It is April 9th
In 2013, my total walking distance was 1,361.2 miles.
Counting today’s walk, I have already surpassed that distance, with a total 2017 mileage of 1,373.48. It’s taken me a total of about 305 hours of walking to do that, which roughly rounds to 12.7 days of walking.
That’s pretty snazzy, if you ask me.
I want to try for 5,000 miles this year, but who knows what the fall will bring in terms of a job (HOPEFULLY MORE TEACHING PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE), so we’ll see.
Cat Dream!
Okay, awesome dream time:
Nate and I were living in this weird dorm-type house, except it was much bigger than a dorm and had like four bathrooms. Each bathroom’s main feature was a giant walk-in shower that didn’t actually have walls or a curtain (?).
Anyway, Nate had to go off somewhere for like a three-week stretch, so I stayed home alone. After a few days, I started noticing that these small little fuzzy creatures had started to appear in pairs on the shower drains. At first I could just scare them away by turning on the light, but after a little while, they wouldn’t spook at all and would just remain on the drain regardless of what I did.
They slowly started increasing in size and were kind of a little scary, but I eventually got brave enough to tap one of them with my foot. Turns out that they were kitties! So of course I did the only thing I could do—I took the kitties off all the drains and started petting them and loving them. Every time I turned around, there was another pair of cats on a drain or a rapidly growing kitten on a drain.
This continued until I had amassed about 40 cats over the span of a few days. Nate came home and I was super excited to tell him about the magic drain cats. He quickly discovered that they were not magic drain cats but rather were cats who were getting into the house through an open window that I had not seen.
I was worried that he would want the window shut, but he saw how happy I was with all the cats and said that we could leave the cat window open.
Dudes, I actually woke up crying from happiness because I was so excited that we could keep getting free cats in my dream.
Seriously.
Yeah, I’m not a crazy cat lady at all. 0%.
Donkey church: “Let us bray.”
Good lord, HowToBasic.
Ha. This was fun.
Buy Some Random Shit from Etsy and We’ll Tell You Your Moral Alignment.
I am chaotic good, apparently.
Z
Hey, so remember when I had a purpose on this planet and wasn’t a complete and utter waste of space, time, and resources?
Neither do I.
IT’S BASEBALL O’CLOCK
It’s Mets time, bitches! Hopefully they’ll win their first game. And, y’know, a good amount of the rest of their games.
(Edit: haha, wow, they murdered the Braves.)
Also, shock of shocks: I dug out my old Unreal CD and stuck it in Big Compy just to see how badly it wouldn’t work. But hey…it actually worked! And it looks shockingly good for a game from 1998.
Awesome. I just wish The Neverhood worked on this computer, too.
I’m pretty sure Canada’s motto is “hieme perpetua”
What the hell is all this, now? IT’S FREAKING APRIL, CALGARY, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS
It’s not even regular snow. It’s rain secretly disguised as giant-ass snowflakes that turn into rain as soon as they touch anything. Which means I had to look like a doofus with an umbrella in the snow while I did my walk this morning. It also meant that—ONCE AGAIN—the sidewalks were covered in slushy crap the entire morning/afternoon.
Not enjoyable at all.
And considering that walking is currently the only thing keeping me from having a complete mental breakdown as of late, that’s not a good thing.
BLAH.
Claudia’s List o’ Petty Annoyances: April Fool’s Day Edition
Here’s a fun list of things that bug the ever-loving poop out of me.
Because I’m in a BAD MOOD and HATE APRIL FOOL’S DAY more than anybody rationally should and I need to RANT.
So here goes the list.
- April Fool’s day.
- People with a story the length of War and Peace who decide the best medium to use to tell such a story is Twitter. Yup, 800 140-character “not at all coherent on its own and hardly even coherent when read with the other freaking tweets” segments. That’s exactly how I want to read the thrilling tale of how Starbucks permanently scarred you by misspelling your name on your cup.
- People who take the elevator to go down one floor. I get it if you have some sort of impairment that makes walking down stairs tough, but I see this way more frequently than the likelihood of such impairments would suggest.
- The whole “yoga pants as everyday pants” thing. I didn’t see this as much when I was in Moscow, but up here, especially at U of C, it’s a very popular style. Comfort’s great, yeah, but seriously…it makes you look like you just rolled out of bed and threw on the first thing that was on the floor by the hamper. I’m the last person to be judging others’ fashion choices, but hey, I’m going to do it.
- This is mostly on Tumblr/online in general, but I’m irrationally annoyed by the popularity of people announcing how tired they are. “I’m 104% tired.” “I feel like I’m already tired tomorrow.” So what do you want, a medal? If you’re honestly that tired, maybe try changing your lifestyle in some way?
- All these remakes/sequels/live-action interpretations of 80’s and 90’s TV shows and movies. Yes, Millennials are the nostalgia generation in the sense that we have a very strong connection to the media of our childhoods. But do we really have to rehash every damn thing from Beauty and the Beast to The Powerpuff Girls to (edited to add) The Dark Crystal? And what’s worse, do we really have to be so dumb as to throw enough of our money at such a blatant attempt to profit off our nostalgia to the degree that we encourage the making of more of these atrocities?
- Sequels in general. They don’t work, they’re not worth it. 95% of the time they fail at living up to the original (exceptions in my opinion: the Toy Storys, the Iron Mans, Home Alone 2).
- The words “doggo” and “pupper.” They just bug me.
- The expectation of now that Nate and I are married, we’re going to start pooping out kids. “So when are you going to start a family?” Um, we already are a family, you rude bag of antiquated societal spew, thanks for asking.
- All the pedestrian-related stuff that I’m TOO ANGRY TO EVEN MENTION BECAUSE I THINK IT WOULD GIVE ME A BRAIN ANEURYSM.
Blogging is Hard
*looks at Eigenblogger*
*realizes I haven’t published a blog post in 180+ days*
*sulks*
*gets motivation to publish posts*
*looks at 85-page Word document containing posts to publish*
*suddenly demotivated*
*doesn’t publish posts*
*sulks harder*
Rinse and repeat.
Curlin’
Every once and awhile, my hair will do this natural curl thing. And it’s awesome.
Except, like in this picture, it’s usually only one small piece of my hair and the rest remains frizzy/fluffy/dead to the world/obnoxious.
The end.
(Yes, my shirt is covered in cat hair. My life is covered in cat hair. Deal with it.)
Hypocrites
I was watching the CTV news while I was running on the treadmill this afternoon. They had some “scientist” from Trump’s team talking about the great myth that is climate change. And he was contradicting the hell out of himself. For example:
“Climate change is a myth that has been blown way out of proportion by the liberals. Climate change isn’t happening.”
Then, in the next sentence, “It’s important that the US not limit its coal and oil production, as the extra monetary protection will be beneficial once the climate changes.”
Like, seriously. That’s almost word-for-word.
We’re screwed.
Biostatistics Ryan Gosling
Haha, these are great.
I’m surprised Nate didn’t hear me laughing like an idiot at these at 4:00 in the morning.
Favorites:
The end.
Who wants some more RECIPES?!?!?!?!?
You probably don’t since I just posted one of these like two weeks ago, but hell, you’re gonna get some. Deal with it.
- Pasta with Peas and Ricotta
- Giant Instant Pot Pancake
- Simple Classic Fettuccine Alfredo
- Simple Vegan Creamy Mushroom Fettuccini
There will be more. There’s always more.
I love it here
Okay, so I know I post a time lapse or panning video of Calgary like every month or so on here, but I really do love this city and this particular video has awesome music and awesome shots.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G…H, I, J, K, man I gotta pee
I just spent like an hour browsing around this website. Clouds are awesome!
dfjlsf
The only reason I feel remotely comfortable posting about this is because I know I won’t get these up for like another couple of months or so and by then I’ll (hopefully) be feeling better…
…but man. My will to continue to exist is just not present at the moment. I haven’t felt like this in a long, long time.
It’s really rough.
Reekris
Yay, USA won the World Baseball Classic!
I’m ready for the regular season to start. Nate got me all excited about baseball last year, haha.
Edit: unrelated, but important.
ARMS ARMS ARMSARMSARMS
I need to start making an effort to consistently lift weights. Like, I feel like I could kick through a brick wall with how strong my legs are from all the walking, but I can barely carry a gallon of milk up three flights of stairs without feeling a little muscle fatigue in my arm. And I have no idea how strong/weak my core is.
Anyway.
Status Update:
Still sad. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with my stupid brain this year, but it needs to cut it out and get back to normal. I’m sick of this.
Poosers
Holy crapples, this is fantastic.
I think they should have assigned this as required reading to all first-year grad students who had to TA as part of their funding, and then made them re-read it at the beginning of every subsequent year so as not to forget important stuff. It’s also still relevant as an instructor. At least, most of it.
Highlights:
“Many instructors assume that students will read what is handed to them; I think this is incorrect.”
Oh my god, yes. This wasn’t something I ever did as a TA, but as an instructor (both at UI and U of C), I like to take time during the first lecture to actually go over the syllabus and any other important hand-outs. I particularly like to do this in the form of a PowerPoint so that I can really focus on the big things. I think it really helps emphasize what’s important to the students rather than making them wade through a two- or three-page document that includes a little information on every aspect of the class.
“People never learn course material as well as when they have to explain it to others.”
U of C has a thing up here for their 200-level stats classes called “continuous tutorial.” This is kind of like drop-in homework help where a TA staffs a computer lab for an hour, and during that hour students from STAT 213 and STAT 217 can drop in, work on homework, and ask questions of the TA if they have them. During my first continuous tutorial, I botched the hell out of a really simple probability question while helping a student. It wasn’t because I didn’t know how to do that type of problem, but because I hadn’t done that type of problem in quite some time, I blanked on the very simple solution and really confused the student. Brilliant, right? It is super important, both as a TA and as an instructor, to actually work through the homeworks assigned to the students and make sure you know how to do them. Because there’s not a lot of things more embarrassing than blanking on a question covering a subject that you supposedly know well enough to teach to the students.
“To me, motivating means addressing the history, culture, and usefulness of mathematics.”
LAKJSDFLASKFJALKF ASDFYADJFSDJ YES YES YES YES YES YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES
If you can put the topic into some sort of “non-computational” context, I think students are apt to be more open to it, approach it with less fear, and maybe even get excited about it. This is such an important idea to me, you have no idea.
Yay.
Heckin’ Bork
I don’t have anything to blog about.
So you know what that means…
RECIPES!
- Saturday Night Broccoli Pasta
- Roasted Potatoes, Carrots, Parsnips, and Brussels Sprouts
- Grilled Artichoke and Mushroom Lemon Pasta
- Cornbread Pancakes (!!!!!!!!!!!!I LOVE CORNBREAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- Homemade Tortillas
- Spaghetti with Olive Oil and Mizithra
RRRRRRRRRR
Ha, remember that Global Advanced Personality test that I used to take like twice a year? It’s been like three + years since I last took it. So let’s take it again and compare it to the last time I took it to see how much I’ve changed into a responsible, level-headed adult.
Ye Olde (September 2014)
Ye Newe (Now)
Hahaha, my “adventurousness” went up. Livin’ on the edge.
Eigenblogger 