A quote for Caturday

"If there is one spot of sun spilling onto the floor,

a cat will find it and soak it up." — J. A. McIntosh

This is a repeat of a post from 2017, found HERE.

The Caturday quote was illustrated by my cat CLAWDIA,

who lived with me and blogged about things on CATURDAYS.

She still graces the heading above and the sidebar.

Beginning ~ with a woman dragging a suitcase

Beginning

Holding the glass door open with her hip, she dragged the suitcase into the stairwell leading down to the underground parking lot.  Sweat trickled down her chest and back beneath her T-shirt; it was only slightly cooler here than outside in the shimmering heat of the airless streets.

The Boy in the Suitcase ~ by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, 2011, mystery, 313 pages

Nona Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help -- even when she knows better.  When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets sucked into her most dangerous project yet.  Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy, naked and drugged, but alive.

Is the boy a victim of child trafficking?  Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him?  When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy, too.  In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.

Pi Day = pie for dessert

Pi Day is celebrated each year on March 14th.  Why?  Because the mathematical "pi" equals 3.1415 (plus a string of other numbers).  When we put those numbers into the way we count days, they become 3/14 or 3-14.  Do you see it?  I loved numbers (as well as words) when I was in school, so this kind of stuff intrigued me.  This year (3-14-25) is a Friday (as you can see).  The illustration above seems rather impossibly to be a mixture of cherry pie and pumpkin pie.  I like both, but I prefer fruit pies like these.

Thursday Thoughts

What happens when we die?  I ran across THIS a few days ago, and I was fascinated:  "Brain activity may prove our souls leave our bodies when we die."  Recent studies suggest that a surge of brain activity observed in clinically dead patients could potentially be interpreted as evidence of the soul leaving the body.  EEGs have detected a burst of brain activity in the brains of clinically dead patients, even after vital signs like blood pressure and heart rate have ceased.  Another way to say it is the brain's final moments of activity or the effects of the dying process itself.  Someone called it a "near-death experience."  Yeah, I know this is a speculative interpretation, but isn't it interesting?

Once again, I happened across one of my old posts with a link to WindowSwap, which linked me HERE.  Clicking from window to window all over the world is fascinating . . . and addictive.  I just kept clicking, from backyards here and there to active scenes.  I saw Cancun and Japan and different states in the USA.  I glimpsed parts of the UK and South Africa and the Punjab, India.  I saw several cats looking out windows the way Clawdia did when she lived with me (shown above), plus a few cats cleaning themselves in the window or out on the porch.

Extrapolate is my word for today

I was in the Cafe recently, eating alone and blogging on my laptop.  Two men sitting near me were deep in a philosophical discussion of words and ideas.  One of them said "extrapolate," and I actually smiled to myself.  That was when this "wordy" person started composing this blog post.

Word of the Day

ex·trap·o·late / ikˈstrapəˌlāt / verb = extend the application of a method or conclusion (based on statistics) by assuming that these existing trends will continue.  For example, if I encounter only friendly faces in a town I am visiting, I may extrapolate that all the folks in that town are friendly.

Two thoughts

What TIME is it?

When I woke up on Sunday morning, I learned that my iPhone had updated with the time change, but my watch had not and was an hour behind.  The clock on my kitchen stove was also an hour behind and needed to be reset.  I think we should get rid of the annoying "spring forward" and "fall backwards" changes.

The Unbreakable Brain: Shield Your Brain from Cognitive Decline ... for Life! ~ by Will Mitchell, 2015, health, 121 pages, 8/10

I wrote about this book (HERE), but I marked a lot of pages and want to save some quotes.  So here are a few things from the book that I want to continue to think about and consider:

1. The first thing I noticed is that I stopped reading (or at least putting sticky notes) at pages 56-57.  Why there? I wondered.  It was at a section on "Regular Physical Activity" saying that "walking ... can significantly drop your chances of cognitive decline" (p.56).
2. "Pernicious Anemia" is caused by a deficiency in Vitamin B12.

As I write this, I'm thinking of my recent habit of noting the number of steps I take each day in my daily planner.  I took over 6,000 steps on Sunday and almost 8,000 on Monday.  The reason I noticed "pernicious anemia" is because my grandmother died of pernicious anemia.  I remember my grandmother, though she died when I was little.

I definitely did not want to ever have pernicious anemia, so what's the best way to avoid it?  Grandma Reynolds hated liver.  I learned to love liver and onions, but I also like milk and eggs, which are also sources of Vitamin B12.  As I sit in the Circle@Crown Café composing this (to post just after midnight tonight), I have just eaten scrambled eggs and usually have cereal with milk every few days.  So I am doing the best I can to avoid that B12 deficiency.

Roberta Flack died recently

The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music ~ by Roberta Flack with Tonya Bolden, illustrated by Hayden Goodman, 2023, children's picture book, 40 pages

This autobiographical picture book by the multiple Grammy Award-winning singer Roberta Flack recounts her childhood in a home surrounded by music and love, and it all started with a beat-up piano that her father found in a junkyard.

Growing up in a Blue Ridge mountain town, little Roberta didn't have fancy clothes or expensive toys, but she did have music.  And she dreamed of having her own piano.

When her daddy spies an old, beat-up upright piano in a junkyard, he knows he can make his daughter's dream come true.  He brings it home, cleans and tunes it, and paints it a grassy green.  And soon the little girl has an instrument to practice on, and a new dream to reach for ― one that will make her a legend in the music industry.

This picture book is perfect for aspiring piano players and singers.  It's an intimate look at Roberta Flack's family and her special connection to music.  (I remember her version of "Killing Me Softly" and am now singing it in my head.)