Mixed nuts

You already know that you can’t count on me to have any big ideas. Now that I mention it, I’m usually at a loss for little ideas, too. But this time around I’ve got a few small notions rattling around in my noggin, so I’ll just share them at random, sort of like a jar of mixed nuts.

1) You’re familiar with some styles of shirts, such as the aloha shirt and the Barong Tagalog, that are designed to be worn untucked. An incarnation of the aloha style, by Reyn Spooner, enjoys popularity in a lot of places, and I recall that this was acceptable fare for business casual in mainland corporate life.

Outside of these designs, though, it’s pretty hard to find a shirt that seems happy to be untucked.

However, maybe this will change. I recently noticed a full-page ad in an in-flight magazine for, yes, untucked shirts. The company’s website, “UNTUCKit.com,” says their shirts are designed to be untucked. I haven’t ordered any of their stuff but I wanted to mention it because I thought it was interesting.

2) Here, by contrast, is a company I’ve bought stuff from: Pimsleur, the company that makes audio language courses. Pimsleur recently unveiled the fourth level of its Japanese course.

Each Pimsleur “level” is a series of 30 lessons that are about 30 minutes each.

Pimsleur’s Mandarin Chinese is now available in four levels, so the Japanese course now joins it.

I asked if a fifth level is coming for Mandarin but was told, essentially, that there’s not sufficient demand for such a product.

3) A window of opportunity opened up to take a coast-to-coast road trip in the states. I was in the mood for just such a thing anyway, so my wife and I took the leap. This landed us in the maw of a record cold spell in the northeast; we’re talking sub-zero Fahrenheit. But we’ve had it easy, since this is a leisure trip, so we don’t have to work in the cold. Still, once we got rolling, we headed south for warmer conditions just like migrating birds.

This will make you cry on Saipan, but I just have to tell you: Gas costs about $2.15 a gallon in the southern states right now, at least from what we’re seeing. For $40 in fuel we can roll 500 miles. My coffee consumption usually costs more than that. I’m sure not complaining.

4) Oh, here’s something to complain about: the curse continues. Whenever I find something that I really like, the product is discontinued. This factor follows me like a shadow.

The curse struck again when I discovered an ideal business item, a waxed-canvas attaché that was trimmed with leather. It could accommodate a notebook computer, but was far more endearing than the standard breed of synthetic computer bags. All luggage is a series of compromises, but this one really hit the sweet spot: price, size, weight, materials, design, construction, it was a true winner.

Since it was the perfect fit with Saipan’s casual atmosphere, I was going to run an article about it during holiday shopping season as a gift idea. However, as I sought to reconfirm the price, I discovered the item had fallen out of inventory and was no longer available.

Now I see that it’s been dropped from the catalog entirely. Yes, the curse continues.

5) Most of my amateur astronomer friends do astrophotography, which typically takes years to master but which rewards such efforts with really impressive results. By contrast, my telescopes are set up purely for using an eyeball, not a camera lens.

A camera can see more than an eyeball, since it can accumulate the light that hits it, while eyeballs by contrast have to take what they get at a glance. What looks impressive in a photo is often just a very faint orb of fuzz in my eyepiece, but it greatly entertains me nonetheless.

6) You might have forgotten to celebrate International Ear Care Day, which was marked on March 3. I’ll admit that I let that one sort of slide by my calendar as well. But the World Health Organization warmed up to the occasion by issuing a study that warns that a vast number of youngsters are risking permanent hearing loss by the misuse of personal audio devices.

This might be a recent evolution of an old story. Portable music became popular in the ’80s, using small headphones instead of today’s ear buds. Of course, it’s a lot more common these days, and the technology is smaller and more convenient. I’ve got no idea where the boundary is drawn between use and overuse. So I’ll err on the side of caution, keeping in mind some words from Edgar Allan Poe: Never bet the devil your head.