For 48 Hours Only!

Normally I don’t advertise that I’ve added content to my astronomy blog.  It’s a locked blog, so it doesn’t make sense.  However, in honor of the super-cool events in the sky this week, I unlocked the blog for the next 2 days so people can read this entry if they’d like:

Comet Watching

On the Merits (Or Lack Thereof) of Lent

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every Friday as a sort-of exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Topic: LENT

Ah, Lent.

To quote a friend, “Catholics really got the short end of the stick on that one.”

I can say that, because I was raised in a fully Catholic household, and can say unequivocally that Catholics really do get the short end of whatever stick we’re talking about when it comes to Lent.

I will back up.  Lent begins on Ash Wednesday (which is today) and continues for approximately 40 days until Easter Sunday.  The point of Lent is to, a) remind us of Jesus’ sacrifice for 40 days and nights in the desert and b) to have each of us learn self-sacrifice.  I’m over-simplifying, but I think that gives the gist of what Lent is about.  The self-sacrifice bit is primarily accomplished through a combination of fasting, (I know everyone has heard, “No meat on Fridays!”) and giving up something important to you, something that is difficult to give up. 

I was an active participant in the whole Lenten observation thing for all of my childhood and part of my adolesence.  One year, around the age of ten, I gave up chocolate for Lent.  That’s hard for a little kid.  Do you have any idea how many cookies and candies and cakes and drinks involve chocolate?  A lot.  Especially when you’re ten.  That was a glorious Easter morning – I probably ate three Cadbury Creme Eggs before breakfast.  My parents, especially my mom, always made a point of encouraging the whole giving-something-up-for-Lent extravaganza.  But when I hit the middle of high school and started thinking a bit more for myself about religion and religious customs, I began to feel like Lent was a bit… dumb.

I still feel that way.  So I don’t do Lent.  To be honest, I don’t buy into organized religion in general, which is probably a separate blog, but I especially don’t buy into Lent.  To me, there is no reason given in the Bible for giving things like meat and chocolate up.  That is something the Church imposed on us, probably for economic reasons, a thousand years ago.  And I never once felt anything remotely spiritual as a result of sacrificing for Lent.  I felt exactly the opposite.  The teachers and priests and my parents could explain it all they wanted, but I always felt like it was just mean and… well, dumb.  The short end of the stick, if you will.

The only value I see in the season of Lent is that it gives people a reason to celebrate Mardi Gras, and it makes McDonald’s drop the price on Filet-O-Fish sandwiches.   So while Lent is not for me, I do hope the people who feel there is value to Lenten sacrifice continue to do what they are doing.  I am always looking for a good reason to pig out on spicy foods, or on delicious greasy fried fish.

Whitney wrote a blog about her take on Lent.  You can check it out here.

For a Friend

Before I started the job I have now, I worked for OptiCare for several years.  While I loathed that job, I met a lot of fantastic people as a result of working there.  One of those people passed away suddenly last Thursday: Rod Smith.

Rod was the lead optician in the office I worked in – he and I were basically partners.  He was a good person, and his death is shocking.  I’m having trouble finding the proper words to memorialize the Rod I knew, so I am hopeful the link to his obituary listed above is at least adequate.

You Can’t Be Mad About the Past

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every Friday as a sort-of exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

To Regret, Or Not To Regret? That Is the Question.

I’m sorry to make an immediate Harry Potter reference, but I feel it’s necessary.  In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Dumbledore tells Harry the following:

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

Dumbledore is very wise. 

Occasionally I have moments of profound introspection about my life.  This in and of itself is not profound or unusual - the more I talk to my friends, the more I realize we all seem to do this from time to time.  I always smile to myself after I’ve had one of these moments, because the cliche really is true: hindsight is 20/20.  There are loads of things I’ve done or choices I’ve made that if I had known then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have done things the same way.  Again, not really a profound conclusion to reach. 

But do I regret anything?

My answer to that question historically has been ‘no.’  I think what we do with our lives ,and the experiences we have as the result of our decisions, make us who we are.  I would not be me if I hadn’t made mistakes and learned from them, or not learned from them.  And I think the same is true for everyone. 

So imagine my surprise over this past weekend when I found myself admitting that I regret something.  I will not bore you with the details of the thought process that led to this particular revelation – suffice it to say, I was thinking about college and courses and why I took what I took.  And it hit me: I went to an amazing college, and it took me until my final year or so there to truly take advantage of the opportunities that afforded me. 

So here it is: I truly regret not having pushed myself harder to try some of everything while I was at William and Mary.

I could have learned multiple languages – when I was there they offered about ten.  Instead, I took one semester of Russian and then wussed out and switched to Spanish so I could be done with my foreign language requirement.  I am kicking myself for that now.  I could have taken physics and therefore been eligible to apply to graduate programs in astrophysics, but instead I chose to only take biology and chemistry because that was the bare minimum required for my major.  Williamsburg is in a fantastic spot for really digging into (haha – Whitney, do you appreciate my play on words?) America’s past, but I avoided all courses that involved any type of work outside the classroom.  And if I hadn’t been so busy messing around, I would have switched majors much earlier and I would have been able to go on a major Alvin cruise with my eventual advisor – who took her entire lab with her on that cruise and made sure every student got to go down in Alvin to the hydrothermal vent sites at least once.  I missed that by only a year. 

So, while I know I did what I did for a reason, and that dwelling on the past is never good, I have to say I regret the way I handled my undergraduate experience.  I can never get it back, and that makes me sad. 

If you want to read Whitney’s take on regret, check out her blog here.

This. Is. Cool.

I was linked to this by DailyCandy:

http://www.blacktomato.co.uk/experiences/action+time/journey+to+the+centre+of+the+earth

I think this is awesome, and I must do it before 40… maybe even before 30.

Patronus Quest

It’s Friday! Collective blogging day!

In case you don’t remember, this is an experiment my good friend Whitney and I are doing. Each week we come up with a topic to blog about, and then we write separate blogs on the topic. It’s a test to see how different our takes on certain things really are, and if we’d be successful writing a novel in this way for NaNoWriMo 2009.

This week’s topic: What Type of Patronus Would You Have?

OK. I realize I may have just lost a bunch of people. What exactly is this patronus thing you speak of, you might be wondering. To that I say this: you really need to read the Harry Potter series. It’s wonderful, and you are missing out by not reading it. But this post is not about the merits of Harry Potter, and I don’t want to digress too much.

Patronus: the result of the charm Expecto Patronum, a conjured protector that takes on the silvery, ethereal, semi-transparent form of an animal. The animal always has special significance to the conjurer (examples: Harry’s Patronus is a stag, which is the same as his deceased father’s; Dumbledore’s Patronus is a phoenix, which is symbolic of his pet phoenix, Fawkes.) These are especially useful for getting rid of dementors.

Did I lose you? Damn.

Dementors: soul-sucking bad guys in the wizarding world. They are initially presented as the guardians of the wizarding prison Azkaban, but as the books progress they join the evil Lord Voldemort and attack witches and wizards who are against their cause.  Dementors feed on happiness and good feelings, forcing their victims to relive their worst memories.  A Patronus cannot feel the devastating effects of a dementor and is therefore the ideal shield against a dementor attack.

The form your Patronus takes is incredibly symbolic. It is a direct reflection of y0u, your life, and your feelings – in some ways your Patronus is the very essence of who you are. It can reflect your true love (as in the case of Snape), your family (like Harry), and/or many other aspects of your personality. As such, a whole bunch of quizzes exist to try to help you determine what your Patronus would look like if you were a witch or a wizard.

When Whitney and I decided to write about this topic, I took a bunch of those quizzes. I was left completely dissatisfied. They told me I’d have things like a wolf, or a bear, or a deer, or an otter. I didn’t agree with any of them. Then I noticed that some of the quizzes are actually links to websites that talk about animal spirits and other new age, spiritual items.

I’m not really so much with the animal spirits and totems, if I’m being honest. I have trouble with the concept of animal energy and vortex power and crystal healing. Not for me.  This created a problem for me, because I still had not come up with anything I felt comfortable embracing as my Patronus.

Then, on a whim, I looked up what these websites have to say about flamingos. I have thought flamingos were the greatest thing since sliced bread my entire life. My parents tell me it probably has something to do with the teething ring I had as a baby – it was in the shape of a bird with one stubby little foot, and it was pink.  I don’t know if there’s anything to that, but I can tell you that flamingos have always been my favorite thing to see at the zoo.  And I took my fascination seriously – I posed for pictures in front of the flamingo exhibit on one leg proudly anytime I could.  Everyone in my life has at some point given me a gift that involves flamingos.  And the icing on the flamingo cake: my one tatoo is of a flamingo, standing on one leg in a small pool of water.  It was with high hopes that I read the description of what a flamingo animal spirit/totem means.  It would make so much sense if my Patronus were a flamingo.

Flamingo Spirit: is colorful, wild, and gives light.  The word itself is from the Latin word flame.  Flamingos have the ability to change colors and have a shape-shifter association. The Egyptians believed these creatures to be the living embodiment of their Sun God, Ra.  If you have a flamingo spirit, you are likely to mate and breed for life (like a flamingo), and you are likely to be dedicated to your choices and reach further than most are willing to go in order to achieve your goals.

Now, I’m not sure I fit ALL of that.  But I think I fit a good deal!  And given that a Patronus is supposed to reflect the inner you and/or the superficial animal you tend to gravitate towards, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable conclusion to reach - that if I were to wave my wand and utter “Expecto Patronum!” (with the proper concentration and focus on a happy and powerful memory, of course) from the tip of my wand would burst a beautiful, silvery flamingo, which would protect me while standing serenely on one leg.

If you want to read about Whitney’s quest to discover her Patronus, you can read about it here!

I Feel Pluto’s Pain

Remember how I recently said it is very hard to embarrass me? I think I said something about having a thick skin, the result of being dubbed a geek for most of my life. Well, last night my boyfriend proved that it is most definitely possible to embarrass me – and oh boy did he do it in style!

For the last month and a half, I have been looking forward to attending a lecture called “Witness to Demotion: The Rise and Fall of Planet Pluto,” to be given by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think Dr. Tyson is unbelievably cool – he takes unbelievably complicated astrophysical subjects and makes regular people understand them, and he gets you to laugh while he’s doing it. For one of my Christmas gifts, my mom pre-ordered his new book (The Pluto Files) for me because she knew how badly I wanted to read it. For the record, I think Pluto is awesome, regardless of its planetary status. The lecture, highlighting the book, was announced shortly after Christmas, and I jumped all over it – bought tickets to attend as soon as I could, and I told Nicole about it, too (a fellow Plutophile and Dr. Tyson fan). We have been plotting with each other about how awesome the lecture would be for weeks, and we sat and read the book together as soon as it was released.

A bit of background: Alex does not always see eye to eye with me and Nicole when it comes to the subject of Pluto.

So yesterday arrived. Nicole and I were prepared. Each of us had our books in hand when we arrived at the American Museum of Natural History for the lecture. The lecture was great. At the end Dr. Tyson announced he’d be signing books in the lobby for anyone that was interested. Everyonewas interested, which is a testament to how engaging this guy really is. And so we waited in the line of extreme longness to get our copies of The Pluto Files signed.

It was hot. It was crowded. Alex was a good sport and waited with us. As we got closer to the front of the line, I started to chicken out. This was one of my science idols. I wasn’t sure I could handle interacting with him. So I turned to Alex, handed him my book, and said he might need to hand Dr. Tyson the book for me. He found this bizarre, but took the book. Little did I know, the wheels in his head were whirling around at a dangerous pace.

And so it was that after about a 40 minute wait I arrived at the front of the line with my dear boyfriend and my book to have Dr. Tyson sign the front page. The following is an approximation of the way that interaction went:

Alex: hands book to Dr. Tyson, “That’s for Christina.”

Dr. Tyson: “And where is Christina?”

Me: “That’s me.”

Alex: “Yeah, you’ve got a disbeliever here.”

Dr. Tyson: “A disbeliever?” Looks at me with amusement. “What do you mean?”

Alex: “She’s not sure she believes this whole Pluto thing.”

Me: Speechless with embarrassment, can only open and close my mouth silently. I can feel my body start to overheat.

Dr. Tyson: Looks at me as if I have 14 heads sprouting from my left elbow. “I see… well let me check the page… Ok… and how do you spell Christina?”

Me: Barely able to spell my own name, wanting to crawl away and hide from the shame of Dr. Tyson thinking I am questioning his entire book. I am now sweating profusely, and a little bit wishing I had not asked Alex to hand Dr. Tyson my book.

Alex: “C-h-r-i-s-t-i-n-a”

Dr. Tyson: Signs the book, hands it back, smiling the whole time.

That’s it. Well, it’s not it. Because here is what he wrote:

“To Christina, We can surely agree on page 159. Neil deGrasse Tyson”

Want to know what’s on page 159? A comic from a newspaper in Montreal that contains a drawing of Pluto. The headline reads: “News Item: Now Pluto Is NOT a Planet” and Pluto itself is saying “Like I’m supposed to give a s**t?”

Mortified! Horrified! I’m not sure I can ever go to AMNH again for fear of Dr. Tyson seeing me and remembering I am the girl who thinks he’s full of crap! Alex will probably tell you he was trying to ensure Dr. Tyson interacted with me, and the best way he could think of to have that happen was to create conflict. He and I argue about Pluto’s status all the time – he is not as sentimental towards the now-dwarf as I am. I don’t think he anticipated my level of star-struck muteness when faced with the prospect of actually speaking to Dr. Tyson.

But at least my book got signed…

My Most Humiliating Moment

Welcome to the fourth installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every Friday as a sort-of exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

This week’s topic: Worst Public Humiliation Moment

I have to say it took a great deal of soul-searching to come up with my worst moment of public humiliation. I feel quite certain that this was not a problem of a lack of humiliating experiences; rather, a lack of resounding memories about them. Because I was such a geek growing up (see last week’s blog for full details) I developed a pretty thick skin about certain things and it now takes a lot to embarrass me to the point where I would remember it forever.

But that was not always the case, and there is one event in particular that I believe was not only my worst moment of public humiliation, but also shaped a big chunk of my personality in social situations.

The year: circa 1985. I was about 4 years old, and we were having a bunch of people over to our house. It was a family gathering – it might have been my brother’s second birthday, or it might have been Easter. I was in a cute little dress, complete with matching tights and hair barrettes. My hair was curled, and I was wearing white patent leather shoes. I was always a bit anal about everything matching and looking “just-so,” and this occasion was no exception. I remember prancing around like I owned the joint at that party because I knew I looked fantastic. My grandmother (my dad’s mom) arrived with her usual odd assortment of gifts for her grandchildren. Sometimes she brought us bags upon bags of sour cream and onion Lays potato chips. This day, though, she brought hideously ugly, brightly-colored plastic sunglasses. They were much too big for any child to wear, and the lenses were a bizarre grey color and popped out of the sunglasses if you so much as touched them.

Being the princess I was at the age of 4, I was less than thrilled when I was presented with my pair of bright red plastic sunglasses with lenses in the shape of hearts. They were awful. I hated them. – - – - As a side note, I do see the irony in my attitude towards these ugly sunglasses at the tender age of 4, knowing as I do now that I was destined to work as an optician for 9 years and develop a true disdain for cheap sunglasses. – - – - Despite my loathing of the heart-shaped horrors, I had some sense of propriety at age 4, and I knew that if my grandma was giving me a present I better use it in front of her. So I put them on and put on a grand show of prancing around in my fancy dress with my fancy shoes and my new sunglasses.

And that is when my whole family started laughing at me.

To be clear, a family gathering in my family at this time did not mean my parents, my brother, and my grandparents. They were there, but they were not the only people there. My aunts and uncles and cousins were there. So were my parents’ second cousins and their kids. So were our next door neighbors and their kids. And not to be left out, my mom’s best friends from college and their spouses and kids were there, too. And they were all laughing at me.

For the life of me I could not figure out WHY they were laughing. I was just dancing around the steps to the basement, singing and wearing my sunglasses. It wasn’t THAT funny. But people were laughing. Laughing hard. That’s when I reached up and felt the sunglasses on my face. The sunglasses I had put on upside down.

That’s right, perfectly put-together 4-year-old me had put her ugly humongous plastic sunglasses on her face upside down, and didn’t realize it, and proceeded to prance around like the queen of everything. My family found this quite humorous, hence the loud and long laughter. They were still laughing when I took off the sunglasses, turned around, and ran up the stairs crying. I was more embarrassed in that moment than I have ever been in my life. I went in my room, closed the door, and would not come out until my mom came in and told me it was OK and no one was going to remember that I had put them on upside down. But I remembered, and from that moment on I refused to be outgoing or silly or anything that would draw attention to myself in groups – because I never wanted to be the center of attention and therefore subject to ridicule ever again.

If you want to read about Whitney’s most humiliating moment, you can read about it on her blog here.

A Problem of Philosophy

I recently had a conversation about the merits of the statement: “You shouldn’t feel that way.”

I am of the opinion that this statement is a bit offensive.
Perhaps this is something you hear in everyday conversation and ought not to be viewed as offensive. Perhaps. Or maybe how a person feels is a completely subjective experience and ought not ever be invalidated by a statement like “you shouldn’t feel that way.”
By way of definition…

• Feelings are a conscious subjective experience of emotion. As such, feelings almost never give the feeler a perception of the physical world that would be considered a universal perception or reaction.
• Perception: the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. Perception is viewed as a result of the interplay between past experience, your culture, and your own interpretation of what you perceive.

Even the definitions of these words are open to interpretation, and will be judged based on each reader’s own prejudices, pre-conceived notions, needs, and past experiences. And just because the person who wrote the definitions of these concepts may have intended one thing of them, it’s very possible someone reading them will take them in a way not originally intended. I suspect this is the case with a lot of Shakespeare’s works, by the way.
Examples: No one is quite sure if we all experience the color red in the same way. It’s rare to find two people who experience classical music pieces in the same way. Culinary creations suffer from the same problem. You could make an argument that everything in life is subjective, there is no right and wrong, or black and white – only the explanation by each individual for how they perceive the world around them.
Which is the whole point. How can anyone attempt to understand the true nature of the world we live in or the universe as a whole if statements like “you shouldn’t feel that way” are deemed acceptable? That different people feel different ways and interpret things differently is what makes life interesting and difficult to unravel. If someone feels a certain way, that’s how they feel. One individual’s disagreement with that feeling is valid, but should not invalidate the original feeling. Everyone is entitled to feel what they feel and to not be told something is wrong with them for feeling it.
This quote probably says it better than me:
“People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole-shaped.” ~ Unknown

Starbucks Value Menu

I saw this article on AOL.com and found it intriguing.

Starbucks value menu?! I realize the article is really more cautionary than check-this-out, but I’ve got to say my curiosity is piqued…