Friday Night Cool...

Yes, sir -- it's been a busy week. However, I have managed to accumulate a shipload of cool, and since it is the coolest night of the week, I'm going to share it all with you.

Cool Item #1:

Darby got a great review in The Muskoakan: [www.muskokan.com]

A Walk Through A Window

By K. C. Dyer

Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2009, 230 pages, $12.95 paperback

Darby’s idea of a great summer is hanging out with her pals in Toronto doing whatever is dear to the hearts of young teens anywhere. To her dismay, her parents pack her off to her grandparents in an out of the way village on Prince Edward Island while they renovate their house and generally sort out their shaky marriage. Big time bummer, thinks Darby. Little does she know………….

                K. C. Dyer has skillfully woven a coming of age story into dramatic, action packed glimpses of Canadian history that include early aboriginal nomads, desperate settlers fleeing the potato famine in Ireland and Scottish immigrants seeking a new life in the colonies. The literary device of letting a character step over a magic boundary into a totally different time gives the story the ghostly quality that readers relish. Darby’s connection to her ancestral past as she discovers more and more about her grandparents’ genealogy brings her an eye-opening new appreciation of her family as well as a more exciting summer than she could have ever imagined.

                This is a lovely summer read for girls from 10 to 14.  

 

Thanks, guys!

One of these days the newspaper style-police will learn to just leave the name in lower case. No caps. No periods. Just kc dyer  -- lower case, low key. Canadian.

Think it'll happen?

Nah, me neither. I'm just happy they liked the story!

Cool Item #2:

Got my flu shots this week. I've got asthma, and that puts me in the high risk group, I guess. Not really cool...but this is:

[hat tip to QI elves...]

Hmm. Not sure that worked...

But, come ON,  who wouldn't want to learn how the flu takes over your body?

And finally, Cool Item #3:

Not quite sure how big those viruses really are?

Check out the very cool comparative size chart, from the size of the font here [Times New Roman 12 pt] to a carbon atom -- and many things [including viruses!] in between:


http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/



[hat tips to a tweet from Grant Imahara of Mythbusters, and to the University of Utah for building the page]

Okay -- I think that must be just about as much cool as any person can stand, even for a Friday night.

More soon!

~kc