First of all, if you are in search of creative ideas, you might wander over to More Odds Than Ends and find a spare prompt that tickles your fancy. I’m not sure where the fancy is located – maybe it’s different for everyone? Regardless, there’s sure to be one that does it. And you can always send in a prompt – either for the challenge, or a spare. The difference is that with the first one, you get challenged back – it’s like a prompt duel! – and have to create something yourself. Email your prompt to oddprompts@gmail.com and specify spare in the subject line if you aren’t up to the challenge.
As for me… Well, I sat down last week and did a time budget. It’s like a money budget, and just like that one, my time is finite. I only have so much time in the ‘bank’ and I’ve been running on an overdraft for some time now. Combine that with the money budget and realizing that I’m going to have to give up some plans I was dreaming, and I was fit for man nor beast this weekend. Being an adult sucks some days. Grieving for the silly stuff also sucks. So I pulled my horns in and took shelter for a little while – which meant I dropped off social media, lest I be tempted to whine. That’s never a good look or sound. I feel… like I got some time back. It’s not going to be a ‘forever done!’ with social media. I don’t have any IRL social life, so I need that online interaction to keep going long term. But until I can catch up on some overdue obligations and reconnect firmly with family, I’m taking a break. Got to fix me before I can appear in public with any grace.
I jotted down some random ideas for blog posts, though. I’m going to try to do some long-running series and that will hopefully ease the time spent staring at the screen thinking ‘what do I write about?’ and even though a couple of them require research and thought, if I can plan for it, it will be less time-consuming than having an idea strike and then going down the research rabbit hole without spelunking equipment. Anyway, I hope that will be the case. I do miss research, though.
- Salmonella and Listeria in foodstuffs. ?coliform in the organic marketplace
- Irradiation – safe? Underutilized?
- Alchemy and the Dragon – gullet for atomic manipulation. Lead to gold.
- Mechanisms of Disease: bacterial toxins. Peptidoglycans
- Bibliophilia – profile old books with photos. Reg. Weekly column
- Tactical Romance: define and explore
- Plant Poisons – ongoing series. Myths and chemistry.
- Kitchen Chemistry – series. Plan to expand to book in near future.
- Native Pollinators – series. Already have the materials, simply need to edit for blog.
- Saprophytes. Acremonium – arthritis?
Anyway, I don’t know how many of these I will actually use. Some, for sure. Some? Just random thoughts. I’ll have more. Usually while I am driving, then I forget them once I stop and can record it!
Oh, and I may go back to book reviews, only from a slightly different perspective, and likely not modern books most of the time. I’ve been reading a lot. Comfort reads. But they give me ideas, too.
Comments
6 responses to “Ideas”
I have some old books you haven’t seen yet (Aunt Pam brought them when they visited in January). I’ll have to make a list – you might find something interesting for your blog there.
Ooh! Oh, Mom, I have some time off around July 4, I’ll plan to get down there to see you then.
Hmm. Lead to gold via dragons.
If every dragon could make lead into gold, would the value of gold plummet, and the value of lead rise?
Perhaps an article titled, “Alchemy and its effect on the precious metals market.”
Hah! I was contemplating the transition of one atom to another form, and the energy change that would require. The effect on dragon physiology would be interesting…
And the transition could be tricky. Between lead and gold are mercury and thallium. Overshooting gold would result in platinum which likely would not be a problem (and aside from inflationary metallurgy…) increase value. Would a dragon prefer to start with mercury when possible? The gotchy there is that mercury has many stable isotopes and gold one, so even if nuclear actions were at a remarkable 1:1 effectivity rate, the results could get quite interesting. One also wonders if the bismuth subsalicylate stomach remedy might cause problems for a creature that ‘normally’ deals with lead.
Here’s a freebie. A friend recently called and advised my wife that we should NEVER use a microwave to cook food. Her explanation? Well, it’s dangerous when it gets cooked that way. Huh? The microwave is dangerous? No, no, the food is radioactive after you cook it in a microwave.
I ended up reassuring my wife that a microwave uses radio waves to heat the water in the food, so the food is basically steamed from the inside out. And no, the food is not radioactive afterwards. I’m still not completely sure the explanation fixed everything, but my wife did decide we could continue cooking things in the microwave.
But that first warning… this is a friend who lives in the Philadelphia area, and runs a successful restaurant. I was flabbergasted to hear this theory of what a microwave oven does… I guess it uses radiation to heat the food, which makes the food radioactive? Wow… I wonder if that theory is running around some social networks or something?