Denis and I ran a few errands Wednesday morning. My major errand was to get my Covid-19 booster, which was quickly and easily done, although my arm was sore, which it wasn't for the other two shots.
We were about six blocks from home when Denis got a call from the alarm company that monitors our house. That always makes your pulse rate skyrocket! Denis had trouble connecting with the caller and didn't until we'd pulled in the drive. In the meantime, I was thinking of burglars and brought up the alarm app on my phone.
Without my reading glasses, I was able to decipher "Kitchen Motion Detector..." Kitchen motion detector? How in the world could that motion detector go off without one of the outer door or window alarms going off first? What? Did they come down through the roof and attic space?
Denis went inside to investigate, and I was sitting in the Jeep wondering if it was a good idea for him to go in there. What if someone was waiting for him? Well, someone was.
It was Ralph.
Who's Ralph? Ralph is the Shark IQ robot vacuum (which is FAR superior to iRobot or Bissell). Denis had forgotten all about programming Ralph to do some cleaning every day, so when he trundled off into the kitchen to do his thing, he set off the motion detector.
Denis and I had a good laugh about it, but we also learned our lesson: if we're going somewhere, block off the kitchen so Ralph won't scare the puddin' outta us again!
Enjoy the links!
►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄
- Why news reporters write the best crime novels.
- No one has ever lived in the past, so how can writers accurately represent history?
- Why have novelists stopped making things up?
- A brief history of books on wheels.
- The queer old case of the spinster sleuth.
- Laurie R. King on the financial ecosystem of the writer.
- Steph Cha on choosing the best of mystery and suspense during an unprecedented and harrowing year.
- Laurie Kahn and a pair of red socks.
►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄
- Traces of a submerged Roman road have been found beneath a Venetian lagoon.
- A metal detectorist found a sword pyramid dated from the time of the mysterious Sutton Hoo burial.
- An ancient Christian settlement in Egypt shows evidence of urban planning.
- Louisiana's Poverty Point earthworks show early Native Americans were "incredible engineers."
- Wondrous wooden carvings re-emerge after being entombed in bird droppings for 1,000 years.
- Polished 5,500-year-old stone balls were found in a neolithic Scottish tomb.
- First Cupid, now a wine glass? More revelations emerge from a restored Vermeer painting in Dresden.
- A hand-carved 400,000-year-old bone tool used for smoothing leather has been found in Italy.
- A hidden suffragists portrait studio has been found in a New York attic.
►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄
- Elizabeth Ann is the first cloned black-footed ferret.
- After watching this video of a giant monitor lizard climbing a crowded shelf, I wish my neighborhood 7-11 had similar interesting shoppers.
- Rat poison has been found in dead eagles from across the United States.
- An epic Monarch migration faces new threats.
- Experience a day in the life of a wild wolf, as seen in stunning collar-cam footage.
- Watch this fearless turtle chase lions away from his waterhole.
- This couple built their beloved cat his own bedroom with matching blankets and a working television.
- A trio of lifeguard dogs rescued fourteen people swept out to sea from an Italian beach.
►Fascinating Folk◄
- Diana Rigg remembered: "Ma didn't suffer fools. She exploded them at fifty paces." Pardon me while I go watch a few episodes of The Avengers...
- Interior Secretary Deb Haaland's mother, Mary Toya, has died. Toya indelibly shaped the child who became the first Native American leader of the Interior Department.
- Sean Sherman, AKA the Sioux Chef, works to return indigenous food to the forefront of the American diet.
- Zitkála-Šá, the Native American who fought bigotry with Broadway.
- The nineteenth-century women who wrote "weird" stories and refused to be pigeonholed by genre.
►Craftsmanship & Artistry◄
- Quilling artist Manan Mistry creates beloved cartoon characters out of tightly rolled 3D paper spirals.
- A compendium of Native American tipi decoration circa 1900.
►The Wanderer◄
- Ten bookstores built in surprising places around the world, from cathedrals to caves. I was happy to see that I purchased books in one that's on the list.
- Remembering when Americans picnicked in cemeteries.
- How Memphis created the nation's most innovative pubic library.
►I ♥ Lists◄
- From sitcom stars to Bond girls and an actual king, Star Trek guest stars you might not have spotted.
- Ten books about long-distance relationships.
- Five books that examine the American penal system.
- Fifteen mind-bending facts about The Matrix.
- Rotten Tomatoes' 25 worst movies of all time.
- Sixteen books by Latinx authors.
- Lisa Jewell shares seven mysteries set in manor houses.
- Nine books to read when you're in a bad mood.
That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.
Stay safe. Stay healthy. And don't forget to curl up with a good book!
Oh, my, Cathy! I have to admit, I had a good chuckle about the whole alarm story once I knew you and Denis were safe. That's one thing about our modern digital age, isn't it? Yes, Ralph needs to stay out of the kitchen if you're not home. Now, I'm off to that Egyptian Christian settlement - no programmable cleaners there!
ReplyDeleteThere's something to be said for a world without gizmos...
DeleteI remember fondly visiting Poverty Point a couple of times in the past and marveling at the amount of earth that had been moved to create those structures. They truly are amazing.
ReplyDeleteI had a good chuckle over your experience with the robot, but I can imagine that it was very scary at the time.
Whereas I've been to Cahokia and did the same kind of marveling. The cities they built were incredible.
DeleteI'm glad the alarm was just your Shark vacuum and nothing more serious! And thanks for sharing that story, because it totally made me chuckle. :D Have a great weekend!
ReplyDeleteYou, too, Lark!
DeleteI wrote a comment, then it went to Google's sign in. I wrote my gmail address and password and it rejected it. I don't get it. This never happened before.
ReplyDeleteCould be the Google monkeys were fiddling around with the coding at the time. I know weird things happen to me on Blogger from time to time. I usually discover that some sort of maintenance work was being done.
DeleteWhat a hilarious story. Glad Ralph didn't get any with any valuables.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how Ralph would work in my apartment with all of its corners, furniture legs, boxes, doorways, etc.
Speaking of gadgets, I saw a meteorologist on TV who said her three sons put Alexa in the kitchen who started giving her cooking instructions. She said, "Get Alexa out of here!" Alexa answered back.
So she banished Alexa to the second floor. Those kids are lucky to still have Alexa.
But Ralph, I may ponder.
Having never seen your apartment, I don't know how well Ralph would do there. All I know is that he's far superior to others we've had when it comes to not getting stuck somewhere, and the magnetic strips used to keep him out of certain areas work really well.
DeleteThe first few times you run him, he's making a "map" of the house. Now that the map is done, Denis can use the app to tell Ralph to go clean the kitchen or go clean the bedrooms, and he'll trundle off to the correct location and begin working. He's even self-cleaning. Ralph is pricey, which isn't surprising considering all the bells and whistles he has, but Amazon had a killer deal on him, and that's when Denis snapped him up.
Time to ponder Ralph. So one never has to clean out the dust and dirty? It's amazing in a NYC apartment.
DeleteRalph even cleans out his own dirt trap (or whatever you call it). We don't have to touch the tray he empties into for a month.
DeleteWell, I guess there is a bit of a learning curve when one is not used to leaving the house very often 🙂. Glad it was nothing more serious.
ReplyDeleteHope you have a good weekend!
It wasn't so much a matter of us not leaving the house that much but that Ralph was a new family member and we hadn't gotten used to him yet! LOL
DeleteWhat a great story. The things this 21st century has given us that I wouldn't have dreamed of as a kid.
ReplyDeleteI know!
DeleteRalph, the safe intruder who cleans one's house.
ReplyDeleteI watched Janet Evanovich at the PP, funny. She has her 28th Plum book out and is publishing a start of a new series in March.
ReplyDeleteThen I watched Lee Goldberg and Matt Witten. Omigosh, did I ever laugh. Goldberg is an absolute nonstop riot. He imitates his wife's French accent about his writing a book with a first-person woman character. She said to him: How can you write from a woman's point of view? You kno nothing about women!
Very fun evening. But also interesting about the latter writers' books, as I never read anything by either of them.
I've gained more than one new favorite author from attending Poisoned Pen events.
DeleteSounds like Ralph needs a good talking to. :-)
ReplyDeleteYour link on bookmobiles was interesting. We had one in one of my Houston neighborhoods that would come around every Thursday for a couple of hours in the afternoon...not a great time for me, but the kids loved it. I was surprised to learn that the first bookmobile in Texas was supposedly the one purchased by the Beaumont library in 1935. It was used for a long, long time from what i understand. The surprise, though, comes from the fact that it was a city as small as Beaumont who did it first...and not Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or Austin.
I always like it when the little guy gets in there first.
Delete