Towel Day

Today is Towel Day, honoring the late Douglas Adams, creator of the amazing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, in which the hitchhiker is advised that a towel is the most massively useful thing a hitchhiker can carry, for many reasons but most importantly because if one has a towel, others will assume that one has other necessities and is a really together guy.

I always keep a towel in the car-- since I don't hitchhike, I don't actually carry one. But towels have been on my mind recently, particularly the supply of towels in our house.

Each of the two bathrooms has a towel bar with a nice clean, fluffy, relatively new towel and washcloth. The doors of the two bathrooms have hooks from which hang more towels, clean, but thin, frayed, and undeniably ratty. (See first photo.) These are the towels in actual use. The nice towels stay unused--except when Josie takes a bath. She is having none of the crummy towels.

Our linen closet has a stack of unused new towels. So why aren't we using them?

Beats me. But I remember that my grandparents were much the same--continuing to use threadbare towels when there were new ones on the shelf. Is this an old age thing? Inherited frugality? For what are we saving those new towels anyway?

Maybe in honor of Towel Day I'll gather up the ratty ones and put them on the shelf for utility/dog use and break out some new fluffies. Walk on the wild side! Live for the moment! Woo hoo!

10-10-10

Today is being called Singularity Sunday. There are those who think that, due to the date, Something is likely to happen. 

I am charmed by the fact that 10 10 10 in binary code equals 42 in base 10. (No, I didn't know this on my own -- I learned it HERE.)

So what's the big deal about that, I hear you asking. Well, as all true fans of Douglas Adams' magnificent The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe  know, 42 is the answer to The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

So perhaps as the day unfolds, the meaning of the question will emerge.  Or not.

Till then, I'm pretty excited with the picture I caught at the river yesterday of what I think must be an osprey. 

And yes, we're beginning to get that fall color.

Do let me know if the day brings any auspicious events or revelations your way.

Pat in TN Was Wondering . . .

. . . what ever happened to my writing chair that I hauled off to be re-upholstered. Well, here it is, in its fresh new green cotton splendor.

I really should have taken a before picture -- under the home made blue and green slip cover (shown in the photo over in the sidebar, just above the Zombie Chicken Award) was a truly ghastly sight -- filthy, faded, fifty-year old pale blue brocade covered the chair -- mostly. Except where the stuffing was poking out. In spite of a pillow on the seat, it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable to sit in for any period of time.

The ottoman, another piece of furniture from my grandparents' house, was in fine shape -- its faded yellow brocade untorn. But I went on and had it recovered as well.

They look just grand -- and the dogs and cats agree, fighting to sleep in the chair when I'm out of it. So I've put the old slipcovers back on to protect them.

At least it's not clear plastic.

Pat's other question was about a comment from Willow a few days ago. "your sighting of the young girl with the hoe just gave me the shivers! What a perfect inspiration for a book character."

And that comment was in response to a comment I had left at Willow's blog on a recent post she did about a ghostly sighting.

Briefly (and there's not much to tell anyway), our house (built by my husband in 1975) sits in the middle of what was once a tobacco or a corn field. One night, in the early years of our occupancy, I was alone in the living room, drowsing on the sofa, and I saw a young woman in an ankle-length homespun skirt, standing there with a hoe in her hand.

That was it. She didn't move or speak or go Oooooh. And I've never seen her again. But she was in my mind when I wrote the Little Sylvie story -- twenty-five or so years later.

Any more questions? I know the answer to the Ultimate Question, the one about Life, the Universe, and Everything.

It's 42.