Waiter! There’s some freezing over in my hell!
Me: Yay, it’s good to be back in Calgary. Hello, Calgary!
The temperature, as it tanks over the next few days:
Seriously, though, what is this madness?
That first line of temps contains the “highs” and the second line contains the “feels like” temperatures. And yes, those are in Fahrenheit.
It’s supposed to warm up starting next weekend, but that’s exactly how last February was supposed to start. Instead, it was this madness all month.
I don’t know if I can do that again.
MY FREAKING HAIR
So now that my hair has had the chance to be its usual horrible self with this new haircut, I think it looks terrible. So I went to Great Clips tonight and got those front thingies chopped off.
Now it looks like this.
Improvement?
Another Weird January Dream
So remember a couple days ago when I mentioned that my brain likes to fire off a fair number of weird, vivid, memorable dreams near the start of the year? Here’s another one for you!
In last night’s dream, I actually am not sure if I was part of the thing I was dreaming about or just watching it on TV. That part I can’t remember. But the rest of it I can, so we’re just going to say that I was watching this on TV in the dream, because it was a TV show I was dreaming about. Specifically, it was the show 7th Heaven. If you’re not familiar with the show, it ran from 1996-2007 and was heavy-handed with lots of Christian themes. It focused on the family of Reverend Camden, which consisted of his wife Annie and like nine kids, and their Wacky Christian Adventures. One such adventure, for example, was the Rev finding a blunt in the house and going berserk “I WILL DRUG TEST THE LOT OF YOU HEATHENS” on the kids because he wanted to know which one brought the Devil’s Grass into their holy house.
It was a…weird show.
Anyway. In the dream I am watching(?) 7th Heaven on TV and in the episode, one of the Camden kids has befriended some other kid (he’s like…eight? Nine?) and have brought him home to hang out with him. This kid is like perfect: no hair out of place, perfect clothes, perfect speech an annunciation, perfect response to everything that he is asked—and as the episode goes on, I think to myself in the dream that I remembered this episode from having seen it before. Specifically, the “big twist” is that this kid is actually Jesus.
Yup. Literal, actual Jesus, disguised as a nine-year-old kid.
The episode cuts to this scene where JesusKid is finishing the last book in a huge bookshelf of novels and one of the Camden kids – I think it’s Matt – says something like, “there’s no way you could have read all those books so quickly. You’d have to be some sort of divine being to have done that.”
(Subtle.)
Jesus Kid just smiles, and Matt takes one of the books and says “Okay, fine. But I’m going to read along with you just to make sure you’re reading them all like you say you are.”
Cut to a different part of this bizarre 7th Heaven universe: a farm. There’s a mother and a daughter out working in a field when the mother jumps up and starts freaking out about one of their sheep escaping its pen and going over to the Camden’s field. Now I’m pretty sure that in real life 7th Heaven, the Camdens lived in town, as they lived in a church-owned house that somehow held the Rev, the wife, and their massive brood. But in the dream, I guess they lived on a farm…?
Anyway, the mother and daughter start absolutely freaking out, because I guess there is some sort of giant pond between their farm and the Camdens’ and the sheep was in danger of drowning in the pond.
Cut back to Jesus Kid. Using what I’m assuming is his God-bestowed sixth sense, he suddenly seems to realize the sheep is in trouble, and he jumps up and runs out to the fields, much to the confusion of Matt and everyone else.
He bolts to the pond as fast as he can and sees the sheep drowning near the middle of the pond. Then – I kid you not – he just calmly walks on the pond water out to the sheep. He touches the sheep, which grants it the ability to walk on water as well, and the two return to the Camden side of the pond.
So, walking on water: obviously a Jesus thing, right? But the Camdens don’t make that connection. They chalk the whole thing up to an optical illusion (???) and are just happy that the sheep is safe.
Jesus Kid, meanwhile, waits until everyone is busy doting over the sheep, then disappears into the ether with a weird little halo glow about his head.
Then the episode is over.
I literally had to Google “7th Heaven Jesus episode” when I woke up this morning, because while I was sure that no episode exactly like the one in my dream existed, I was convinced that there was some episode where the kids meet Jesus without even knowing it.
There’s not.
7th Heaven creator Brenda Hampton, I am disappoint.
What a Decade
I suppose any decade has the capacity to bring about MASSIVE CHANGE due simply to its length, but this past decade has definitely brought many changes, both worldwide and personally.
For example, 10 years ago today was December 30, 2009. Things that were true on that day include:
- I was 21 years old
- I had a BS in psychology, a BS in philosophy, and had just finished my first semester of grad school at UBC for an MA in psychology
- I was 100% miserable in my grad program and did not want to go back up to Vancouver after visiting Moscow over Christmas break
- I had no desire to ever become an instructor/professor (or whatever the hell you want to call it), especially an instructor/professor of math
- I was not yet walking for pleasure/exercise/sanity
- I suspected I’d never find anyone I wanted to actually legitimately marry. People I liked? Yes. People I thought would like me and would tolerate my nonsense? Nope
- I had 1,340 blog posts on Eigenblogger
Now, on December 30, 2019, the following things are true:
- I am 31 years old
- I have a BS in psychology, a BS in philosophy, I (somehow) finished my time at UBC to get an MA in psychology. I also now have a BS in math and an MS in statistics
- I love living in Calgary and always enjoy going back after visiting Moscow over Christmas break (even though I miss my mom when I leave Moscow!)
- I have been working the past six-ish years to get to where I am now career-wise as an instructor in math/stats
- Walking is my JAM, yo
- I have found my soulmate and love him more than I ever thought I could love someone
- I have 4,992 blog posts on Eigenblogger
Wild. What has changed for y’all over the past decade?
I hope the next decade proves to be even better to everyone.
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
I got all my ugly, pain-in-the-ass hair cut off today because, as I’ve mentioned before, I am so sick of dealing with it. Here’s what I look like now:
What do you think? I’m still an ugly bastard, but now all that long, scruffy hair is gone at least.
(Ignore the frizz; Moscow is way more humid than Calgary and my hair can’t handle it.)
‘Twas the Night Before Finals
How quickly my sleeping schedule reverts back to “lol 4 AM is dinner time, 6 AM is bed time, 9:30 AM is time to get up” when it’s allowed to.
I must confess, though, that I’m already missing those early morning walks. I’m not missing getting up early, but I’m missing being out there in the dark when there’s no traffic on the streets and everything is dead quiet. It was enjoyable in a weird way.
I mean, I have to get up a little early tomorrow because the calc final starts at 3:30 PM and I want to give myself a good amount of “wiggle time” so that I’m not getting there at the last possible minute, but I won’t be getting up at 3:30 AM and leaving at 4.
So yeah.
*additional wild screeching*
I FEEL HYPER AND UNFOCUSED
(what else is new?)
It’s a good thing I already got my daily words in for NaNo, ‘cause holy hell. I can’t concentrate on anything today. So here’s some random stuff.
This site generates pictures of people who do not exist.
Here is a poster containing the names of 100 classic books. You can scratch off the names and reveal the covers of the books you’ve read. Super cool!
I’m not sure if I ever posted this on here (and I’m too lazy to check, haha), but here is a giant leaf I found in Vancouver during my first few months there back in 2009.
This is how my teeth feel today:
OKAY BYE
*wild screeching*
Holy crap, y’all, I might have some really exciting news soon (and, for once, it has nothing to do with my job).
As always, I don’t want to risk saying what it is in case it falls through, but there might be something exciting to announce at some point in the (near?) future.
WOOOOOOO
SNIFF SNIFF BITCHES
Hey, I wrote about something like this in a short story like six years ago, haha.
As you might expect, there has been a lot fewer studies and a lot less research done into smell and fixing smell issues than any of the other senses. That’s one issue why there really hasn’t been any development of this type of technology yet.
Another issue is that smelling is a lot more complicated, physically, than things like hearing or even seeing, just because it is a chemical sense and is a lot more “fine-tuned” in terms of its various components compared to vision or hearing.
But the idea that the concept is “on the radar” now, though, is pretty cool!
Maybe one day…
Day off!
Today I walked.
Then I went home.
It was glorious.
Tomorrow I’m going to stay home ALL DAY, which is going to be even more glorious.
(Sorry, I’m really burnt out and need some time where I don’t have to deal with people.)
Edit: hahahaha, oh my god.
Screaming starts at 1:00. Jesus would approve.
Green? Blue? Grue?
My eyes are pretty unremarkable, color-wise. But they do seem to change their main color(s) over the years. They used to be super brown, then super green. Now they seem to be trending towards blue, especially if you look at them in the sunlight. Example:
There’s always that brown ring around my pupil, but as you move further out, that’s definitely a blue-ish color.
Weird.
More Gross Feet! You’ve Been Warned
Look at this poor bastard. Look at what I’ve done to him.
My poor freaking feet, dudes. This is what walking 90+ miles a week since January 2017 has done to them.
VAYCAY
It’s “reading week” here, which is code for a week off from school. We didn’t used to have a whole week off in the fall semester, but they changed that because everyone is always so freaking sad/stressed this time of year.
So I get a week off this week, which basically means “you still have to do prep, but not teach.” Which is fine I guess.
Woot?
When Did You Arrive?
Here is an interesting article about days and times of birth in the United States. It’s interesting, as the article notes, how procedures like C-sections have skewed the distribution of times/days of births where, prior to these procedures becoming commonly used, babies were born pretty uniformly around the clock and through the week.
What day of the week and time of the day were you born? I was a Tuesday baby born (I think) at like 6:52 AM (like an hour before the C-section rush). I was not a C-section but I damn sure didn’t want to come out of there.
What about your birth month? I was a February.
Pretty cool!
Enneagram Rhapsody
Y’all. This is really good. That main guy singing has a good voice.
I used to have a book on the Enneagram (because of course I did); I liked to type people.
I also used to type as a 5, but I’ve just taken like six different online tests (super valid, I’m sure!) and half the time I get 5 and the other half I get 1. When I read the descriptions of both of them, though, I feel like 5 fits me better.
A few tests if you want to check it out: here, here, and here.
OH GOD MOUNTAINS
So I wish this showed up better in a picture, but you can see the mountains through that little break in the clouds in the middle.
Kinda cool.
Sorry, not much going on today other than our walk.
IT’S THE SPOOKY LIST, BITCHES
Hi. Let’s go.
- This is why I want to go to a Coldplay concert. I really hope they do at least one more tour and come somewhere vaguely close to Calgary (or, y’know, they come to Calgary).
- A hilarious watching/commentary of the Netflix movie “Tall Girl”
- The first minute or so of this is how I imagine the Calgary ScooterGangs roll.
- I have to invigilate a two-hour midterm tonight and then spend tomorrow morning grading it and I don’t want to do either of those things.
- Astros vs. Nationals in the World Series? I’ll take it. I’m cool with either of those teams winning.
- I love how I was like three days away from having my blog 100% up to date and then managed to screw it up. Classic Claudia.
- Check out this resting heart rate, yo.
- Cured egg yolks?! Holy crap, this looks so good.
I think that’s everything.
Broccoli Makes Memories
So for the first time since I’ve been with Nate, my mom was able to come up and meet us at Nate’s parent’s place near the border and spend Canadian Thanksgiving with us. It was super fun! It was also hard not to jump in my mom’s car and just go back to Moscow, haha.
ALSO, my mom made the broccoli cheese thing that we (my mom, dad, and myself) always used to have at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was the first time I’d had it in a long time and holy hell I forgot how good it was.
I’ve mentioned the recipe for it in my “Master Recipe List” that I posted a while ago, but I’m going to link the blog with that document here, ‘cause I highly recommend trying it out. So tasty.
(“Broccoli Bake” on page 7)
YAY
A Wrinkle in Foot
Today’s walk was COLD and SNOWY and WINDY and I have TRANSFORMED INTO WRINKLEFOOT.
That is all.
Cheffing at Sea
Interesting!
This is probably going to sound really stupid/weird, but I’ve always kind of wanted to work at sea. Like, ever since junior high or so, I’ve had this weird fascination with wanting to work/live on a big ship. I have no idea why; it has zero correlation with any of my other dreams or desires. But it’s always kinda been there, and it’s a little embarrassing to admit for whatever reason (probably because I imagine the reaction to this dream being a judgmental look and a “pfft, you? Please.”).
So yeah.
I freaking love Max Scherzer
That is all.
DO YOU EVER FEEL
LIKE A PLASTIC BAG
DRIFTING THROUGH THE BREEZE
HAUNTING THE U OF C
That bag flew around for like half an hour out there. THE SNOW IS BLOWING IN, Y’ALL.
