Does a net even have corners?

I’m going to have a lot of fun going through my bookmarks. The vast majority of them aren’t blogs, or other places that you’d go to everyday, but just interesting pages to browse through. Seen by themselves these pages are a little eccentric, but I hope that by arranging them in eclectic groups they will form the virtual equivalent of a sight seeing tour. Perfect for the rainy weather we’re becoming accustomed to.

A good example, Handwriting-L talks about how to give people a psychological evaluation merely by studying their penmanship.  Not the kind of thing you’re going to need, but if you click on the tab that says “analyses” and skim through an example of how to tell someone’s a control freak through the tension of their writing, you will have all you need to analyze your own handwriting. Once you’ve done your own it’s only fair to do your friends’ too. What does your middle zone say about you?

Equally entertaining, if more educational, is the Exploratorium, which I have bookmarked so that I can quickly pull up my age on other planets. How old am I on  Mercury? Why, 89 – I know, I age well. On Neptune? 0.13 years. That’s pretty mind boggling, to think that in the whole course of my life Neptune hasn’t completed even one rotation around the Sun. According to the Expolatorium, Neptune takes almost 165 years to make a complete orbit, so the chances of me celebrating my first Neptunian birthday is solely dependent on the invention of cryogenics. On the other hand, I’m turning 35 on April first (tomorrow!), if you go by the Venusian calendar. Maybe I should throw a party?

Maybe you’re not in the mood for reading, maybe you want to do something. No fear, my bookmark file has something for you too. This has been on my to do list for a long time, actually. It’s instructions on the coptic stitch, one of the stitches used in book binding. If you do a google search on it you can actually find whole blogs written by people who bind books by hand. Just the thought makes my head feel a little lighter. This link leads to a picture on flikr, though. A simple sketch of coptic stitch basics, which can be applied to either a few sheaves or reams and reams, binder’s choice. It’s a simple little project, but the one time I attempted it I managed to get my holes all out of line. Moral of the story: precession matters.

If you are in the mood for reading, let me direct your attention to The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Run by the spunky Mrs. Ree – mother, wife, rancher, cook, and author – The Pioneer Woman Cooks is great fun to read even if you hate cooking. For one thing, it features the most gorgeous photography (and of food! It makes me think of a passage in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape letters actually, the pictures are that bad). Then there’s Mrs. Ree’s “keeping it real” wit, easy instructions, and love for butter. As if this weren’t enough, the food all taste good. Even if you don’t want to make them yourself, you might want to share some of the recipes with people in your life who love you. Then you can guilt them into cooking for you as a way of saying thanks. I’ve made the sheet cake twice already, hampered only by the fact that, when I made it the first time, I didn’t believe I was really supposed to let it cover the whole pan. In my defense, I’d never had sheet cake before. Unlike the other links, which you’ll probably go to once and then never go to again,  the PWC demands constant surveillance and a place in your blogroll. Bon Appetite!