finding Nemo and other things

Following is a list of somewhat random discoveries made over the past week or so...

The first is an interesting little bit of trivia (and the reason for the Nemo reference in the title) -- on a tour of the Biodiversity Museum at UBC, I learned that clown fish (Nemo) and about 60% of all reef fish (don't quote me on that) are sequential hermaphrodites, which means they can change gender based on situational need. In other words, when Nemo's mum disappeared, his dad would likely have just switched gender, become female and laid new eggs.

The next thing actually seemed to find me, rather than the other way around. I won't bore you with anecdotal examples, but suffice it to say that books tend to find me at the library. So while looking in the sewing section, this one caught my eye from a nearby shelf:

As I'd had a friend talk at length once about her experience working with a Life Coach, I took this one home for a closer look. It's about examining all parts of your life and making a commitment to living purposefully. I imagine each person who takes it up gets something different out of it and I suspect there is something in there for everyone.

Let's skip ahead to chapter 2 which is about "clearing out the brush", which seemed a timely idea as I had decided to tackle the much-neglected crawl space this past week. The crawl has seen several overhauls over the years, but hadn't been properly dealt with since a few major events -- the house renovation (in which a TON of stuff was tucked away down there) and a child or two moving out. Add to that the usual "just put it in the crawl space for now" mentality and, well, you get the idea...

The clean out is far from complete, but it is well underway, and among the "treasures" found so far are these sweet little angels...

and this awesome coffee maker...

...which we've had since the early 90's but stopped using when kids were around. Incidentally, Filmmaker Son and I saw this very same system in a trendy cookware shop on South Granville, after the above mentioned UBC tour, at which I exclaimed "We have one of those in the (you guessed it) crawl space". 

And I found a few things on the internet too... did you know there's a magazine (in the Southern U.S., where else?) called Garden and Gun. Hmmm.

And finally, this wonderful little blog called The Jealous Curator is a great place to discover art and artists like this one, this one, and possibly my favourite -- this one!

I hope your week is full of interesting finds!