Dramatis persona*

helenhead Helen Chick

I've always wanted a bumper sticker that said "I'm a female, LDS/Mormon, Scout leading, geocaching, piano-playing, bicycling, mathematics educator with a PhD in maths ... and I VOTE"!

I think this makes me a minority group of cardinality 1!

* Since there's only one of me and "personae" is plural (I think), I've gone with dramatis persona.
March 2024
S M T W T F S
« Jan    
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  

Visitor counter

Visits since May 2016

Recent visitors

The greatest invention since …

Many, many, many moons ago I spent the princely sum of $50 on what was then the state-of-the-art, bee’s knees, absolute-must-have, gear-freak’s delight, whiz-bang new bushwalking toy.

A headlamp.

And not just any headlamp: a Petzl.

It had a halogen globe for extra brightness and a zoom beam so that you could vary the dispersion of the light.

After enduring the nuisance of using one hand to hold a torch while the other hand tried to do the work of two, or holding the torch between clenched teeth while trying not to drool into the evening meal I was cooking, the wonderful convenience of having a light source that directed itself where I was looking and left my hands free and which had a bright beam that pierced the darkness a whopping 20m ahead, made me convinced that this was, indeed, the greatest invention since, well, the battery operated torch in general. My bushwalking friends were quite jealous of my possession of this wonderful new technology.

It occurred to me this past weekend—as I was blinded by one of the el-cheapo LED torches carried by my Scouts, with a beam that will floodlight an entire forest from a distance of 5km and a battery life of two decades—that it might be time to upgrade.

 

2 comments to The greatest invention since …

  • The Grey-haired Matriarch

    Just a couple of days ago, when we were doing an archaeological dig in the depths of the family home, Pater found a souvenir brass “Dunny Lamp”, bought at Sovereign Hill MANY years ago. This delightful gadget has a candle holder on top of the matchbox holder, and complete with a finger-sized handle!
    Ah, those were the days! At least they emitted insufficient light to see the red-backs – very comforting!

  • […] 12 of 12, June 2011 This month’s 12 of 12 coincided with the second day of a three-day Scout hike along the Great Ocean Walk from Blanket Bay to Cape Otway and then on to the Aire River. This is a lovely coastal walk, and I was in the company of Matthew (one of the other leaders), and six of our older Scouts (including one who has now gone up to Venturers, for whom this was his last Scout activity … we shall miss this particular lad’s zany antics). The weather was good for June, and I got to test my new tent and my new headlamp. […]

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>