Friday, November 18, 2011

Best of the Week #39

Sometimes my mama and I text and it is always amusing. She’s a smart lady, but can’t seem to figure out the T9 situation. For example,  yesterday:
Mom:  I now have a vain.
Me: Is that a typo? Do you mean a weather vane?
(This seemed kinda sorta logical to me since my parents’ house is being re-roofed, and my mom loves ridiculous rusty things like rooster weather vanes…but also totally illogical, since their house is in Tahoe and you don’t usually see weather vanes where it snows…)
Mom: Oops. I now have a local library card. 
Me: Well duh.
Another random thing – this week I finally totaled my weekly mileage for the past couple months. I always keep track (see my 'Running Log' on the left sidebar), but I rarely/never  add up the miles to see how things are going. From September through last week, it looks like: 10, 15, 7, 18, 21.5, 23.5, 20, 24, 25, 39. That last jump at the end is a bit extreme


Conclusion: I should add mileage up more often and make intelligent workout decisions accordingly.

In other news, my article made the Christian Science Monitor for week #2! To quote my mama again, “Mollie, this is exciting. It’s like you’re a real writer!”

And finally, I went swing dancing at the Kennedy Center last night as part of their 2 week long Swing Festival. There was a free lesson at 8:30, then a live band and dancing from 9-10. I’m definitely not good, but it was really fun!


My most popular post this week was a flashback – Zen Master Mollie: Bikram Yoga (which I am still going to twice a week). And thanks to everyone who commented on my Running Safety post - great ideas! 

And now it’s time for some linky-love.

I’m going home next week for Thanksgiving and I’m SO EXCITED! I want one of these pictures of San Francisco! (more)





This woman is a bad-ass/totally insane? “Elana Nightingale Dawson, SPA/BA ’03, made headlines this summer as the woman who went into labor while taking the Illinois Bar Exam and delivered a beautiful baby boy just two hours after finishing the exam.” (more)

The Nyamulagira volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo is spewing out lava in what volcanologists say may be its biggest eruption in 100 years. Watch the video, it is crazy!

6x6 loves this video - Catvertizing!







It’s beginning to look a lot like eggnog season!!! From 1000 Awesome Things, Walkinginto a grocery store and seeing the first shipment of eggnog - “Because if we drank eggnog all the time we’d get pretty fat.”


This amuses me. No good reason.




These photoshopped images blew my mind yesterday. They’re for a United Colors of Benetton add campaign.
"Another photo shows presidents Kim Jong-Il and Lee Myung-bak kissing. In Benetton's world, the fact that they preside over one of the most contentious borders on the planet just adds to their latent steaming affection for one other."





Sorry to be such a Debbie downer, but you all know I am…this is important: The Shock of Modern Slavery
The great Nicholas Kristof has another difficult to, must-read piece today on human trafficking. Including this arresting statistic:
By my calculations, at least 10 times as many girls are now trafficked into brothels annually as African slaves were transported to the New World in the peak years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
FYI, at its peak the trans-Atlantic slave trade was on the order of one hundred thousand per year. Figures on human trafficking differ widely but one million is on the lower end so Kristof’s estimate is sadly reasonable.


Apparently this is old news, but I had no idea! Conspiracy theorists unite: Why is China building gigantic structures in the middle of the desert?


These tea bags are ridiculous but awesome.



Have a great weekend!