It’s Not Spring Until I Get a Weird Sunburn
This glorious thing is brought to you by the following thought process: “naw, man, I don’t need to take off my Garmin in order to put sunscreen on. I know how much of my wrist it covers.”
At least it’s not as bad as this atrocity.
OH HEY IT’S THE APRIL LIST AND ah, screw it
- Make icebergs and see how they float.
- There’s a realtor up here named Ken Richter and his realty signs are the most fantastically nerdy things I’ve ever seen. He plays on the whole “Richter Scale” theme. I always want to take a picture of one but there’s always people around and I always feel weird about taking pictures of…well, anything in public.
(Except other peoples’ cats.)
- Edit: I found the Remax website that talks about him and they have the little scale graphic he uses:
- Was anyone else absolutely terrified of Gossamer when they were a kid (and perhaps even now)? I think I’ve mentioned this before on here at some point, but I saw a .gif of him on Twitter and now I’m freaking traumatized.
I’ve had the opening song to “The Pajama Game” stuck in my head ALL FREAKING DAY, so here it is for you to get stuck in your head as well:
UGH I don’t have much to say today, sorry. Life is meaningless and the world is a constant disappointment.
A Rant Subdued
So I had this big ol’ rant planned out today ‘cause I’m SO FREAKING FRUSTRATED with how poorly the vaccine rollout is going up here in Canada and I’m SO FREAKING FRUSTRATED at how stupid people are being with their failure to follow COVID-related rules (the daily new COVID cases in AB are back in the 1,000s; thanks, losers)…but then I saw this thing and couldn’t stop laughing, so you get that instead of my rambling nonsense:
Relatable.
UGH FREAKING PEOPLE SLJFLSAKGFJALSGHFLAG
So Alberta’s going back to the Phase 1 restrictions because people suck and can’t follow the rules and now variant cases are making up like 60% of our new daily cases (which have risen back to the ~1,000 per day level).
I just want to see my mom. It’s been FIFTEEN MONTHS.
I hate everyone.
Irrational Pasta Nonsense
So I’ve gotten into this habit that before make spaghetti, I have to dump the whole container of it out on the counter and then measure each and every strand against the others to pick the straightest and most uniformly long noodles to use as my portion. This process takes about 30 minutes.
Yes, I am aware that the pasta all gets turned into the same mushy wiggles in the end.
The rational part of my brain knows this.
But the pasta-sorting part of my brain is much more persuasive and jumps at the chance to spend half an hour sorting through the entire bag of spaghetti.
Who knows. It’s probably some sort of “control” thing. I can’t control anything else in my life, so let’s CONTROL ALL THE PASTA LENGTHS.
I hate myself.
GEEEEEENES
Hey so my 23andMe ancestry composition has updated a bit with their new algorithms. Check it:
- The “French & German” went waaay up from 28.7% to 43.9%
- The “British & Irish” went down from 4.2% to 0.1%
- The “Native American” went up from 8.8% to 9.1%
- The miniscule bit of “Japanese & Korean” is new
- The “Sub-Saharan African” category went down from 2.2% to 1.8%, but the individual regions got a bit more specific I think.
I am very German, haha.
Coolio!
Today I performed an exorcism of the demons living in my toenail
And by “exorcism” I mean “I cut my toenail.” But the level of effort was comparable to an exorcism.
So for quite some time now, my toenail has looked like this demon-possessed thing:
Basically, it turned black and the toenail started to kind of slide off, but another toenail grew beneath it at the same time. This made my toenail about a half a centimeter thick and made it pretty much impossible to clip.
But slowly, very slowly, the old toenail has ground down to the point where the whole thing is actually starting to look and feel normal.
And today was the first day in a long time that I was actually able to legitimately cut that toenail. Now it looks like this!
I call it a victory. It’s a gross victory, but a victory nonetheless.
(The fact that this is like my tenth post about my toenails speaks volumes about the quality about my blog, don’t you think?)
Ugggggggggggggh
I am so freaking homesick.
That is all.
Jendah
‘Sup?
So this is quite depressing (but also unsurprising): “Gendered Language in Teaching Reviews” is an interactive chart made by Ben Schmidt that allows you to see how frequently certain words are used on RateMyProfessor.com to describe male and female teachers. It also breaks it down by field.
A few:
Words that did not have that consistent gender split: lazy, stupid, boring, engaging, quiet, bad professor, good professor, harsh.
I don’t have anything else to say today so here’s a cool website
What end-of-world scenario would you prefer? I’d take AAAAARGH!, please. Consume me, my glorious star.
(…I might make that my new blog tag.)
Lunchbox Nostalgia
I remember having a very distinctive lunchbox in elementary school. It was this big hard plastic thing that was pink and purple and it had these funky dials on it that you had to turn to open it. I would use it to put worms in after rain storms to keep them from drowning in the puddles (see this blog post about my “worm saver” nickname from elementary school; yes, I was an odd child).
Anyway, I was talking to Nate about this lunchbox and wondered if I could find it by just googling something like “purple lunchbox with dials.”
And lo and behold, here it is!
That’s the exact freaking lunchbox, OH MY GOD. I don’t remember if I had the thermos, but I put so many worms in that little sandwich compartment.
The nostalgia is real.
Also, these images are from an eBay listing for the lunchbox, and it’s sooooo tempting to get it just for the sake of having it again.
UGH.
OUTSIDE
It’s FINALLY warming up here, which means I can FINALLY run outside again.
You don’t know how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone.
Which has been the theme of basically the past year.
Anyway. Sorry for a short blog. I am worthless.
SKYPUNCH
So this is ominous looking, eh?
This sort of phenomenon is called a fallstreak hole (or cavum, hole punch cloud, punch hole cloud, skypunch, cloud canal, or cloud hole…and I can’t tell you which of those names is the coolest ‘cause they all are). It occurs when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing but the water is in a supercooled state (being below freezing but not yet a solid). When the ice crystals do form, the droplets around the crystals evaporate, leaving the hole.
Apparently they’re a fairly rare thing and have been (understandably) mistaken for UFOs.
Super cool!
Pocatello, why?
So apparently the city of Pocatello has a flag.
And apparently it’s horrible.
(source)
It looks like a bumper sticker, what the fuck.
But luckily, we have the kind people on r/vexillology who gave it a redesign. But not without some scathing comments, of course:
- How am I supposed to know how proud pocatellans are?????
- This [the redesign] isn’t even trademarked, any dumbass can copy the flag now!
- Not enough pride in this flag.
- uncontrollable screaming
- Oh my god, that is horrendous. A copyright on a flag that looks like a Windows 3.1 background is just next level.
- we don’t talk about the last one…
- *vietnam flashbacks intensify*
(I love flags, sorry)
It’s Gonna be Brrrr Time
So just a fair warning: Calgary is headed into a deep freeze soon, so I suspect there will be a lot of book reviews on here.
I’m SO GLAD I bought that treadmill last year and I’m SO GLAD I closely followed up that purchase with the purchase of a Kindle. My daily walking is a necessity for me, but doing it inside is so freaking boring. The Kindle really, really helps with that.
Plus I finally get to read again. And reading + exercise? What more could you want?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I AM A RAGE MACHINE AND I HATE EVERYONE BYE
Fun Christmas Activities for 2020
- Walking in the snow/cold
- Wishing it wasn’t winter
- Crying
- Hating your life
- Hating everything else
Freaking party time.
All Along the Water Tower
A visual representation of how we all feel at the end of 2020:
Empty, broken, and ready to fall over? WAIT, I FEEL LIKE THAT ALL THE TIME!
I love the sounds they make when they hit the ground. Very satisfying.
Also, side note to the guy who flipped me off while I was running because he got stalled in the snow as he stopped to let me cross the street: if you would have used your blinker like a courteous human being, I would have known you were going to turn down that side road and I would have stopped to let you go so that you could have kept up your momentum. But you didn’t use your blinker, so I figured you were just going straight and thus I kept up my speed to cross the street, thus causing you to have to stop. Not entirely my fault, bro.
Noooooooooo
They’re taking down the last of the four cranes at the Cancer Center.
I am FREAKING SAD.
As I mentioned in a blog earlier this year, those cranes had been over there since 2007. Three of them were disassembled in September, and now I guess it’s time for the fourth and last one to go.
I’ll miss you, son Crane #2.
Hippity Huppity, I’m Feelin’ Uppity
I finally organized my earrings after having them in several chaotic piles around the house. Observe!
Yes, I have a lot of earrings. They’re the only type of jewelry that I wear. And the more ostentatious, the better.
(I know, I know, no one cares about any of this.)
