Author: Annie

Yes. I am THAT She Devil. The original, shedevil at vix.com. You know: I am: mom, attorney, fathers' rights advocate Actually, I'm a lawyer -and- I play one on tv. Yep..that's me.

At Last! A BPA-Free, Dishwasher-Safe Thermal Travel Cup which Accommodates a Stainless Steel Straw!

It became something of a holy grail for me: I love me my stainless steel straws (which are by definition also BPA free) and I’d been looking for ages for a thermal tumbler or thermal mug (i.e. a travel mug or travel cup) which was a) BPA-free, and b) dishwasher safe, and c) could accommodate my stainless steel straws through its sip hole (many sippy holes are too narrow to accommodate a rigid straw). If it was wide enough to also accommodate my favorite tea strainer, so that I could brew my morning cup of tea (lapsang souchong, thank you very much) all the better.

Here’s the thing: it’s crazy hard to find thermal travel mugs that are both BPA-free and dishwasher safe. In fact, it’s hard to find any travel cup or travel mug that is dishwasher safe, period.

So now, after months and miles of searching, I have found the perfect travel tumbler: BPA-free and dishwasher safe, and it works with both my tea strainer and my stainless steel straws.

And, even better, it’s about half the price of many of the other travel cups out there!

The Bubba ‘Envy’ tumbler promises to keep your hot drinks hot for up to 3 hours (and cold drinks cold for up to 5 hours), and retails on Amazon for about $10.00. Such a bargain!

Combine this with these stainless steel straws (a 4-pack for $10.95 – that’s just $2.25 per straw), and you have the perfect travel beverage set up. (The reason for the straws even with warm liquid like your morning coffee or tea is two-fold: first, it’s safer to drink from a straw when behind the wheel because you never have to tip your head back to get to the liquid at the bottom; second, it helps keep your teeth from getting so stained as you aren’t filtering your coffee or tea through your front teeth.)

And, if you want to be exactly like me (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) you can start your morning with some wonderful Lapsang Souchong tea. If you’ve never tried it, you owe it to yourself to try it at least once – it has a wonderful, smoky flavor!

bpa-free-thermal-travel-mug

Here are some direct links for you:

File It! A Cheap Way to Keep All Those Over-the-Counter Medications Organized

Is your medicine cabinet or bathroom cabinet a jumble of boxes of pills in blister packs that defy organizing? Over-stuffed with rows of boxes containing the blister-packed products? I know that mine was, between homeopathic products such as Sabadil (allergy), Sinusalia (self explanatory) and Coldcalm (ditto), and the more standard products that we use when necessary (Benadryl, Sudafed, etc.). Nowadays it seems that every OTC (over-the-counter) medication and health product that comes in tablet or capsule form comes in a blister pack (those little pockets that have a foil seal that you peel off or push the pill through) which is packed in a box (often a box that takes up much more room than the product inside). Wish that you could somehow organize them to take up less space, and be easy to find?

Well, do what I did! Do this:

photo

The box is a cheap index card file from the local office supply store, which includes the tabbed deviders. I usually cut the directions from the box of each pill and file it with the product.

Now, this assumes that either a) you have no children in the house who would be at risk from non-child-proofed meds, or b) that you can put this up high enough to keep it out of their reach or, ideally, c) both.

But I have to tell you, this has dispensed with frustration on so many fronts! I can see everything that we have at a glance, and, more importantly, find everything that we have at a glance. And I can easily see when we are running low on something.

And my bathroom cabinet has lots of free space again.

What’s Your Sign? What Did it Used to Be? New Zodiac Dates Required, says Planetarium Society

First Pluto is excommunicated as a planet, now the signs of the zodiac are given new dates, meaning, say some, that the sign of the zodiac under which you have believed all along you were born is the wrong zodiac sign. Can we rely on nothing celestial?

It seems that due to the moon’s influence on earth, says the Minnesota Planetarium Society, the signs of the zodiac, assigned millenia ago, are no longer accurate. So do you need to change your sign based on the new zodiac dates? Or are the new signs of the zodiac dates just an interesting thought experiment?

The zodiac as we know it was developed by ancient Babylonians as long ago as 600 years or more before the birth of Christ. In the past 2500+ years, the moon’s effect on the earth, which creates a bit of a wobble (or, in astronomical terms, “precession”) has caused our points of reference to have shifted some. And so, says Professor Parke Kunkle, on the board of the Minnesota Planetarium Society, “When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces, it’s really not in Pisces.”

And the reason you should care, if you want to care, is that the astrological sign under which you were born is determined by in what sign the sun is on the day of your birth.

Prof. Kunkle expounds:

“In science we deal with a long tradition of fact based investigation. We are not in the business of interpreting the purported relation between the positions of planets and human affairs.

The Earth spins and, like a toy top, the spin axis moves around, pointing in different directions. Today, Earth’s spin axis points toward the pole star, Polaris. Around 3000 BC Earth’s spin axis pointed toward Thuban. Wait 26,000 years and the north star will again be Thuban. Astronomers call this motion of the spin axis precession. About 130 BC, Hipparchus noticed that the Earth’s spin axis had changed directions, so astronomers and astrologers have known about the Earth’s precession for over 2000 years.

But this means that if the sun was “in” a certain constellation on a particular date, it is in a different constellation on that date today. For example, the sun was in Pisces on March 1, 2000 BC but it is in Aquarius on March 1, 2011 AD.”

However, not everybody agrees with the good professor. In fact, says one commentator, pointing out that the very Babylonians who created the zodiac also were very aware of precession, “The stars are markers that drift, but our main points of reference are not directly the stars. They are the equinoxes (both spring and vernal) and the solstices which altogether make the four cardinal points of the zodiac which in turn determine the signs. The stars help us locate those points which define the SIGNS of the Zodiac which remain constant in relation to the equinox point. The CONSTELLATIONS do move about and we take that into consideration when locating planets.”

That said, in case you care, here is the new set of dates for the signs of the zodiac, as propounded by the Minnesota Planetarium Society:

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11
Pisces: March 11-April 18
Aries: April 18-May 13
Taurus: May 13-June 21
Gemini: June 21-July 20
Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23-Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20

And here is the traditional set of zodiac dates:

Capricorn Dec. 22-Jan. 19
Aquarius Jan. 20-Feb 18
Pisces Feb. 19-March 20
Aries March 21-April 19
Taurus April 20-May 20
Gemini May 21-June 20
Cancer June 21-July 22
Leo July 23- Aug. 22
Virgo Aug. 23-Sept. 22
Libra Sept. 23- Oct. 22
Scorpio Oct. 23- Nov. 21
Sagittarius Nov. 22-Dec. 21

Tool-Using Octopus Caught on Film – Video of Veined Octopus Building Coconut Shell House

In an incredible display of just how smart the octopus is – and how they are capable of forethought – Dr. Julian Finn of Museum Victoria in Australia has caught on film a veined octopus transporting coconut shells for the express purpose of building a shelter (and then doing so).

Says Dr. Finn, of the moment when he realized that he had evidence of an invertebrate using tools, “I was gobsmacked. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I’ve never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.”

Here is the video of the veined octopus carrying the coconut shells and using them to create a shelter:

What Exactly is a ‘Bra Fitting Destination’?

If you’ve seen the billboard ads along the highway – “Your bra fitting destination” – you may be wondering just what exactly a bra fitting destination is. I certainly was. It turns out that the ads are for Sol Lingerie. Sol Lingerie specializes in bra fitting. Now, you guys can stop reading right here (save for your prurient interest), but us gals can attest that one of the most vexing parts of life as someone with two X chromosomes is finding a bra that fits well.

SOL is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, so, apparently, Denver, Colorado is your bra fitting destination. If you’re in the Denver area, you can head over to SOL to get a bra fitting with a trained bra fitting professional (according to SOL, their bra fitting professionals go through a six-week training before they are allowed to fit customers).

However, even if you’re not in the Denver area, you’re still not S.O.L. as far as SOL goes. SOL offers some of their bras for sale online, and they have an “Ask the Expert” area on their website. You can also call them.

Says SOL, “At SOL we believe receiving a professional bra fitting is the best way to ensure finding a perfect fitting bra. As a result we recommend coming into SOL to find out which size and styles fit you best. But we also know how busy life can be so as a result we’ve made a few of our most popular bras available for purchase online. If you have any questions about a bra you see here or would like us to look up your size, please don’t hesitate to call us.”

SOL is located at:

248 Detroit St. (in cherry creek north)
Denver, CO 80206

And you can look up your bra fitting destination online here.

Slashdot and the Baltimore Sun “Discover” Unschooling

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when mainstream media gets something so spectactularly wrong, but I expect better from the brainiacs at Slashdot.

So imagine my surprise to read the headline “Schooling, Homeschooling, and Now, “Unschooling” ” on Slashdot today, and to learn that unschooling, a method of homeschooling that I and many of my homeschooling friends have personally known about for at least a decade – and which has been around since at least the 70s when John Holt wrote about it – is something new and now.

At least Slashdot only acted as if it were something new – the Baltimore Sun was much more insulting, calling unschooling, and I quote, “a byproduct of home schooling.”

Hrmph.

You can read the Slashdot piece here, and read the Baltimore Sun article here.

Two Writing Wrongs Don’t Make a Write Right

I used to love going to the Brewing Market and teasing the barristas because their sign on the case where they have their pastries and snacks offered, for the longest time:

Bagels and “Cream Cheese”

Scary. I pondered aloud what they could possibly be offering as “cream cheese”, rather than actual cream cheese, and scarier still, was that few of the staff actually understood the source of my bemused merriment.

I only wish that I had a picture of the sign for you. You’ll have to take my word for it.

Today, I went into the Brewing Market, all set to joke around with the one barrista who did get it, and who would roll her eyes and laugh at it with me, when to my shock and horror, I saw that the sign was gone, replaced with a newer version, missing the offending quote marks around Cream Cheese. (Keep reading below the picture.)

I felt like an old friend was gone – and as I was saying so to The Barrista with a Clue my eye fell upon the rest of the signage, just above it:

Whew. It’s good to see that some things haven’t changed. Like, the literacy level among the sign-making staff at the Brewing Market.

Odor Eaters for Your Pants

Would I make this up? A company called The Pond is marketing a product that can only be described as odor eaters for your pants.

Actually, I guess it can also be decribed as “Subtle Butt” filter pads, as that’s what the company is calling it. (For the record, I detest the word “butt” – and I also detest the word for the emission at which this product is aimed – or, er, I guess, vice versa, the emission is aimed at the product.)

And, while you are buying pant filters, you can also buy underarm filters, and other items sold to help you deal with the pesky problems of when your bodily oopsies meet your fashionware.

You can buy all of these nifty, must-have products from http://www.garmentguard.com/.

Germany to Circumcise Constitutional Freedoms

You read that right. According to the website NetzPolitik.org, in reporting on the upcoming change to German law which would censor certain websites:

I imagine that they meant “circumscribe”, but, you never can be too sure!

As English is probably not the author’s first language, it’s a rather darling translation error. Still, at least two comments to the article point out the error, and yet the error has still not been..er..cut.

You can read the full article here.