CLOUDSKY
Y’all, look at this fantastic cloud boundary. So sharp.
I risked my fingers freezing off for this, too. It’s so freaking cold here right now, but it wasn’t cold enough to deter me from taking cool cloud pictures.
‘Cause that’s how I roll.
Long Hair? DON’T CARE!
Seriously, why did I ever have long hair? It was a pain in the ass and looked terrible. Not like I’m a supermodel or anything with short hair (I’m still just as ugly and stupid-looking), but at least I look more “naturally” ugly and stupid-looking, if that makes any sense.
Probably not.
Freaking Virus, Yo
I want to preface this blog by saying that given the current circumstances, Nate and I have it pretty good.
We both still have jobs and neither job is in danger (probably).
We can still pay our condo fees, mortgage, bills, etc.
We are both healthy (as far as we know).
Everyone we care about is healthy (as far as we know).
So our situation could be much, much worse in many different ways.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I am angry and disappointed.
I’m angry that my mom is finally able to retire this year but won’t get to travel (at least for a while), which is what she immediately wanted to do. Hell, she can’t even go to, like, a mall to celebrate.
I’m angry that Nate and I had an awesome retirement trip planned out for her that was going to be awesome for all three of us. Redwoods? Mets games? Family hangout time? Gone.
I’m angry that I’ve finally gotten a semester completely off for the first time since 2017 and most of the long walks that I haven’t been able to do because I’ve been too busy I now can’t do because of social distancing restrictions (or just general “I don’t want to take the risk by going to Walmart/taking the bus/sharing this path with 100 people who don’t understand the concept of covering their mouth when they cough).
I’m angry about not knowing how long all this will last.
I’m angry that my parents are in one of the most at-risk populations and, due to the border being closed and airlines being NOPE, it would be very difficult for me to get down to them if either of them got sick.
I’m angry that there are probably enough people who are still not taking this seriously enough that a second surge of this thing is probably going to hit once we start gradually opening things back up.
I’m just. Angry.
Sorry for the complaining. I need to do it somewhere.
Three Tiny Things for One Tiny Blog Post
One: This would make a beautiful tattoo. I love cardioids.
Two: “Steamed Hams Inc.” came on over shuffle while I was walking today and it made me remember what a treasure of the internet that song/video is.
Three: I feel like I will never be able to understand math the way a true mathematician understands math. I was hoping that my understanding and intuition of math would improve as I took more math courses (especially ones outside the more narrow focus of mathematical statistics, such as complex analysis), but I don’t think it ever really did. Maybe my focus was still too narrow, or maybe I’m lacking some basic fundamentals that help tie everything together. Or maybe I just don’t think like a mathematician. Or maybe even I’m still letting that basal fear of math that I’ve always had buried in my psyche prevent me from being able to look at math from different angles. Who knows. But it’s sad and embarrassing.
Circulation problems
I’m pretty sure I’ve got some sort of circulation problem in my hands. Either that or my cold tolerance is just pathetic. I don’t think that’s the case, though, as I can walk in -15 degree weather and be reasonably comfortable…
…except for my hands.
Like, in temperatures where I see a lot of other people either not wearing gloves or just wearing those thin little $2 gloves you can get at Walmart, I’ve got my thick winter gloves on and my fingers still feel like they’re on the verge of getting frostbite.
I don’t know if constantly exposing them to cold weather is making this worse, either. It’s to the point now that if I’m out for long enough in the cold, they ache like hell once I get back inside and get them warmed up (we’re talking aching for several hours here).
I’ve Googled “how to improve circulation” and of course the first result is “exercise!”
Fool, I do that for four hours a day, so that’s not going to help anything if it’s not already doing so. Do they make compression gloves? Maybe I should try compression gloves.
Freaking winter.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I get up at 5:30 AM so that I can go walking from 6 AM – 10 AM before I teach at 11 AM. Last semester I had to get up even earlier so that I could walk before my 9:30 AM class. As we transitioned from fall into winter, it of course got both darker and colder in the morning, which is very demotivating for someone who is basically powered by the sun.
But today was the first day I noticed that it is finally finally getting lighter outside. Not a lot lighter, but lighter.
It was still cold as all hell, but as I was turning around in Bowness to head back to campus, the sky was definitely lighter.
YAY.
I NEED LIGHT.
Spring Training!!!!!
FREAKING YAY I AM SO EXCITED FOR BASEBALL YOU HAVE NO IDEA
Baseball season = the warm, sunny, long-days part of the year. The best part of the year. I neeeeed.
Carz
This is pretty disgusting, honestly.
Why are they getting publicity without being punished for, I don’t know, blatantly breaking the law for pretty much this whole journey?
The more I walk, the more I realize just how much the world is catered towards cars/driving compared to other forms of transportation. And it really bothers me.
Sorry, I just found this article today and it’s all I’ve been able to think about,
I found the piece I took to State Drama
So when I was in 12th grade, one of the elective classes I took was drama. I don’t remember much from it other than us performing Ayn Rand’s “Night of January 16th” (I was Magda), us dicking around a LOT during class, and the tryouts and subsequent state drama competition.
I had two pieces I performed for the state drama competition. One was with my friend Bethany; we did a scene out of Hamlet. The other was a solo piece that my drama teacher thought would fit me very well. It was called Twirler, and after just a little digging on the Tubes, I found it here.
I remember practicing this. I remember buying a baton and making my costume. I remember practicing a southern accent.
(I don’t remember saying the “n” word, though; surely I would not have been comfortable with that. We must have subbed it out with something else.)
I remember the tryouts, too. The regional ones were held one weekend in our high school building and I had to give my “Twirler” performance in one of the math rooms, which just shot my anxiety straight through the roof.
But both of my pieces got called to go on to the state competition held somewhere in the south – either Twin Falls or Idaho Falls, I can’t remember. We couldn’t do the one with Bethany because she had some sort of other prior commitment, but I went and performed “Twirler.” They said I would have gotten into the final round had I not gone over time.
Which, you know, is how things always go with me.
But yeah. I just had a sudden flashback to that piece and wanted to see if I could find it.
END!
Lapsing (Again)
Calgary should use this as an official tourism video, seriously.
I know, I know. Another time-lapse. But this one is fantastic. The transitions are so smooth and beautiful, and that shot of The Bow building at 0:37 is stunning.
Nate got me a weighted blanket and OH MY GOD
Being beneath it is like what I would imagine being vacuum sealed would feel like. It’s so freaking comforting and calming. I was dubious at first, but it really helps mellow things out.
I can’t say if it actually helps me sleep better or not because I fall asleep within about a minute of lying down (no matter what), but it definitely felt good while I was awake.
I’d recommend trying one out!
List it! List it goooooood!
- I’m digging having short hair again. It is so much easier to wash, style, and deal with. Also, when I brush it back a bit I get serious Claude vibes, which gives me the happies.
- Hahahahaha.
- Now this is the kind of Buzzfeed quiz I can get behind.
Goddammit I’m stochastic calculus. That stochastic methods class I took my last semester at U of I was the hardest freaking class I’ve ever taken. - I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this on my blog before, but for whatever reason it showed up in my “Recommended For You” list the other day and now I can’t get it out of my head.
“What the shit ass Christ were we even talking about?” is a great line.
- Oh my god this makeup is gorgeous.
THAT IS THE END
AAAAAAAA I DON’T HAVE A TITLE AAAAAAAAA
If you saw a dog locked in a hot car, what would you do?
If it was a car parked in front of a shop/store/whatev, I’d probably go see if I could find the owner (as long as the dog wasn’t in too much visible distress). Then I’d call the cops and, if necessary, break a window to save the dog.
Is it easy for you to accept help when you need it?
Help is for SUCKERS
Have you ever been in a fashion show?
Haha, nope.
Would you like to be famous?
Can I be famous without having to deal with constant paparazzi? Then yes.
What is your most compulsive habit?
We’re not going to go there, huh?
What do you most strive for in your life: accomplishment, security, love, power, excitement, knowledge, or something else?
Knowledge, I’d say.
How close and warm is your family?
They’re pretty good I suppose. My mom and I are super close.
Does that fact that you have never done a thing before increase or decrease its appeal to you?
Depends on what it is. Bungee jumping? Never done it before, but I have no desire to. Get a tattoo? Never done it before, but getting one sounds coolio.
If your friends start belittling a common acquaintance, would you defend that person?
I’d like to think I’d do better with this now than I used to.
Do you make a special effort to thank someone who does you a favor? How do you react when you aren’t thanked for going out of your way for someone?
I try to. If I do someone a small favor I don’t really mind if they don’t say “thank you,” but if I did something relatively big for them, it irks me a bit, yeah.
Since adolescence, in what 3-year period do you feel you experienced the most personal growth and change?
2007-2010. I don’t know about personal growth, but I really feel like this was my own personal little “Age of Enlightenment” era (especially 2007) because holy damn my knowledge of the world exploded.
When you do something ridiculous, how much does it bother you to have other people notice it and laugh at you?
A lot.
Do you believe in capital punishment?
Yes.
Do you find it so hard to say “no” that you regulalry do favors you do not want to do?
Yes.
SO FREAKING COLD
Oh my god, Calgary, fucking why?
I hate this so much. And the whole week is going to be like this. Remember last February’s month-long deep freeze? This isn’t supposed to last as long, but it’s definitely going to be colder than last February.
Gross.
FREAKING BRRR
Yeah, it’s that cold here. -30 Celsius is -22 Fahrenheit for my ‘Murican bros.
Fun fact: I have always found “Celsius” way harder to spell than “Fahrenheit.”
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.)
Eigenblogger 