Tiny Muddy Waiting Room Hodgepodge

1. Did you watch the solar eclipse? Your thoughts? Sun Chips, Moon Pies, Starburst candies, a Blue Moon beer, a Sunkist orange, or a Milky Way candy bar...what's your favorite eclipse related snack on this list?

I did not exactly watch the eclipse. For most of that morning and part of the afternoon, we were on a wild goose chase trying to get an immunization that Lydia needs for school. The injection is routinely given in middle school and used to be optional, but it is now required by the public school board, so we decided to get that taken care of, along with a mountain of other things, before school starts.

Short version: a call to a pharmacy that also has a walk-in clinic informed us that we could go to that clinic and get the shot there. (The clinic was closed when I phoned, that's why I didn't call there first.) When we got to the clinic, they refused to do it, I think because she was out of the usual age range, and told us to go to the public health office. The nurse at the public health office was sympathetic, but said that they don't usually do those shots on site and we would need to go to a walk-in clinic. When I said that we had already been to a walk-in clinic, she suggested we go to another one. So we did, and we sat the typical clinic wait in the waiting room and then in the examining room, at which point a doctor came in, asked what we were there for. She approved our request and then disappeared down the hall to rummage in the refrigerator, so to speak. She came back and said they would have to order the serum and they'd call us when it came in. So that was that.

A couple of hamburgers later, because nobody had had any lunch, most of the eclipse was over. Some of the burger employees went running outside while we were eating our fries. I assume they had something to view it with and weren't doing a Marge Simpson.

Oh, as far as the cosmic treats go...the favourite around here would probably be a Vachon 1/2 Moon. We used to call them Lune Moons when we were kids, because the bilingual packaging confused us.

2. What are you 'over the moon' about these days? What's something you enjoy doing every 'once in a blue moon'?

Not sure about those today.

3. Tell us about something in the realm of science that interests you. How do you feed that interest?

Library books, mostly! I like reading about new discoveries in neuroscience that relate to how we learn, remember and make sense of what's around us.

4. What are a few things you remember about going back to school as a child?

We were given almost everything by the teacher, on the first day. A pack of crayons, pencils, notebooks, maybe a ruler. Later on, I think ballpoint pens. Everything was stamped with the name of the county board of education.

But you had to buy your own pencil case.

Image found here

We didn't have glue sticks in those days. When we needed to glue things, the caddies with rubber-tipped bottles of Lepage's glue were passed around. 

Image found here

Before that, we had Paste, the kind the bad kids liked to eat.

Image found on Ebay (listing expired)

5. I've seen several versions of this around the net so let's make one of our own...share with us five words that touch your soul and briefly tell us why.

How about thirteen?

A quote from The Complete Plain Words, by Sir Ernest Gowers:

"...we can turn to Shakespeare, and from the innumerable examples that offer themselves choose the lines 'Kissing with golden face the meadows green, / Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy' which, as a description of what the rising sun does to meadows and rivers on a 'glorious morning,' must be as effective a use of thirteen words as could be found in all English literature."

6.  Insert your own random thought here.

OK, on to the tiny muddy part.

On Monday I will be taking a bus to Toronto for Courtney Carver's Tiny Wardrobe Tour. Once in a blue moon I like to go to the city, but it has to be a very blue moon indeed. 

Since the time of the summer t-shirts and shorts is quickly coming to an end, and since (unlike last year) it doesn't look like Septenber will be unseasonably hot, I figure I will be packing them away in just a couple of weeks. I had thought about winding up the summer with a 10x10 Wardrobe Challenge like I did last spring (choose ten pieces, wear them for ten days), to get extra mileage out of the most summery things.

Yesterday I had somewhere nice to go in the afternoon, and I pulled on my green skirt, vanilla-coloured cami and top set, a necklace I had just thrifted, and put everything I needed in a purple tote bag, including an umbrella because it had just stopped raining.

Did you pay attention to that last bit?

I was on my way to the bus, thinking what a nice outfit that was, that I had never worn those pieces together and I liked them, and that I should really do that 10x10 challenge, when I slipped on the mud outside our building.

Other than a slightly sprained wrist and a large amount of injury to my pride, I wasn't hurt, but I did need to go back in the building, back up the elevator, dump all my clothes and the tote bag into a dishpan that was conveniently sitting in the bathtub, find Outfit #2 and Bag #2 very quickly, and head back out the door. I knew I had missed that bus, but Mr. Fixit was also leaving right at that time, so he gave me a ride downtown.

Later I washed everything, and, happily, all the mud stains seem to be gone. My arm still hurts a little.

I'm sure there was a lesson in there somewhere. I'm just not sure what it was. "Have such a small wardrobe that if you have a major malfunction it's obvious which backup clothes you should grab?" "If Woolite doesn't take mud stains out of skirts, try.regular laundry detergent?" "If you're going to slip in mud, make sure you do it right outside of your own building, and make sure nobody sees you going back up the elevator with dirt all over your backside?" And the most obvious one: "Stop worrying about what you're wearing."

But as for the 10x10 Challenge...I might still do that.

Linked from the Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.