LED Let There Be Light

According to Gregory, in his high end architecture and interior design experience, the secret to lighting a room is many small sources of light. This was experienced by and agreed with by Duane, lighting director at The Lyric Opera of Chicago.

I am pleased to announce that as of today, my bedroom is an all LED lamped room. (Lamp is the correct name for what we have been calling "bulbs.") There are seven sources of light in the room and each one now sports a Philips Slim Style LED light. 

According to the package information, these bulbs should last until I am 90 years old come March. They will last for 22.8 years! The cost for each lamp will be $1.26 per year so that should cost approximately $9.00 a year.

Interesting! Or not?

Who Looks Foolish Now?

Every morning the routine goes something like this. I get up and let the cats out of the guest bathroom where they have spend the night with food, water, several cushions, their liter box, and room to play. 

When it is time to put them in at night,  I announce "TREATS!" and they come running, even though they know they are about to be locked up for the evening. No matter how "crazy" they have been during the day, they seem to enjoy settling in and are quiet until the next morning.

Next morning, I greet them with, "FREEDOM" as I open the bathroom door. They first weave their love around my legs and then venture off to begin their day. I sit on the sofa where I supervise their play because sometimes they need to work off that energy gained overnight.

They usually settle down but if they are having trouble doing so, I take their basket of toys and toss or roll them down the long hall at the front of the condo. This usually distracts them from running around the living room like "crazy people" up and over the sofa, chairs, and literally bouncing off the walls.

Today, I followed the above routine  with a humorous, unexpected result. As I was rolling and tossing, both cats went to the head of the hall and sat down. They watched as with various levels of energy I rolled each ball, and tossed each mouse down the hall. They did not leap, or follow, or chase. They just sat. Sat and watched me play with their toys. 

I wonder what they were thinking? When I finished, they returned to the livingroom where they continued to chase each other for another twenty or thirty mimnutes before settling down.

Here is a picture of them at rest in our bedroom. Like little children they are so peaceful when asleep and so wild with excess energy when awake!

A Most Amazing Thing

This evening Gregory and I were sitting on our balcony sharing a cup of coffee. The temperature was perfect, the sky beautiful, the view from the balcony our roof top garden one story below. The garden helps us feel grounded, literally. There are seven beautiful trees, loads of bushes, at this time of year plenty of yellow lilies, and a ribbon of grass running through it all.


The amazing thing is that we watched, for about half an hour, a Robin building a nest in the tree right in front of our balcony. It had found apiece of paper, approximately 2" x4", picked it up in its beak, and flew the nest piece up into the tree. A few minutes later the piece of paper came drifting down to the grass. A few seconds later the Robin flew down, picked the piece of paper up again, and flew it back up into the tree where it stayed. We watched the Robin make at least a dozen trips with bits of this and that in its beak. It pulled apart a low growing plant and took part away with it. Twigs of various sizes were airlifted to its new home. 


The only thing that could have made this experience better would have been if we were able to see the nest itself, hidden in the center of the tree, being built. Gregory and I posed several questions: Does the male or the female build the nest? If it is the female is it before she is "with egg" in preparation or after the egg(s) have been fertilized in anticipation? 


So this is what I found on-line: NESTING: Robins are one of our earliest birds to nest. The female does the majority of building, although the male may help bring materials to the site. Nesting materials may be gathered up to a quarter of a mile from the nest site. The nest takes 2 to 6 days to build, and may be started up to two weeks before the first eggs are laid.

You Have to See It To Believe It: The Automatic Coke Machine

I was sitting in a McDonald's (OK I admit it, for lunch) and had a good view of the employee working the drive through window. Next to the cash register was a whirligig, merry-go-round, circusy type machine. It looked quite complex, seemed to be accomplishing something important, but I couldn't tell for sure exactly how it worked. So I asked the employee to explain it to me.

When a drink order is entered on the cash register/computer a signal is automatically sent to this Ferris Wheel of a machine. The cup holder spins to the correct size stack of cups and deposits one on a conveyor. The cup then travels in line towards a single nozzle.

When the cup gets under the nozzle, the correct flavor drink, as entered on the computer, is filled with the correct quantity of beverage, as entered on the computer. A medium Diet-Coke. A small ice tea. A large Sprite.

Finally the filled cup continues down the conveyor, waiting in line for its turn to be capped, picked up, and delivered to the customer with the rest of their order.

I wonder what the Hamburger Flipper, Mustard and Catsup Spritzer, and French Fry Salting Machines look like.