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.)
December?
It’s December in Calgary and I just went running in shorts and a tank top.
It’s like 50 degrees out there.
What.
I’ve actually kind of enjoyed running in the 30-40 degree range; I don’t get nearly as hot (running is like the only time I produce actual body heat) and so I feel like I can run longer and easier, at least most of the time. When it’s in the 20s it’s a little rougher because my legs start off being really cold and thus feel really heavy and slow, but I can still do it.
I haven’t run in anything below 19 degrees yet, but I’m sure I will at some point.
But yeah, it is unseasonably warm here and it’s weirding me out. It legit feels like September.
Do re mi fa so OH GOD NO
Y’ALL I keep forgetting to introduce you to my new succulent buddy, Captain Planet.
His name was originally Captain Spiny, but in one of my many COVID dreams, I’d named him Captain Planet and I had the actual Captain Planet bust through the ceiling of the condo and tell me that his name was copyrighted and how DARE I name a plant after him ANYWAY, ‘cause WHAT DO PLANTS HAVE TO DO WITH THE PLANET SLDFJSAFDKFJFJFJFJFJF
So I decided to change his name in real life.
But yeah, he’s my new buddy. I got him from Safeway because he looked super sad and lonely in his little planter. He needed love.
Have a music blog, ‘cause it’s been a while.
(Has it? I actually haven’t checked.)
Here are a few badass songs that I’ve found in the past little while. Enjoy!
Amazing Grace by Pentatonix:
I was worried they’d make it too pop-ish, but they do an amazing job with it. I really like this cover.
Here is Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra:
The orchestra gives this song so much more depth, oh my god I love it.
Sheppard’s Animals:
Love the energy.
Teddy Geiger’s Sharkbait:
The bassline in this song is killer.
I’m sorry WHAT
I’m assuming the reason that this article is so hilarious is because it’s 4 AM and sleep is for LOSERS, but I could be wrong.
But anyway, apparently a city in Sweden has this Christmas tradition where they construct this giant straw goat (or, since 1986, two goats). They also have a tradition where the goats get destroyed somehow (usually by arson).
“The display has become notable for being a recurring target for vandalism by arson, and has been destroyed many times since the first goat was erected in 1966. Because the fire station is close to the location of the goat, most of the time the fire can be extinguished before the wooden skeleton is severely damaged. If the goat is burned down before 13 December, the feast day of Saint Lucia, the goat is rebuilt. The skeleton is then treated and repaired, and the goat reconstructed over it, using straw which the Goat Committee has pre-ordered.”
“Goat Committee” is a phrase I didn’t know I needed to have in my life until today.
Anyway, the Wiki article has a table listing, for every year, security measures implemented to protect the goat(s), when the goat(s) was (were) destroyed, and how it (they) were destroyed. And there’s a lot more destroyed goats than ones that survived.
And some of these entries read like plot points around which a novel could be written.
Fantastic.
Did the goats survive in the year you were born?
Um…
Calgary, u ok?
This is why I can never find my way anywhere. This is why I walk the same five routes all the time. Because the universe is ready to destroy me with this nonsense if I ever stray off the righteous path.
(The “righteous path” being the Bow River Pathway).
Edit: Nate, I know you were waiting for a hilarious blog on this sign. Instead you get mediocrity. It’s just like everything else I do, isn’t it???
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(?)
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