Asha Anujeeva

I was reading in the time.com health and science section that an accidental discovery by scientists have left them with new knowledge that may prove helpful in predicting future earthquakes!  They were measuring how barometric pressure effected underground changes and discovered that there were changes shortly before a couple of earthquakes happened!  So the scientists are thinking that they may be able to use this technology to help predict earthquakes and give residents advance warning to get to safer places.  This is really big news and I’m surprised that I didn’t hear it on television news!

Thanks for the guest post by Susan Dorman

When my husband decided to surprise me with the birthday gift of one of those upright style commercial vacuum cleaners I exclaimed that it was the best birthday gift I had ever received, he looked at me quite skeptically. “It is?” he queried. “Well, yes of course it is” I replied. “When you give me a tool for floor care it means that you are going to take on the chore, and I can’t think of a better gift than for you to take on the carpet cleaning chore.

Well, what could the poor man say after that? He said “well, I wasn’t planning on taking on the vacuuming.” My reply was “then you should not have bought me a vacuum cleaner! I was perfectly happy with the cannister style vacuum that I have owned since before we met and the upright styles are too hard for me to push back and forth, so if you expect our carpets to be vacuumed with that, then YOU are going to be the one to do the vacuuming.”

Well he hemmed and he hawed and said that it was easy to use the upright vacuum, much easier than using the cannister style. So I told him that was great news because HE was going to be the one using it. Well, he tried to put on his best game face and he DID use it to vacuum the floors for about a month. Then he declared that it was, in fact, harder to use than the cannister style vacuum and he put in out in the garage, never to be used again. Until, of course, we broke up and I kept the cannister style vacuum!  And when it came time that my cannister style vacuum broke down I ended up buying another cannister style vacuum. The upright ones are just too hard to use!

Yesterday I was reading an article about dying Christmas traditions. One of the traditions mentioned was the use of the spray-on-snow. Did you know that the snow used to be made from asbestos? I wonder how many people now are suffering from mesothelioma as a result of the spray-on-snow that they used to decorate their houses with? I can remember when I was a child my parents used it to spray on the Christmas tree!

My cousin sent me the link to a BBC website that was talking about a new store in Germany called “The Future Store.”  He included the note “I thought you might get a kick out of this.”  So I clicked on the link and watched a video made for a tv news show where the reporter was going around the store and explaining how new technology was being used at this store.

It really was very interesting; the customers use their cell phones to scan the bar code of the product they are buying when they take it off of the shelf before they put it in their cart.  The meat counter has microchips in the meat packages to advise the store that the meat package has been removed, so the store can keep track of when they need to re-stock.  When the customer is finished shopping, they press a button on their phone, which produces a “master bar code” which they use to scan at a self-service checkout counter.  Really all quite interesting.  The biggest question I have about the process is regarding how the store expects to keep the customers “honest” and reduce the risk of shop-lifting?  I’d be curious to learn about that part of the equation!

I was surprised to discover when I stepped on the bathroom scale this morning to discover that I had lost ten pounds over the past month. No wonder my clothes don’t fit me anymore! I am going to have to go shopping and buy a whole bunch of new clothes for the fall and winter coming up. If I don’t, I will look pretty stupid with all of my clothes hanging off of my, being held up with a belt!

So, as much as I don’t like to think about buying new clothes, I will be having to be hitting the Internet sales and see what I can come up with for good looking clothes that won’t cost an arm and a leg!