A Quiz

A (virtual) gold star to the first reader who can correctly name the source of the quotation used for today's Word of the Day at The Free Dictionary (if you're reading this after July 25, you'll need to look at the archived version).

To check your answer, click here.

Sick Day?

Did anyone else experience the no-traffic phenomenon this morning on the way to work? All I can think is that everyone who didn't finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows over the weekend called in sick this morning.

Dog Days, Or, An Excuse to Post a Picture

The Firefox weather add-on I use shows a little icon for each day's weather forecast. Thursday shows a flaming-hot thermometer, signifying "very hot" weather. This got me thinking about the origin of the term "dog days." I had no idea it had anything to do with astronomy and the alignment of Sirius and the sun. I truly thought that it just referred to the tongue-hanging-out-of mouth effect of the summer heat.




photo: Chicago Daily News. (1904). [Two black and white puppies standing next to each other]. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0002055. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. Available from Library of Congress American Memory, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/cdn:@field(NUMBER+@band(ichicdn+n002055))

Expanding Horizons

Online Social Activities for the Week

Added picture to Facebook profile

Changed blog template and layout

Replaced blog photo

Sprang for a paid wiki (yay--no more ads!)

Uploaded two photos to new Flickr account

Cataloged a few books in LibraryThing

New Look

What do you think about the new look? It's fun to have a piece of my life I can change up when I want without too much trouble or impact. I won't tell you, however, how many hours it took me to modify the colors in the new Blogger template (far more many than it should have).

If I knew anything about Photoshop, I would tidy up my self portrait. Alas, I'm not the expert some people are.