The White House is a six-story, 55,000 square foot house located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washinton, DC. The house has 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, twenty-eight fireplaces, eight staircases, three elevators, five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a (single-lane) bowling alley, a movie theater (officially called the White House Family Theater), a…
How long do dinosaurs live? Do carnivores live longer than herbivores? If being a herbivore (vegetarian) makes you live longer, then why didn’t the carnivores switch or become omnivores? Do omnivores live longer than either of the others? This all started with a simple off-hand question from one of my students last spring –…
This journey started when I first learned about the packhorse librarians of the Great Depression. Research for that story led me to Luis Soriano’s biblioburro and Amy Baqer’s library rescue in Basra. What I also discovered along the way is there are many different types of bookmobiles in use around the world – camels, swamp…
I have always loved the smiley face. Its cheery, happy, yellow smile brings happiness wherever it goes. If my life could have a logo, I think it might be the smiley face. (My theme song is Don’t Worry, Be Happy and my motto is “Oh well!”) There – I’ve claimed it! I was driving through…
Becki at A Book Lover’s Adventures has been running a series on her blog this year called Hometown Tourist. She was kind enough to accept my submission to feature Arroyo Grande, CA. We only lived there for three short years but it found a place in all our hearts and in many ways feels like…
Who’s your favorite Care Bear? At our house, it’s Cheer Bear. Of course, to us, she will always be “Care Bear” because she’s the only one who matters. Care Bear came to live with us, and specifically, to live with Bella, in May 2004. We had discovered at Bella’s two-year-old well-child check that she had…
Did you know that out in the Nevada desert in 1955, at the Test Site, a town was built? It was called Survival Town, or Doom Town. As part of the 14 nuclear tests done in 1955, the town was built to study the effects of a nuclear explosion in a populated area. Various houses…
They say road trips are good for conversation. You’re in the car for hours, watching the world go by. You have to talk about something with your fellow passengers, right? Today’s post topic came up on my recent road trip from Salt Lake City back to New Mexico. On our way home from dropping Ryan…
As a prime mosquito buffet target, I spend most of the summer scratching my itchy bites. I am not a fan of those annoying pests and would not be sad if they suddenly disappeared from the earth. At dinner the other night we were talking about mosquitos and wondering – What are they good for? …
A history lesson in a commercial? Yes, it’s true! One of the latest GEICO commercials features Alexander Graham Bell answering the phone, “Ahoy hoy!” He goes on to tell the caller that it’s a wrong number, “No, no. My number is one. You must want two.” Haven’t seen the commercial yet? Watch it now. A…
Every year my family takes an epic cross-country road trip. We started calling it “Big Trip” and the name stuck. This year is Big Trip Lucky 13. (I’m not too superstitious but it just seemed like a good idea to hedge our bets and add “Lucky” to the name for this year.) We’ve been driving…
A refrain heard often in schools every day. No cuts in the line! No frontsies, no backsies, and no saving places. All school children are well aware of the rules but it sometimes seems as though grown-ups have forgotten. Whether it is intentional bad behavior or just because we are becoming so self-absorbed that we…