Almanac offers more than when to plant corn
We’ve turned the clocks back an hour and the calendar forward to November. Time for my annual thievery. Today I steal from the pages of the "The Old Farmer’s Almanac" — just like I do every year.
It’s the textbook definition of a win-win scenario.
Without further adieu (which is good since I haven’t stocked up on adieu), here’s a smattering of what can be found in the 2010 edition:
>> A series of short stories about laughing. More specifically, they’re about tickling monkeys, the sanity of a philosopher and the use of laughing gas as a recreational drug. (There’s a joke here somewhere.)
>> I won’t tell you about the total eclipse of the sun that’s coming in 2010 since we won’t be able to see it here. (You can see a lunar eclipse in 2101 tough.)
>> Which marigolds and pansies produce edible flowers that you can add to your home salad bar. (I’m partial to petunias.)
>> Fireplaces are out and radiant heat flooring and solar panels are in. (Saves on chopping wood.)
>> The fact that there are 670,000 U.S. households that do not have indoor plumbing. (Glad to say mine is flush with plumbing.)
>> Salt Lake City is America’s fittest city. The fattest? Miami. The one in Florida, not Ohio. Strange. (How can it not be New Orleans?)
>> A story about people who create works of art with chain saws. (There are even tips on how to chip in, pardon the pun.)
>> A really cool article about how weather averages will be recomputed in 2010 and rolled out in 2010. It also goes into why what is "normal" matters far beyond weather predictions. (I wonder if this will help TV weather persons be more accurate.)
>> An astronomical glossary and a list of dates and times when certain planets will be visible from the United States. (Stars are fun to watch, I just wish I didn’t have to stay up all night to see them.)
>> A feature story on the planet Jupiter, which will be closer to earth than it’s been since 1963. (One year before OHS had sole possession of the district football championship.)
>> An article showing that a flip of a coin isn’t always random. (Even if my column fodder is pretty random.)
>> Mad stones, what they are and how they are believed to be good medicine. (Any time a friend of mine has mentioned stones and doctors, a lot of pain has been involved.)
>> A 28-question quiz on birds of different feathers. (You have to be a real bird brain to get all of these correct.)
>> An article titled "10 Curious Facts About Mark Twain." (One or two I already knew; most were fascinating.)
>> Tips on how to wash windows the right way. (Some advice: Don’t show this page to your wife as a how-to tip. If you do, you’ll be doing the windows.)
>> An explanation on why we yawn. (And it doesn’t mention anything about reading my column.)
