The Magic House
So it’s like 5 AM and I can’t remember exactly what brought this topic up several hours ago (was it the St. Louis Arch? Maybe.), but I was telling Nate about this place in Missouri called The Magic House. My grandparents used to live in Missouri when I was young (< 8 or so), my mom and I would fly down there once or twice a year and do stuff with them. The Magic House was (is) basically a big children’s museum full of a bunch of interactive stuff, a lot of them having to do with science in some form or another.
It has obviously upgraded since I was last there, but it’s still there and some features are exactly the same as I remember.
I remember the bubble room, that big Van de Graaff generator (my short hair would REALLY frizz out), a wall where you could use pulleys to hoist yourself to the ceiling, colored circles on the floor in one room that made different tones when you stepped on them, a place where you could test if you were colorblind, a place where you could draw silhouettes, and a big wall that you could dance in front of and your image would be displayed on the wall with all sorts of psychedelic effects applied to it. I really liked going there.
Edit: I’ve also been to the top of the St. Louis Arch (again, when I was very young). I remember those weird elevators and being able to lean out over those little windows. I’d like to go back and see that again!
Book Review: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Wilder)
Kindle-driven reading obsession COMMENCE! Let’s do another review.
Have I read this before: Yes! I read this in 7th grade, I believe. I think it was one of the first books on my “classic books to read” list back when it was in its first iteration.
Review: I only vaguely remember this book, in part because 7th grade was like TWENTY YEARS AGO and in part because I was even more of an idiot back then than I am now and I don’t think I processed this book very well. But it’s good. Basically, a rope bridge collapses with a group of five people on it and a friar who witnessed the incident is interested in trying to determine why those individuals happened to be the ones who were on the bridge when it collapsed. Was there a reason it was, specifically, those five?
Favorite part: I liked the chapter-based focus on each individual (or set of individuals) and how they interrelate. This bit from Esteban really stood out to me as well; I think this stood out to me in 7th grade as well:
“You know,” cried Esteban, leaning across the table, “you’re not allowed to kill yourself; you know you’re not allowed. Everybody knows that. But if you jump into a burning house to save somebody, that wouldn’t be killing yourself. And if you became a matador and the bull caught you that wouldn’t be killing yourself. Only you mustn’t put yourself in the bull’s way on purpose.”
Rating: 6/10
Re-KINDLING my love of reading
This Kindle is one of the best things I’ve bought in years, guys. I love it. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it so much, especially since I’ve always been wary of e-readers and figured that I would prefer a physical book to an e-reader, but now that I have one, I am not ashamed to say that I am an e-reader convert.
There’s something very cool about having immediate access to almost any book you’d want. Obviously you can get that through libraries as well, but with the Kindle:
a) I can find books that I’ve had trouble finding in libraries, or at least at libraries that aren’t the UI library. You’d be surprised how hard it is to find copies of some of the books on my list.
b) COVID, so I don’t think I’d want to go into a library right now regardless.
c) I am notorious for checking out a library book and then keeping it for like a decade. Not ideal for anyone involved.
d) The Kindle is small and light, which would make it easy to carry around once, you know, it’s safe to freaking travel again. Some of the books on my list are like 600+ pages, which make the physical books a bit more difficult to cart around.
e) Going back to the original reason why I bought the Kindle, I don’t have to worry about balancing a book on my treadmill’s little shelf while I walk. The Kindle fits there perfectly and I can increase the font size to whatever size I need to comfortably read while walking.
The Kindle has made me super enthusiastic about reading again. I don’t know if it’s because I feel like I have access to any book on my list now (not just the limited subset that I can find in the U of C library) or what, but hot damn I just want to read.
That’s a good feeling. I’ve missed that.
Book Review: Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
Have I read this before: Yup! I think this was one of the first books on my list that I read in junior high.
Review: Since I read this in junior high (or really early in high school), it’s obviously been a long time since I’ve read it. And it’s quite a bit different than I remembered it. For some reason, I thought that the crime in question was admitted to fairly early in the book, but I was very wrong, haha. Shows you how much I paid attention in 7th/8th/9th/whatever grade. But it is still a very enjoyable book. Also, as far as “this book has a lot of Russian names” books go, it’s not too bad. Better than War and Peace.
Favorite part: The tension builds nicely throughout the book. I also like how the main character keeps toying with his fate in the sense that he basically outright admits the crime he’s committed but does so in a way that it sounds like he’s just joking.
Rating: 6/10
I wish I had a normal belly button
Is that a weird thing to say? I guess “normal” is subjective, but of the people whose navels I have seen up close and personal,* mine looks quite different than theirs.
Lemme ‘splain. Of the few people whose navels I have gazed upon in relative close inspection, you can see where it “ends.” Basically, you can see that it is a finite hole that has a bottom/end to it. It looks like a little cup or something.
Mine does not look like that. Mine looks like a bottomless pit. Mine looks like what I would expect the tied part of an inflated balloon looks like from the inside. You can’t see the end/bottom of it and it’s weird and I hate it. I mean, when you Google “belly button,” a good number of the pics that come up look kind of like how mine looks, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a belly button like that in person apart from mine.
Part of why mine looks the way it does might have to do with the fact that when I had my appendix taken out, they inserted one of the wands/probes through my belly button during surgery. I can feel a small little scar in there, but it’s nothing too dramatic.
Anyway.
I know this is stupid and that NO ONE CARES, but it just bugs me.
STUPID BLOG POST IS OVER, BYE
*There haven’t been many of them, let’s be honest
Horrible iPad Drawings
HEYOOOOOOO so I have an app on my iPad called ArtRage, which is basically a fancy version of Paint. I suck as an actual artist, so I mainly use it to play Pictionary with Nate (we take turns looking up candidate words on an online Pictionary dictionary and try to guess what each other are drawing).
However, every once and a while I go a little overboard with the drawing nonsense. Examples:
(This is called “The Telltale Art”)
(This came out of a Pictionary round, but I have no idea what the word was)
(This is called “Schwa, Bitches”)
Yeah, I suck.
I’m Glad I Have This Blog
I’m pretty sure I’ve said this on here before, but I am very glad I have a record of the last 14+ years of my life in the form of this blog. The reason I’m particularly glad of that as of late is because this whole COVID nonsense has made me even more nostalgic than I normally am and I like having the ability to go back and read about whatever nonsense I was up to five years ago, ten years ago, back at the end of high school, etc.
It allows me to re-live some of that normalcy that we’re all missing so terribly right now, and that’s been helpful for retaining at least some degree of sanity during the last few months.
So yay?
List-a-Thon: August 2020 Edition
- Hahaha, sorry, what? I feel like there’s a story behind this very specific piece of advice.
- This is such a weird freaking baseball season. Watch the Mets not make the playoffs in a season where like 80% of teams are going to be in the playoffs.
- These are beautiful little objects.
- Need some ambient noise?
- Here’s a calculator to approximate your risk of getting COVID from certain activities.
- I love how all the nonsense in 2020 just hasn’t been quite enough for the US, so the universe was like “lol let’s add some raging forest fires in the west” just to make things more interesting. How much do you want to bet that Trump either a) completely ignores these fires or b) somehow blames them on the Democrats?
- Edit from September 12: so three states are ON FIRE and Trump has said nothing publicly. Called it.
Kindle!
So I got distracted by the redwoods yesterday and forgot to mention that my Kindle came! Check it out:
(Yes, that’s Jazzy in the background of that second pic, haha)
It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but it’s super light and, now that I think about it, it’s about the size of a typical paperback. You can adjust the font size and everything, too, so if I want to read it while I use the treadmill, it should be fine if I make the font big enough.
Supa cool!
Edit: his name is “Kondle” now. He’s my son.
NOT THE REDWOODS
Redwoods do well with fires, but these fires are incredibly intense and hot, which damages the trees. How many other redwoods will be affected by these fires that are so obviously exacerbated by climate change?
Consider helping via donation. I don’t know how many of you have seen the California redwoods in person, but they are incredible beyond words (even the “smaller” ones).
Help them. Help the parks.
Annnnnnd the Mets have COVID
Of course. At least they weren’t the only ones to get it. Or the first.
Hopefully those that have it will only have mild symptoms and will recover fully!
Pantsylvania
Have I mentioned this game on here before? I’m not sure and I’m too lazy to check (pro blogging, yo), so I’mma mention it now.
Among the funky computer games I played as a kid was this one called Pantsylvania. I remember playing this with my friend GE in Troy a lot. It was basically this game where you could explore the town of Pantsylvania through several different buildings and with the guidance of different characters that had you do different things in the buildings. It was super point-and-click fun for young kids and I remember really enjoying it.
The frog gets a lot of hate, apparently. He was my fave.
Edit: here it is if you want to play it yourself!
Somebody’s Got a Tan
Hint: It’s me.
At least on my arms. You can see where I normally wear my Garmin, haha.
Also, ignore how hairy my arms are. I am a yeti.
Creamy Peanut Butter is a Culinary Abomination
That’s it.
That’s the blog.
TYPE ME, BABY
HEYO, so body typing is weird and completely unscientific, but it can be helpful for people who want to…want to dress to accentuate their body shape, I guess?
Anyway, I’m ugly as hell so there’s nothing to accentuate but the ugly, but I like meaningless quizzes and such, so I decided to figure out my Kibbe body type.
Test here!
(Or here, with pics to help)
I fall barely into the “classic” category, but I also suck at describing parts of my body, so.
Fun anyway.
ALRIGHT BITCHES, let’s do a little math.
So I want to try to get another 5,000+ miles this year, because nobody thinks I can do it.
I shall do it.
2017 was the year of exactly 5,100 miles, so let’s compare this year’s pace with 2017’s pace to see what I’d need to do to get to at least 5,000 miles this year.
Through August 15, 2017, I had gone 3,298.9 miles in the year (I was also like a week out from that stupid knee/leg injury thing that slowed me down so much but DID NOT PREVENT ME FROM REACHING MY MILEAGE GOAL HOHOHOHOHOHO)
Through August 15, 2020, I’ve gone 3,164.2 miles in the year.
That means I’m behind pace by 134.7 miles. BUT, like I said, in 2017 I actually had gone 5,100 miles instead of just 5,000. So discounting those last 100 miles puts me only 34.7 miles behind pace.
Not bad.
HOKAY, so let’s just focus on this year, then. 5000 minus 3164.2 gives me another 1,835.8 miles that I’ve got to walk this year. There are 19 weeks (plus a few extra days) left in the year. That breaks down to about 96 miles a week (discounting those last few days), or an average of about 16.1 miles per day six days a week for the rest of the year.
Could I do that?
I absolutely could.
So if I did exactly 16 miles six days a week for the next 19 weeks, that would get me an additional 1,824, which would leave me with an additional 11.8 miles to do over those last few days of the year. Usually I have troubles getting my full six days per week at the end of the year due to travel, but HAHAHAHA THAT’S NOT HAPPENING THIS YEAR, so this should be an issue.
I could totally do it again, guys.
I’m going to do it again.
I Miss My Mom.
United States, get your shit together.
I completely understand the extension on the US-Canada land border closure (AGAIN) and I fully expect it to be closed at least through the end of the year, but it still sucks, yo.
I mean, since I’m a US citizen I could go down there and visit her, but when I came back up here I’d have to quarantine for 14 days. I don’t know if I’d have to quarantine when I got to Idaho?
And since I’m a Permanent Resident of Canada, she could technically come up here to visit me, but she’d have to quarantine up here for 14 days.
So not super feasible.
It just sucks.
Claudia’s Dental Saga: Episode 8
SO…guess who’s back at the dentist?
(This is the eighth time since the end of May, by the way.)
And today was “let’s try to deal with that problem tooth again!”
I was really, really nervous about it, since it was so resistant to the novocaine last time.
But for whatever reason, everything went a lot better today. Apparently, according to my dentist, this is something that happens with some people. They have a region in their mouth that does not respond to novocaine during one visit, but when they come back sometime later, the novocaine is effective.
So at least it’s not just my mouth being a weird fart.
More C-C-C-COVID
Today, Alberta led the Canadian provinces and territories in new active cases of COVID-19. How many new cases did Alberta have?
121.
That’s a good sign, I think. I mean, the province leading in new active cases sucks (especially since it’s only the fourth most populous province in the country), but the fact that it’s leading with such a relatively “small” number is good.
Yay?
I am not having a good time.
Really, really not having a good time.
COVID Rankings
So here’s an interesting ranking of US states and Canadian provinces/territories. Want to see how your state/province/territory is doing with COVID compared to all the others? Take a look. Alberta’s not doing too great compared to the other provinces/territories, but is doing pretty well compared to most states.
Edit from November: yes, this thing keeps updating and I didn’t take any screenshots of it when I originally posted it, so there have been some changes. However, in general, the provinces/territories are still doing quite good compared the states.
Anyway, check it out. It’s interesting
LISTEN, YOU FREAKING PEOPLE:
Using the “99% of people who get COVID don’t die!” as an argument for it not being a serious illness is really, really stupid. Sure, if you get COVID, you probably won’t die. But so many people are reporting other issues post-COVID – some of which may be lifelong complications – that it’s ridiculous to discount those things.
I hate this black and white “it’ll kill you or it won’t, and it probably won’t, so you’re fine” nonsense. If I got COVID and ended up with a long term effect of not being able to walk for more than 10 minutes due to not being able to catch my breath, I would wish that it would have killed me. I can’t live without my walks.
And the fact that those possible long-term side effects aren’t even being considered by a lot of people is really rage-inducing.
Just…UGH I’M MAD.
More Walking Nonsense
Guys, I am super close to a very big walking goal. Not my 5,000 miles this year (I’ve still got a ways to go for that!), but a walking goal I’ve had since I started working towards when I first moved up here. I suspect I’ll hit it within the next month and a half or so, so expect a big blog post about it then!
But for now…VAGUE GOAL POSTING IS VAGUE
Eigenblogger 