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Monday, February 25th, 2008
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5:03 pm - Been a while.
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Met someone new with an LJ account, so wandered by. Reading myself from 4 years ago is like reading someone I just barely recognize. Fascinating.
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| Tuesday, May 4th, 2004
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3:36 pm - Painful physics joke
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For some reason, a really bad physics-based joke occurred to me while I was getting ready for work this morning:
Do people who are more normal have more friction in their lives?
Ouch; boo-hiss. But I did warn you.
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| Monday, May 3rd, 2004
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3:20 pm - Math and memory
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Came across this sentence in NY Times today:
'People with master's degrees in English still sometimes confuse "its" and "it's," which should remind us that the rules of punctuation can be as hard to remember as the Pythagorean theorem.'
I don't debate the main point of the sentence; what did surprise me was the author's example of the Pythagorean theorem as especially hard to remember. Is it really? I thought it was common knowledge by 8th grade for most people. What's so hard about "for a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two legs"? Or "a^2 = b^2 + c^2"?
Next thing you know, they'll be saying that Pascal's triangle isn't very well-known.
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| Thursday, April 29th, 2004
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8:35 am - Outside looking in
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Two people last night gave me insights into how other people see me. I was amused.
The first one asked me with whom I'd been working recently. I asked him to clarify and he said my swing-dancing felt different and wondered from whom I'd been taking private lessons. So I told him about my 3 new activities (ballet, tae kwon do, rock-climbing) and asked him which of those I felt most like. And he said ballet! Yea! Seeing as how I took ballet up precisely to learn a different way to move/dance and to improve my spins and balance, I was excited to hear it.
The second one mentioned that she'd run into a friend of mine elsewhere, and they had described me to each other as "Heather, with the medium-brown hair, kind of tall, midwesterner, with a very off-color sense of humor" and had immediate recognition. This one's funnier to me, because when I was in Texas and the rest of the Gulf Coast while on ship in winter 2001, everyone immediately knew I was from California (though I'd spent the last 1.5 years in a New York college). But when I interned in San Diego in summer 2002, people thought I was originally from New York. Now that I'm in D.C., I'm seen as a midwesterner, in that I'm "a straight-shooter," as this second person told me.
I also don't think of my humor as all THAT off-color, but perhaps I'm just spending a lot of time with people with similar humor, and so I look extreme to people with a more on-color humor.
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| Wednesday, April 28th, 2004
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11:17 am - Purpose
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Listening to the CD for the Broadway musical "Avenue Q", I was reminded of the search for a purpose in life that many people about my age experience. And then I wandered onto a webpage detailing the game, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", which I already knew about, but again it sparked my memory.
And I got to thinking about friends and how after just 4 months of knowing someone you can miss them so much, even though your life was perfectly content 5 months ago when you didn't even know they existed.
So, here're my thoughts: 1) My presence and enthusiasm for life makes my friends a little happier for having been around me; at least, they exhibit signs of joy, including laughter and smiling. 2) Happier people have a little more positive energy, which they spread to their other friends. 3) Repeat 2 a few times. 4) Ultimately, the result of my life will be the increased happiness of Kevin Bacon.
This can be applied to making the entire world a little bit happier, too, but it works better as a joke if it focuses on Mr. Bacon.
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| Friday, February 27th, 2004
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5:55 pm - Candy hearts
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I was enjoying one of my Valentine's Day presents from my family (they send me lots of lovely care packages on holidays), and it happened to be one of those small boxes of candy hearts with words on them.
Now, I remember when I first started being able to read these hearts, and they used to have gushy emotional outpourings on them, like "hug me" and "will you?" and normal St. V's Day sentiments like that. However, these days they've got all kinds of weird things written on them. For one thing, the syntax and abbreviations of instant messaging seem to have infected the message-writers, as evidenced by such phrases as "ura star" and "ur kind." These sound like weird names (whoever heard of someone named "Ura?" Though I have heard of the land of "Ur" in the Bible) to me, and indeed I've time and again confused myself by trying to pronounce them before realizing that I was meant to say the names of the letters rather than their sounds (so they're really "You are a star" and "You are kind").
Also, some of the heart's messages now have nothing to do with romance, and indeed occasionally fail to even make a statement. For instance, I just ate one that said "book club." What?! Am I supposed to meet someone -- a secret admirer, perhaps -- in book club?
My hypothesis explaining the changes in messages on the hearts is as follows: the target consumer has moved from people who will give these to their beloveds and/or significant others to schoolchildren who are forced to bring valentines to every one of their classmates, as well as to their teachers. Schoolchildren are more likely to want a variety of messages, both platonically friendly and romantic, from which to choose for each classmate (hence, the weird "book club" or the ever-popular "I like u" or the ubiquitous smiley-face). Also, the kids are the ones who've really adapted the patois of instant messaging for all of their communications, including the writing of old-fashioned letters. Thus, they feel no annoyance at the incorrect "ura star," unlike me (being the daughter of an English teacher and all).
Have the messages really changed that much in just a decade, or is it just a change in my perception that has led me to finally notice things I hadn't before?
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| Thursday, February 26th, 2004
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2:53 pm - Movies and Netflix
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When I graduated college and got my first job and suddenly had all kinds of free time again, I figured I'd start educating myself on pop culture, which I've always woefully lacked knowledge of. This lack was partially due to being raised to believe that most pop culture was evil and devil-fruit and partially due simply to a lack of caring about it. Why watch boring old television when there was a good book available or a bright sunny day outside, or models to be sculpted from clay or built from Erector sets, or whatever? It seems I have since come to enjoy the vegetative state induced by the television screen more than I used to.
I decided to begin my pursuit of pop-culture knowledge with movies and television, and then later move on to music, clothing, fads, and celebrities. To this end, I joined Netflix. I've rented over 100 movies in the last 5 months, as well as some television series on DVD. However, my mood to consume mass quantities of movies is coming to an end, especially as I've discovered my local public library and am rediscovering my love of reading, which I'd had to neglect while in college due to course load.
Oddly enough, I've found that I prefer Netflix for renting television series on DVD. With these kind of discs, one can watch for less than an hour and still get a full storyline, so I don't end up with movies lying around my apartment just waiting for me to sit down for a two-hour chunk of time simply to be able to receive my next installment of the various television series.
I guess clothing should be my next catch-up area. It's arguably the area that most affects others' perception of one's personality, but as a student it was always low on my list of priorities. It still is, in terms of actually caring about the clothes themselves (except for the odd fancy dress), but I'd like to not always look out-of-place and/or incorrectly dressed for the places I go out to.
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| Tuesday, February 24th, 2004
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4:08 pm - Long overdue
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I just realized that it's been over a month since my last post. This is not unusual for me, as my interest in things tends to be cyclic. I'll be really into writing for a week, then read like a maniac for a week, then watch movies 'til all hours, then play music and sing to the exclusion of lots of other things, then ...
Ah, well. I do keep a few things consistent throughout these cycles: swing dancing once or twice a week, for instance, and also drinking alcohol. I adore alcohol. My drink of choice runs in cycles, too; the main players are Tanqueray Ten & tonic, good Scotch (or Irish) whiskey on the rocks, Absolut screwdrivers, various wines (including sparkling/"Champagne"), and gin martinis. Though I haven't had a drink in quite a while (about a week) because of my recent dental hyjinks.
The dental joy went down (heh) as follows: Friday, February 13th, 2004, I noticed a throbbing pain in one of my teeth. As Valentine's Day weekend progressed, this pain spread down into my lower jaw and then up at the jaw joint, causing an ear-infection-type ache and sinus pain and a headache. Also, my throat below my lower jaw started swelling up. I had called for a dental appointment on Friday when I first noticed the pain, but he couldn't see me until Tuesday (Monday being a federal holiday). When I came in, he quickly diagnosed an abscess and sent me to the endodontist for a root canal. That day, the endodontist prescribed Amoxycillin and Vicoden (antibiotic and painkiller/narcotic, respectively), with directions on taking them and to come back on Friday for the actual root canal. So I floated on clouds of Vicoden haze for the next few days (quite lovely, actually) with a slight trepidation about the impending root canal, but the actual operation was very easy and arguably one of the least painful dental procedures I've ever endured (and that statement includes prophylaxis, i.e., the semiyearly cleanings); certainly it had the quickest impact of any. Immediately afterwards, I was able to open my jaw wider than I had been (it had gotten stiff when it swelled) and the pain soon began to decrease to levels that didn't require painkillers.
So anyways, all that to explain why I hadn't been drinking: alcohol and Vicoden are not meant to mix. Seeing as how liver disease runs in my family, I figured I'd take the wise course of action and follow the recommendations on that topic.
But now it's time for me to head home from work, so off I go. Think I'll mix myself a screwdriver when I get home.
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| Wednesday, January 14th, 2004
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12:28 pm - Reasons for children
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A bunch of my friends are starting to get married, and naturally they've begun discussing children. Specifically, whether or not to have them. I listen to them discussing and it begins to seem as though all their reasons to have children are inherently selfish. Some of the reasons given include:
"I want someone who will love me unconditionally"
"My biological clock is screaming"
"I want someone to pass on my knowledge; I have so much to teach"
"Someone has to carry on the family name"
All of these sound like variations on the "I want" theme to me. Should we really be bringing children into the world simply to fulfill OUR desires? What happens when that child goes through the hating-parents phase, or refuses to listen to what her parent has to say, or decides to change his name?
Maybe I'm just the product of a cult of children these days. Everyone's so concentrated on the welfare and happiness and self-actualization of children that I now can't conceive of a reason for having children that would be valid outside of having them for their own sake. Which ends up in circular reasoning because how can you do anything for their sake when they don't even exist yet? I must think some more on this matter.
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| Tuesday, January 6th, 2004
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8:13 pm - Current Domino's commercial
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Saw this vaguely amusing commercial in which a guy with a t-shirt with "Tuesday" on it whines about being the most-ignored day of the week until Domino's came along with a 2-for-the-price-of-1 special on Tuesdays. He watches forlornly as Friday and Saturday frolic. But I was thinking, what about Wednesday? I guess it's not really ignored, 'cause at least it's nicknamed "Hump Day." So then I thought, Wednesday had better be represented by a REALLY attractive human being, thus to be worthy of its nickname.
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4:12 pm - The New York lounge community
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Something that continues to fascinate me about the New York loungers is the huge amount of experiences they have, both individually and collectively. Most of us are now single, though a surprising number have been married at least once. We span a huge age range, with loungers from 18 to over 50. Some of us barely completed high school, while others have multiple doctorates. And yet we can all come together and enjoy chatting, drinking, listening to jazz/big band music, dancing, dressing well, debauching the peons, and generally hanging out. Oh yes, and good eating. And many of us savor a good cigar or cigarette regularly. The jazz music and the cocktail culture seem like such little things to be able to draw us together so strongly. Somehow I've ended up meeting 3 women who really understand my inner workings ridiculously well. Two have already been divorced while the other and I have never married, two have masters degrees while the other never attended college but has worked with an astounding number of celebrities (Nicolas Cage told her to call him "Nick"), but all three can complete my sentences (and vice versa) and seem to have developed a strong affection for me that I cannot explain through any merit of my own.
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4:04 pm - Why does job training consistently suck?
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I just returned from a grueling day-long class in "Introduction to Team Performance." The first hour especially was exceptionally long and painful. First, there was an exercise in which teams of 2 were supposed to make a win-win situation of arm-wrestling. What the heck?! I mean, I can understand getting us to think outside the box, but this class wasn't geared toward that. Then there was the old stand-in-a-circle-and-link-arms-and-now-untangle exercise. The trainer was rather nitpicky and liked to use the Socratic method. Now, I enjoy the Socratic method of teaching, but when speaking to a room full of people who clearly are not in the mood to answer the questions, the instructor wastes a LOT of time waiting for someone to speak up so that he can continue on to the next question. Usually, I'm the one who breaks the silence, simply to avoid the damn pauses. But today I was sick with a cough and sore throat, so we sat and sat and we sat. Blech. Not to mention that when I DO break the silence, everyone then sees me as chattery and waits for me to answer everything. It's kind of an all-or-nothing thing with answering questions in lectures.
current mood:  annoyed
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