Day 264: Claire to Ohio, Burning Tea, Penguins

Because I (Claire), have trouble sitting still apparently, I am heading from Berkeley to Ohio today with my brother to see all our grandparents and relatives. My parents, who met when they were 9 when Little Lance entered Barb's 3rd grade class, are from the same town, and thus most everyone tangentially connected to them still lives there.

In the past day in Berkeley, I unpacked from the wedding and then had a dinner party in which I learned from a well-traveled guest that people in Iceland (my number one place to visit) do not pay for their heating bills. Additionally, I finally spoke with Johanna, our dear friend who I spent a summer living with in Florence. This PhD student finally got out of the hospital six days later for second degree burns on her thighs and stomach. She did this to herself, sadly, with tea, reminding clumsy tea drinkers like me and Lara that our morning zombie states can have dire consequences. This summer, when I passed through Florence, I went to find the apartment I had shared with Johanna in order to take pictures. But I got lost, and so ended up just taking pictures of guidebooks that read "Florence." It was sad, frankly, but not surprising given my directional sense.



In interesting news, here is a cool article about an SF group of friends who decided to not buy anything new for the entire year of 2006. They sparked a 3,000 member following in their effort, mostly because they are not really weird crunchies but did it as more of an interesting experiment. This is particularly notable for those who know me well, as some of the online free stuff exchange sites (FreeCycle.Org, GarbargeCycle.Com) the article cites are in my daily inbox, and Amy Dacyczyn's The Tightwad Gazette is my bible (aside from the other one).



Finally, in honor of penguins, here is an awesome penguin game a family friend, Mia, passed along to me in light of our famed penguin slapping eachother movie on this blog's sidebar. Go here, click on the polar bear once to get the penguin to drop from the cliff, and once again to hit the penguin so that he goes flying and you can compete against your own record as per how far he slides. Best game eva!!





These were more pictures of penguins from, obviously, India. In case you did not know, India has the perfect climate for penguins and so many ceramic ones live there. Particularly in Mumbai. Thank you, Claire and Lara, for teaching.