Shootin’ the Summer Breeze

If we were having coffee, I’d whisk us to Berlin, Germany to Dimension Alley, billed as the first 3-D Printer café.

In D-Alley’s own words, “The café serves traditional English fare: Cornish pasties, pies, scones with Strawberry Jam and Cream, cakes and biscuits. We have tea imported from the UK as well as great Berlin coffee.”

http://www.dimensionalley.com

That’s not even the fun part!

The café features a 3-D printer so you can design and manufacture your own coffee cup, or perhaps a superhero with the face of your coffee-mate!

http://www.dimensionalley.com

Don’t worry. If Berlin is too far to go for coffee, these printers are coming soon to a coffee shop near you.

The Name Game

While enjoying Aerial America on the Smithsonian Channel, I’ve mused about what we call ourselves in each of these 50 connected, yet vastly different, United States.

That led to musing about what residents in parts of other countries call themselves, and what names they give the demarcations that form legal, interior boundaries.

I know Canada has provinces.. I think Mexico has states, and Italy has regions. Beyond that I’m ignorant.  When I comment to across-the-pond blogging buddies, I don’t even know whether they call their country England or Great Britain, let alone what interior demarcations the countries of the United Kingdom use.

Sure, I could Google this. But wouldn’t it be fun to hear from you – either in comments here, or in a post of your own – helping me fill in some blanks?

Without any of us checking Google?

Announcing the Cherished Blogfest

Hey!! Help us celebrate the first-ever Cherished BlogFest I hope you will join. Fun bloggers, fun topic, and minimal amount of time or effort. You’ll see a link at the end of the post. All you have to do is click it and add your blog URL. You KNOW you want to!!

No Facilities

I know. I’ve been talking all week about how I stink at organized blog activities, but I’m one of the organizers of a Blogfest? WTH? That’s like putting me in charge of the checkbook, or asking me to guard the bacon, or to take fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies to a bake sale.

You might not think this makes any sense, but it does.

A blogfest is a great way to meet new people, see what they have to say and get your stuff in front of them. I’ve never been part of a blogfest, but, as I understand it, it’s pretty easy:

All you have to do is to write a blog post. Post it at the designated time. Fill out a Linky thing, read a few posts, and give us your first-born child.

Oh?

Apparently, we dropped that last requirement?

Official Story

For the Cherished Blogfest, we – Paul…

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It’s the Cream in My Coffee – Summertime Scenes

If we were having coffee beverage-of-choice, I’d apologize in advance for showing so many photos in one post, but I’ve been playing outdoors in my vast summer playground and I want to share it with you.

I have no idea how these photos appear for my readers because they appear differently on each of my 4 devices, and they appear differently by signing into WordPress vs accessing them via WP’s app. It’s that infinite technology black hole I’m unwilling to explore so I skirt the edges, praying my posts are acceptable to you without necessity for me being sucked into that vortex of electronic media machinations that would prove a cruel end to my blogging career.

Will the Real Annie Please Stand Up?

Did any of you watch that 50’s-60’s show called ‘What’s My Line?’ where four people come on stage and say something like, “I’m Annie, and I’m an author”?

Only one of them was really an author named Annie but they all answered author-ish questions from a panel of celebrities (Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf) who would then guess which contestant was the real Annie.

Finally the host, John Charles Daly, would say, “Will the real Annie please stand up?” and the audience would gasp at how cleverly the contestants fooled the panel.

That’s how I felt back in January when Elizabeth wrote about reading Anne LaMott’s book Small Victories.

The gist of our comments was:

Me: “I’m so glad you are enjoying Annie Dillard …

 Elizabeth: “Who is Annie Dillard?”

 BAM!

I’d done it again. Been flummoxed by the Annies.