Category: things I learned this month

Happy Halloween guys! I’m linking up with Emily P. Freeman today to share a few things I learned this month – feel free to share some things you learned in the comments section below or send me a link to your own blog post if you are linking up also!

Here are a few things I learned this month:

1. Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake!” and several other popular quotes that are often misquoted. But you should eat cake anyway.
2. My kids are both doing really well in school this year – MM has been blowing his teacher’s mind with his penmanship and attention to detail – and way less messy desk. And BB is blowing everyone’s mind by being good at everything (except bringing her homework home reliably, but you know, six).
3. Reasons to love Audrey Hepburn even more:
4. It takes about 364 licks to get to the center of a Tootise Pop (and more candy facts at mental floss).
5. Apparently undetected breast cancer can also lead to eye problems. Because you didn’t have enough on your plate.
6. This: 
7. Speaking of which – Lyft will send you free zombies on Halloween. which isn’t nearly as adorable as kittens.

What did you learn this month?

Hard to believe that the end of July is upon us! It’s been a busy month – it always is when we travel. I’m linking up with Emily Freeman to share a few things I learned this month, on the road and otherwise. Silly or serious. There are no rules here really except to document what you’ve learned and share.

1. My in-laws taught Dan and I how to play Pitch. Apparently it’s his parent’s favorite card game and my brother in law’s as well – and now we all seem to be big fans which is bound to make family get togethers a lot more interesting! I have some very wonderful memories of playing Pitch into the wee hours this month, laughing hard and bonding big time.
2. I learned how to up my Ramen game – we had friends over this month and we cooked a more homemade style of Ramen complete with a soft boiled egg on top. Major game changer.
3. I also learned how to soft boil an egg, which might be my new favorite way to cook and consume eggs.
4. I learned about three different places to experience Platform 9 3/4 and now I want to visit them all.
5. I learned from reading her new book that Danielle Fishel worked at Macy’s during the holiday season as a gift wrapper, mostly because it sounded like fun. And that even Danielle Fishel is not immune to rude customers.
6. I learned how good it feels to tidy up a room according to Marie Kondo’s methods in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I still have a LONG way to go in both the book and my house (so I guess I’m not really following her advice to clean it all out now immediately) but it still felt great to see my office floor again.

I’m sure I’ll think of more things I learned later that I should have shared, but this is a pretty good representation of my month over all. Share what you learned in the comments section or link up with Emily and send me a link to your answers!

What’s your favorite card game?

Favorite way to cook eggs?

I’m linking up with the lovely Emily @ Chatting at the Sky to share some things I learned last month – it can be something silly or serious, profound or plebian. Here’s what I learned.

1. I learned how to prepare starfruit and what they actually taste like after playing a game of produce section roulette with the kids (i.e. letting them pick a random fruit we’ve never tried before just to see what it tastes like). Bottom line: It has a pretty mild taste. My husband compared it to an apple / melon hybrid. I felt the faintest hint of pineapple like flavor.

2. I learned that my kids have no idea how Truth or Dare works. This is probably a good thing.

3. I learned a LOT of good lessons while camping Father’s Day weekend. Especially: a) I actually know how to set up a tent. b) You can’t control the weather but you can make the most of it. c) When your husband doesn’t catch any fish, you get to go out for dinner.

4. I learned that Clarkson, Hammond and May plan to do a new show together. Top Gear fans rejoice!

5. I learned that there really are “paper towns” like Agloe, New York which is a fictional place in Delaware County, New York, that became an actual landmark. In the 1930s, General Drafting Company founder Otto G. Lindberg and an assistant, Ernest Alpers, assigned an anagram of their initials to a dirt-road intersection in the Catskill Mountains: NY 206 and Morton Hill Road, north of Roscoe, New York.^[1] The town was designed as a copyright trap.

6. There are a ton of old MS DOS games that you can still play in your web browser. I continue to be terrible at Oregon Trail but love it all the same.

7. I learned how to crochet. Or at least, I started to learn after finding this fantastic tutorial:

What did you learn last month?

I’m joining Emily again to share a few things I learned in the merry old month of May. Wanna play along? Tell us what you learned last month: It can be silly or serious and you can post on your blog or just let me know in the comments section below!

1. According to the woman who was giving my son’s class a tour of the Burpee Museum in Illinois, you can recognize words that are Greek in origin if the word contains a y in the middle that makes an I sound. Mind. Blown.

2. Apparently you can earn money (or rewards at least) if you use the Bing search engine rewards program. Just search as you normally would and you’ll be earning points towards things like Amazon gift certificates or travel rewards points or even donations for charities.

3. A run-on sentence is NOT just a really long sentence. According to these debunked grammar myths at Mental Floss, they can actually be quite short. A run-on sentence contains independent clauses that are squished together without the help of punctuation or a conjunction. For example: “I am short he is tall,” is a run-on sentence even though it only has six words.

4. Giraffe tongues are gross, slimy, long and gray.

 What did you learn last month?

I’m linking up again with Emily at Chatting at the Sky to share some of the things I learned this month. This is by no means an exhaustive list, just some of the cool things I took the time to share or write down somewhere.

Perhaps this should have been obvious from the start but I learned that sugar probably isn’t any healthier than high fructose corn syrup. Definitely worth a read.

I learned that sometimes white and gold really do look like blue and black. Yes, I’m talking about that damned dress. I almost didn’t even read about this but curiosity got the better of me and then after reading through and looking at the pictures I’ll admit, I was a little bit shocked. I know part of this is just the balance of colors in each photograph but it still surprised me. This comic about it made me laugh.

I learned that my daughter is the shortest kid in her class. I’m not sure how I never noticed this as she always seems tall to me at least in comparison to her brother at her age, but at 44 inches tall she is about 4 inches shorter than most of her classmates and 6 inches shorter than the tallest kid in her classroom (her best friend coincidentally).

I learned how Emily at Chatting at the Sky keeps track of what she’s learned each month. I like her idea for a bullet journal and I’ve been giving it a try for a couple weeks. I’m not super consistent with it yet but I like the idea.

I learned that Walt Disney and Amelia Earhart used to date! And that Neil Armstrong one had a job as a muffin maker. There were lots of cute little facts about famous people from history at my son’s class Wax Museum this month.

I’ve been learning a lot about progressive lenses (a no line bifocal) at work and what types of shapes and lens materials are better for progressive wearers. Not a cut and dry answer but I’ve appreciated all the suggestions and tips I’ve learned from the other people I work with.

I also learned a little bit about the dangers of sun and our eyes and why sunglasses are important and the difference between the more expensive sunglasses we sell and the ones you can get for like $5-15. I also learned that kids eyes are much more susceptible to UV damage than adults. I can’t remember all the science behind it, I’ve got more research to do though for sure.

I learned that no matter how many episodes and seasons of Parks and Recreation that I watch, the show just continues to get better and better. I’m still on season 5, way behind the rest of the world, but continue to be OBSESSED.

I’m also obsessed with the Lunar Chronciles series by Marissa Meyers (if you haven’t yet, stop everything and read Cinder right now – just be warned that once you’ve read it you will want to read all the other books in the series basically immediately).

I’ve learned that the reason why Mercury gets so cold at night is because their atmopshere is so thin from being so close to the sun. Venus, on the other hand, has such a thick atmosphere that it’s hot at night and during the day. According to my husband, this is kind of the basic science behind Global Warming and the changes to our seasons that we’ve been seeing.

What have you learned this month?

I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that today is the last day of September. This month flew by in a flurry storm of new and exciting mixed with the same old same old. To celebrate the end of another month, I’m linking up with Emily @ chatting with the sky to share things I learned over the last month. Wanna play along? Just share things you learned this month, silly or serious and link up with Emily.

1. This month my youngest started kindergarten and I started a new job. It is my first time working in eight years and you can imagine I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned more than I think I ever imagined about the world of optical sales (which I’m not going to write about because I assume it would bore the pants off you) and a lot about myself as I embrace this new journey. I’ve learned that when I find myself outside of my comfort zone, it’s easy to want to throw in the towel and run back to a more familiar world but I decided that challenging myself to learn something new that seems daunting is important and every day on the job gets a little easier and little less scary. I learned that I’m not immediately good at everything but that that’s okay.
2. I’ve relearned again that I can quell my nerves and anxiety some by just talking through the issue. Say it out loud and the problem gets smaller.
3. I learned that my daughter is capable of much more than I give her credit for. Kindergarten has been all about learning to be more self sufficient and it’s been hard to step back and let her do things on her own – but so rewarding to see what’s she’s made of! BB has had a great first month of kindergarten and is learning a lot! And her hand writing is quickly becoming neater than her brother’s!
4. I’ve learned that my son is crazy smart and has a huge imagination. Sometimes he talks for hours about things like “What if you could see sound waves?” or “What if airplane windows had smart screens so you could play crossword puzzles on them or draw pictures?”
5. I learned to be careful what you wish for! It seems like just yesterday I was complaining that my 2nd grader wasn’t being challenged enough and should have more homework – wait, did I seriously say that? Yep I did. This year my 3rd grader has so much homework some nights that he has to stay up late to finish it all. We’ve learned a lot of methods to help keep him organized and I’ve learned to let go of my expectations of how my afternoons are going to look and accept that it will be different every day.
6. I learned from taking this quiz that I can read an average of 22 books a year if I read 30 minutes a night. And that when I’m reading a book I don’t enjoy very much that I can spend 30 minutes playing Diamond Digger Saga or some other dumb Facebook game instead.

What did you learn this month?