family observations

Columbo’s Dead Air Space – Johnny Cash Edition

My husband enjoys watching reruns of Columbo. For the kids out there who aren’t familiar with Columbo, this is a TV series that features actor Peter Falk playing Los Angeles homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo. Columbo always appears to be bumbling around while solving the murder, but he always knows right away who did it. Whoever he hounds the most is the one who committed the crime. Having watched the series too many times to count,…

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family home nature observations

Suburban Wildlife

After living in a rural town most of our lives, a little over a year ago, we moved to a suburban city. One of the biggest surprises about our new home is how much “wild” wildlife we see here. Sure, at our previous home, with its large backyard enclosed by trees and bushes, we saw plenty of squirrels, rabbits, birds, and butterflies. The robins had parties in our yard in the spring, plucking through the…

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observations technology

LinkedIn – A Curious Social Media Creature

Apparently, according to the email I got from LinkedIn recently, I’ve been on the site for 15 years. How can that possibly be? Feels like I joined only a few years ago. Of course, this could be because I’ve only become really active on it in the past few years. And since Twitter fell into the slop bucket and Facebook has become a nest of non-stop advertising (both undergoing enshittification, as Cory Doctorow would put…

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art challenge fiber art observations

A Little Color-Matching Test

When I was earning my BFA degree for visual arts, one of the required classes was on color theory. It makes sense seeing as how so much of art depends on how colors interact with each other. During the class, the professor, Merle Sykora, who also happened to be my weaving professor, gave us an interesting color challenge. He provided each of us with 2 index cards. We were to combine two colors of gouache…

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music observations

Main Character Energy

My daughter recently used the term “main character energy” when describing a mutual acquaintance. As in, “That person has main character energy!” In the past, we might have said a person “lights up a room” with their personality. A person with main character energy is someone you can’t take your eyes off of because their personality is so magnetic. It’s meant to describe someone with positive energy, not a Debbie Downer or Dastardly Do-Badder. Obviously,…

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