Slinky

Do you remember Slinkys?  The coiled metal toy that walks down stairs? Well, I certainly do. I had a lot of fun with them back in the day walking them down steps and springing them down and up like a yo-yo. However, at some point, they would get tangled up and rarely work as well as they once did. But still everyone I knew had one and loved it.

Slinkys did not start out as a toy. Engineer, Richard James, was trying to figure out a way to lesson vibrations to sensitive equipment on a Navy ship. He discovered that his "invention" would walk downstairs. (Do you ever wonder what made him think to try that, anyway?)

He took it home and between the neighborhood children's excitement and his wife, it ended up in Gimbels in Philidelphia in 1945. And the rest is history, so they say.  (BTW, its Philadelphia beginnings made the Slinky Pennsylvania's State Toy.)

So just as the Slinky came from efforts not related to a toy, it has been used for many other things besides walking down stairs. First thing that comes to my mind is demonstrating compressional waves in science classes. Also, they were used as antennas during the Viet Nam War. And NASA has used them in zero gravity experiments.


However recently, I heard about my favorite use of all time. My mother fell a few months ago and broke her wrist. The recovery from that has been long and hard. One of the people who is doing therapy with her bought a birthday party box of Slinkys. She used one for my mother to manipulate and gave the rest to other nursing home residents. After a while, she looked around and saw a room of smiles as Slinkys were springing everywhere. She said even people she has never been able to get to smile were smiling.

Sometimes it's the little things that put a "spring" in our day. I want to thank to Richard James and the Navy's sensitive instruments for bringing us the Slinky and putting smiles on people of all ages for a long time now.


More about the Slinky:
http://www.kidzsearch.com/wiki/Slinky

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/slinky.aspx

A Second Look--Part II

Yesterday, I showed you some of the bird activity and today I'm going to show you a few of the flowers that are blooming. Things are changing so fast this time of year, it feels like I shouldn't go two weeks before I show you what things look like now in the plant world. And oh, it's still raining. However, now the rainy periods are interspersed with just cloudiness. :)

Here are a few things I saw this week

 during a Second Look.

The first Japanese Iris to bloom this year.

Pansy

Peris japonica. This one is about a month behind the one directly across the walk from it.

The bleeding heart are still blooming.

Lily of the Valley

Azalea. Others are just budding.

Nettle

Rhododendron 

Pansy

Raindrops on Lady's Mantle

A Second Look--May 4, 2016

The birds have been very busy this week, so this is going to be a bird only Second Look. The plants will have to wait.

Here are somethings I saw this week 

during a Second Look.

 We had a lot of rain this week, but the birds came out anyway. You can see this female cardinal looks a little wet.

This blue jay looks soggy also.

Blue jay on a drier day.

It may have rained a lot this week, but the real event was a visit from a pileated woodpecker.
One reason for the excitement was that these are big birds. I'm guessing that this one is about 15"-20" long.

Compare the pileated woodpecker to this little chipping sparrow that is only about 3" long. (You can use the suet feeder as a scale.)

Male cardinal

Catbird

Male bluebird and white-breasted nuthatch.

Speaking of bluebirds, their eggs hatched this week. This picture was taken on Monday.

By Tuesday, all five had hatched.

A-Z Wrap Up

or What am I doing with all of my free time?

Last Saturday was the final post for the A-Z Challenge that I participated in during the month of April. Some crazy people had three blogs going during that challenge. One was plenty enough for me.

Upon reflection, this year was easier than last year. Even my husband noticed that I wasn't as stressed trying to keep up with daily posting. That's not to say that I wasn't stretched doing it or should I say stressed, but it was better. However, I can't quite put my finger on the reason.

Many people had a theme for their month of posting such as a travel log or writing techniques (many of the participants were writers). And I swore, after last year, if I ever did this again, I would only do it with a theme. However, that didn't happen.

Then I said that I would look ahead and have my alphabet planned out with topics. Well, I tried to do that but, I couldn't come up with much. Actually, it was easy to come up with words and topics, but thinking of something to write about them was difficult. So that also didn't happen.

So what did happen? I think, this year, I didn't try as hard to make the words and topics fit the letters. For example, the letter O was about M&M's. Logically that topic should have been under M but I stretched it with the title, Only the Red. In addition, I tried to get ahead on Sunday, our day off. I usually wrote Monday and Tuesday then which took some of the pressure off at the beginning of the week. Also, friends were suggesting topics for me which helped. I couldn't always used them, but they did help spark my thinking.

So the same question as last year. Will I do this again? Maybe. I think it took me out of my comfort zone with both topics and frequency and that was a good thing. Also, I enjoyed  the challenge. Let me rephrase that. I enjoyed completing the challenge. I wasn't always thrilled with the work and time it took, but it's good to say that I did it. But a month was long enough for me and I need to resurface and catch up on some things that were neglected. However, I hope to maintain some of the momentum I gained during April.

And before I finish, I also want to say thanks to all of the dedicated volunteers who made this challenge possible.

Now it's time to get ready for tomorrow's Second Look. :)

Z is for Zany

Z is for Zany or Crazy

So when I did T for Toes, I talked about pedicures and how many people got one. This was brought about by the news that Kate (of British William and Kate) had had her shoes off in public and revealed that she had bare toes. Oh, the horrors according to much of the press.

Well, a couple of days after that, more news surfaced about the new fad in pedicures--individual, painted toes on stockings. Since it's on the stocking and not your toes, you can change it out every day. Apparently, it's all the rage in Japan and is spreading to the rest of the world. As fashion fads go, it's pretty cheap selling for $15.  (Now whether it's worth that is another question.)

From Belle Maison 

As long as we're on the subject of stockings, there is another questions that my inquiring mind wants to know. When did panty hose become a bad word and have to be referred to as stockings or tights? Only having boys, I missed the transition somewhere along the way. When I learned those words, stockings were individual hose that were held up with a garter belt. Panty hose were stockings where the legs were connected to a panty that eliminated the need for the garter belt. Tights were opaque "panty hose" that little kids wore to keep their legs warm under dresses. Now I am looked at strangely if I say panty hose. What words do you use for this kind of leg apparel?

So many questions, so little time. I haven't even delved into the bare legs trend yet. As for the pedicure stockings, do I think I will get some? If you look at the title of this post, I think you can guess the answer to that.