Aww.
Saturn’s getting a nice bath from Aquarius.
(Yes, I know these celestial objects are incredibly far apart; SHUT UP, IT LOOKS CUTE.)
Relatable
When I was in elementary school, we were allowed to join band once we reached third grade. I played clarinet (at least to start with; other instruments came later!) and the way our band was arranged in the multipurpose room had the clarinets sitting in front of the trumpets.
The trumpets were so loud and the sound was so painful that I had to wear a pair of earplugs during band.
I was made fun of* incessantly for this.
I didn’t stop wearing them because I didn’t want to be in pain, and at least they helped to drown out the ridicule, haha.
But yeah. I wish Baby Claudia could have the same “I no longer give a shit about what other people think of me” attitude as Current Claudia, at least when it comes to clothing choices and wearing a mask.
I don’t care what anyone thinks about my wearing a mask.
Anyway.
*I was made fun of for a lot of things, honestly, but this is one I really remember. This and that one time I wore shorts to school and a kid in the grade above us told me that my legs were ugly and hairy and I never wore shorts again; THANKS, RANDOM ASSHOLE KID
Crop It
MapPorn is one of my favorite subreddits, and here’s an example of why.
I like how Nevada basically doesn’t grow shit.
I also didn’t realize how concentrated the lemon crop was in the country.
And for my fellow Idahoans who are angry about the lack of potato map, here you go!
Random Thought:
Does anyone else find the blinker sound of an unfamiliar car unsettling?
You know, this thing:
You get used to the way it sounds in your car (or the car you’re most frequently in), but its specific sound is slightly different in every model and make and I’ve always found unfamiliar blinker sounds very unnerving.
It makes you feel far from home, no?
I remember when I was a kid and my dad and I would go down to visit my grandpa and grandma in LA. The blinker in my grandma’s car always sounded SO DIFFERENT from the blinkers in my parents’ cars and it always reminded me of how far away from home I was.
Anyone else? Or is this just a “me” thing?
Well that was cool.
Got up around 1 AM to go do my night run (even though the days are technically cooling down now and I could probably go when it’s light). Got out on the path and noticed that there were huge swaths of green northern lights streaking through the sky. They lasted probably half of my run before dissipating.
It’s a weird thing to say, but I’ve never felt more safe during a night run. How can one get hurt under the northern lights?
(I know that’s a weird thing to say, but that’s what I was thinking while running.)
(Shut up.)
So Very, Very Brr
So one of the recommendations for water conservation during our water main shutdown is to limit showers to five minutes. This isn’t that hard to do; I can run the water to rinse, turn it off to soap/shampoo, then turn it on to rinse again. The problem is that I have so completely destroyed my body’s ability to regulate its temperature that as soon as the water is off after rinsing the first time, I am
SO
RIDICULOUSLY
COLD
Like, it’s still pretty warm here, both during the day and overnight, and I usually am quite warm when I get done running. But I cannot handle that little change in temperature that comes from having wet skin in the shower. I literally start shivering like I’m out in the middle of one of our -30 snaps.
I’m pretty sure if I had to do this in the winter I’d die.
Can’t wait until the water’s back.
Flipper (not the dolphin)
So I just found out about this wild open ocean research platform called the RP FLIP, which is designed to flood (partially) and flip 90 degrees so that the top of the platform is sticking straight up from the water.
It’s not in operation anymore, but there are of course videos of it doing its thing.
Can you imagine seeing this thing and having no idea what the hell is going on?
A more in-depth vid:
Wild.
Y’know What?
This was a good summer.
It’s been the first summer in several years where I’m not frantically prepping for something big, like ASHA or tenure track renewal or tenure. We had good weather while my mom was up here in June and despite it being like 100+ degrees in Moscow when I was down there in July, at least I got to go down there (and I didn’t get injured this time!).
I had lots of time to experiment with my new favorite medium of watercolor and got to watch a LOT of SolarBalls while doing it.
I got to run a lot, even if most of it was at like 3 AM in the pitch black and in creepy Bowness Park.
Yup.
Good summer.
Water Main Shutdown COMMENCE
Here we go again!
It sounds like this repair (these repairs?) are going to take a while; we’ll see if the city complies or if people will start rebelling, haha.
The city did do a pretty bad job of getting the word out about this second shutdown, though. You’d think with something as critical as not running out of potable water would warrant, I don’t know, at least like a pamphlet in the mail. Or they could do like they did with the original water main break and send out an emergency alert. Just so that people know what’s going on.
Bah. Who knows. We’ll see.
Voyage
On this day in 1977, Voyager 2 was launched! The probe’s main mission was to study the outer planets and then study interstellar space beyond the heliosphere. It was able to visit the four outer planets due to their periodic alignment in the late 1970s and reached Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in 1979, 1981, 1986, and 1989, respectively. It remains the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune (which is sad…the ice giants need more attention!).
It also carries one of the two Voyager Golden Records, which act as time capsules and are designed to be studied by any intelligent extraterrestrial life that may encounter them.
Also, slightly related (and I’m mentioning it here because I saw it on Tumblr today), here is a painting by Rick Guidice that visualizes a Pioneer probe doing a slingshot move using Jupiter’s gravity and if you say this isn’t the coolest freaking thing you’ve ever seen then you’d be WRONG.
Thun-Dah
We had a mega storm yesterday and the freaking airport flooded but I can’t take it seriously because TRÈS GROSSE GRÊLE sounds like a badass French metal band.
Oooooo, I like it!
As many of y’all know, I like logos/emblems/symbols/etc. In the past, I have offered my praise/critique of various Olympics emblems over the years, so let’s look at some of those logos now that the Paris Olympics are fast approaching, shall we?
In fact, let’s start with that one:
Not bad. Nice and simple. The woman depicted in the flame is Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic that represents “humanism, fraternity, generosity, and sharing.”
What about Winter 2026, set to be held in Milan and Cortina?
Eh. A little bland.
Summer 2028, held in Los Angeles?
I like it! And the cool thing is that this isn’t the only emblem they’ve got. Apparently this is one of 32 37 different variations. Each variation features a different design of the “A” by various athletes, actors, artists, singers, etc.
That’s pretty freaking cool. I dig it.
That’s as far ahead as the emblems go so far. Hopefully future ones are cool as well!
Disaster!
Apparently Roku Live TV has a DISASTER CHANNEL and half the time it’s showing episodes from my “Mayday” YouTube channel that I love so much (the one about the airline disasters).
Anyway, today I caught the end of an episode about a 1985 accident involving a British Airways plane. There was a fire on it before it even took off and the big question surrounding the whole thing was that while the fire was major, it was not major enough to cause as many casualties as there were. So why were there so many casualties?
The documentary went into a very interesting discussion about human psychology, human factors, and the effect of panic when trying to exit a plane in an emergency. Helen Muir, basically the expert on airplane and airplane passenger human factors and psychology, talked about how they tried to reenact everyone getting off the plane to try and determine why so many died. This reenactment resulted in some major changes to plane cabins (track lighting to find exits in the dark/smoke, wider entryways to help prevent bottlenecking at exits) to make them safer.
I highly recommend watching this.
Want to see what I looked like in grade school?
Of course you don’t!
But this is my blog so I’m going to post the nonsense that I want. And if you still decide to read this drivel, that’s on you, bro.
Anyway.
Sometime back in the Stone Age, my grandma cross-stitched this little picture-holder thingy that was designed to house one of each of my school pictures from first grade all the way up to 12th grade.
Here it is:
Comments:
- I was the Mullet Queen up through third grade. You’re not a 90s kid if you’re not a Mullet Queen (or Mullet King) at some point, I guess.
- I LOVED that shirt I was wearing in my 4th grade pic.
- I also loved that one from my 7th grade pic. It had these big bell-bottom sleeves on it.
- That shirt from the 12th grade pic was great, too. I still have it, but it’s pretty shredded up now.
- I look really stupid in my 8th grade pic, but that’s my favorite background out of all of them.
- I actually look really stupid in all of these, but 8th through 12th grade are the worst.
- WHY DID I HAVE SO MUCH HAIR IN 5th GRADE? WHO LET IT DO THAT???
- My hair in 11th grade is…obeying the laws of physics? How?
Ew.
Several Things Today
1. Happy birthday, Leibniz!
2. Today is the first official day of my having tenure. And also the first day of my being an associate professor. So that’s awesome.
3. As of today (halfway through the year), I’m at 3,218.42 walking/running miles. This is 132.44 miles more than I had last year at this time. Can I beat last year’s mileage total? I guess we’ll see.
4. I’m in Moscow!
End.
Fifth Place!
Not bad, Calgary. Not bad.
Last year Calgary was ranked 7th, and this is the 11th year that it’s been in the top 10. Apparently cities are assessed across five categories: stability, healthcare, education, culture and environment, and infrastructure. Calgary did well in education, healthcare (really??), and stability.
Woo!
June List 2024
Bwa bwa bwa, who cares.
- Me with my fantasy baseball team: “I love all my players and will never trade them because I’m loyal and I believe that they’ll play to their potentials!”
Also me with my fantasy team: “EOVALDI YOU BAG OF FARTS” - The warm weather has been super mild so far this year. Not too hot, a good amount of rain, and almost zero smoke. Can it always be like this? [edit from late July: IT WAS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE]
- It’s not summer until you can see my Garmin tan from space.
- So remember that blog post I made about that AI-generated song “I Glued My Balls to my Butthole Again”? Well, the video I’d linked to the song got deleted, so now there’s no video on that post and I’m stuck with the tag “i glued my balls to my butthole again” without any context. That’s actually pretty hilarious.
END!
DRUM
It was like 200 degrees in Calgary today, so my mom, Nate and I decided to do the smart thing and go to the one town that was even hotter: Drumheller!
We saw some hoodoos, which are pillars/spires of rock formed when softer, more eroded rock is topped with some sort of harder, less eroded rock.
You could really see the different layers of rock!
We were going to go to the Royal Tyrrell Museum (dinos) too, but we figured it would be really crowded during the summer season.
Woo!
Edit: Nenshi has won the election for the leader of the Alberta NDP! He won it with 86% of the votes, which is like the highest in the history of party leadership voting in Canada. Because Nenshi is awesome.
I voted…as a Canadian!
As an official member of the Alberta NDP (New Democratic Party), I was able to vote for their new party leader. This was my first official voting event as a Canadian!
And of course I voted for Nenshi.
Exciting! We should know the results soon after voting closes in a few days.
A frost advisory in mid-June?
LOL OKAY ALBERTA, YOU DO YOU I GUESS
Stitch the Temps
I mentioned this to my mom the other day and realized I hadn’t posted the full set on here, so here it is!
Reddit user Adolwyn has been cross-stitching the monthly average temperatures for Calgary since 2018. It’s interesting to see how big of a swing there is from those hellish February temps to the hellish August temps.
They use a cross-stitch template that they found, but I agree with their assessment that one more lower temperature range would be very appropriate for Calgary, as we get a lot more < -18 temps than > 35 temps.
Supah cool!
Eigenblogger 