MattandSally.com

Friend of MattandSally Jason Boyett has picked up a new gig: blogging for Relevant Magazine. If you enjoyed reading Jason’s Pocket Guide to the Bible or any of his published works, then be sure to check out his new blog.

In his latest entry, Jason ponders the lines forming in front of Apple stores around the globe in anticipation of the iPhone. He offers a list of items for which he would be willing to camp out on the sidewalk, including a

Bluetooth ear thingy one-way blaster. This product would allow me to transmit my voice into the earpiece of any person — say, within 20 feet of me — who is talking into his little hands-free Bluetooth ear contraption.

The last time I camped out for anything was the fall of 1995, when my roommates and I were first in line for ND football student tickets.

In the vein of my previous post, I thought this was interesting: a collection of first-aid myths. Apparently, you shouldn’t apply raw steak to a black eye:

“The only medical merit this has is if it’s a cold steak,” says Flip Homansky, M.D., who’s seen his share of shiners in his work for the Nevada State Athletic Commission, which regulates Las Vegas’s boxing bouts. “The cold will decrease swelling, but there is no enzyme or anything else in a raw steak that will help otherwise.” The fact that the steak, compared with blocks of ice or ice cubes, can be formed to fit over the eye is another benefit, but a cheaper and less bacteria-prone solution is a bag of frozen peas, or crushed ice in a plastic bag wrapped in a towel. And remember, you will still end up with bruising.

via ririanproject

According to the July/August edition of The Family Handyman, “bug zappers attract and kill thousands of insects, but most of them aren’t mosquitoes. They kill only a small number of mosquitoes in the area. (ironically, they zap a lot of the insects that prey on mosquitoes.)”

Also, citronella is no more effective against mosquitoes than any other candle.

Sally often laughs when she hears me say, “look how beautiful that is” — only to find me pointing at a highway overpass.

Check out these interchanges via dailycognition.

I love the elegant tangle of these massive concrete-and-steel curves, but they represent conflicting ideals to me. On one hand, I appreciate and admire the ingenuity and even artistry that went into engineering (most of) these interchanges. On the other hand, their very purpose is distasteful to me. They exist to prevent us and our motor vehicles from having to slow down (as much) when our paths cross. While I wouldn’t want anyone’s commute to be longer than it needs to be, I would trade all of our beautiful highway interchanges for more mom-and-pop local interaction.

I just ran across this journal entry from February, 2006:

Justin Shumaker shared the following via IM:

so dig this. haley’s grandmother had a friend whom she had known since childhood. this friend didn’t have any children. she adored ella [Justin and Haley’s daughter], and wrote to her and sent her presents all the time, even though she had only been around ella a few times. she died of pneumonia this week, and we found out her last words were “tell ella i love her.”

Her name was Patty. She was 69 years old, and she lived in Abilene. Patty’s last thoughts were of a three-year old acquaintance named Ella. I don’t know if she was religious. I don’t know what she expected to find, if anything, on the other side of death. I do know that she was thinking of one of the sweetest things on earth when she died. I hope I can do the same.

As I type this, at 1:19 a.m. on a Friday night, I hear Francis stir and cry over the baby monitor. She only fusses for a few seconds. It sounds like she was ending a bad dream.

What will my last thought be?