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Sunday 16 February 2014

Eight Things I learned Today



1. There is a (fruit? vegetable?) called spaghetti squash.



2. You can make a pretty decent lo-cal spaghetti substitute with spaghetti squash. I walked two miles to the grocery store this morning and bought one along with Italian sausage (counterproductive) for the sauce.


3. All the major Antoni Gaudi architecture in Barcelona is identified by precise coordinates in Wikipedia....my microchip GPS for Spain is still in Alice's jewelry box in Ankara, Turkey but she will be bringing it back to Tampa and giving it to me at the Yankee's baseball game on March 15th....


The picture above was created by Bernard Gagnon. He lives near Quebec city. The picture has been retouched (probably to eliminate the ubiquitous construction cranes).



4. On cruise ships, you should actually take formal wear and always avoid dart and skeet shooting contests.


 5. The Spanish word for hand is mano. When you say "the hand" you say "la mano". This is one of the fortunately infrequent and strange exceptions to the general rule that Spanish nouns that end in the letter "o" are masculine....


6. There is a form of exercise called "pilates".  This was invented by by Joseph Pilates, a physical-cultist from Mönchengladbach, Germany. I encountered this word twice for the first time...once in an article about cruise ships from Bennett and again while eating spaghetti squash.



7.  Most people identify squash with vegetables, from a botanical standpoint, they're considered fruits because they contain the seeds of the plant. This is mere knowledge. Wisdom is not adding squash to your fruit salad.


8. Gladbach is the name of a brook near Monchengladbach. Monchen means monks.


9. When the "tower of Jesus" is completed on the Sagrada Familia, it will be 550 feet tall and boast a blue laser beam.