Alberta Needs This
AAAAAAAAAAAA Nenshi is doing political stuff again!
I’m so glad I’m able to vote now, because I’m totally going to join the NDP, vote for Nenshi to be the leader of the party, and then hopefully help to get him into the seat of the premier of Alberta.
Honestly, an angry wasp with a drinking problem would be a better leader than Danielle Smith, but Nenshi? That would be amazing.
LET’S GO, ALBERTA.
RIP Paul Alexander
Do y’all know who Paul Alexander was? He was an American who held the title of the longest time spent living in an iron lung. Paul, born in 1946, contracted polio when he was six. He survived (obviously) but was left quadriplegic and couldn’t breathe on his own. So they put him in an iron lung machine, which he has used to breathe up until his death today at age 78.
The dude was tough. During power outages, neighbors would have to come and pump the bellows of the machine manually. Paul taught himself how to consciously breathe and was able to spend some brief times outside of the iron lung. He earned a law degree. He wrote a memoir over the course of eight years, using a plastic stick or pen to tap out words on a keyboard.
A man named Brady Richards came to Paul’s rescue when, in 2015, his iron lung machine began to break down and he either needed a repair or a new machine. The machines were quite rare by that point, but Brady was able to rebuild a broken machine he had in his warehouse and gave it to Paul. He regularly visited and helped Paul from that point on.
It’s a super interesting story. Paul had been hospitalized COVID last month, but it is unknown if that was the ultimate cause of death.
Flashback (even further this time):
You know what I miss sometimes? Going down to visit my grandparents in California. Their house was huge and interesting and had all sorts of funky things in it and I always enjoyed exploring it (and the yard) every time I went down there with my dad.
My dad would sleep in his old room and I’d stay in my Aunt Vicky’s room, which was right next to his. She had the coolest little desk and windows and dresser in there and my grandma put a tiny little stereo/CD player in there for me so I could play some CDs when I slept.
Anyway, one of the CDs she had in there was this one:
I didn’t really know who Andrea Bocelli was when I was a kid, but I LOVED this CD. The first song on there always reminds me of that house.
Pretty much every song I have links to a certain memory, but this is one of the stronger ones.
Flashback:
So one of my favorite movies as a preteen was Mystery Men, as I’m sure some of you know. My mom, GE, his parents, and I went to see it in the theatre when it came out in 1999 and I watched it on like continuous repeat after I had my appendectomy during the summer of 2000 (my mom can vouch for this, haha).
We of course had a VHS copy of it back then, which has since been replaced by a DVD. However, the DVD does not have the little “extras” clips/interviews that were at the end of the VHS tape.
But fear not! The DVD may not have them, but the internet certainly does:
Anyone else freaking love this movie?
“Disco is NOT dead! Disco is LIFE!”
I See Your Point(er)
You know what I’m totally used to now that would probably shock anyone else who looked at my computer screen?
My big-ass cursor.
If you recall, I (somewhat jokingly) made my cursor the size of Andre the Giant when I got my new big monitor. I’ve since scaled it down a bit, but it’s still much bigger than a normal cursor. Behold:
Cursor next to the Google logo.
Pointer finger pointing aggressively at Gmail.
I love it.
Hahaha, I remember these!
My mom? A PC person.
My dad? A Mac person.
I remember going to his office on campus and he’d have one or two of those original iMac computers (the ones with the big backs and transparent color cases) in there for his grad students to use. He also had one at his condo and we had a tangerine iBook clamshell.
Lotsa Mac, is what I’m saying.
Back in…junior high?…he gave me one of the old iMacs and I would set up a little cushion fort in the living room around the coffee table (where the iMac was) and just play and type and do random stuff on that computer.
One of the things I’d do was play with the MacInTalk voices because they were fun and I was 12.
Anyone else remember these?
That “Hey you! Yeah, you! Who do you think I’m talking to, the mouse?” whispered phrase still lives in my head today.
The Manly Hour
Me after washing my hair and brushing it all back like I used to do when I did drag:
Hot Take
My version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is better than Fall Out Boy’s version. Why?
Reason One: Mine is in chronological order. Theirs is very clearly not. You could really hear the care that Billy Joel put into his in terms of getting everything to not only rhyme but to be in chronological order. Fall Out Boy’s version sounds like it’s just cashing in on the nostalgia hit. “Remember this? And this? And this other thing? Who cares that they’re not in order!”
Reason Two: Mine rhymes better, let’s be honest. Like what the hell is this verse, Fall Out Boy?
Elon Musk, Kaepernick, Texas failed electric grid
Jeff Bezos, climate change, white rhino goes extinct
Great pacific garbage patch, Tom DeLonge and aliens
Mars rover, Avatar, Self-driving electric cars
S-S-R-Is, Prince and the Queen die
World Trade Second plane
What else do I have to say?
The “Tom DeLonge and aliens” line does not fit in there at all (and how is that a top event in 1989-2023?). What the hell is that supposed to rhyme with? And “World Trade, second plane” is such a weird-ass way to shove that MAJOR event in there.
Here’s one of my verses:
O.J. Simpson, Amazon, Oklahoma City Bomb
Hale-Bopp, boy band pop, Dolly the sheep
Harry Potter, Princess Di, Toy Story, Columbine
Napster, Euro, Ted Kaczynski
ExxonMobil, Sarajevo, Mark McGwire, Galileo
Nunavut, Albright, Titanic, baseball strike,
AOL, Deep Blue, Mad Cow, Google
Bill Gates, Y2K, Clinton and Lewinsky
That’s better rhyming. You know it is. I was very careful in matching Joel’s rhyme scheme.
Reason Three: I’m sure I missed a lot of big events in my time frame, but DID THEY FORGET TO PUT IN COVID???
Like, I wrote mine back in 2018 because I wanted it to cover the first 30 years of my life (1988-2018) so I have an excuse, but REALLY? How do you forget a global pandemic?
Just…ugh. It could have been so much better, yo.
Edit: I’m not the only one who thinks this was sloppily done.
Recipe Redux
Yo.
I am currently on a (several-months-long) journey to finally organize all my Chrome bookmarks. One of my sub-folders contains all my favorite recipes that I’ve found over the years. And while I’ve already posted my Recipe Master List a while back, I think some of these didn’t make that cut but are good* anyway. So here they are.
- Baked Breakfast Croissant Sandwiches
- Creamy Mushroom Pasta
- Gordon Ramsay’s Scrambled Eggs
- Spinach and Cheddar Rolled Omelet
- Stuffed Shells with Spinach and Ricotta
BYE!
*Most of these I haven’t actually tried yet, hahaha, but THEY LOOK GOOD, OKAY
Book Review: The House of the Seven Gables (Hawthorne)
Have I read this before: I THOUGHT I had, but holy hell, I don’t remember any of this stuff. I do vaguely recall checking this book out of our junior high library, which means it was one of the first books I read on my list way back when and I was probably…twelve? Thirteen? So yeah, who remembers anything about anything involving one’s tween years?
(I do but LET’S NOT GO THERE)
Review: This was good, mainly because I like Hawthorne’s writing style. I like how the house itself was basically described as a living (and haunted) thing and how the Colonel’s portrait on the wall reacted to events taking place in the house. The ending was a bit of a letdown as I was expecting something a little more…not grandiose, necessarily, but impactful.
Favorite Part: Just the writing style. It flowed very nicely and was easy to read in the sense that the style basically prompted you onwards. I like that kind of style.
Rating: 5/10
Running Worries
So my ultra marathon is in like three months and I have barely been able to train for it at all because the weather’s been ass. I don’t train like a normal person because my body is truly weird, so my training process is “increase the long run mileage by one mile each weekend until I hit the desired distance of 60K (37 miles).”
Right now I can run a marathon distance without much trouble (I run one every weekend I’m able to run outside), so I’m going to need about 11 weeks to hit my goal.
BUT TIME IS RUNNING OUT
Part of the problem is that yes, I have a treadmill, but there’s no way in hell I could ever run that far on it. I can barely do 14 miles and 18 (my treadmill version of my weekend “long run” when I can’t go outside) is really tough.
So I won’t be able to work on increasing my distance until I’m able to (consistently) run outside.
Like…last weekend was great! 27 miles outside, no problem. But this weekend is too freaking cold (and snowy) to be doing anything outside,* so I had to do a short “long run” and not work on increasing my miles.
It’s just frustrating. It also doesn’t help that I was just really lucky with the weather last year this time and had no problem ramping up the mileage to hit marathon distance prior to the end of May.
*I walked the 1.5 miles to North Hill after running and I felt like I was in some sort of Antarctic storm simulator.
Hey, Chrome?
Can someone tell me the purpose of this? Why would anyone ever need this option?
“Man, I’m bored. I wish I knew which internet thingy to look at today. PFFT SCREW IT LET’S LOOK AT ‘EM ALL!”
What’s even worse is that it’s easier than it should be to accidentally click this option. You get to that drop-down menu by right-clicking on the “Bookmarks” button. So if you accidentally right click and then move your mouse down slightly while correcting your mistake to left click, you’re screwed.
At least I would be. 200+ suddenly opened tabs?
…
[intrusive thoughts intensify]
…
Okay, I guess there is an “oops, did you really mean to click that option, you stupid fart?” failsafe.
BUT STILL. WHY IS THIS A THING.
[Chrome just froze on me. It didn’t do anything else, haha.]
Recall:
Okay so random thought: Pizza Hut still sells those breadstick things, right?
These bad boys:
And they still sell the garlic bread:
Does anyone remember when they used to sell cheesy garlic bread? It was that garlic bread above but with the best freaking melted mozzarella on top. They don’t sell that anymore and it sucks because that stuff was the BEST. ‘Twas my childhood. I ordered cheesy garlic bread more often than I ordered pizza back when my mom, dad, and I would go there on Thursdays.
EDIT: HOLY SHIT YOU CAN STILL ORDER THE GARLIC BREAD WITH CHEESE ALDSJFLFAJALDFKAJLGHAREFIADFY
I’m Facebook stalking ‘cause I HATE MY LIFE
Does anyone have that one person from your past who affected your life in some significant way but who has probably never given you a second thought after a certain point in time (like after, say, high school) but you secretly wish they thought of you every once and a while and checked up on how you were doing and was blown away by everything you’ve accomplished and how far you’d come in life since the last time they’d seen you and feel a mild twinge of regret for not giving you a second chance back when they knew you?
Yeah, me neither.
No One Nose
AYYYYYYYYYYY it’s Anosmia Awareness Day.
Go hug a non-smeller.
And watch this review of a really weird-ass water bottle.
This sounds absolutely horrible. Why are y’all with working noses so weird?
Baby Books for Babies: An Update
Current list of childhood books I’ve re-read:
- Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Judy Blume)
- The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Barbara Robinson)
- Holes (Louis Sachar)
- A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L’Engle)
- An embarrassingly large number of Babysitters Club books
I actually just finished reading Holes yesterday, and that book is even better than I remember it. It’s surprisingly…intricate?…for a kid’s book. It’s not hard to read or anything like that, but everything ties together in more ways than you typically see in a lot of kid’s books. I also really like Sachar’s writing style and characters; I actually bought a physical copy of his Sixth Grade Secrets because I used to love that book as a kid. So if you haven’t read Holes, read it!
A Wrinkle in Time was a disappointment. It wasn’t nearly as good as I remember it being.
Now I need to figure out what to read next!
Book Review: Gulliver’s Travels (Swift)
Have I read this before: Nope.
Review: So you know the most famous part of this book? The first part when Gulliver goes to Lilliput, the island full of little dudes? That’s the most boring part of this whole story. The visit to the island full of giganto dudes (Brobdingnag) was much more engaging, and the visit to the island full of the talking, rational horses (the Houyhnhms) was the most reflective. So if you can get past the Lilliputians, you’re golden.
Favorite Part: I think the part that stuck with me the most was when Gulliver’s little house (basically a shoebox) on Brobdingnag was scooped up by a giant bird and then dropped into the ocean. He describes this from within the sealed box, unable to see what’s happening, and once he starts feeling his house being towed in the water, he assumes that one of the giant Brobdingnag citizens swam out and is bringing him back to land. But then he hears people speaking English and realizes that human sailors have found him and he calls for them to open the box. They reply that they need some time to try to get it open, and he wonders why they don’t just lift the lid off because he’s so used to being around individuals large enough to do so. Swift portrays that feeling of Gulliver being small so well that I also was like, “why don’t they just take the lid off?” before realizing that Gulliver was back with people his own size, haha. It was a good illusion.
Rating: 5/10
Because I’m All About the Weird Earrings
So remember Studiocult, that funky jewelry/bag shop I mentioned a while back?
I bought a few of their earrings and they came today.
Observe!
I didn’t know this thing actually had a name, but it’s called the “Cool S” according to Wiki. And now I have earrings in that shape:
Also, freaking OCCLUPANID earrings!
I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with these, but I love them. It’s taking all my will not to get one of their occlupanid bags. If I was at all a purse person, it’d be here already, haha.
Sorry about the picture quality. It’s hard to take a good pic of your ear.
The Digital Age
So I made my first attempt at digital art today. Behold: Pepper in neon!
(Yes, I know it sucks.)
Drawing in Procreate is very different than drawing by hand. I’m sure I could adjust the brush settings to be much more like drawing with a real pencil, but I didn’t want to mess around too much this first time.
Whatcha think?
Run, Jacket, Run!
So I broke down and bought one of these jackets from the Running Room a while ago because I’ve seen a lot of Cool People out running in them and I wanted to be a Cool People, too.
I got the “racing red” one, because of course I did.
(I’d get one of those brighter ones, but my running gear gets SO DIRTY SO QUICKLY and I don’t want to run around in a grimy bright green thingy.)
I finally got the chance to wear it on my run the other day and it’s FREAKING GREAT.
It looks like it would be like any other jacket of this material and not breathe at all, but it does. It’s also got mega armpit vents that you can unzip to keep cooler if needed.
The small is really big on me ‘cause I’m short as hell, but it’s still big enough to go over my running pack rather than having to fit underneath it. And the sleeves are nice and long, too, which makes up for the lack of thumb holes.
So if you live in Canada and/or are ever up here looking for a nice running jacket, give this one a try!
Family Day: Song Version
(Sung, of course, to this tune.)
It seems this month that all you see
Are snow and ice and temps in the negative degrees
But where are those good old lazy off days
That we all need to survive?
Lucky there’s a Family Day!
Lucky there’s a day that
Makes us want to take back
All the times that we said…
“Why can’t it be May?”
It’s our Family Day!
STILL GOT IT
It’s good to know I can still do a marathon even though I haven’t been able to get outside and run that distance in several weeks.
I hate being stuck inside.
OH, and I lost another toenail. Kinda. This is just like the top layer of one of my toenails, but that still counts, right?
PUT IT IN THE TOENAIL BAG!
(Also, absolutely no nausea today, so who the hell knows.)
Claudia vs. NSAIDS (I think the NSAIDS won)
Alternate Title: How I Possibly Destroyed My Stomach Lining with Ibuprofen and Am Now, Ironically, in Tons of Pain
Alrighty, sit down, it’s story time, you little nerds.
So I take ibuprofen when I run, and I’ve been doing so since…well, probably since I started running. I actually don’t know. Maybe once I started going the longer distances. Anyway. I’d take a single ibuprofen for my “regular distance” runs during the week (I did two of these, so two ibuprofen total) and two ibuprofen for my “long run” on the weekend.
So four total per week.
That’s not really that much, in my opinion. But I guess over a long period of time (several years) it adds up.
But I never had any issues, so I figured it was fine.
Now let’s fast forward to July of last year. That was when I angered my sartorius muscle and it hurt to even just walk. But because I’m me and I’m insane, I still wanted to run while the muscle healed. So I started taking two ibuprofen before every run. That adds up to six per week.
Again, not too much in my opinion. But I kept up this dosage even after my sartorius healed (mainly out of fear) and have been taking six per week for about eight months or so.
Well, I’m pretty sure I’m starting to experience some side effects of that practice. I’ve been dealing with some frequent bouts of nausea and pretty bad upper abdominal discomfort. Not pain in most cases, but this feeling of pressure and…churning? I don’t know how to describe it.
Anyway, over the past few weeks, I’ve had to walk/run inside on my treadmill because the weather has been ass. Every time I run, I take my ibuprofen. But I’ve been getting really bad nausea/discomfort/pain/other gastrointestinal stuff that YOU DON’T NEED THE DETAILS TO IMAGINE hitting me just a few miles into the run.
Which makes running horrible.
I thought it was the treadmill at first. I’m so used to running outside that I figured the different tempo and stride involved with running on the treadmill was just upsetting all my insides and making me feel like garbage. I experimented a little bit with different speeds and such, but nothing helped.
Then I realized it might be the ibuprofen. I looked up stomach damage from NSAIDS and found a list of basically all the symptoms I’ve been having.
Soooo that’s fun.
I’m going to switch to Tylenol for a bit and see what happens. I doubt the symptoms will just stop if it is what I think it is, but maybe they won’t get worse.
Who knows!
Eigenblogger 