I really enjoyed The Complete Blue Ridge Mountains Mysteries 1–5 by Cathy Pickens. 📚
I very much liked the main character, Avery, and the author seemed very grounded in the setting — specially interesting as it was totally unfamiliar to me. Make sense:
set in small-town South Carolina, where Cathy grew up and where her family has lived for 300 years.
At 8.06am [NZ time] on Friday, July 7, Earth reaches aphelion …the furthest point from the Sun in its elliptical orbit…
At aphelion, Earth is about 152 million Km away from the Sun … about 5 million Km farther than at perihelion
I liked this notion in a book I'm currently reading (has local relevance):
Opinions became more subtle and more difficult when mixed with knowledge and friendship rather than mere speculation.
Source: Location 22166 of 23750 in The Complete Blue Ridge Mountains Mysteries 1–5 by Cathy Pickens.
My little buddy Willow is visiting for a bit today. 🐶
So cool: NASA Seals Volunteers Into Isolated Habitat For Year-Long Experiment:
four volunteers entered a simulated Martian habitat … to learn more about the logistics – and the human psychology – of living long-term on another planet
Inside 160 m2 — 1,700 square feet for a year!
After bookmarking a page in Micro.Blog I was stumped about how to Highlight a section. I tried for a while then gave up. Today I tried again, searched fruitlessly for instructions.
Finally I tried unchecking Enabled
in the Stop The Madness extension. Success: a Highlight 'button' appeared.
Nuttin' — just hanging around…
WOAH!
More bias exposed — Women Hunt in Most Foraging Societies:
narratives of 'man the hunter' and 'woman the gatherer' are crumbling in the face of new evidence.
…ancient sites around the world strongly suggest that women have been fishing, hunting big game, and going to war … for many millennia.
Another excellent NativLang video (17 minutes): Why is this the most popular word order across languages? – SOV — Miraz the blog post wrote
, for example.
If you're interested in words, language, languages, do watch.
I really enjoyed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season One, but Season Two is just “out of this world”. Loving this season so much. Such fantastic stories. 👏🏼👏🏼 🖖🏼
Just scraped in at the end of June with my (briefer than usual) monthly Waikawa Newsletter. One of the things I like about Buttondown is that it checks for alt text and the validity of links before I send.
Glanced up from making breakfast to see our neighbour's Huntaway dog bounding through the paddock next door. Not something he's ever done before.
Then I grabbed the binoculars as he bounded back again to discover it was in fact a deer!
What the heck? But also: yay! Nice start to the day.
In this year's NZ Garden Bird Survey I saw (or heard) way more birds than last year:
6 sparrow, 1 fantail, 30 canada goose, 4 pheasant, 1 shag, 1 blackbird, 1 waxeye, 2 magpie, 1 grey warbler, 4 swallow, 2 hawk, 3 starling, 1 chaffinch, 3 thrush, 10 pigeon, 1 kingfisher.
Starting today (27 June) July 2023 will be a month where I focus on my health, in particular getting my body more flexible. I have my own stretches, plus two exercises from my massage therapist, and I’m adding in Yoga For Neck, Shoulders, Upper Back | 10-Minute Yoga Quickie with Adriene.
Had the most wonderful massage today with Natalie Waddell from Functional Bodyworks in Paraparaumu. My back and neck have been so stiff and sore lately — not helped by all the car travel of the past week or so. That was so good I’ve booked another in a couple of weeks.
Whew. After 2084 Km in our car plus another 220 Km with friends in their car, it’s good to be home. We saw some great sights and had good times with friends. We ate good food and excellent food. We’ve come home with an idea for the porch we’ve long thought about adding to our house. ✅
I wouldn’t normally dream of posting a naked selfie, but occasionally there are mitigating circumstances …
(Deb took the photos.)
Today’s drive was marked with narrow winding roads to start, pouring rain, crawling past an accident, a visit to friends, roadworks, 110 Kph on the Waikato Expressway (highest speed limit in Aotearoa), and a surprisingly good panfried fish, veg and mash lunch at a service area called Autobahn.
Time to head home now — a 12 hour drive. We’ll visit friends along the way and have a couple of overnight stops.
Rain forecast for the rest of our trip.
