Dear Kid,

Well, yeah.

Calendars are wonderful. They’re useful for making notes and keeping appointments. They remind us of holidays and birthdays and daylight savings time.

And they often have cute pictures.

Over the last few years, themed calendars have been getting more specific. We’ve gone from calendars with dogs to calendars with puppies to calendars with only lab puppies. Or pugs. Or whatever. All of which is fine and lovely.

I think people should look at their calendar and smile.

So I’m completely in favor of calendars that make people happy.

The other day, however, I saw a themed calendar that just made me scratch my head.

It was a goat calendar. And not just a goat calendar. Goats in Trees. I am not making this up. I took a photo so you could see for yourself.

I am fascinated by this.

I didn’t know there were enough people who liked goats to make a goat calendar worth printing.

I had no idea goats liked to hang out in trees. Or that anyone made a habit of photographing them when they gamboled and gallivanted vertically. When did goats start doing this? When did calendar people notice? Who knew that there could be 12 wonderful photos of goats in trees?

Live and learn.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Yes, the Winter Olympics are fast approaching. Actually, they are approaching at the same rate as always, but (as always) they’re getting closer. Here’s what you need to know (actually you don’t need to know, but it’s interesting).

This is the 23^rd Winter Olympics.

The slogan for this year’s Olympics is “Passion. Connected.” Which I like a lot.

There are two official mascots for the games. Soohorang (a white tiger which is Korea’s guardian animal) and Bandabi (an Asian black bear which symbolizes strong will-power and valor). And they’re cute. Very cute.

In PyeongChang (please note the capital “C” which is a recent addition to help people distinguish between PyeongChang where the Olympics are and Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea) they’ve built a ginormous (35,000 seat) pentagonal stadium for the games. They will use it for the opening and closing ceremonies (and some other stuff). Then—get this!—they plan to tear it down. Gone. Goodbye. Nice to have had you here.

Meanwhile there are a bunch of other venues (“venues” is an important word for the Olympics).

At these venues we’ll see traditional games and four new sports: curling mixed doubles, speed-skating mass start, alpine team event, and snowboard big air. So more like “variations” than “new” sports.

There will be three Mexican athletes at the games (they all qualified for alpine skiing). This is three times the number of athletes Mexico generally sends. And it’s more than the NFL will send since they’re sitting this one out (I think that’s a good thing). It’s possible the Jamaican women’s bobsled team might qualify for the Olympics this year. I am not making that up.

Now you know.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Have you thought about wool recently? If you were, perhaps you were wool gathering (“wool gathering” means daydreaming). Here are things you don’t know about wool.

Wool comes from sheep. Except when it comes from sheep and alpaca, sheep and llama, sheep and camel, cashmere, angora, vicuna (what the heck is a vicuna?), yak, guanaco (not to be confused with guano), beaver, or otter.

Side note: There are two wild camelids in the South American Andes, the vicuna and the guanaco. They both live at higher altitudes than you do and they both have nicer coats.

Wool is biodegradable (but not very quickly so you don’t have to worry about it falling apart while you’re wearing it), flame-resistant, mildew and mold resistant, and contains natural UV protection (since lambs are not good about reapplying sunscreen).

Side note: Wool has uneven and negatively charged fibers and since stink-causing bacteria prefer flat, positively-charged surfaces they (the stink bacteria) usually hold conventions on synthetic fabrics.

Wool fibers are very durable. If you want to break a wool fiber, you’d have to bend it back and forth (the same way you break a pop top off a soda can) about 20,000 times.

Side note: Scissors are easier and faster.

The children’s song Baa, Baa, Black Sheep was probably an objection to heavy taxation on wool in England.

Side note: Being the black sheep of the family has nothing whatsoever to do with wool.

Despite popular assumption, My Friend the Internet assures me that sheep are quite intelligent.

Side note: They also have crazy peripheral vision. They have rectangular pupils (an excellent fact you might need during a trivia contest) and can see almost 360 degrees without turning their fuzzy heads.

Wool is used for clothes, piano dampers, and the insides of baseballs.

Side note: Most baseballs contain over 370 yards of wool windings.

In times of yore (and by “yore” I mean before either of us were born), wool was traded as commodity. (It still is, but I really wanted to say “yore”.)

Side note: When Richard the Lionheart (think Robin Hood) was captured, part of his ransom may have been paid in wool. Or maybe not. MFtI is conflicted on the point.

Wool is currently very popular (especially in Asia), which has driven up the price and caused farmers to send fewer lambs to slaughter (the better to raise them to wool-bearing age).

Side note: This is good for lambs, farmers, and knitting needle manufacturers.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

This is very exciting. It seems 2018 is going to be the year of purple.

Pantone has named Ultra Violet its color of the year for 2018.

A dramatically provocative and thoughtful purple shade, PANTONE 18-3838 Ultra Violet communicates originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking that points us toward the future.

More importantly, the Voice of the Movies has spoken. The Vice Admiral (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) has lavender hair. The hedgehogs in Ferdinand are (mostly) purple. Una is purple; Dos is a darker purple; Cuatro is a steel blue but his ears, nose, and eye rings are light violet. And Tres? “We do not speak of Tres,” –Una.

I’ve had purple hair for some time now. Which either makes me ahead of the trends (unlikely) or particularly enchanted with the color. (Trust me, if Pantone says next year’s color is peach, I will not be sporting peachy hair.)

2018. The year of purple. I’m pretty excited.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Just for the record, I was right.

Someday, this will cease to surprise people. Since we have not yet reached that day, I will continue to remind people.

I was right.

 When one talks about alcohol proof one is technically talking about the amount of ethanol (and by “ethanol” we [and by “we” I mean the scientific community] mean alcohol) in a beverage. In the US of A (yes, it’s different in different countries), alcohol proof is twice the percentage of alcohol by volume.

In other words, 100 proof whiskey contains 50% alcohol.

As we all agreed one cannot say “50% proof” unless one is talking about geometry. Which we most certainly were not.

So why the term “proof”? I’m glad you asked.

Turns out that in England back the 16^th century, adult beverages were taxed at different rates depending on their alcohol content levels. More alky equals more taxy. Since the tax man (yes, they were all men back then) didn’t have advanced labs to carry around with them, they devised the gunpowder test.

Basically, they soaked a pellet of gunpowder in the liquid being tested. If it could still burn post-soak, it was considered above proof and therefore taxed at a higher rate. Hard to see how that would improve the taste of the alcohol.

In case you randomly find yourself on Jeopardy!, you should be aware that 57.15% alcohol was the level of proof because under that amount, soaked gunpowder wouldn’t burn. So BackInTheDayintheUK, 57.15% was 100 proof.

By the 18^th century, there were more complicated tests that don’t interest me very much and didn’t really change the system.

Here in the US, the idea of calculating 57.15% (or even thinking about calculating 57.15%) gave people migraines, so when the proof system was established (1848 in case you were wondering) we skipped all the complex specific gravity stuff and went with 50% alcohol equals 100 proof.

These days, people don’t care about proof very much (unless you’re a college student in which case saying you’re drinking something 60 proof is much cooler than saying you’re drinking something 30% alcohol).

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Rather unexpectedly, I found myself in the middle of a discussion about meat. (For clarity’s sake, by “in the middle of” I mean I was listening to.)

Turns out some people take meat very seriously. Especially in some of its less-well-known forms.

The conversation was rolling around on some very shaky skates.

For example, did you know there’s such a thing as trail bologna? ‘Tis true. There was a long discussion (during which I was absolutely silent) about trail bologna and what made trail bologna, well, trail bologna. I (of course) looked this up when I got home and found that none of my friends were correct about the origin of the name. Pay attention:

Trail Bologna is called Trail Bologna because it’s made by Troyer’s Genuine Trail Bologna in the tiny hamlet of Trail in Ohio’s Amish country. (It’s an all-beef ring bologna.)

The conversation then slid sideways, spun the wheel, and landed the topic “meat sweats.” The first time I’d ever heard of the meat sweats was in a Progressive Insurance commercial (you know the one where Flo and all her relatives are sitting around chatting?). I thought it was a made up term. It’s not, although it should be.

“Meat sweats” is the mysterious condition whereby, after ingesting a generous helping of meat, you begin to sweat like a fat man in a cake shop. First identified by competitive eaters, for whom the malady is an occupational hazard, the meat sweats are thought to be caused by the combination of adrenaline and protein.

Speaking of things you don’t know about, have you heard of pudgy pies? Of course not because I am a terrible mother and never told you about them. This is because I had never heard of them until this weird food conversation.

Pudgy pies are not pies. They are grilled sandwiches one makes over a campfire in a special little contraption that is sort of but not exactly unlike a waffle iron.

After almost climbing out of the Pit of Doom in which the conversation found itself, the unthinkable happened and we plunged backward into a discussion of loaves of meat. Like ham loaf. There was a detour while we tried to determine exactly where on an animal one might find the “loaf.” The group decided that not even Jeb the Cowhand would know about that particular part of the anatomy.

With that, the conversation gave up and ordered dessert.

Love, Mom