficiency and emissions.

In 1996, GM introduced a limited version fully electric car called the EV1 in Califormia and in 1997, Toyota launched a fully electric RAV4 (as well as the Prius hybrid).  Since then, the Tesla Roadster, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt have become best selling fully electric cars.   Doubt their popularity?  Then don’t go to Norway – 39% of all new car sales there are fully electric vehicles!

Manufacturers are stepping up their electric vehicle production too – Volvo announced in 2017 that they would be phasing out combustible engines beginning with the 2019 model year.  So next time you head to the dealership for a new car, you may be surprised at all the electric vehicles available to you!

Here’s the latest video from OK Go – hope you think it’s as funny as I do.  Have a great weekend!

https://youtu.be/6lXVtCjJrz0

Ah Necco Wafers.  You either love them or hate them and I’m betting until a couple weeks ago, you didn’t think much about them.  Then suddenly it was all over the news that Necco Wafers may disappear as the company that makes them was threatening to go out of business.  What will we do without our Necco Sweethearts at Valentine’s Day?  Necco Wafers have been produced since the mid 1800’s by the New England Confectionary Company which also makes Clark bars, Mary Janes and Candy Buttons – which I’m sure we all at least tried in our childhoods.  It looks like the end of an era…

Or is it?  The former CEO of the New England Confectionary Company, Al Gulachenski has announced that he would like to buy the company.  But the hitch is that he will only put up $5 to $10 million of the $30 million price tag.  He’s hoping to fund the rest of the purchase price buy setting up a GoFundMe page.  Check it out at https://www.gofundme.com/we-need-to-save-necco-wafers.

As of this writing, they’ve raised $3,880 of their $20 million dollar goal so there’s a LONG way to go to rescue the company from closing its doors and laying off hundreds of employees.  If you’d like to help save a memory, click on the link above and make a donation!

We all get stressed out sometimes.  And stress can lead to a lot of problems like snacking late at night and insomnia.  I’ve discovered a little basic yoga right before bed helps settle me down and lately has been the cure for my trouble with sleeping.

This isn’t the routine I’ve been doing because I can’t figure out how to share from my phone’s Yoga app to the old blog here – but this routine I found on YouTube looks pretty easy and relaxing.  So give it a try – I’m betting you’ll feel better!

The internet is a great place – but if you’re on it a lot, you’ve probably left a lot of personal information in your wake.  Over the past 6 weeks, Facebook has been in the news because of the improper dissemination of personal information.  I know a lot of you read this blog through my plug-in to Facebook so I thought for today’s to-do, we’d look at our privacy settings.

This video from PBS does a great job of talking about privacy settings and why they matter.  It’s about a half hour but well worth your time to make sure you are aware of what you are making public – and what you want to keep private.

Yesterday was Earth Day.  But did you know it was originally planned to be celebrated on March 21st – the first day of spring?

Peace activist John McConnell first proposed a day to honor the earth at a United Nations conference in 1969 – and selected March 21, 1970 to be that date.  The idea was then picked up on by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson who selected April 22, 1970 for a environmental “teach-in” on thousands of college campuses to raise public awareness of environmental issues.  The grassroots response was overwhelming – remember, in 1969 there was a huge oil spill off the coast of California, the Cuyahoga River burned and smog was a fact of life around factories of the time.  The envisioned “teach-in” snowballed into not only educational activities, but rallies with huge attendance figures in major cities across the U.S.

These activities not only helped raise the profile of environmental issues but also spawned the creation of the EPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and hundreds of environmental organizations.

Earth Day is now celebrated in over 140 countries around the world.  I celebrated by cleaning up my yard – how did you celebrate?  Tell me in the comments!

 

Bears!