Biomes Blog

Entry #46

Happy Birthday Zachary (5) and Samantha (6).

I’m a god.

Become a God or Goddess. by zerogirl
Name:
God/Goddess of	The Stars
Element:	Lightning
Animal Companion:	Raven
Weak against	Acid
Weapon:	Dagger
Created with quill18's MemeGen 2.0!

Cool.  I hang out with large black birds that are smart enough to turn on street lamps to keep warm.

Thanks to Amy, who also guessed the wrong animal on Entry #44.

A 60 ton sperm whale exploded on the streets of Taiwan the other day.  I won’t give the gory details, but if you don’t believe me google it. 
Update: Oh, alright.

Here is the ultimate Simpson’s quote site. With sound!

Buy yourself a giant microbe.

Entry #45

The Gingerbread House Preschool (Narragansett) visited us this morning and then again this afternoon.
Happy Birthday Sean (5).

I put up a new section on the main page illustrating our 12 learning stations. Check it out.

Reading through my comic links on the right got me thinking that I should give some advice to aspiring comic strip artists: If you want to create a funny child character, give him lots of hair. Here is my proof: Huey from "The Boondocks",  Calvin from "Calvin and Hobbes", and Binkley from "Bloom County". These are three very funny kids. Now, compare them to this dud.

Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” trilogy is being made into a movie to open next year.  I’m a huge hitchhiker’s fan and this guy is supposedly going to play the lead, Arthur Dent. Oh, man. I’m all tingly just thinking about it. Don't Panic.

hmmmm.

Entry #44

Cool Site of the Week: The Dialectizer. Type or paste any sentence or paragraph and this site will change it to fit a variety of english language dialects.
Read biomescenter.com in "Elmer Fudd".

Here is a site about dumb product warnings. A sample: On a Harry Potter Toy Broom there is a sticker which says "Warning, this broom does not actually fly".

Updated penguin game.  It's just like the one from Entry #42, but the penguin goes farther further.  No, it's "farther". Just looked it up.

Dept. of Educashun:  Snowflake Science.

So, a few weeks back at my weekly Pub Trivia Competition (held on Tuesdays at Ri-Ra in Providence) the picture round was animals, which we aced of course.  Except for the answer to this pic:

Entry #43

Snow Day!  Graham's thrilled since we just set up his own internet service last night and now he gets to play.  But these snow days really mess up my schedule.  To those schools in Connecticut I was supposed to visit today, I'll see you tomorrow (yeah, like they're reading).

Politics: Click here to watch an angry, crazy, lunatic.
At this point in 1992 Paul Tsongas was leading and an unknown Governor from Arkansas was way behind in third place.  I’ll support any of them, but there is a long way to go.

This is a fantastic take on the role blogs play/will play in our information saturated society.  It’s long, but it’s a great read.

Here is something:

This is Charlie, 104 years old, owned by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill bought Charlie in 1937, giving her a boy's name despite the fact that the bird is a female

Entry #42

We set up the final two One Month Aquarium Programs for the H. Olive Day School's (Norfolk, MA) first graders. While there I noticed that they were also studying penguins.

Today's the big day up in New Hampshire. Here's a fun take on my guy's The Yawwp. He even has his own action figure. (Looks like Howard’s been pumping some iron.) And here’s his interview with Wolf “my beard is pretty” Blitzer, essentially calling the TV press "entertainers". Heh.

And for the little physicist in the household, here's the Albert Einstein Action Figure.

Cooking with Biomes: I luuuve me some tacos but I’ll take a pass on this.

Entry #41

Which Muppet are you?
My results:

You are Kermit the Frog. You are reliable, responsible and caring.  And you have a habit of waving your arms about maniacally.  In spite of this suave picture, you tend to favor old jeans and a Biomes tee-shirt, irregardless of the weather. Although muppets don't normally grow facial hair, you really should think about shaving a little more regularly. You also tend to improperly use nonstandard words such as "irregardless".

What Muppet are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Now, that's just plain eerie!

Mushroom portraits.

Dept. of Educashun: The Whozoo.

Write Like a Babylonian:  Here’s my name in ancient cuniform.

Entry #40

Happy Birthday Matthew (6), Joseph (5) and Joey (8).

Lobster Barbie.

Politics: Who should you vote for? Take it with a grain of salt. According to this I should be a Kucinich supporter. Yuk.
Or just Whack-a-Pol

Do-wop horses (click on the horses). This is so stupid, you'll laugh out loud.

Economics made simple

Search Results: Someone found the biomes blog by googling “Mark Hall: Marine Biologist”. That kind of creeped me out a bit.

Entry #39

...and it continues. 4:45 a.m. - 6:15 a.m. the dog and I had another episode of “fun with epilepsy”.  Of course, I took a small break to give the furnace motor a good whack with a hammer to get it running again.

Happy Birthday Sarah (6), Jason (7) and Cameron (5).

Today’s read.

Heh. Show Pride in Your work.

Search Results: Someone found the Biomes Blog by Yahoo searching “Dogfish shark brain pic”.  Now that’s just sick.

Go to this site and click the purple button. It doesn’t cost you anything. You don’t get charged, you don’t get spammed.  In fact, it costs you nothing but about 10 seconds out of your day. Their sponsors donate based on click numbers, so each day you click you provide a neglected animal with half a bowl of food.  Now that’s a deal.

Entry #38

Well Graham and I spent most of the morning at the E. R. (fist +glass door = 25 stitches) and the day just sort of went from there.  Including coming home to a broken down furnace.  Long, long day and if you live in New England you can guess it'll be a fun night.  I'm in no mood to be cute so check in tomorrow when I'll be back to my charming, cheery self again. 

Irony Update:  After discussing with Graham about how violence against inanimate objects is never productive, I just got my furnace working by kicking it.

Entry #37

Continuing on our theme from the other day: Here is the Table of Condiments that Periodically Go Bad.

Rebecca and Elizabeth spent the day taking care of our school tanks. Another mom's club visited us this afternoon.

Ask Biomes: (yes, all "ask Biomes" questions are real. My actual email responses are usually a bit more diplomatic.)

Q: I’m doing a report on Cnidarians. Do jellyish revolve (I think he means “evolve”) into corals or are there different species?
Michael

A. Michael:

Dept. of Educashun: SOTU facts and fiction.

The Onion, as usual, pretty much says it all.

Click here and Bart will write whatever you want on the blackboard.

(Shirts and other high quality junk that nobody really needs, but hey, it sends a few bucks my way, are here.)

Entry #36

Rebecca visited the Martin Luther King Jr. School in Providence for third grade in-class programs today. Monday, of course, we celebrated his birthday (although he was actually born on January 15). He would have been 75 years old.

Fight the Power! Join the Sasquatch Militia.

I travelled down Route 2 again today and though I think my rant in Entry #31 is essentially valid, I did notice some beautiful old homes on that road. I may have been a bit cranky that day.

True Story:
I go to the same coffee shop nearly every morning and of course the regulars' faces get to be familiar. There's this one guy I've seen there for years, although our longest conversations have been like "hi", hi". "Nice dog." "Thanks". You get the picture.
So, today we're both standing in line and he glances out the window where my car is parked.
Him: "Wow, the dog's getting big!"
Me: "Yep."
Him: "Looks like you've put on a few pounds too." And he PATS MY BELLY.

I don't even know this person's name for crying out loud.

Explore the Center for Duck Studies, a website written by a person with a very strange, even spiritual, obsession with this bird group. Very odd. (Of course, it could all be a big gag.)

Entry #35

Bartcop readers: Sorry, not much politics here. But there's some good stuff hidden among the junk, so thanks for clicking on his link, look around and check back once in a while.
(Bart: Wow.)

I've evolved again. I'm now a "Crunchy Crustacean" in TTLB ecosystem. As a friend pointed out, it's like I'm a pokemon. See entry #18. Honestly, the post changes by itself. I don't know how they do it, but it's not me. (Note: I'm still a lowlife in the blog ecosystem, so don't be too impressed.)

Update: I can't keep up. While writing this entry and finding the links I wanted to use I clicked "preview" and now I've morphed into a "Lowly Insect".

We had a visit this afternoon from the Portsmouth Mom's Club.

If you have a flash player, here is a fun song about the Periodic Table of Elements.

This is good too. It's the Periodic Table of Rejected Elements.

Entry #34

My "Sally Field moment" yesterday was sarcastic self-parody, in case anybody missed it.  (I really do only have 7 regular readers.  They just check in a lot.)

Entry #30 update:  The outtake "slobber rag" is also very funny.  Oh, just go rent the movie.

We had 62 visitors today for our walk-in hours.  Next public walk-ins will be on February 16.
Happy Birthday Jack (5).

Why Billmon is on my blogroll.

Kevin has a google update.  Is there anything google can't do?

How cool is this? We got an ad placed on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln!!

Finally, here’s a hamster working out:

Entry #33

Reminder: Open hours tomorrow from 11-2:00.

Happy birthday Patrick (6), Adam (5) and Brianna (6).
One of yesterday’s birthday parties (Aiden’s), his parents had a great idea which they included in their invitations. Instead of guests bringing presents for the birthday child (I mean really, how much junk does a kid need?) they asked each guest to bring a bag of dog or cat food which was then donated to their local animal shelter. Coincidently the same shelter from which we just adopted Sammy. Nice.

The latest James Bond movie featured a hotel made entirely out of ice. I thought, “yeah, right”.

Google Update: For years teachers and parents have complained that they can’t find our website. When they google the word "biomes" they get thousands of links but none of them are ours. (See Entry #23) The main page web address is “biomescenter.com” because “biomes.com” was taken at the time by a pharmaceutical firm.
Things are starting to change. Google the word “biomes” now and this blog is the second link given. I’m not sure how google ranks their list but I think it has to do with the number of hits. (This 32 day old blog had it’s 1000th hit today thanks to whoever logged in at 10:36 this morning .) I'm feeling a Sally Field moment coming on....
You like me! You really like me!

Cool Site of the Week: The Earth Calendar. This site gives a list of today's holidays celebrated throughout the world.

Entry #32

So now that we have both a boa constrictor and a cat at biomes, hopefully we won't ever have to deal with this. (Remember: Click the pictures. They don't bite.)

Now, now. I'm just kidding. Won't ever happen.

Happy Birthday Andrew (4), Alexandra (5), Isabella (5) and Aiden (6).

My son Graham has finished some more of our little movies and posted them on our movie page. Not bad for a 14 year old, eh? But that narrator, sheesh. He has got to go! One of the teachers who visited us last week said she plugged her classroom computer into some overhead projector/viewer thingy and showed the movies to her class before they visited us.

Play a game of miniature golf
Update:I was doing really well on my first try but I pulled a Roy McAvoy when I reached the windmill and shot 9 over par for the hole. Darn.