Friday, November 25, 2011

List Series: Pleasant Sounds

A basketball hitting pavement
A shovel scraping against the pavement and through a foot of heavy snow
Small zippers
Cloth rustling against cloth
A knife passing through a juicy apple
My new keyboard with its cover on when I’m thoughtfully typing slowly and without too much pressure
Skin brushing against skin
Coffee beans pouring
Scooping ground coffee beans with a plastic spoon scoop
Water trickling through a small brook or a water feature
The new carts rolling through Target
The fan whooshing noise of the TNG Enterprise
Steady rainfall on trees, wood, plants
Seismic charges in Star Wars episode 2
British people saying "luv" as a term of endearment

List Series: Annoyances


Jack Johnson
Lack of oral hygiene
Facebook posts like “I have the best girlfriend ever”
Kissing profile pictures
Caring what race you date/marry/have babies with
Anti-gay marriage
Anti-cross dressing
Afraid of sexuality
Too much in the way of PDAs
Girls who dress like Kim Kardashian
Men in leather thong flip flops, a loose polo, and khaki shorts who haven’t showered in days
Axe body spray
Old school pink bottle Herbal Essences
Gross bathrooms
Lol cat writing or speech
Festering wounds
Condensed soup
Raw or partially cooked eggs
The smell of burning cheese
The fact that I have internal organs

List Series: Reason's Relationships Can Suck


Swapping a cold or flu back and forth
UTIs
Risk of STIs
Risk of pregnancy
Having to shave closely
Caring what underwear you’re wearing and when you last wore it
Washing the sheets more often
Having two sets of everything
Clearing out space for his stuff
Watching his shows
Listening to his music
Watching him play sports
Watching him play video games
His friends
Fights about nothing
Knowing 90% of what you talk to your friends about is him
Knowing you don’t hang out with your friends enough
How it changes things with male friends
Never having a moment to fart or pick your nose
Your period
Spending money on dates and presents
When he doesn’t get along with people you love, or they don’t like him
Beardface hair in the sink
Face stubble
The way the bathroom smells
Feeling fat or not sexy
Stressing in the beginning about how he feels about you
Are we moving to fast or not fast enough
When do you know it’s over
Is he cheating
Would I be happier with someone else
What if this is it forever

Friday, November 4, 2011

Brown Eyed Girl

While reading The Huffington Post yesterday, I came across this article about a doctor who created a procedure that turns your eyes blue.  Dr. Homer uses a laser to remove the darker pigment from the eyes which reveals a layer of blue under that.  Apparently, brown eyes actually have blue under the brown.  The article doesn't go into depth about green eyes or about if this is why many babies start out with blue eyes and then develop brown eyes as they mature. 

Luckily, Wikipedia  covers all of this.  Yes, it does seem that this related to how a baby can be born with blue eyes but grow into a brown eyed child.  The layer of pigmentation, which causes the eyes to appear brown, develops after birth and covers the blue eyes.  There are different processes that lead someone to have brown, green, blue, or any other color of eyes.  It seems possible that Dr. Homer is only able to remove the brown layer, leaving it unclear what would happen if he tried his procedure on someone with green eyes.  Huffington post explains that only 20% of people have blue eyes, but Wiki mentions that green eyes are even rarer.   

Personally, I prefer dark brown eyes.  I'd be sad to see people lining up to have their dark eyes laser-ed away. My eyes are brown.  I was born with blue eyes and they stayed that way until I was a few years old.  Then, they darkened to a hazel color about the same as my mother's eyes.  When I was in late telemetry school or early middle school they darkened yet again until they were decidedly brown with only the faintest hint of green or yellow.  They are now like a pond in the forest, deep brown with the faintest touch of pond scum here and there.  Wikipedia points out that changing eye color later than infancy is very rare and often brought on by disease or trauma (10 to 15% of people change eye color later in life) but that the most common genetic color change is from hazel to brown.  I experienced no disease or trauma.  I guess that means it was genetically motivated. 

Bottom line: I like brown eyes. My eyes are rarer than blue eyes. Dr. Homer is possibly a shallow person.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

NaNoWriMo

It's NaNoWriMo!

Who's-a-what-now?

It stands for National Novel Writing Month.  The idea being that a lot of people want to write a novel but are so daunted by the task that they never get to far.  Instead of viewing novel writing a write, edit, throw out, rewrite, cry, write some more, process, you just take one month to try to write 50,000 words.  It doesn't matter if 3/4 of those words are "poopy" copy and pasted over and over again on your screen, at least you wrote something.  By limiting time and setting a goal of word count, writers are encouraged to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and simply get words out there.  Editing can come later, plot can emerge on its own.  I think the biggest accomplishment is in showing people that it can be done, that writing lengthy works isn't an insurmountable block. 

Personally?  I'm not doing it.  While I love novels; series of novels; shows with multi-episode, multi-season story arches; and movie series, I don't consider myself to write in that fashion.  I enjoy writing in 1-5 page spans.  I've been corralled into writing longer pieces pretty much only in an academic setting.  I got though two such papers based on my own research, and I could see myself writing a book along those lines, but like many academically inclined books, the chapters would be independently sustainable with only common themes emerging between them.

Maybe when I'm older I'll be more interested in writing a novel.  However, I like the idea of doing something creative with my month.  I'm going to make more of an effort to blog, paint, craft, and read this month.  We're still a ways off from New Years, and Lent was a long time ago.  Some consider this to be the Holiday Season, but I think we can leave December as a time for family and charity and make November a time for creativity. 

Good luck to you NaNoWriMo-ers!  I look forward to reading your future novels.  Be creative, have fun, and prove to yourself that you can do it!  Happy November 1st to all!