Time to start hacking away at the long list of topics I want to write about. I suspect this may become a regular occurrence. :)
On my walk past the Cougareat about half an hour ago, this seven- or eight-year-old girl had her little brother on a leash. Seriously. I tried not to laugh out loud.
BYU is reopening the Jerusalem Center this fall. If only I had the $6,800… We talked about it a lot in my Judaism & the Gospel class today (seeing as my professor, Dr. Chadwick, has done a lot with it in the past). You know, travelling is something I haven’t done enough of. Time to start saving… (Aye, and there’s the rub — it’s a toss-up whether saving for a future house or saving for travel is more important. Probably the house, but I suspect there’s a best-of-both-worlds middle-of-the-road solution.)
I read some of Benjamin Franklin’s scientific letters on Saturday, about daylight saving time, the gout, why white cloth isn’t as hot as black cloth in the sunlight, using electricity as medical treatment, and several other interesting topics. I’ve decided to adopt old Ben as my namesake. (I think I was named after King Benjamin from the Book of Mormon, but I can have two namesakes, can’t I? :)) Franklin was a printer, a great innovator, and a store of wit and humor. I consider it an honor to share his name. :) (Maybe I’ll name my first son Benjamin Franklin Crowder… ;))
I discovered Moleskine notebooks on Saturday. :D Yes, that’s a super-wide smile. These are the coolest notebooks ever. I got a music one, which is basically 192 pages of beautiful staff paper in a nice black binding. Let the concertos and sonatas come forth! :)
The other night I dreamt that I was trying to take a picture of a mouse at my family’s house, and the cat walked up next to it. Now, in my dream, they had both lived with my family for a while and were peaceable and all that. So imagine my surprise when I watched the cat chomp the mouse’s neck and start chewing away. (It wasn’t bloody or anything, let me assure you.) “Um, Mom? I thought the cat and the mouse were supposed to be friends. ‘Cause the cat is now eating the mouse.” When I turned back to look at it, the cat had swallowed the mouse whole. But that’s not why I’m writing about this. The funny thing is, as soon as the cat started eating the mouse, my first thought (in my dream) was, “I’ve got to blog about this!” :)
I read Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten last week and quite enjoyed it. Not that I necessarily agree with everything he says, but a lot of it was really good, reminding me what it means to be human. I wish I could go back and be five for a day…
Last week I also started reading the dictionary. For fun. No, no, there’s no need to make a reservation for me at the psychiatric ward, I promise. :) It’s actually tremendously exciting — I’m learning all sorts of neat words like gherkin, ersatz, pendent (with an ‘e’), seraglio, and giblet. For me, words come dripping with backstory. A serape, for example, is a woolen poncho worn by Latin American men. As soon as I read that I was transported into a world of pueblo and desert, complete with sandstorms. Not that it’s all like that, but there’s so much in each word. It’s great. :)
Speaking of words, “eavesdrop” apparently comes from the water drops that fall from the eaves of a house.
I’ve noticed that I’ve become more creative since starting to wake up at 5:30. Late nights kill the muse as far as I’m concerned. (Your mileage may vary.)
The other night I was in line at Smith’s and noticed an elderly Hispanic couple come up behind me. After a short debate with myself on whether or not I should say anything, I decided to hablar some español. And it was quite fun! Granted, I didn’t understand half of what the man said back, but the effort had to count for something.
That’ll have to be it for now.
[tags]Benjamin Franklin, Moleskine, Robert Fulghum[/tags]
Comments
So, we missed you at CSLS today. But anyway . . . as regards to #7, it may not be a sign of instability, but it certainly made it onto the Geek Test, which I took yesterday, scoring 27.7%. I personally have never read the dictionary, but my sister used to do it all the time.
Also, I agree with the getting up making me feel more creative, smarter, and productive. The problem is that staying up later makes me feel more social. I want to have my cake and eat it too. Or maybe I should just find friends who have time to do things before 10 PM. :D
never actually did that with a dictionary but now encyclopedias on the other hand….
I remember reading the dictionary for a bit. I think I made it through most of the B’s. At that point I realized that as fascinating as it was to be exposed to all these words, they were largely going in and then continuing right on through, there was very little retention for me. So instead I’ve signed up with Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. This way I can get them at a more moderate pace which allows me to use that single word in the day and own it better. Plus it comes with a really cool blurb on the history of the word!
Travelling is something everyone needs to do in their lives. It’s so easy to get caught up in one’s little community that one forgets there are other people out there with differing beliefs and values and culture. It really opens the mind. I’m a much different (and I’d hope better) person from just going to Europe for two and a half weeks on a blitz tour. Exposure to all of the different cultures and people, even if it was just a tourist’s view, really broadened my mind and made me look at the world and its workings in new ways.
The problem is it is costly. At this point, if you’re stuck with choosing to save for a house or travel, there isn’t going to be a happy medium for now. What with the explosive (and I believe unmaintainable) growth of the housing market, acquiring a home is only going to get more and more expensive as time goes on, no matter where you choose to live. Of course, the housing bubble might burst pretty soon so owning a home would drop on the priority list a bit providing you a reprieve, but you’ll almost certainly have to give up travelling for a few years if you want a home, unless you can be certain you’ll be lucky enough to have a well paying job.
Throw in your two cents