Hostess 100 Calorie Cupcake pack, one serving (3 mini cupcakes): 5 grams of dietary fiber (20% of the RDA).
Trader Joe’s Venezia salad mix, one serving (3.5 cups of lettuce): 1 gram of dietary fiber (4% of the RDA).
How can 3 little blobs of sugar and fat pack in more fiber than an entire bowl of salad?
I’ve always had some difficulty with identifying pictures. I am pretty sure it’s genetic, as I’m the daughter of a woman who didn’t understand what the red hand on crosswalk signs referred to (hint: it’s in contrast to the green or white walking person). (Hi mom!)
This caused me some trouble in first-grade phonics, with those mimeographed worksheets that showed a picture and then some letters, and you had to circle the one that the name of the object started or ended with. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out the picture at all, and sometimes there were difficulties with names. One that I remember very clearly showed a picture like this:
(image from this mildly amusing site)
I circled C for Cup. It wasn’t until I got the worksheet back with a big red X that I learned most people would call that a Mug.
This disability occasionally causes trouble in med school, since photos of medical conditions are usually cropped to include only the affected portion of the body, and often oriented strangely. I spend a lot of time in lectures like this morning’s (on anaerobic bacteria) whispering to my neighbor, “what IS that?”
Via A Bluestocking Knits (which was via Mason-Dixon Knitting) I have discovered a blog that is all about memes about books. I enjoyed reading other people’s responses so I decided to do it too. This week’s is about how you take care of your books.
What kind of care do you take of your books? Let’s review, shall we?
- Are you careful with the spines? Or do you crack your books open to make them lay flat? Not careful with the spines. I don’t purposefully abuse books for reading like I do books of piano music, but I don’t take any particular care.
- Do you use bookmarks? Or do you dog-ear the corners? If you do use bookmarks, do you use those fashionable metal ones? Or paper? I dog-ear corners in magazines only. In high school (the last time I took a class that required me to read entire fiction books) I did dog-ear pages I was intending to quote from in my essays. Normally, I use bookmarks consisting of random scraps of paper, like the subscription cards in magazines, used grocery lists, or torn-off bits of tissue paper.
- Do you write in your books? Ever? If you do, do you make small marks, or write in as much blank space as you can find? Pen or pencil? Highlighter? Your name on the front page? No. I probably should write in the non-fiction ones, because I like coming across remarks and it would be useful in book club discussions, but I can’t bring myself to do so. I don’t write my name in, either. In my coursebooks for school, I write with pencil (pen if necessary) in tiny letters. I don’t highlight.
- Do you toss your books on the floor? Into book bags? Or do you treat them tenderly, with respect? I toss gently.
- Do you ever lay your book face-down, to save your place?Yes. If the spine seems fragile I use bookmarks but more often, if I’m planning to come back to it soon, I lay books face-down.
- Um–water? Do you bathe with your books? Hold them with wet hands? Read out in the rain? Anything of that sort? I don’t take baths. And I can’t stand the way pages crinkle up after getting wet, so even when I read at the beach I’m careful to dry my hands first and keep my hair from dripping onto the pages.
- Are your books lined up on a bookshelf? Or crammed in any which way? Stacked on the floor? All of the above. Mostly lined up on a bookshelf, but the ones that don’t fit are stacked on top, and I sometimes have a stack on the floor next to the bed.
- Do you make a distinction–as regards book care–between hardcovers and paperbacks? Not really.
- And, to recap? Naturally, you love all of your books, but how, exactly? Are your books loved in the battered way of a well-loved teddy bear, or like a cherished photo album or item of clothing that’s used, appreciated, but carefully cared for? Clothing.
- Any additional comments? I’m amused that I’m cavalier about mechanical damage to books but neurotic about writing in them.
Sometimes I wonder why it is necessary to include instructions on, say, soap. I suppose it is possible that some people have not figured out to use soap yet. However, I don’t think the following label will take care of that:
Directions: Wet hands. Work into a rich lather. Rinse.(Trader Joe’s “Next to Godliness” hand soap)
It doesn’t seem to mention the part where you add the soap.
Similarly, a frozen pizza I baked the other night instructed me:
Remove plastic wrap. Place pizza directly on oven rack. Bake 9-10 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.
It’s a good thing I knew that I should remove the cardboard under the pizza. Sure, that’s obvious, but it’s not as obvious as removing the plastic wrap! (If you hadn’t had frozen pizza before, you might not notice the cardboard since it can blend in with the crust.)
On a different note, I just purchased some “Blue Tabs” automatic toilet bowl cleaner. I noticed that the package says
Safe to use around pets and children, although it is not recommended that either be permitted to drink from toilet.
That is so awesome. I was dithering on whether I really needed toilet bowl cleaning tabs, but when I read that I decided that this company definitely needed to be rewarded with my business.
(It does later say: “HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED. EYE IRRITANT.” so I’m not sure exactly how safe it is.)