A Bit Early For a Vermont Sign of Spring

We're having a January thaw here in Vermont, a temporary break from the deep winter chill.

We had a pretty substantial snow cover a few days ago here in St. Albans, but most of it is gone now.

January in Vermont? A daffodil pops up in St. Albans
during a January thaw

The rapidly melting snow, coupled with the comfortable temperatures, had the added benefit of hitting on a weekend,. This gave me an unexpected chance to get things accomplished outdoors. It mostly involved clearing brush and chainsawing a few scrubby, unwanted trees.

The heavy snow earlier this winter came before the ground really froze, and the snowcover acted as a blanket to keep the ground relatively warm.

That meant a few hardy plants were able to respond to the midwinter warmth when the snow disappeared today. That's why you see the daffodil sprout in this post. I spotted the green shoots this afternoon as I was hauling dead branches to the burn pile.

The daffodil plants won't die when the cold inevitably returns. (It's supposed to be below zero in a few days) But the ends of this plant will turn brown, and not look great when it first comes up in April. I'll probably cover it with a thick layer of mulch, just to give it an assist to ride out the deepest cold of the winter, which will surely hit soon.

"Sign Spinners" Prove There's a Vocation For Everyone

While looking at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog last night, I noticed he featured the video, at the bottom of this post, of someone called a sign spinner.

I did a little digging out of idle curiosity and discovered sign spinning is a Big Thing. I had no idea.

A sign spinner in Times Square

Apparently, there's a huge industry that has people learn how to do all kinds of acrobating tricks while holding a sign. They're hired by businesses who want to attract the attention of passing motorists.

You can even go on line to something called signspinners.org to either hire a spinner or get a job as one.

There are so many industries in this world I had no idea existed, I tell ya.

They're cool to watch, but I wonder how much local zoning boards appreciate sign spinners. They're certainly a distraction to drivers. I wonder if they cause crashes? And if so, who gets sued? The inattentive driver or the sign spinner who made him so? Or the business that hired the spinner? All of the above?

As is always the case with every phenomenon or hobby or occupation,  there is even a big competition for sign spinners.   It's the Aarrow World Sign Spinning Championship, coming up soon!  Feb. 10-12 in Las Vegas, in case you're interested in going or competing. Yes, they spell "arrow" with two A's.

So anyway, the cool sign spinner video is below. Turn down the volume, the music may not be to your liking. And be patient. The first few seconds are kinda slow. And ignore the random dancer that invades. This is still huge fun:

Would You Like an Update on Debt Ceiling Negotiations With That Dessert?

Here's another one of my husband Jeff's great habits. Almost every week, usually on Friday, sometimes on Saturday, he'll announce we will not be having dinner at home and we instead go out to a restaurant.

I love this. At home, there are distractions. The TV is on. The dogs need attention. I always hear the siren song of my laptop and gravitate toward that, even when food is ready to eat in our happy homestead and Jeff is asking how my day was.

When we go out to a restaurant, all the distractions are gone. The cell phones are off. The latest viral video, the demands of work,  the  breaking news updates on the follies of Congress or Kim Kardashian are silenced and our oh-so-wired life has been deliciously disconnected. It's just Jeff and me. Soon, we fall into our rhythm, the conversation flows, he makes me laugh, I feel better and I hope he does, too.

Is this the restaurant check
of the future?

The restaurant is our refuge from the world, and I come out of it completely recharged.

Which is why I was dismayed by the news that a Washington DC restaurant is experimenting with  printing out news updates on the bill the server gives you at the end of your meal, according to Eater.com 

Eater.com quotes Old Ebbitt Grill General Manager Christian Guidi as saying he likes the experiment because he's "always looking for ways to add unique value"

Unique, yes. Value? I'm not sure.
He also said the Associated Press news updates on the checks fill "the dead time between receiving the check and the server processing the payment."

What, do diners customarily sit in silence once the bill is presented? Is conversation supposed to stop? If so, Jeff and I are breaking the rules. We continue our conversation during our entire time in the restaurants.   But I guess that's not the American Way.

The news feed on restaurant bills is really all about advertising. Like we need more of it.  In a press release from  the people putting these news feeds say,   "If successful, this will create a new channel to disseminate news and advertising to millions of readers on an existing platform never used for this purpose."

Ah yes. It seems advertising must invade every part of our lives. If this keeps up, there will be some requirement for people to whisper "Buy Product X!" in our ears repeatedly at night as we try to sleep.

I hope the restaurants Jeff and I go to don't adopt these news feeds on restaurant checks.  You just spent a chunk of change on a nice restaurant meal, you're feeling good and mellow, and all of a sudden, here comes that loudmouth advertiser, in print here, ordering you to BUY BUY BUY! 

Kills the mood, doesn't it?

Stung by 1,800 Bees, Then Jolted 13,000 Volts. So What Does This Arborist Do Next?

I remember as a kid ads for a toy and the tag line was "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down."

The best example of a human Weeble, were told by television station KVIA, via Gawker, is one Craig Benavidez, 52, a New Mexico arborist. First 1,800 bee stings, then 13,000 volts.

Talk about a guy who recovers quickly! I hope I have his recovery powers if I ever get injured.

His travails started in the summer, when he got mixed up with a next of Africanized bees. These are the "killer bees" that swarm and sting and sting and sting until you die.

Benavidez got stung 1,800 times. And managed to live.

The scene at the hospital sounds like a horror movie. Said Benavidez:

"They told me in the hospital that they were wiping them off with a credit card because they didn't want to count them anymore,” Benavidez said. “Bees were coming out of my mouth, my ears, my nose and flying around the hospital. People had to leave the hospital who were allergic to bees.”

Benavidez recovered and went back to work. Until Monday. That's when he got jolted by electricity from power lines he accidentally made contact with while he was trimming limbs from a tree.

And once again, the power of recovery: On Monday, he was listed in critical condition in the hospital. On Tuesday, he was calmly discussing the incident with a television reporter. He said he planned to go back to work Thursday, despite cuts to his hands and head and burns on his feet.

This guy has more lives than a cat.

You'll Hear Much Over the Decades From Poet/Performer Noah St. John

Noah St. John, 15, of Berkeley, California finds himself in the viral online spotlight these days thanks to a video of his winning performance at NPR's Snap Judgement.  It's a tour de force.

Snap Judgement is an NPR podcast in which people tell stories, recite poetry or otherwise provide some great verbal narrative, often to a musical score. St. John won a recent Snap Judgement contest with his performance, called "The Last Mile"  

Noah St. John in performance

In the video, he talks about a trip in the family car. That's all I'll tell you know. It's absolutely riveting.

You might have already seen the video. It's all over Facebook and in the blogosphere.  I often avoid posting stuff that's already been widely seen, but in this case it's worth putting it out there for even more attention.

I love the emotional roller coaster St. John puts you on. The video has really been justifiably embraced by a variety of gay blogs and media sources. But the fact that his parents are two moms really are besides the point in the monologue. On one hand, that represents an advance in gay equality. On the other hand, it's as it should be.

Acccording to Meredith May, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, St. John certainly has the right pedigree for his performance, given that his parents are a novelist and a rhetorical expert.

He's previously won awards for spoken word contests and poetry slams. He says he's not sure if he wants to develop a career as a writer, actor, director or all three.

In any event, he'll do well. At 15, his career is certainly off to a rousing start.

Before you click "Play" on this video, I have to issue a Kleenex alert: You will need the tissues as you surely get emotional watching his powerful performance. Here it is:

Amazing Panoramic Photo Contest Winners

The aerial, panaromic, amazing view of Central Park and parts of Manhattan in this post were taken by photographer Sergey Semenov in the annual Epson International Photographic Pano Awards.

Do click on the link to Dphoto to see the other winners if you want to look at some amazing photographs. (Note to self: I'm not worthy!!!)

When you're in the site gaping at the wonderful photographs, make sure you click on the image of VR/360 winner Eric Herrmann and follow the instructions to put your mouse on the image and move it around.  You'll get a real treat with that.

Do click on the photograph on this post to make the image bigger and easier to see. Believe me, it's worth it.

Hmmm. I've never really done anything with panometric photography. Maybe I ought to look into it.

Washington State Crisis: Picnic Table Pyramid Mystery Not Solved

While we spent the fall an early winter dealing with Hurricane Sandy, fiscal cliffs, the Obama election and the Kardashian pregnancy, we haven't solved an urgent mystery out of Washington State.

Somebody this summer was going into parks in and near Spokane and making elaborate pyramids out of picnic tables.

One unanswered question on everybody's mind: Are the pyramids art or vandalism or both?

Another unanswered question: Was it really expensive to taxpayers for crews to dismantle the pyramids or was somebody wasting money?

The question was raised by the pyramid builders themselves. After reading complaints the pyramids took hours and lots of equipment and plenty of municipal workers to dismantle, the pyramid builders left a note at one of their masterpieces saying it only took them a half hour or so to build, so why was it a big federal project to dismantle?

According to the Spokane Spokesman Review, the picnic table stackers wrote:

“We heard that our riverfront table pyramids cost $500 each to remove,” the note reads, “yet they only took 4 teens 25 min to assemble sans equipment! Please stop wasting taxpayer dollars.”

Parks officials responded that it took special equipment and a lot of time to take down the stacks.

The other question to emerge was whether this was art or vandalism. You decide