Salty Coffee

Well it's been more than a month since the long-winded butterfly post.  Not much has changed.  Well except for the fact that after 2.5 years I finally had my braces taken off! Cue the peppy music and parade!  It didn't hurt nearly as bad as I expected it to. Yay! Straight teeth!

On a related note of amazing-ness, I tried a Iced Salted Caramel Mocha from Starbucks today, basically it was heaven, and yes, it deserved to have it's name capitalized.

You know those "Vote-For-Me" politician's signs that hang out on street corners(they have much in common with hookers)?  I noticed in a herd of signs today, and one in particular caught my eye.  It wasn't flashy, just simple white with black letters(possibly why it stood out).  It said something along the lines of 'Vote Subway, your local sub shop.'  It made me chuckle.  Well played Subway, well played.

Butterflies and magic and stuff

Yeah so butterflies are pretty. You know it, I know, whatever. They're all, fluttering around, like, 'hey look how graceful I am, I bet you wish you could fly like me. Check me out.''

So being the homeschooled kid that I was, I loved nature books; seriously, Readers Digest North American Wildlife was my constant companion. I memorized descriptions, copied the drawings, I knew where every animal, bird, bug, and fish were in the book. There were lots of other nature books in my life, but that one was by far my favorite. But anyway, back to the lepidopterans. 

  So butterflies were mentioned today by a pregnant coworker of mine who is having a hard time finding gender-neutral baby clothes. She had found something yellow, but it had butterflies on it, making it feminine. Later while I was in the shower, there happened to be a moth flying around. I hurried up so as to try to give it a better chance of surviving (steam = water vapors = probably not good for moth wings) and that got me thinking, butterflies and moths are pretty fricking amazing! 

They start out as eggs, then wormy caterpillars, then they weave cocoons out of pure magic, and then transform themselves with more freaking magic into beautiful flying furry(some) creatures of happiness and joy! Okay, so, to stay on topic, the wings are what I want to talk about. The moth in the shower episode made me wonder if parents are still teaching their children not to touch butterflies/moths (or maybe kids don't care so much anymore). It was my parents that taught me this. They told me if you touch the wings of a butterfly/moth, the "dust" will rub off and it won't be able to fly, therefore causing it to die. Turns out, that's not really true.

The "dust" is actually microscopic scales. Scales! So butterflies are basically dragons. Except for the whole breathing fire thing, but, close enough right? The scales are covering the super thin membrane of the actual wing. Losing scales will not deem the butterfly un-flightworthy, but rather may just expose some of the translucent membrane; if enough scales are lost and too much membrane is exposed, the wings can become torn, leading to the inability to fly. Not only do the scales provide the beautiful color on the wings, dark scales soak in the sun’s rays and some are even scented(pheromones)!

So yeah, butterflies are pretty darn awesome.