I Found a GIANT Occlupanid!
Check it:
He was on the floor in FreshCo.
Based on the specimens photographed in HORG, I think he’s a protocrena pachyplatus from the archignathidae family.
One of these days, I hope to identify a never-before-seen occluplanid!
Fun Thought:
I haven’t bled through a pair of shoes in a while.
TIME TO CHANGE THAT!
Around mile 10 of my marathon today, I realized that the front of my right foot felt kind of wet, as if I’d stepped in a tiny puddle.
Turns out…
I didn’t want to stop to take my shoe off and it wasn’t hurting yet, so I continued onward. It actually didn’t hurt too badly until I got back home and took my shoe and sock off.
Observe:
Could be worse. I thought my toenail just sheered off or something. Instead, I had a hole in the toe of my sock and the exposed part of the toe had the top layers of skin rubbed off. It bled a lot more than it deserved to for that small of an injury.
Bandage has been applied; walking and running must resume!
(Thrilling blog post, I know.)
I could be brown, I could be blue, I could be SCREECHING WITH RAGE
This is still one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.
That is all.
Can’t Figure Out the Door? It Might Not Be Your Fault!
Haha.
So today I found out about the term Norman door, which refers to any door that is confusing to use. Or, in a broader context, it refers to any item/product that has a design element that does not make it clear how that item/product should be used.
It is named after Don Norman, who states in his book The Design of Everyday Things that:
“The design of the door should indicate how to work it without any need for signs, certainly without any need for trial and error.”
A vid:
The doors in the math building fall under the term “Norman doors.” Some of them have “push” or “pull” on them, but half of them don’t and it is definitely not clear what you should do with those. I still screw it up sometimes, haha.
I feel like I knew there was a name for this kind of thing, but didn’t know the name itself. Interesting!
Also:
(Not really a Norman door with that handle, but this is what came to mind when I was reading about this, haha.)
Let’s Play “WHAT’S IN CLAUDIA’S BACKPACK?”
I have two ratty old folders I keep in my backpack for…various reasons. However, over the past several years, they’ve both accumulated all sorts of nonsense papers and things that I probably don’t actually need to carry around with me on my walks.
So let’s see what we’ve got in these things, huh?
(Yes, this is the thrilling blog content you’ve all been wanting me to update/upload daily, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW)
Folder #1!
- The outline/timeline for my NaNoWriMo 2020
- Notes for my presentation on Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem for ASHA
- The “this is all the procedural stuff for the tenure application” packet
- A piece of tracing paper?
- A mask
- The receipt for my compy from last year
Folder #2
- An old STAT 213 final exam formula sheet
- Some blank graph paper
- Another mask
- Some of the info for applying for an out of the country voting ballot for the last presidential election
- Some notes/sketches for a REALLY DUMB comic strip idea I had a while back
And I’m carrying all of this around because…?
Absolutely riveting.
Ugh.
The smoke is back.
Already.
It’s FREAKING MAY.
It also always seems to happen on the hottest day of the week/month/whatev, so we can’t even open the windows.
I hate summer already.
I Hate Myself! :D
That is all.
Unsettle Your Nettles
I don’t think I’ve ever felt unsafe walking anywhere in Calgary. Granted, I’ve never been downtown at night alone and have never walked through that weird little murder triangle neighborhood in Bowness, but I’ve never felt like I was in danger. Even on those early morning walks/runs at like 4 AM, the most unsettled I’d ever felt was in the dark bowels of Bowness Park – and that was more due to knowing there might be all sorts of random wild animals in there in the early morning than anything else.
But today I took a little jaunt through the neighborhood just south of North Hill Centre and I got the most creeped out feeling while in there. It was like I was being watched and that I was not supposed to be in that area.
I didn’t see anyone or anything like that…in fact, it was an eerily quiet neighborhood…but I got out of there pretty quickly. I’m usually right about those kinds of feelings, so I figured I should listen to it.
NOBODY CARES
What normal people do when they’re sad and want to be happy again: listen to music, be with family/friends, go for a walk, watch a fun TV show, eat tasties.
What I do when I’m sad and want to be happy again: sign up for marathons
I HAVE A PROBLEM
Anyway, I’m signed up to do Bloomsday, several marathons, a 50K, and the Calgary Marathon Ultra (60K) over the next several months, so LET’S GOOOOOOOOOO
(I wanna die)
Roar
HAHAHAHA okay okay okay okay listen.
So it was really windy and quite cold this morning so I ended up wearing my headphones to keep my ears warm on my run. I was on my way down to Bowness when I heard this ad for Homes by Avi, which is a house building company up here.
Now, they advertise quite a bit on the station that I listen to, so I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the ad. They were talking about how you could experience nature right in your backyard in one of the developments they’re building in – there were all of these nature sounds and stuff like crickets, birds, etc. – and then I swear to god at the end of the ad there was a big bear growl.
But I couldn’t be sure…that is, until I heard the ad again on my way back to the bottom of our hill.
And yes: gentle sounds of nature including crickets, hooting owls, loons, chirping birds all throughout the ad, until the end, where the announcer was like “come enjoy life with nature” and the ad ends with a HUGE FREAKING BEAR GROWL.
I had to stop running because I was laughing so hard.
Edit: I listened to the radio for THREE HOURS to catch that ad again. Here it is:
That is the FUNNIEST THING I’ve ever heard, oh my god. I wonder if some poor intern kid was told “just throw some animal sounds in there” and just put that bear at the end.
Hilarious.
Attachment
So this clip came up on Twitter for me today:
(I’ve never watched Bluey so I don’t really know the context, but from everything I’ve heard, Bluey is a great show and you can see that in this little clip.)
Anyway, it got me thinking about houses. As some of you know, I’ve moved around a lot. If I sat down and made a list of all the different times I’ve moved (that is, packed up my belongings and transported them all to a different living location), I suspect it would number in the twenties. Hell, between July 2011 and December 2011 I moved FIVE TIMES.
WHO DOES THAT?
I think a consequence of moving so much has been that I’ve never really felt an attachment to any given house. Sure, I’ve missed living in some houses that I’ve spent time in, but I’ve never had an emotional attachment to any of them. I’ve never cried upon moving from a house, and I cry at everything.
I mean, I can understand why people get emotionally attached to their home, especially if they lived there for like 15 years. Maybe if Nate and I ever move from our condo, I’ll feel that emotional loss (we’ve been here nine years now). But I’ve just never experienced that.
Anyway. Just some thoughts.
This Packing Puff is Built Like a Grenade
This is hysterical.
That is all.
Today’s Running Question: Can I Beat the Storm?
Answer: Nope.
I could see the clouds encroaching, but I could not outrun them. Got blasted with wind and very cold rain for about five miles.
But the payoff was nice:
The GigaToenail has Fallen
OH MY GOD do you want to see a toenail so absolutely overgrown and destroyed by miles and miles of running that it looks like a fossil?
OBSERVE!
Yes, that is, in fact, a toenail. I can confirm it, as I just ripped it off the middle toe of my left foot.
FINALLY.
That’s the underside of it. The top side doesn’t look much better, trust me…though maybe it does look more like a fossil than the underside.
(Thumb for scale.)
Now I’m down to one – count ‘em, ONE – wonky toenail on my left foot. Once that one falls off, my left foot is going to look more normal than it has in years.
Wild.
GOODBYE BIG BOY
The big toenail on my left foot fell off.
I actually wasn’t expecting it to; it was all black and gross but not anywhere near as black and gross as the other toenails on that foot, so it was quite a surprise when I felt it flap away from my toe when I caught it on the carpet.
Wanna see it?
I know you don’t, but here it is anyway.
I’m keeping all of these, by the way.
For science.
TWO THINGS
THING THE ONE:
I took my final exam for French today and got a 95%. So not as good as my first three exams (all 100%), but two of the questions I got wrong were totally stupid mistakes and the other one was a genuine “I don’t know what this is,” so.
THING THE DEUCE:
It’s opening day for baseball! Everything is better with baseball.
Edit: oh shit the Mets lost
Goooooo Vandals! And…Yale?
Well this is awesome.
Marching band kids are the best, yo.
Edit:
Nice!
DUO
I’ve now been using Duo for 600 days!
That’s pretty cool.
Here are some examples of the types of sentences I can read now.
Nope, Not Dead
So much to everyone’s disappointment (especially mine), the poop water from Saturday didn’t kill me and I’m still here.
Yaaaaaay.
Flaaaaaaags!
Any video that combines legit flag critique and legit humor gets an A+ from me.
Nunavut’s flag is cool. But I actively hate BC’s flag. It…it bugs me.
A Vehicle for Death
Important.
There was a Tweet I read not so long ago about a guy who got into a car accident in his big-ass SUV and was saying how grateful he was that he had a big-ass SUV to “protect himself and his family.” Never mind the other guy whose car got totally wasted by said big-ass SUV…or any pedestrians that may get caught up in its grill and chewed up and spit out because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Ugh.
I want…
- To know if I’m getting tenure or not
- To go down to Moscow and visit my mom
- My mom to come up here and visit us
- The weather to get better so I can start training for my ultra
- The reassurance that I can actually run this ultra (60K sounds so intimidating)
That is all.
Luck of the Bucks
I found $15 on my run this morning! It pays to exercise, haha.
I used to find cash ALL THE TIME when I was out walking. Like, I found a $50 once by a bus stop. I haven’t found as much cash since the start of COVID, but that’s probably just from people relying on using their cards more.
Still, though. Dolla dollas!
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