Thursday Odds and Ends

First of all, thanks to all of you who sent wishes for my recovery from the miserable summer cold I've had the last few days. I'm still not hitting on all cylinders, but am feeling considerably better today ... well enough, unfortunately, to go to work, where I can feel yucky AND clean out my in-box. How much better does life get?

I'm still not completely back to normal (or whatever passes for it in my case), so today I'll just offer a few odds and ends that you may find interesting...

If you've ever described something as "the greatest thing since sliced bread," you may be interested to know that it was on this date in 1928 that sliced bread first went on sale at a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri, courtesy of the invention of the Rohwedder Bread Slicer by an Iowa jeweler named - oddly enough - Otto Frederick Rohwedder. You can read the entire history of sliced bread here. This is what the original Rohwedder Bread Sliver looked like:

We've all had the experience of dealing with things which drive us to distraction because they are poorly designed. Naturally, there's a website dedicated to such things ... it's called Bad Designs, and includes a long list of examples of poor design, sorted by category and including design suggestions that would have made the devices more useful, less confusing, and generally better. It's an interesting place to visit.

Need to find everything you ever wanted to know about flirting? Here it is: The Social Issues Research Center (SIRC) Guide to Flirting. It's a very useful website that includes general topic headings such as "Where to Flirt," "Who to Flirt With," "Nonverbal Flirting," and "Verbal Flirting." I wish I'd had this handy guide years ago, instead of routinely embarrassing myself over the years while I learned by trial and error. Thanks to my good friend and fellow dancer and shameless flirter Joy for bringing this to my attention.

And Minnesota is still closed.

That's all for now. I need to conserve my energy for another day of work.

Have a good day. Flirt well. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo