Living In the World, Not on It

On 1 December I posted the Old Farmer's Almanac information and other fun tidbits for this month. If you read it, you may recall that I described the Ember Days that come up four times a year, predicated on specific Roman Catholic holy days. Today is the first Ember Day in December, and by folklore, determines the overall weather in January. Here is a reminder of the Ember Days and how they work: Ember Days: The four periods formerly observed by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches for prayer, fasting, and the ordination of clergy are called Ember Days. Specifically, these are the Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays the follow in succession following (1) the First Sunday in Lent; (2) Whitsunday - Pentecost; (3) the Feast of the Holy Cross, September 14; and (4) the Feast of St. Lucia, December 13. The word ember is perhaps a corruption of the Latin quatuor tempora , "four times." Folklore has it that the weather on each of the three days foretells th...

The Blue Memory Meme, Part Two Welcome back to Sunday Stealing which originated on WTIT: The Blog authored by Bud Weiser. Here we will steal all types of memes from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent memes. You may have heard of the expression, “honor amongst thieves”. In that age-old tradition, we also have our rules. First, we always credit the blog that we stole it from and we will “fess up” to the blog owner where we stole the meme. We also provide a link to the victim's post. (It's our way of saying "Thanks!") We do sometimes edit the original meme, usually to make it more relevant to our global players, to challenge our players, sometimes to select that meme's best questions, or simply to make it less repetitive from either this new meme or recently asked questions from a prior featured meme. Let's go!!! Today we ripped off a blogger and...

Last week, I turned the tables on some of you who answered a recent edition of the Sunday Seven . Those who played that week had to come up with questions they’d ask me over dinner. The questions I got were so good, I couldn’t resist using them for the Saturday Six . I’ll answer the questions myself this week, but today, it’s all about you! Thanks for dropping by and I hope you enjoy this week’s set of questions! Be sure to check back this week and click on the links of bloggers who play along in the comments below! It’s a great way to find blogs you may not have visited and keep the conversation going! Here are this week’s “Saturday Six” questions. Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your blog… But don’t forget to leave a link to your blog so that everyone else can visit! Permission is not granted to copy the questions to message boards for the purpose of having members answer and play along there. Enjoy! ...

Welcome to Saturday: 9 . What we've committed to our readers is that we will post 9 questions every Saturday. Sometimes the post will have a theme, and at other times the questions will be totally unrelated. Those weeks we do "random questions," so-to-speak. We encourage you to visit other participants posts and leave a comment. Because we don't have any rules, it is your choice. We hate rules. We love memes, however, and here is today's meme! Saturday 9: Mrs. Potter's Lullaby 1. Adam Duritz (writer and lead singer of Counting Crows) mentions previous girlfriends in songs. In Mrs. Potter's Lullaby he sings “There a little piece of Maria in every song I sing”. Is there a piece of an ex that will always be a part of you? Oh, look at this - I missed this question. How sad is that? OK, I would say that all people who have had an impact on my life - good, bad or indifferent - has left a little piece with me. That is a lot of people. Certainly I woul...

This is the greatest image I have ever seen of phraetic activity in a volcano. I have no idea how it got that rich blue colour. I've seen the typical grey lava, some black lava and the freaky white lava, but never this colour. I love it! This is a gorgeous image. The Volcano is the Volcán Rincón de la Vieja in Costa Rica, one that I am not very familiar with - the more commonly known Costa Rican volcano is Arenal, who blows its stack quite frequently. I've read about Vieja as I have all the volcanoes currently active there, but I had no idea it would produce such an interesting colour. I love it. It is really gorgeous! I always wanted to go see a live working volcano, which I did in June 2009, when I went to Montana. The whole of Yellowstone National Park is inside a huge caldera and is still very volcanically and seismically active. Granted that most people may not realise that they are standing in such an enormous caldera or how active it really is, but I en...