Mystery Penny

I've been doing a lot of house cleaning this weekend. I finally took a moment to take a giant bucket of pennies that had been accumulating over the past 6-7 years to Coinstar.

I was a penny short of $43. One of the pennies that came back was the one show above. It's been through one of those souvenir penny smushing machines at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.

I've never been there. I'm not sure if I know anyone who has been there. No idea how I ended up with this one. 

And all the creatures came out...

to celebrate with Wilbur.

Adventures at Disney World!

Nope... not me. Just my Arctic Zone soft-side cooler.

Here we see the Arctic Zone starting off the day at Blizzard Beach:



And here we are on a bus headed to another Disney Destination :



Where will it be tomorrow? I'll let you know next time I hear from it.

DO NOT EAT! - Complete?

The jar is full!!



Our collection of silica gel started on Tuesday May 22, 2007.

You can see our progress chronicled here: http://agent317x.blogspot.com/search?q=silica

Thanks to all friends and coworkers that have contributed to this endeavor. I'm not really sure what happens next. Right now the overflow is going into a smaller jar until we discover Step 2.

Happy Halloween

Don sent me a link to this cool Rezillos video from '78. MoAM? did a cover of this and it's always been one of my favorites.



That got me watching YouTube. Now you can watch The Genuine Miracle of Pyrex. It's pretty spooky.



Happy Halloween from Agent317x.

Pneumatic People Tubes

They need to edit this to make the change to "dried plums" and re-air it:



I bet pneumatic people tubes could work through the interweb too.

Coco Sighting

Today I took Dad out to a late Father's Day lunch at Bangkok Thyme. I ran across Coco with one of the Refuel oil collection trucks between there and Food 101.



Here he is talking to Zach outside The New York Butcher Shoppe.

22 Player Foosball Table

Made by Airworks for some Amstel promotion.



I'd hate to think how long a game would take.

Zem

No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures which live quiet private lives in the marshes of Squornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seem to mind and all of them are called Zem.

- Douglas Adams

From Marvin and the Mattress in Life The Universe and Everything.

Stars

Desiccant Update

We met Scott for lunch Friday at Arby's. He presented us with 4 packets of desiccant.



The three at the bottom are the standard silica gel. The one at the top left was a fairly monstrous packet of some form of bentonite.




Woohoo! It continues to fill.

On a related note, a friend sent me a link to a pillow on Etsy.

Thanks Easter Bunny! Bok Bok!

Naturally... the squirrels were curious.

Why are bananas curved?

This morning a coworker asked "Why bananas are curved?"



So... of course... I had to look it up. I found it at banana.com.

Bananas possess a unique scientific phenomenon called "negative geotropism." As the little bananas start to develop, they grow downward--as gravity would dictate. Little by little, several "hands" or double rows develop vertically and form a partial spiral around the stem. As they take in more and more sunlight, their natural growth hormones bring about a most puzzling phenomenon, and they begin to turn and grow upward. - Link

Thus this cause the curve.

Thanks banana.com.

Silica Gel Check-Up

It's really pretty amazing how much silica gel has accumulated. Many of my coworkers have now been trained to bring their packets in from home and deposit them upon arrival to work.



We're almost to halfway.

People keep asking what I'll do with with it when it's full. I don't know... but I'll consider any suggestions posted in the comments.

See this post and this one if you missed the early days of the jar.

(Pay no attention to the angry geometron with the icepick on the whiteboard... they're mostly harmless.)

Banana Sharpener

I miss good TV.

Mr. Pickadoodle

I want a Mr. Pickadoodle.



Go check out New Mechanical Aids for Busy Housewives (Feb, 1933) from Modern Mechanix.

Come on in and stand a spell

Today we added some new seating.... umm.. I mean standing to our office. Meet the Stand-In.



My parents got this "chair" at an auction back in '83. I spent my high-school years with this thing in the dining room. It's in our office now for the comfort and pleasure of our visitors.

Here's a little background info on it:



I've done a little poking around and it looks like a Westnofa still exists. They make foam mattresses now but it sounds like they may be related. I also found some stuff on the net that claimed Westnofa was a marketing firm as was also responsible for getting Ekornes over to the US. This makes sense to me. I actually have an Ekornes couch at home. It one of the few you can find that has three separate reclining sections.

One Down

It took a lot of beatings.



But the rubber bands finally won out.



Guess we'll put up a new one.

The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

Dave and Danielle came through with another amazing tiki find from last weekend's garage sales. It's a pretty nifty hand carved tiki-fork. At over 28 inches long it dwarfs my existing tiki-carved fork and spoon set. What's odd to me as that it didn't have its matching spoon. I've seen bunches of similar carved fork and spoon combos at yard sales, Goodwill etc. and they always come in pairs. Dave said they asked about the spoon and got two different answers: 1. "It already sold.", and 2. "There never was a spoon."

I guess the dish ran away with it.

It has no markings that I can make out but is about 28" x 4.5" x 1". If you happen to spot the matching spoon somewhere, let me know.

I've never seen a set with a knife... but I've heard they are out there.

Welcome back to Xenon!

I have a small town called Xenon that lives in my Nintendo DS. I hadn't visited my town since last December. I went by for a visit late last week and found that my house was full of roaches and the town was chock full of weeds. I spent a few days cleaning up and all is well.



Seems like the townfolk haven't forgotten me at all. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.