As I post this, it is almost ten where Blogfodder is. Evening Al!

Small stuff can make you sad. Small stuff can also make you very happy. I remember buying a coconut for just over a dollar to go with Hawaiian night*. The kids were happier with that than if I’d spent seventy five on a video game. Truly, they were fascinated; we talked about it all through supper, we used a veggie peeler to peel great wide strips of coconut off the shell and they each took a half to school the next day. It was awesome.

I am ridiculously pleased with…a clock. Yes, you read that correctly, a clock. At first I thought perhaps I was unbalanced, but no, because everyone loves this clock! I brought it to work so I could have more time playing with it. Or looking at it. Ok, yes, playing with. And I do. Way too much the first day but still, every day. And other people stop by and play with it too so although I may perhaps still be crazy I have company.

So now, of course, you need to learn about this clock. Oooh, I’ll try for a picture.
Anyway, here we go: it’s a rectangle, with a map of the world, 24 lines for time, and fifteen holes. There is also…a little silver plane! You can move it to any of those holes and plug it in and when you do the clock at the top reads my time on the left and what they call world time on the right, which is the time for wherever you put the plane, and major cities in that zone.



We’ve even learned some interesting things with this clock. For instance yes, you can make it a 12 or 24 hour clock - big deal. But you can also press a button for daylight savings time. AND you can change it between northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere DST. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing. Logical, of course, once I thought about it but still I hadn’t known that until now.

We also learned about the weird bend around Spain. A co-worker is going there next month (his brother and family live there). We assumed, looking at the lines, that Madrid time would be the same as London time. But it wasn’t! They had it as the same time for Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Zurich and Rome. I was so sad – my beautiful clock was flawed. But was it? WAS IT?

I Googled it. And my lovely little clock was not flawed. Portugal goes to London, but there is a scoopy curve thing and yes, Madrid is with the others. Ha!

*When the kids were small I found it difficult as a single parent (as do non single parents as do people without kids etc) to get meals to go beyond the very limited things we just always did. I felt so tired all the time and it seemed like such a chore to think of things they would like. Which isn’t fair to them; they were and are the most adventurous kids I’ve ever known when it comes to trying new food. But still, there we sat with the usual dishes. So I came up with World Wide Wednesdays.

Every Thursday whoever’s turn it was would come up with a country or cuisine that interested them. On Friday or Saturday I’d find recipes from that country that I’d be willing to make and that I thought had a fair chance of working out with kids. I’d print maybe a dozen recipes. The chosen one, so to speak, would choose the recipe for supper on the following Wednesday. They would also be assistant chef and (horrors) they had to learn something about that country to tell us at supper. This worked really well and lasted about three years. There are dishes that failed, dishes that worked and dishes so delicious we still use them today. Maddy chose Hawaii. We had a honey chicken, a salad with nuts and the aforementioned coconut. It was a good time.