Yesterday:

A friend and I were talking about how guarantee and warranty were only one "sound" off (we're English teachers!). I thought that they must come from the same root word, and that the Normans - who were Scandinavians - apparently had G/W pronunciation issues. So I looked it up, and I was right! I had never learned this.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gu-

Other examples: William/Guillaume, war/guerre, ward/guard.

I have been an insomniac for as far back as my memory allows. Lay me down in bed at night, and I will unfailingly fail to fall asleep. As a teenager and young adult, this didn't bother me so much, because I required just a few hours a night as it was. As I moved into adulthood and now early-stage old lady status, my lack of good sleep skills has been a real bitch.
Except, except!
I can sleep in the daytime NO PROBLEM. You put me in a bright room, preferably with construction workers banging right out my open window, I am out like a light.
My eureka moment came just last week, as I tossed and turned in bed, despite having taken a sleeping pill (which I do sparingly, I don't want to develop a tolerance). In frustration, around 3 am, I grabbed a blanket, went into the guest room and turned on the very bright overhead light and fell immediately to sleep.
Since then, I haven't had to do it every night, but I wait for my husband to drift off, then I grab my special binky and my dog, and we toddle off to turn on the lights in the guest room and fall asleep.

Not a recent Eureka: back in Texas I had indoor/outdoor kitties. Instead of a catdoor, I had a low to the ground window that I propped open with a piece of plywood. To keep bugs out of the open section, I had a piece of fabric over it, that's where the cats went in and out. The difficult part was figuring out how to seal off the open part at night after the cats came in for the evening. A friend of mine said, "Well, why don't you take the board out of the window and shut it at night?" And since then, any Eureka moment has been a "Why don't you take the board out of the window"? moment.

PS to aniola: I remember having a migraine at eight years old. I had probably had a few before that, but I remember that one. And I definitely had regular headaches as a kid. Both of my parents and one of my brothers gets migraines; I figure it's genetics.

The son of a friend of ours got horrible, horrible migraines for years. Now in high school, they have it licked. The found that applying the right electrical current to the right part of his brain at the outset of his migraine would eliminate it. So they did surgery and implanted a little device in is abdomen with wires running up to his forehead. As I understand it, when it senses the onset of a migraine, it zaps that spot in his head and the pain never really gets going. He can recharge the device from outside his body. I was kind of aghast when he told me all this, but he, for one, is embracing his cyborginess.

Sorry for the derail.

That derail is an amazing story.

The most recent Eureka! that comes to mind came after I read a book about a woman who worked as one of the first two females ever hired at Tiffany and Co. This was during WWII. V-E happened to arrive during their time there, and she talks about how they had heard all day long that the end of the war was to be declared sometime that day, and as soon as they got off work she was planning to head to Times Square to be there when the declaration came.

All my life I've seen images like this one of the crowds in Times Square on V-E day. It never occurred to me to wonder: Why did so many people go to Times Square? I always assumed it was because it was like the town square, and everybody was just swarming out on the streets and that's where they ended up. In fact, it's very simple. (A) Times Square is where the New York Times building was, hence the name, and (B) they were in the square to watch the announcements of the truce come across on the Times news zipper. This picture's from V-J Day, but you get the idea. So they didn't just happen to all be in Times Square. That's just where everybody wanted to be because that's where the news came in.

Duh.

I recently had a migraine-related Eureka moment, but it'll sound dumb. I've only ever had one migraine in my life before, and basically forgot that they existed. A few weeks ago I went into work, and felt fine at 9 AM, oddly out of it at 10 AM, distinctly weak and nauseous at 10:30, and unquestioningly sure I needed to go home at 11:00. It came on so fast - I couldn't imagine what was wrong with me. Drove home shakily, glad I hadn't waited, and as soon as I got in the house I threw up and immediately knew I needed to lie down in the coolest, darkest, quietest room possible. I was worried that I had food poisoning or toxic shock or some other thing that comes on quickly, but I couldn't do a thing about it - though I was worried and asking myself "What can this be? What's wrong with me? Do I need a hospital?" I knew that I just needed to shut my eyes and retreat into some very quiet space inside and deal with it after I rested.

I did so, woke up 6 hours later and feeling much better, sat up and said to myself - "Ah-ha - that was a textbook migraine. Duh."

If I'd known it at the earliest signs I would've gone home earlier. It was awful, though, and it left me really grateful that I haven't had them often. Some people in my family get them frequently.

When I realized the blue reflectors on the roads out here in the Bay Area marked the locations of the fire hydrants.

It was awhile ago now, but I remember the strong eureka feeling. I'd noticed the blue reflectors during a quick visit, then years after that when I moved out here, I saw the blue reflectors again and thought, "Oh those things... AHA!"

Nifty and interesting eureka moments, y'all!

My housemate had this contribution to make: dental floss to cut impossibly tall cakes.