First.


 Welcome to the blog Congratulations, you've made it through the week!

The name of this blog was inspired by this brilliant tweet by Rosemary Mosco:

Hey, you. You did it. You made it to the end of this hard week. Some butterflies only live a week as adults. But you just survived an entire adult butterfly lifetime, AND you did it without a single drop of sweet nectar from a flower or an aphid’s butt. Trophy

Since 2018, inspired by that fact, I've been sending random bits of knowledge to an ever-growing group of workmates, friends, family. Every Friday, they get an email that is honestly a grab-bag of strange facts, cute animal photos, or just whatever has grabbed my fancy that week that I just can't wait to share with people. The subject line of that email? Yep, you've guessed it - Congratulations, you've made it through the week. (It's also known as "Eliza's Friday Email" and/or "Happy Thoughts", or possibly "wow is she still sending this thing?!")


But this three-year-long project is coming to at least a temporary end while my partner and I go for a long walk.

Like, long.

Like, 3,000km long.

We're tackling Te Araroa, which is the trail that goes the length of New Zealand.

Until we hit the trail, I'll be sharing my Friday emails here, and I might even put up a few historical ones that I **really** want to share with people.

Once we're on the trail, expect updates to be a bit more... random - it'll depend on wifi and/or mobile data access.


So if you're up for random knowledge, the occasional adorableness, lots of stunning scenery and muddy shoes, this is the blog for you!


Thanks for joining,

~Eliza (and Vaughan)

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you, we love reading your comments!

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Thought for 23 June 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:     The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is opening up the origins of the universe and very distant galaxies, stars and exoplanets to our understanding.   You’d think we’re only looking that far because we’ve figured out how everything works closer to us, right?   Wrong! Science is great because there’s always something new to explore and figure out. Here are just a few of the mysteries that remain for us to solve, or maybe just a few things you didn’t know, right here in our own solar system:   Q: What is our sun’s surface actually made of? A: We’re… not 100% sure, actually! We know mostly, by analysing the light that comes from the sun. You see, every time light passes through an object, including a bunch of gas, it changes the spectrum that we see – that object, or gas, absorbs some of the energy of light at specific wavelengths (or sometimes absorbs-and-re-emits-at-slightly-different-wavelengths). So astronomers can tell what gasses a sta
Read more

Happy Thought for 26 January 2024

Image
Have a Happy Thought: While some of our holiday breaks may be fresh in mind, others may be distant memories. Either way, I hope you’re entering 2024 with at least some positive energy. One way to hold on to that (or maybe create it if that’s what you need) may be to introduce frequent, but short, breaks into your day, ideally getting out into some blue- or green-space.   Image: A stump next to a tree-shaded pathway has had googly-eyes drawn onto it so it looks like a startled face. Picture by author. In fact, taking mini-breaks might benefit your physical health as much as your mental health! A recent study out of Columbia University in the US has found that taking frequent-but-short breaks, 5 minutes out of every 30, can have really impressive impacts on physical and mental health like: Blood sugar Insulin Blood pressure Mood Fatigue Cognitive ability  (apparently, I need this a bit, it took me three tries and spell-checker to spell cogni
Read more

Happy Thought for 5 May 2023

Image
Have a Happy Thought:     One of the very first Happy Thought emails I ever sent gave us all a different perspective on the warning lights in our cars .   And when you think about it, warning lights and all sorts of other symbols are really just like emojis – it’s all about packaging a lot of information into a little symbol, right? Side note – the word emoji comes to English from Japanese: and literally means picture-character or picture-letter : (picture, 絵 , pronounced eh)+(letter/character, 文字 , mōji).   Well, how many times have you hunted through the entire emoji list, trying to find the one that matched the exact thing you were trying to convey? (If you’re like me, about twice, and even then you probably gave up partway through – there are so. many. emojis!)   Others have felt this pain, and have proposed other emojis. Since not every emoji can (or should!) exist… there is a graveyard of emojis that.. just haven’t made the cut. (yet? Some of these may appear
Read more