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With the spork being ubiquitous, I was wondering about the name “spork”. It is the easiest name if you’re combining “spoon” and “fork”, but there are other combinations too.

Spork
Fpoon
Foon
Forn

Not as popular, but you could also have a combination fork and knife.

Knirk
Knork
Fofe
Forfe

And least popular is spoon and knife.

Spofe
Spoofe
Spife
Knoon

In the past year, I have experienced three very useful inventions. They are of the type that made me wish I had gotten them sooner. So now I’m sharing them with you, so you can have a better life.

• Ratchet Belt

  

  I have worn out a number of belts because my waist is a consistent size. So I’m always putting the belt buckle on the same setting, and all that wear and tear in one spot causes the notch to wear out faster. The rest of the belt is fine, but it’s gnarly-looking at best or worn through at worst.

  I tried the web-type belts with the clamping claw, but that has two problems. 1: the claw is slightly destructive, so the more I use the belt the worse it looks. I can see scratches and runs in the fabric webbing. And 2: the buckle releases way too easily. It occasionally catches on something when I turn and it pops open, rendering the belt temporarily useless.

  But at Christmas I got a ratchet belt, the kind with the ratchet on the underside. These belts are awesome. The design keeps any wear and tear to the inside of the belt, so no one sees it. It’s not infinitely-adjustable, but the sizing is a lot finer resolution than traditional notches. I highly recommend them.

• Clicky Paper Towel Holder
  That’s a clicky holder of paper towels, not a holder of clicky paper towels.

  

  My sister got one of these and we tried it and then had to buy our own.

  You can look up “click paper towel holder” or “one hand paper towel holder” or something like that.

  The point is that you can pull the end gently and it unrolls, but if you tear it then it doesn’t unroll. There’s a resistance mechanism built into it. Now I don’t have the weekly chore of winding the paper towels back onto the roll.

• Stepped Car Ramps

  

  I saw a Youtube video about someone who made these, and I was inspired to make my own. Sometimes the Youtube feed algorithm works.

  In this case, it’s useful for me because I work on my cars and I have a stick shift. I’ve had a set of ramps for years, and they’ve been helpful, but I never liked trying to get the manual car up them.

  Also in my case, I’m a little gun shy because I did overshoot the end of a ramp once, and ended up having to jack up the side of the car to free the ramp that it had crashed on. So now I am cautious if I think I’m nearing the end of the ramp.

  With the stick, it’s a pain trying to be cautious on a ramp, because that’s not good for the clutch. Also, my parking brake is not that good so if I stop before the end of the old-style ramp, I have to go back down to the beginning.

  The stepped car ramp is nice because I can count to know when I’m on the last level. 1, 2, 3, stop. And if something goes wrong and I have to stop before the end, each section is level so the car never rolls back. I can stop on level 2 and the car stays there. Note that I built my car ramps longer than this set, so each level has plenty of room for a tire.

  It’s also probably better for the automatic transmissions too – don’t want to use the parking pawl to hold you in place on a ramp while you get out to check if you’re at the top yet.

With some hot temperatures around here recently, I got to thinking about what people think is hot compared to what a car thinks is hot.

Actually the thought process started years ago during a trip to the Badlands. As the temperature was well over 100 (note all temperatures here will be in F not C), I was worried about the car. I knew I would be unhappy being in the sun (no shade in sight, and you can see a long way in that area of the country) with the temp being 105. And I wondered if the minivan was equally unhappy.

It’s easy to tell in general, because cars have a temperature gauge. As long as the needle stays in the middle of the gauge, everything is happy. But I have also learned that if the needle starts leaving the good zone, something is bad and it’s too late to do much about it other than turn off the engine.

But I’ve since realized that what we think are hot temperatures are not hot to the car. It was replacing a thermostat and radiator that helped me understand that. The thermostat was rated for 195 – that’s the normal operating temperature of the engine coolant.

My body’s thermostat, however, is around 98.6 degrees, about half that of the car. So although I’m in danger of overheating in 105 degree weather, the car is not. Going from 80 to 100 degrees is significant to people, but to a car that would feel like going from 40 to 50 degrees to us.

It’s like dog years – a car degree is half a people degree.

Recalling my thermodynamics class back in college: heat moves from the hotter object to the cooler object, like water flowing from a higher point to a lower point. Once the air gets above 98.6-ish, I’m not longer giving off heat, I’m absorbing it. But for a vehicle, that point is 195. And if the air temperature is even close to that we have bigger problems.

With a couple different vacations this summer, I’ve had time to read some books. Half of these I picked and half of these were recommended to me by the wife and/or kids.

I’m going in order of when I read them.

First up: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

I have read this book before, but it was a while ago. It was on our shelf when I was looking for books to read, and as it was a small book it looked good for a vacation read.

I like this classic sci-fi type of book, and because it’s such a classic I feel any review I give will be mostly useless. If you’ve never read H.G. Wells it would be an okay start.

Next up: King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard

I picked this book off our shelves as something to read for the last few vacations, and took it along but never got around to reading it. It also is not a very large book. It was a more interesting story than The Time Machine. I liked it, but it’s not for everyone these days. It was written a while back and different things were socially acceptable back then.

Spoiler Alert

After I read it, I was thinking it would make a good movie, but no one would make it as written. It’s about white people who are journeying into the heart of Africa to find some treasure, and helping a displaced king of a tribe regain his throne. I was thinking what they could do to make it into a movie, then I realized that’s basically the plot of Black Panther. Any attempt to make a movie of KSM would be seen as a white man’s Black Panther. And to remove the African tribe element would turn it into any other adventure story, which would probably be fine, but then it wouldn’t be this story. I think its time has passed for a movie.

End Spoiler Alert

Next up: Story Thieves by H. James Riley

Just kidding, the author is James Riley. But all the authors so far had a first initial of H. so I tried to continue the trend.

This one is like Inception. Except it’s a book. I’ll call it Bookception.

James Riley wrote this book, but in this book there’s an author who is writing his book series, and the protagonists move between the two. It was an entertaining story. There are more books to the series than this first one, which worked well enough as a standalone. It left the door open for the rest of the series but its not like some books that don’t resolve enough in the first book so you have to read the rest.

I don’t remember anything objectionable, so it’s probably fine for anyone who wants to read it. Lower middle grade certainly.

My only complaint is that now I’m interested in reading the book series that’s in this book. I was going to call it the fictional book series. As opposed to the fiction book series. James Riley should take up the pseudonym of the guy in the story and publish those books.

Next up: The Blackthorn Key by Kevin Sands

This one was highly recommended by my son, who is entering 9th grade. It was a refreshing change of pace – a unique setting and characters. England around the time of the Black Plague.

It is a little violent and gruesome, but not out of place with the things that probably happened back then. As with the previous review, I have read only the first book, so I can’t vouch for the rest of the series. But no problems with upper middle grade readers for this one.

Next up: Land of Stories by Chris Colfer

This is another one that I’ve been trying to read for a while. This was one of the better books I’ve read recently, as far as getting into it and wanting to read it once I’ve started. It’s good for people who know all their fairy tales and nursery rhymes and such. So if your kids don’t know those, have them go through Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Mother Goose collections.

As with the previous review, I have read only the first book, so I can’t vouch for the rest of the series. But no problems with lower middle grade readers for this one.

That’s it for this review. Maybe I’ll be able to finish a series soon.

I haven’t had a Family Conversations post in a while, but this should fit in that category. It’s just one though. Now that all the kids are in middle school and up, they don’t talk as much.

The scene: Delta has an origami book and has been practicing making paper cranes, and they’re turning out fairly well.
Delta:Dad, let’s see who can make a paper crane faster.
Me:Ok…go!
We both commence folding. I win the race.
Me:I’m done.
Delta:No, dad, one that looks good.
I do not know how to fold paper cranes. I folded something, but you would not have guessed it to be a crane. Unfortunately, I did not save it nor photograph it.

I just watched Pocahontas for the first time, and it was funny how closely it stuck to the standard Disney formula. I knew there were certain themes that were popular, but after that I listed all them I thought of and now I present those to you, dear reader.

• Main character is the daughter of the king/chief/etc. Bonus points if her mother has died.
• The king wants his daughter to follow traditions, but the daughter is impetuous and does not want to.
• She follows her own way and ends up falling in love with someone not from around these parts, which causes trouble.
• The king or villain or mob of townsfolk tries to kill the love interest, but …
• The daughter intervenes and changes her father’s heart / persuades the locals / helps defeats the villain to save the day.
• Everyone, including loyal animal sidekicks, lives happily ever after.

I came up with this list mostly with Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Moana in mind (and Pocahontas of course), but some of it also applies to Mulan and Tangled.

Side note: I think some of the success of Frozen is due to its not following the formula.
Barely related note: The Emperor’s New Groove 2 (AKA Kronk’s New Groove) was made with minimal effort. They really phoned it in for that one – do not watch unless you have a lot of time to kill and nothing better to do.

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• There are two phases to Jackie Chan’s career – the good old days and the not-so-good newer days. If his movie was produced by Golden Harvest, it’s from the good phase. Once he started making movies with Hollywood, it was all downhill from there.
• Isn’t all food ethnic food? Or when people say “ethnic food” they mean anything other than their ethnicity?
• It’s summer, but it’s August so football is back on the radar. This year, I’m going to keep track of which announcers know the difference between a reverse and an end-around.
• If you take a laundry bag on vacation and bring it home full of dirty laundry, make sure that it contains only dirty laundry. This last vacation, someone packed the shaving kit in the laundry bag because it was easier to carry that way. We didn’t find it until we moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer, because laundry bags just get dumped into the washer.
• Tip for husbands: if the wife ever references TOH, she’s probably talking about Taste of Home, not This Old House.