Random facts of kindness

So on a blog it's not easy to perform random acts of kindness, although I appear to be receiving them regularly (donations up to $125, thank you everyone!) But I can give you some random facts that may be to your benefit.

• Clean out the lint from the vent behind your dryer! Unhook it and use your vacuum to suck all the junk out of there. Also, do not leave your dryer on while you leave the house or sleep. My friend Jamie had a fire after bedtime one night this week caused by lint buildup. Thankfully her family is okay.
  
• Used Honda Odysseys are not necessarily as expensive as I thought. We are going up to Modesto to look at one tonight. If I weren't so scared that it was going to be gone when we get there I would tell you where!
• When you are planning a 5th birthday party, don't even put the stack of invitations on the kitchen counter in that one certain place where things get buried. And then to save yourself some misery, don't clean it off 5 days before the party. When you find all those unsent invitations you will want to cry.
• If you have an active 6 year old who wears glasses, one of those "froggy" things that goes around the back of his or her head is an absolute must!
• Tennis shoes can go in the dryer when a child wears them into the swimming pool.
• You can make a fan-darn-tastic chicken salad with oranges and corn and tomatoes and bell peppers, with some slightly stale jalapeno sourdough bread toasted for croutons.
• I've been learning about stem cell research this week. One professor is working on how embryonic stem cells become blood vessel cells, another on how hematopoetic (bone marrow) stem cells become T cells. Did you know that the time for a hematopoetic stem cell to become some type of regular blood cell is decided partially by its physical location? Once they move away from clusters of other stem cells they stop receiving "stay a stem cell" chemical signals and begin to evolve into other blood cells. Okay, that may not be particularly useful, but it's interesting.
• Despite my totaled car and allergies and jammed finger (watch out playing catch with bed pillows) all is right with the world. Woo!