THIS IS FASCINATING AND BEAUTIFUL AND IT IS NOW MY DESKTOP WALLPAPER
Holy fucking shit.
What you’re seeing here are cell-like regions of the sun’s plasma that result from the turbulent motions of hot plasma rising to the surface of the sun, cooling, and sinking again. This process of convection affects the sun’s magnetic fields, which can lead to solar storms if the fields get tangled enough.
For perspective, note that each of those “cells” is about the size of Texas.
Isn’t this beautiful, though, seriously? I love it so much.
BLOG THE BLOG OF AGES!!!!!
I wish I would have started blogging earlier.
Having a written record of the last 13+ years of my life is super cool; imagine how much cooler it would be if it was the last 18 years of my life. Or 20. Or 25.
I would have a record of all my high school shenanigans.
I would have a record of junior high and how much of my time was spent stalking Lead.
I would have a record of getting my appendix removed.
I would have a record of all the elementary school nonsense and fun, including (possibly) coos.
A lot of changes and transitions have happened in my life since I started blogging, but I definitely missed a lot of important (and unimportant) shifts and changes by waiting until I was 18 to start keeping record.
‘Tis sad. But it’s better than having nothing, I guess.
List it! List it goooooood!
- I’m digging having short hair again. It is so much easier to wash, style, and deal with. Also, when I brush it back a bit I get serious Claude vibes, which gives me the happies.
- Hahahahaha.
- Now this is the kind of Buzzfeed quiz I can get behind.
Goddammit I’m stochastic calculus. That stochastic methods class I took my last semester at U of I was the hardest freaking class I’ve ever taken. - I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this on my blog before, but for whatever reason it showed up in my “Recommended For You” list the other day and now I can’t get it out of my head.
“What the shit ass Christ were we even talking about?” is a great line.
- Oh my god this makeup is gorgeous.
THAT IS THE END
Product review: Phoozy
So I want to do a little product review for you all today. As I’m sure you’re aware, ever since I started making walking a “serious business” sort of thing, I’ve used the iTreadmill app on my iPod to track my steps/mileage/calories burned/etc. I started doing so on an old iPod touch.
But due to years of use and several winters during which he was exposed to very cold temperatures for very long walks, his battery eventually crapped out to the point where even during the summer, he couldn’t last a full 15-mile walk. So a few years ago I upgraded to the next gen iPod Touch.
I’ve tried to be more protective of his battery, especially in the winter. During winter walks, I’ve kept him in a plastic baggie in my pocket and did my best to cup my glove around him to protect him from the cold and wind (I think the wind really zaps the battery life).
Over Christmas break, I decided to go on Amazon and see if there were any products designed specifically for insulating cellphones (and/or iPods) against cold weather. Turns out that most products of this sort are mainly designed to protect cellphones from too much heat/sun, but are also supposed to work in the cold.
I searched around for a bit before I found a reasonably-priced product that had a few good reviews discussing its performance in cold weather, so I decided to buy it.
It’s called Phoozy and it looks like this (iPod for scale):
And it really makes a difference. It’s been cold as all hell up here ever since I got back from Moscow, but with this little insulator, my iPod can make it all the way through a 15-mile walk without needing a recharge (I used to have to stop in the one heated public bathroom I pass on my walks to give my iPod a few minutes of charge in order to get it through a winter walk).
So that’s pretty freaking awesome. It’s too bad I wasn’t doing this from the start, but hopefully this will help preserve the battery life I have left.
YAY!
AAAAAAAA I DON’T HAVE A TITLE AAAAAAAAA
If you saw a dog locked in a hot car, what would you do?
If it was a car parked in front of a shop/store/whatev, I’d probably go see if I could find the owner (as long as the dog wasn’t in too much visible distress). Then I’d call the cops and, if necessary, break a window to save the dog.
Is it easy for you to accept help when you need it?
Help is for SUCKERS
Have you ever been in a fashion show?
Haha, nope.
Would you like to be famous?
Can I be famous without having to deal with constant paparazzi? Then yes.
What is your most compulsive habit?
We’re not going to go there, huh?
What do you most strive for in your life: accomplishment, security, love, power, excitement, knowledge, or something else?
Knowledge, I’d say.
How close and warm is your family?
They’re pretty good I suppose. My mom and I are super close.
Does that fact that you have never done a thing before increase or decrease its appeal to you?
Depends on what it is. Bungee jumping? Never done it before, but I have no desire to. Get a tattoo? Never done it before, but getting one sounds coolio.
If your friends start belittling a common acquaintance, would you defend that person?
I’d like to think I’d do better with this now than I used to.
Do you make a special effort to thank someone who does you a favor? How do you react when you aren’t thanked for going out of your way for someone?
I try to. If I do someone a small favor I don’t really mind if they don’t say “thank you,” but if I did something relatively big for them, it irks me a bit, yeah.
Since adolescence, in what 3-year period do you feel you experienced the most personal growth and change?
2007-2010. I don’t know about personal growth, but I really feel like this was my own personal little “Age of Enlightenment” era (especially 2007) because holy damn my knowledge of the world exploded.
When you do something ridiculous, how much does it bother you to have other people notice it and laugh at you?
A lot.
Do you believe in capital punishment?
Yes.
Do you find it so hard to say “no” that you regulalry do favors you do not want to do?
Yes.
The WORST Things for Sale?
Ahem, I think you mean the best things for sale.
I’d buy like half of this stuff. ‘Cause I’m classy like that.
Bubble poppin’ for DAYS (literally)
A…um…healing pyramid? Yeah, sure.
Why eat ovoid eggs when you can make ‘em square and thus 1000% cooler?
If anyone on this planet would have neon green toilet paper, it would be me.
(Ah shit, I just accidentally added this to my shopping cart. Preparing for onslaught of Amazon recommending me nothing but toilet paper for the next century.)
Accidentally ditch your SD card feeding a parking meter! GENIUS!!
Did some guy steal your SD-containing nickel? STAB ‘EM IN THE NECK WITH YOUR OTHER SPECIAL NICKEL!
Now I’m just imagining a pocket full of change where not a single coin is actually viable currency but one of these weird novelty coin-like…things.
Idaho
I’m feeling super homesick today for whatever reason.
That’s not an uncommon occurrence; every once and a while I just really miss Moscow.
Anyway, during my usual Reddit browsing this evening, I came across a post on the r/Idaho subreddit asking about songs that featured Idaho. A lot of them were pretty good, but my favorites have to be “Idaho” by Reckless Kelly and “Idaho” by Gregory Alan Isakov. Crying happened.
Idaho may be a backwards, Republican, redneck haven, but it’s my home and I miss it.
More Sunshine
If I haven’t yet convinced you that Sunshine is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, mind-wrenching movie, give this a watch and see if it does it for you.
It really is a wonderful movie (with the most beautiful score).
It’s AQUARIUS SEASON
Eminem is 47 years old.
Eminem just released a new surprise album, Music to be Murdered By.
One of the songs, “Godzilla,” features some of the fastest rapping I’ve ever heard. Check it:
Apparently in that fastest verse (starting at 2:57), he’s rapping 10.65 syllables per second. That’s ridiculous.
Eminem’s still got it.
I’M SORRY, WHAT?
A cover of a Coldplay song with brass (and saxes)? Sign me up.
This sounds so freaking cool.
Sorry, that’s all I’ve got today.
Well, hell.
YOOOOOOOOOOOO so I botched up my leg again.
Or rather, my ankle/heel?
I think I must have pulled/strained something down there while walking on the treadmill these past few days. I suspect I take much wider/longer strides on the treadmill than I do when I’m outside. Thus, since I’ve had to spend every freaking day this past week on the treadmill (due to the fact that the outside temp = death), I think I just messed it up through the repetitive unnatural stride.
So that’s great.
It’s not nearly as bad pain-wise as whatever I did to my leg/knee in 2017, but it definitely hurts. Now that I’m able to walk outside, maybe if I go slow(er) with my natural stride, it’ll just kind of self-correct and get back to normal on its own.
I’ve already been to the doctor once in the past year; my quota has been used up.
Edit: I got coolio prescription sunglasses now, though, so at least that’s snazzy. How do I look?
More Zodiac Nonsense Crappola I DON’T EVEN CARE
I feel like EIGHT LEVELS OF GARBAGE today because my brain is phenomenal at taking really good news and turning it into sadness.
So here’s some more zodiac sillies, ‘cause screw it all.
That Aquarius/Sagittarius one at 8:13 really got me laughing, haha. I was not expecting that at all.
BONGATHON
I’m sorry, this is pretty serious, but I can’t get over the phrase “Big Ben’s bong.” That sounds like a weird British hipster band or the name of a weed shop and I’m not sure which one would be more appropriate.
Also, his proper name is Large Benjamin, get it right.
(Sorry, not a lot going on right now.)
SO FREAKING COLD
Oh my god, Calgary, fucking why?
I hate this so much. And the whole week is going to be like this. Remember last February’s month-long deep freeze? This isn’t supposed to last as long, but it’s definitely going to be colder than last February.
Gross.
*Ridiculously Excited Screeching*
OH MY GOD YOU GUYS.
OH MY GOD.
Let me tell you about my day today.
So as I’m sure you’re all aware (if you read my blog, at least), I am currently in a limited-term contract at the U of C, which I just got last August after being a sessional (semester-by-semester) instructor since 2016. This limited-term contract is good through this coming August (2020).
I’m sure you’re also all aware that my dream is to have this job as my career for the rest of my life, so I’ve been really trying to let the higher-ups know that I would basically do anything to keep teaching here.
Anyway, Alberta just made some huge cuts to education, which will affect the U of C in some sort of negative way. We’re not sure how bad it will be yet as the University has not yet released its new budget, but we know it will be a cut from what we’ve got going on so far.
So you can imagine that when our department head emailed me and said he wanted to talk to me today, I was immediately like “oh fuck, here we go, he’s going to tell me they can’t renew/extend my limited-term contract after August and he’s just giving me a heads up.”
Nope.
That’s not what happened.
Want to know what happened instead?
He said that they’re going to be converting my limited-term position into a tenure-track position.
A
TENURE-
TRACK
POSITION.
Do you know what that means? That means that I’ll be able to go up for a tenure review and possibly become a tenured professor. Tenure is basically the supreme job security level.
Tenure is permanence.
And they feel like I’ve earned the right to apply for it.
W H A T .
I don’t think I’ve completely wrapped my head around this yet. This is a huge step towards what I’ve been wanting ever since I started teaching back in 2012. This is the university basically saying “we like you and need you and have confidence in your abilities.”
This is a huge, huge deal to me.
I’m so freaking excited.
FREAKING BRRR
Yeah, it’s that cold here. -30 Celsius is -22 Fahrenheit for my ‘Murican bros.
Fun fact: I have always found “Celsius” way harder to spell than “Fahrenheit.”
2020 Will Be My Bitch
I’m calling it right now.
I am going to work hard this year. I am going to get what I want. I am going to get what I deserve. Nothing is going to stand in my way.
Edit from mid-April: okay, okay, 2020 is COVID-19’s bitch. I concede. But on a personal level, this year’s actually going pretty well so far, too. I’m still sad and angry and hate myself on a cellular level, but at least I’m accomplishing my goals.
…right?
I’m Yogi Bear, Bitch!
So guess what video popped up in my “Recommended” list on YouTube?
God this gave me flashbacks of 2008 when all we did was quote Ebeeto’s videos. I remember Sean, Aaron, Lanky, and myself just randomly shouting “SOLID!” all the freaking time.
Party.
Here’s part 2 in case you need to see how it ends.
And the infamous Yogi Bear one.
LOL THE BLOGS ARE CAUGHT UP
Freaking finally. It’s been literal years, I think.
As always, I’m going to give you all the empty promise that I’m going to do better in my posting habits, but…yeah right, right?
You know the drill.
Waiter! There’s some freezing over in my hell!
Me: Yay, it’s good to be back in Calgary. Hello, Calgary!
The temperature, as it tanks over the next few days:
Seriously, though, what is this madness?
That first line of temps contains the “highs” and the second line contains the “feels like” temperatures. And yes, those are in Fahrenheit.
It’s supposed to warm up starting next weekend, but that’s exactly how last February was supposed to start. Instead, it was this madness all month.
I don’t know if I can do that again.
In This Blog: Claudia’s Jet-Setting Suitcase Says “Screw You” to Cold Temperatures and Goes to California Instead
Today, I went from Moscow/Pullman (PUW) to Seattle (SEA) to Calgary (YYC).
My suitcase, however, did not. It went from Moscow/Pullman (PUW) to Los Angeles (LAX) to Calgary (YYC).
????
Luckily, my nine-hour layover in Seattle meant that my suitcase still got to Calgary before I did, despite its little adventure.
I like Sea-Tac; I’ve spent a decent proportion of my life there. It’s a nice airport. Nine hours, though, is a little too long of a layover. At least I got a lot of semester prepping done and still had time to walk around a little bit.
Hoorah.
The 5,000th Blog
Back when I was in high school, MySpace was the big, cool thing that all the big, cool people were getting into. I was not a big, cool person, but a few of my friends were convinced I was. Specifically, my friends Aneel and E’raina were very insistent that I join them in being big and cool by getting a MySpace account.
So on May 1st, 2006, I finally did.
If you don’t remember MySpace very well, one feature it had was the ability to make blog posts on one’s MySpace page. Once I got my account on May 1st, 2006, I decided to post my very first blog post as well, joking that I’d try to blog daily, but would likely only last in this routine for a month or two.
May 1st, 2006 was exactly 5,000 days ago. 5,000 days ago I made my first blog post. Today, I am making my 5,000th blog post.
That’s more than 13 years of daily blogging. To put that in a slightly different perspective, when I started blogging, I was 18 years old. Now I’m almost 32. I started blogging before I even had my high school diploma; now I’m an instructor at a university.
That’s pretty freaking cool.
Also, sometime along the way, I made it a goal to blog daily for 10,000 days. That means today is finally my halfway point to that goal! Awesome.
(Sorry, I’m excited.)
Here’s to another 5,000 blog posts!
MY FREAKING HAIR
So now that my hair has had the chance to be its usual horrible self with this new haircut, I think it looks terrible. So I went to Great Clips tonight and got those front thingies chopped off.
Now it looks like this.
Improvement?
Another Weird January Dream
So remember a couple days ago when I mentioned that my brain likes to fire off a fair number of weird, vivid, memorable dreams near the start of the year? Here’s another one for you!
In last night’s dream, I actually am not sure if I was part of the thing I was dreaming about or just watching it on TV. That part I can’t remember. But the rest of it I can, so we’re just going to say that I was watching this on TV in the dream, because it was a TV show I was dreaming about. Specifically, it was the show 7th Heaven. If you’re not familiar with the show, it ran from 1996-2007 and was heavy-handed with lots of Christian themes. It focused on the family of Reverend Camden, which consisted of his wife Annie and like nine kids, and their Wacky Christian Adventures. One such adventure, for example, was the Rev finding a blunt in the house and going berserk “I WILL DRUG TEST THE LOT OF YOU HEATHENS” on the kids because he wanted to know which one brought the Devil’s Grass into their holy house.
It was a…weird show.
Anyway. In the dream I am watching(?) 7th Heaven on TV and in the episode, one of the Camden kids has befriended some other kid (he’s like…eight? Nine?) and have brought him home to hang out with him. This kid is like perfect: no hair out of place, perfect clothes, perfect speech an annunciation, perfect response to everything that he is asked—and as the episode goes on, I think to myself in the dream that I remembered this episode from having seen it before. Specifically, the “big twist” is that this kid is actually Jesus.
Yup. Literal, actual Jesus, disguised as a nine-year-old kid.
The episode cuts to this scene where JesusKid is finishing the last book in a huge bookshelf of novels and one of the Camden kids – I think it’s Matt – says something like, “there’s no way you could have read all those books so quickly. You’d have to be some sort of divine being to have done that.”
(Subtle.)
Jesus Kid just smiles, and Matt takes one of the books and says “Okay, fine. But I’m going to read along with you just to make sure you’re reading them all like you say you are.”
Cut to a different part of this bizarre 7th Heaven universe: a farm. There’s a mother and a daughter out working in a field when the mother jumps up and starts freaking out about one of their sheep escaping its pen and going over to the Camden’s field. Now I’m pretty sure that in real life 7th Heaven, the Camdens lived in town, as they lived in a church-owned house that somehow held the Rev, the wife, and their massive brood. But in the dream, I guess they lived on a farm…?
Anyway, the mother and daughter start absolutely freaking out, because I guess there is some sort of giant pond between their farm and the Camdens’ and the sheep was in danger of drowning in the pond.
Cut back to Jesus Kid. Using what I’m assuming is his God-bestowed sixth sense, he suddenly seems to realize the sheep is in trouble, and he jumps up and runs out to the fields, much to the confusion of Matt and everyone else.
He bolts to the pond as fast as he can and sees the sheep drowning near the middle of the pond. Then – I kid you not – he just calmly walks on the pond water out to the sheep. He touches the sheep, which grants it the ability to walk on water as well, and the two return to the Camden side of the pond.
So, walking on water: obviously a Jesus thing, right? But the Camdens don’t make that connection. They chalk the whole thing up to an optical illusion (???) and are just happy that the sheep is safe.
Jesus Kid, meanwhile, waits until everyone is busy doting over the sheep, then disappears into the ether with a weird little halo glow about his head.
Then the episode is over.
I literally had to Google “7th Heaven Jesus episode” when I woke up this morning, because while I was sure that no episode exactly like the one in my dream existed, I was convinced that there was some episode where the kids meet Jesus without even knowing it.
There’s not.
7th Heaven creator Brenda Hampton, I am disappoint.
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