It’s a new year! Seems like 2011 is already a hazy memory. I lazed around all morning. Discovered a new tea variety called ruby-18. (splendidtable.com) Yes I love good tea. No milk or cream please. Here’s a gift for the first person to place a $150 order in 2012 (not including shipping), a lovely 6mm [...]

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Three of the “Big 5″ An animal joins the Big 5 if it is known to kill humans. The African big 5 consist of lion, cape buffalo, elephant, cheetah, and rhino. (Why is the crocodile not in this group?) You certainly don’t want an intimate encounter with any of these dangerous critters if they are [...]

The recent discovery of thousands of Egyptian mummies in a network of tombs reinforces the fact that Egyptians were obsessed with dressing the mummies in the proper clothing and jewelry to prepare them for their trip to the underworld.

Are you “good as gold”? Of course you know “silence is golden”. Have you found your “pot of gold” at the end of a rainbow? Are you a member of the “golden agers”? Gold is a mineral with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. It has been a highly sought-after precious metal [...]

“A man must have aunts and cousins, must buy carrots and turnips, must have barn and woodshed, must go to market … must saunter and sleep and be inferior and silly.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson So there you have it, permission from no less a serious thinker than Emerson to act silly!

SCIENCE CANNOT EXPLAIN WHY Why do you fall in love with a certain gemstone, its vibrancy and color? Science cannot explain why a certain gem “speaks to you”. Although scientists and gemologists devote their careers to unraveling the mysteries of the wonderful gemstones that Mother Nature makes, our response to the beauty of a gem [...]