Jan 10 20242 - Random Life hacks

 

Life Hacks.  This is a topic area all over the internet.  Generally hacks refer to doing things cheaper, easier, more efficient, and are not obvious.  For example: "If the gum is stuck on your hair, use peanut butter to remove it"  - that comes from the website with this table of contents:   100 Amazing Life Hacks (in Images!) 100 More Practical Life Hacks to Try Some Good Life Hacks Life Hacks To Do At Home Real Life Hacks Daily Life Hacks Life Hacks To Make Life Easier Everyday Life Hacks Life Hack Examples Helpful Hacks For Making Life Easier Final Thoughts I scrolled through the list and they fascinate me.  I did stop at this one: "Doritos are great for kindling if you can't find any" - I find this hilarious.  There are many fun ideas this very long list HERE.  They are inventive, silly things for one's every day.  There are  odd and unexplainable life hacks for which full instructions are needed.   One can just scroll down to the conclusion of Final Thoughts. Our author says that doing everyday errands again and again can get disappointing.  Easy life hacks handles this.  The author explains that they are stunts to make everyday work simpler.   And wouldn't that make us happier, too.  Who would guess that Life Hacks could be so impactful!  Now to get some gum.   Here's a crab apple tree that hadn't yet suffered from a freeze.  So far, we've had mostly rain, but I'm looking ahead to see what the next "Winter Wallop" forecast will be.  Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

May 22 - 2022 - Derecho in the Neighbourhood

 

I didn't know the word Derecho until it became a severe weather warning on our radios yesterday.  It made me point the car home. A derecho (pronounced similar to "deh-REY-cho") is a widespread, long-lived straight-line wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving severe showers or thunderstorms known as a mesoscale convective system. High wind speeds, hurricanes and tornado-force winds are common in these storms.  No wonder we got the big alerts yesterday.  Most of the big derechos in the past have occurred in the U.S. Derechos can be hazardous to aviation due to embedded microbursts, downbursts, and downburst clusters.  Generally "bursts" are a big part of the storms. I guess we've been very lucky in Ontario in the past where our worst worries are too much snow and ice in the winter.   The storm yesterday was reported to have almost 1000 km of damage from Michigan to Quebec City. There were 4 reported fatalities - mostly by trees falling.  At one point the winds reached 132 km/h at the Kitchener airport.   The worst derecho in history was in June 2012 where the winds reached 146 km/h and tracked across a large section of the Midwestern US into the mid-Atlantic states. There was $2.9 billion in damage and 22 deaths. It went on for more than a day. That storm is described in Wikipedia HERE.  May is supposed to be reserved for flowers - particularly the lilac festivals. We salute the arrival of summer on the Victoria long weekend with public and private fireworks.   Public Fireworks are back on this year.  This Niagara Falls Summer Fireworks says:  "Fireworks every night" - that's the headline.  Summer has arrived! Gerry and I were in Toronto on Niagara Street last week for a Ryerson (now Toronto Metropolitan University) lighting certificate graduate anniversary get-together.  It took place at a lighting store.  You can see the front door to the left in the first picture, and the lighting sculpture on the wall.  The lighting sculptures were wonderful. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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Feb 4 2022 - Weathering the Storm

 

Weather the storm comes to us from ships on the seas - to remain at one's location during a storm to wait until it passes, as opposed to evacuating. The other variation is to "ride out the storm".  This is an expression that has been used since the mid 1600s and the word weather has been with us since at least 795.  The blog article is Weathering the Weather in Word History.  It is HERE.   "It would be natural to suggest that at one time the word weather had a neutral meaning and that later, since people seldom speak about weather when the sun shines brightly, it began to mean “bad weather,” Our own multi-day snow event will hopefully be concluding today - its third day.  The Hamilton newspaper started its weather coverage with this headline:  "Winter has packed a wallop and Hamilton is digging out from its wake on this Friday morning."   Here are some amusing headlines from the past in this article here: Ice Scream! Fury as city is paralyzed by blizzard Now, Melt! Blizzard stops city cold, and transit officials warn today's no picnic either The Brrrfect Storm From now to whoa:  60-degree temps coming this weekend Gee blizz!  New York socked by snow Snow fly zone No-mageddon:  The Washington, D.C. snow hole And then these:  S'no Foolin', the Snow must go on, Have you been plowed? You can see more headlines and then scroll down to see all the ads.  Things like; Do this once every morning to clear toenail fungus, stars secret to hiding their curves finally revealed, scaling your teeth without going to the dentist is now possible, restaurant meals don't taste as good due to the labor shortage... and so on.   Here is a snow orchard image from a snow day where you can still see the trunks of the trees.

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Winter Comes Fast

Welcome to Meterological Winter.  Notice the 'logical' in the word that doesn't seem fair - we didn't want this much winter so soon.  Meteorologists and climatologists start winter on December 1st.  They want consistency - they don't want a season that varies between 88 and 94 days.  That's a lot of extra work to make things comparable.  Meterological seasons have been tracked since the late 1700s.  The term for measuring the winter season is "meteorological reckoning".   And what happened in Niagara on our first day of winter?  We had rain, that formed ice, followed by power outages, and snow.  With scattered flurries predicted today, we could have more power lines felled from trees, and more power outages.   So I guess the start of winter this year has begun to fulfill the prediction of the Polar Coaster.  As I looked through the news articles, an expression caught my attention:  "the highway looked like a skating rink".  That seems to me to be particularly Canadian.  Other expressions we can expect in winter:  cold snap, snowed under.  And last year's term was "bombogenesis" - a powerful nor-easter affecting the East Coast that brought heavy snow to the Canadian Maritimes.  And there is a soft snowflake that looks more like sleet than snow - it is called "graupel".   I found The Outdoor Swimming Society website and they have 35 ways to say it's cold.  There are words in the list such as brumal and hiemal. Do you remember the expression snug as a bug?  I brought a wreath inside from the front door yesterday.  I wanted to put some decorations on it, and a fly few out of it, and then a walnut dropped off of it.  It seems the fly was no longer snug and the squirrel's secret stash is now gone. I took this picture of Robert Walhout, Grimsby Rotarian and actor.  He was in the Lamplighter Play this year, in the role of the School System Superintendent.  He came costume to the Fantasy of Trees Celebration evening.

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I put butter in my coffee...2019 diet trends

Google trending searches for 2018 included topics like actors, athletes, people categories. We are mostly obsessed with people.  Here's a search I wouldn't have imagined - magnetic eyelashes.  The magnets lock together between the natural lashes and secure the false lash along the natural lash line.  So ingenious! Google has a diet theme.  Here are the top searches on diets: keto - eliminate all the carbs and put butter in your coffee not cream dubrow - interval eating to confuse the "satiety centre" noom - an app focused on behavioural change carnivore - foods that walked, swam or flew and pretty well nothing else - aka anti-vegan diet mediterranean - plant-based emphasis, olive oil, herbs, limited red meat That was in 2018.  What are healthline's predictions for the diet trends that will dominate 2019? gut health - balancing the microbiome plant proteins - new this year - dandelion greens, rainbow carrots, beets and amaranth intermittent fasting - easy to follow  keto diet - spotlight in 2018 will continue in 2019 hemp - anti-inflammatory effects bitter food - asparagus, cucumbers, detox the GI tract un-dieting - futility of dieting trend And they conclude with an eighth one - intuitive eating - the practice of increasing one's awareness and experience of eating.   So many news organizations have been covering diets.  U.S. News ranked diets on January 2nd, right in time for the resolutions - they ranked 41 diets overall.  That's a lot of diets to choose from. They are HERE.  The top three are: Mediterranean, DASH, Flexitarian and MIND (tied with Flexitarian). A few more of our winter ice and fog pictures from a few days ago.

Weekender Weather Alert

Wake Up on the Bright Side    I've been able to go out to the end of the driveway to pick up the newspaper in my bare feet until this past week.  Today looks like the end of that for me - I am not King Wenceslas (out on the feast of Stephen). The part that is interesting is our Great Lakes effects - northeast winds off Lake Ontario will pick up extra moisture resulting in higher snowfall totals.  The Weather Network brings science alive:  "The lake is like a hot tub." The lakes should be covered in ice rather than the current situation.  Jordan Harbour was mostly icebound yesterday - a small patch of ice shovelled clear and two people were skating.  There was a stream still travelling through from Lake Ontario. At Grimsby Beach, the ducks were standing on ice chunks rather than sitting in water.   "The best snowstorm at the beginning isn't the one that buries you, it's one that kind of reminds you we know where we live, we know what season we're in," Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada was quoted as saying. The 10 worst US storms in the 100 years of winter weather history included one from the Niagara region - the blizzard in Buffalo 2014 where Snowvember became an expression. That storm had up to 88 inches of snow. The frequently asked questions on lake effect snow include: how far does lake effect snow travel? which city gets the most lake effect snow? how far inland does lake effect snow go? why are lake effect snowflakes different? This is the video of the oncoming snow in 2014 in Buffalo HERE.   The picture of Buffalo being engulfed in the storm is clipped from that video.  The famous snow load in Keweenaw County Michigan during 1978-79 is documented below it - 25 feet.     There is so much weather news this weekend.  There is a massive disk of spinning ice in Westbrook, Maine.  It is 300 feet wide.  It was showcased on PBS last night. Next is the supermoon eclipse this weekend which will be easily visible for us (weather permitting).  It will happen on Sunday. So here's our February 2018 snow to get a sense of what the garden transforms into.  That summer picture is inviting in comparison.

View From Above

I went out to see the Autumn colours yesterday.  I started at Beamer Park up on the escarpment.  The park is an example of a preserved Carolinian forest here in Ontario, and has excellent views out across the region.  The view in this picture is towards Niagara Falls, and one can see its high rises. The winds have been blowing the colours off the trees so there isn't the show that one might like for photographs.  And as the winds blew and blew, a storm blew in. The last picture is at Locust Lane, where the Hidden Bench barn is located, and looks out over the Lake. While the Lake is in this picture, there's no Toronto floating on the horizon today. Dezi and I arrived home just in time for the rain to start.