Stuff of Olde
HAHA. So.
I was digging through a drawer of all my old notebooks/papers/whatever/crap ‘cause I needed to find something specific for reasons I won’t go into here.
But at the bottom of the drawer, I found the one old journal I kept from first grade. I wrote a lot in first grade. A lot. I probably had over 20 journals full of coo stories (what’s a coo?). Granted, my writing was HUGE back then and I padded the stories with a lot of illustrations, but it was still quite a lot of writing for a first grader, in my opinion.
So in the spirit of nostalgia, have some scanned pages of the notebook I found today.
Calgary’s river walk public bathrooms are like little rave party boxes
Dudes. Okay. So Calgary has this awesome bike/walking path alongside the Bow River downtown. It’s like the Moscow-Pullman trail, only nicer ‘cause it’s alongside a river and not that damn highway. It’s also got shade.
Anyway, I was doing a 20-mile walk this afternoon and spent most of that walk on the river path. While I was down around Centre Street, I noticed some dude going off the path to get water at a drinking fountain (which I had probably seen before, but never really paid attention). But then, I noticed for the first time that the little building thingies by said drinking fountain were actually bathrooms.
And awesome bathrooms, at that. They’re like these little boxes from the future. You press a button to open the door; once you’re inside, it seals you in and turns everything blue and a voice tells you that you have a maximum of 10 minutes to do your thing. The toilet seat is controlled by a button, the toilet paper is controlled by a button, and the toilet automatically flushes once you wash your hands. Check out the inside of this thing:
RAAAAAAAAAAAAVE!
Yes, those are black lights. And there was thumping bass rave music playing.
I don’t know if these were commissioned by Mayor Nenshi, but if they were, that man has definitely earned his World Mayor title.
Edit: lawl, they’re a Pokestop.
Pretty City
I love Calgary, man. I just really, really like it as a city. It’s big (population- and area-wise), and I always like the business of a big city (especially downtown) but there are also a lot of places you can go where it feels like you’re living in a small little town.
It’s also great to walk around the city (in the places where there are sidewalks). I’ve been utilizing the paths down by the river a lot recently, and I really just like the feel of everything going on down in that area. It feels like home.
Here’s a video of time lapse footage of parts of the city. Tell me Calgary isn’t beautiful.
I’m so excited to have found the love of my life here. I look forward to spending a long, long time in this city.
(It’s hard for me to say “the rest of my life” with respect to staying in one place, just because I’ve moved around so freaking much. But that’s ultimately what I’d like, I think.)
BLAH BLAHSON
UGH.
So today was supposed to be a good day. I was supposed to go to the Faculty of Science awards ceremony and get my TA award thingy and everything was supposed to be great.
But instead I had a panic attack.
I’m calmer now (obviously; can’t write a blog in the middle of a panic attack), but I’m sitting in my office with a really bad headache and a really high degree of self-hatred. I mean, I’m never too thrilled with myself, but it’s been awhile since I’ve just felt so damn worthless.
UGH.
Past from the Blast
So here’s a video I’d completely forgotten I’d uploaded to YouTube (I found it after logging onto my old AntarcticaFreak account).
This is my mom filming me doing stuff with stencils (??). Also, animals. The kitty is Baby Slick, and the dog is Mindy. This was our house in Troy.
Good times.
TWISTY POO
Oh, America.
GUESS WHO’S IN A BAD MOOD?
(It’s me.)
I’m so ready for this semester to be over. I’m so ready for school in general to be over.
Just…ugh.
(Sorry. I’m really just not in a blogging mood today.)
Oh, it’s just a little breezy out here–OH GOD
You know what’s fun? Walking in wind warning-worthy weather.
Oh wait, that actually kind of sucks.
I’m pretty sure I’m more dust than human right now.
But I got 15.87 miles in, which puts me over 550 for the year. Snazzy.
That’s all. My eyes hurt and I’m sure I’ve ingested more than my daily recommended value of dust and debris.
What it’s Like to Read Lips
Sign language. This is why it’s important.
Word Mapper
It lets you type in a word (I think it only has the most frequently used 100,000 words, though?) and will map its frequency of use in tweets (either by county or just by hotspots) across the continental US.
Here are some fun ones.
The differing distributions of “geek”, “dork”, and “nerd”:
“Canada”, “Mexico”, and “America” (I would have used “United States”, but it just takes words, not phrases):
“North” and “south” are nicely clustered around the states with those words in their names:
Idaho!
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.
Have some gifs n’ stuff, ‘cause I’m freaking done with life right now.
*angry huffing*
So this week has been awful.
But luckily I have a ridiculously incredible fiancé who picked up some super colorful flowers for me on his way home from work today, just because he knows things have gone south for me over the past few days and he wanted to show he cares.
I can’t wait to marry this man.
Two other completely unrelated bits of news:
- I had a scintillating scotoma migraine this morning. It’s been awhile since I’ve had one of those.
- I want you all to hear 2016’s first five-star song. It’s incredible.
Ice, Ice, Body
So Nate and I went walking today because I’m out of school until next Monday and Nate had the day off. It was okay walking to our destination, but on the way back it was COLD and WINDY and COLD.
How cold was it? I had a half-full bottle of water in my backpack. The water, which had been sloshing around while I walked (that is, it wasn’t just stagnant), had ICE IN IT. SO DID MY BLOOD.
I took my temperature when we got back and it was down to 94.6 degrees.
Brr.
TRA-LA-LA-LA, I FEEL LIKE TRASH
Hello duders.
The worst thing about New Years (or any other time-related milestone) is that it always makes me feel like crap. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because they make me realize how little I’ve accomplished in my life and how crappy I am at everything I try to do.
Blah.
Edit: On the upside, WALK THE MOON uploaded the video of them performing Shup Up and Dance live at New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. They’re really good (and entertaining!) live.
FICTURE IT
Do you sometimes really miss parts of your past for no real reason? Not, like, particular events or days or anything like that, but routines or schedules that you remember you used to have at various points in life that you don’t have anymore.
I miss my past sometimes.
I don’t know why I felt like saying that. It’s not like my present is bad or anything—it’s the opposite, in fact!—but I just every once and awhile really, really miss the way things used to be.
Yeah. Sorry. Don’t have much to say today.
Where is Idaho?
I did a little experiment this evening (because why the hell not). I wanted to see which states Idaho is most commonly grouped with when the country is split into “regions” (because I’ve seen it put into the Pacific Northwest, the West, the North West, etc., each with different states along with it). So I went to Google Images and typed “regions of the US” to see what I could find.
I looked at 50 different maps and recorded how many times each state (apart from Idaho, of course) was grouped along with Idaho.
Results!
States like Mississippi and Louisiana and such were grouped on some map showing the nuclear regions (or something like that) of the US.
Heat map!
Heat map courtesy of here.
Interesting to see the difference in grouping frequency between our state to the east (Montana) versus the two to our west (Washington and Oregon)
Reparations
My awesome owl iPod case has been with me since February 2012, when I bought this iPod down in Tucson. It’s done surprisingly well, considering I’ve walked about 4,000 miles with it. However, this afternoon I noticed that there was a huge tear in the silicone which would render the case useless if it tore all the way through.
So tonight Nate and I went to a Micheals to get something to repair it. After about an hour, we realized that the best course of action was to just get some duct tape and use that.
So I did.
Now he’s got a badass belt.
Eigenblogger 