It’s been like two weeks, LET’S DO A SURVEY
1. What would you pick as a major, if you could go back to college and do it again?
Haha.
Hahahahaha.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Ha.
Do you know how often I think about this? Did you know that one of my plans was to try to convince the president of the U of I to let me remain as a perpetual undergrad to “bring publicity to the school”?
Did you forget I actually DID go back to college because I’m that kind of person?
(I’d probably get an English degree.)
2. Who is the one celebrity with whom you would most like to have an in depth conversation?
DOES LEIBNIZ COUNT?
3. If you could make a living doing ANYthing, what would that be?
Walking/running. And I’d be damn good at it.
4. What’s your all-time very favorite dessert?
I like candy in general, but if we’re talking actual desserts that one might order at a restaurant, I’d say German chocolate cake.
5. How many pairs of jeans do you own?
Like three.
6. What is your favorite flower, and why?
Sunflowers. I have no idea what they smell like, but they’re giganto and pretty.
7. What book has most changed your life?
I don’t know.
8. What is your least favorite vegetable?
Of the vegetables I’ve tried, celery is the nastiest.
9. If you could take a nonstop first class flight to any destination, where would you pick to land?
South pole. Fight me.
10. If your 15 minutes of fame included a stint on American Idol, what song would be your trademark solo?
I would LOVE to sing a Coldplay song, but unfortunately they’re not in my register. So if I wanted to sound “good,” I’d pick “Achilles, Come Down.”
11. If you could pick one former friend (who has remained elusive in this wild Facebook world) to reunite with, who would you unearth?
Anastasia Pennington. My best friend in elementary school before she moved away.
12. You have been awarded the time off from work and an all-expenses paid week anywhere in the United States. The catch is that it must be somewhere you have not been before. Where do you choose to visit?
NYC.
13. Name three of your guilty pleasures.
Self-loathing. TiKToK scrolling. Riverdale.
14. The best kind of cookie is:
Those seven-layer cookies my mom makes. So freaking good.
15. What do you value most in other people?
Kindness towards animals (especially cats). That’s one of the many reasons I love Nate.
16. Have you ever looked back at your life and realized that something you thought was a bad thing was actually a blessing in disguise?
Probably the whole UBC garbage. It got me the teaching position at the U of I, which got me the teaching position here.
17. What is the most beautiful place you’ve ever visited?
Not sure.
19. Name three things you are thankful for right now.
My ability (physically, financially, time-wise, etc.) to walk/run as much as I do, my family, and the fact that my existence is fairly stable.
20. Have you ever participated in a three-legged race?
Not that I remember?
21. When you are at an event that plays the National Anthem, do you place your hand over your heart?
Sure.
Barak Obama is SCAAAAAAAARED of me!
This little rap from the Dean was stuck in my head today, so I’m going to share it with y’all:
That is all.
Band o’ Cloud
Bro, check out this snazzy band of cloud:
I LOVE the clouds up here. We usually don’t get super interesting ones until the summer (apart from the Chinook arches), but this one is pretty unique.
Burfday
I am now THIRTY FIVE!
What’re you gonna do about it???????
(Sorry, there’s not much to say today)
Claudia’s Big Bad Year of Doing Stuff
So.
I have things I want to accomplish this year.
To help keep track of them (and to allow for a reflection on progress later), I’ll list them here. Note that this list may update as the year goes on AND that these things are in no particular order.
THING #1: Apply for tenure
The obvious big one. I can’t get tenure this year (the application process goes from May – May), but I can get my application in and hope I get tenure next year.
THING #2: Take at least two French classes through the Continuing Education program
One class is currently in progress; I’d like to take another either in the spring semester or the fall semester.
THING #3: Run a marathon
Preferably an “official” one (like the Calgary Marathon) and preferably in person, but who knows with COVID. I’d at least like to run the distance at some point.
THING #4: Beat last year’s walking/running distance
I guess is kinda sorta a New Year’s resolution, but I’m putting it here anyway.
THING #5: Go to a Coldplay concert
I love Coldplay. Being able to actually see them live would be SO FREAKING COOL. I’m putting this on here so that I don’t try to back out, assuming (again) that COVID is manageable via masking, etc.
THING #6: Do at least one full story revision
I’m partway through a big revision right now (I’ve got a lot to go, haha); I’d like to be able to do at least one full revision to make the story more cohesive and better overall.
THING #7: Apply for Canadian citizenship
I’m finally eligible for it now, so let’s goooooooooo
That’s it for now! We’ll see how it goes.
McNeil!!!
YAY!
Four-year, $50 million extension with the Mets!
Awesome. I hope I get to see him play in person someday.
Oops, we did it again!
So first item of interest: MORE COLDPLAY TICKETS! Got up early to treadmill so I could run over to my compy as soon as the queue option became available. Got tickets for the newly-created Saturday show, which will be a lot easier for us to get to than the Friday one. Now all I have to do is sell the Friday tickets and we’re good.
The second item of interest: while waiting for and purchasing said Coldplay tickets, I started to feel a little crappy. Nothing too bad – just some shivers and some general blah. I thought I was just excited for Coldplay, and when I said this to Nate he joked that maybe I was feeling bad because we’d run the humidifier overnight and, given our poor track record of keeping it clean, maybe it was infested with whatever bacteria/mold that made us sick the last two times.
But no way, right? Surely we had been taking better care of the humidifier after TWO incidents of the same sickness from previous gross tanks. Plus, this time we hadn’t let the water sit in it for an entire summer. So there was no chance there was another crop of bacteria in there, right?
RIGHT????
I go to school and feel like absolute ass all day (and ended up puking with a mask on, that’s a fun experience). Then I get home and Nate tells me that he was also feeling the same sickness he’d felt the last times we’d screwed up the humidifier. His was delayed because he’d been in the bedroom/back room all day, whereas I’d slept in and exercised in the same room as the humidifier.
So yeah. We did it again.
A
THIRD
TIME
What the hell is wrong with us?
I think I’m going to start calling the humidifier-induced sickness “Fauxvid,” since the symptoms are so similar to COVID.
We’re responsible adults, we are.
Uh…
Why…why is my middle toe so red?
Is it dying?
(It’s probably dying)
Toe, if you’re dying, I need you to move to the left foot. That’s where all the dying toes go.
K THANKS
Well that was a distressing dream
So y’all remember Captain Planet, right? My chill and completely non-murderous succulent plant?
Well last night I dreamt I took him out of his little water catcher plastic thingy and a huge mass of roots broke through the bottom of his pot. Nate’s watching this and I tell him, “I bet all those cramped roots are painful!” and as I say this the roots start bending upwards and growing up the outside of the pot.
Before I can react, one of the thick roots basically rips off the end of my fingertip and starts going inside my finger. And it’s SUPER PAINFUL and SUPER BLOODY and I start freaking out because I can feel the root going up my hand and arm via one of my veins.
I start telling (or screaming to) Nate that it hurts and that we need to call an ambulance because I’m pretty sure once the root gets to my heart it’ll strangle the muscle and it will die, but Nate’s pretty calm about all of this and basically says that we don’t need an ambulance for this kind of thing.
I woke up before the dream got too gruesome, but there was a lot of blood and a lot of pain and I seemed to know in the dream that I was going to die no matter what happened.
So that’s fun.
MOVE OVER, SWIFTIES
CLAUDIA’S BUYING COLDPLAY TICKETS
I got up early to get my miles in so I could be in the ticket queue as early as possible. I’ve never bought tickets for anything like this before, so I was nervous about the process. But we got tickets!
I have no idea if the location will be ideal or not, but the floor tickets were already sold out once I got the option to pick (I don’t know if I’d do the floor anyway; I’m short and fighting my way to the very edge of the stage sounds stressful if they just let us all in at once), but I think based on how I’ve seen their show setup in other venues, this should be good.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
“Trains are blameless, holy creatures.”
I’m sorry, I’m sure I’ve posted this vid in some form or another on here, but it’s 4 AM, I’ve had sugar, and this is the most hysterical thing in the world right now.
“My earlobes WON’T STOP GROWING!” and “I’m gonna go throw myself in the thresher!” are lines that just randomly pop into my head sometimes.
GET THEE TO SOME SENNHEISERS
AND LISTEN TO THIS
I’ve posted this on here several times, but today was the first time I’ve listened to it with my Sennheisers (I know, can you believe it?) and it’s even better.
Pavarotti was ridiculous.
ZOMG
ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG COLDPLAY IS GOING TO BE IN VANCOUVER IN THE FALL
I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED TO BE THERE
Tickets are on sale Friday. I’m going to be as close to the front of the virtual line as is possible.
I LOVE Coldplay. I have always wanted to see them in person. This is AWESOME.
Connor
This morning, I found out that someone from my high school passed away due to an accident.
I think this is the first person we’ve lost from our graduating class.
He had other medical issues that likely contributed to the accident, but it’s still wild to think about someone from my class is gone. We weren’t friends friends, but I certainly knew him from band.
RIP, Connor. You were a good dude.
Elliptical
It’s interesting how difficult it is to express such a (visually) simple shape.
THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY, I’M BUSY!
I’m the next Steve Jobs, yo
So this is a fun little doodad that lets you design an iPhone. You can give it a try, but I seriously doubt your design can be better than mine. Check out this bad boy:
And the back:
If your smartphone doesn’t have a handle on it, is it really a smartphone?????
???
??
?
????????
Brrthday Brr
So it’s been pretty well established over the years that it’s always very cold on my birthday up here in Calgary.
I mean, of course it is, my birthday’s in the winter. But I mean in comparison to the days surrounding my birthday, the birthday day itself is always quite a bit colder than the other days.
And it looks like that’s going to be the case this year, too:
That’s hilarious. There’s a DELIBERATE TEMPERATURE DIVE approaching February 2nd, then it goes back up again.
H I L A R I O U S
ALLO THERE
This is really interesting.
I can definitely see this in a lot of the books I read.
Boom, boom, boom, boom / Please get out of my room
So in yesterday’s blog (which like only two of you readers have access to because you know my super secret password LOLOLOLOL), I mentioned that one of my biggest pet peeves is when people misquote TV shows, movies, songs, etc.
I wanted to elaborate on that.
I think this is such a pet peeve of mine because for whatever reason, my one skill in life is being able to remember dialogue for movies/TV shows (and lyrics from songs) as if the movie/TV show/song was just being replayed in my head. I’ve mentioned this in a past blog, but when I was a kid, I frequently had trouble hearing/understanding what characters were saying but could remember the cadence, inflection, and rhythm of their speech. As I grew older, I think my ability to remember these features combined with an improved ability to understand the words themselves and just made it so that all those components fused the words right into my brain.
Like…when I say I can recite some movies word for word from beginning to end, I mean it. I could recite a number of Brian Regan’s routines word for word, too (just ask my mom, hahaha), along with accurate cadence, tone, inflection, etc.
So I think this is such a pet peeve because I have trouble understanding how others could not have this level of recall. If you get a word wrong, the whole cadence is off, and can’t you notice that???
It’s not anything I’d confront anyone over, of course – this is SUPER trivial and SUPER dumb – but it’s just something that rubs me the wrong way. Most of the time I don’t say anything, either, because it’s just not worth the confrontational effort.
Anyway.
(I also like to use this as an excuse as to why I have no sense of direction. The part of my brain that’s responsible for keeping track of where I am in space is occupied instead by the scripts to Mystery Men, Apollo 13, and a whole bunch of other movies/TV shows/songs.)
Yo
These are the BEST NAANS IN THE WORLD!
They’re so soft and floury. If you’re ever in Canada (or anywhere else they sell these, haha), grab them. Nom them. Ascend.
I knew it!
I’m pretty sure my cycle was (is?) affected, and I don’t know if I’d call it “temporary.” I think it’s been different ever since I got the first vaccine.
This article talks about delayed cycle starts; mine is starting earlier it seems, though my time between periods has always been a little shorter than average. And I don’t think mine has gotten heavier – just…different.
Anyway.
Song
So I don’t consider myself a Swiftie, but I really like Cardigan. It’s such a sad and beautiful song. It’s got such a specific feeling of melancholy to it. That piano is haunting.
Progress!
I have now printed and received twelve years of my blogs. That’s May 2006 to April 2018. I’m still formatting the later years, but I really do hope to get a complete hard copy at some point. I think that would be really cool (assuming I have the shelf space, haha).
Anyway.
Eigenblogger 