Interessante...

Several different psychological brain tests for a research study. Interesting all around.

Test your brain!

High on a hill was a lonely...sock

Sometimes life is just like that.

You lose a sock somewhere in the deep recesses of space-time, otherwise known as BusyLifeMessyRoomSockEatingLaundry. You hang on to the poor, widowed sock for a suitable grieving period, in hopes that its MIA partner will soon be found.

But then, you just have to cut it loose and send it to the special home for widowed socks (a.k.a. the trash), unless you happen to be a connoisseur of sock-wallets or sock-cell-phone-holders or sock-mug-warmers (*eww*), which I'm not.

It never fails. Less than a week later, just long enough for the trash to reach the dump, bingo: house cleaning, missing sock found. Throwing that second sock away now seems doubly wasteful, not to mention cruel, but what else can you do? 

Maybe save it and try to matchmake it with the next sock to lose a partner to the BLMRSEL? But I doubt they'd just randomly have enough e-Harmony compatibility points to make it work. So what can you do?

See, sometimes life is just like that.

30 Degrees of Perspective

Sometimes, I do strange things when I'm sleeping. Sometimes I remember them. Sometimes I just wake up with a really sore neck. 

Like today.

I'm currently walking around with my head tipped 30 degrees to the right because it hurts to keep my head upright, tilt it 31 degrees to the right or tilt it at all to the left. 

So you could say, I'm seeing life from a different angle today.

Haha.

I think sometimes that small shift is all it takes. For me, reading and writing trigger a lot of those "ah-ha!" (or "uhh") moments. I've been working on a novel and a few short stories lately. I wrote the novel before I started college, and now I'm rewriting, trying to give it greater rounding and complexity.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to analyze how my fictional characters would behave, and how to make sure their actions are grounded in their personalities, past history, and prior experiences.  I want them to be human. I want them to be sympathetic. I hate one-dimensional villains. 

I was working on that project yesterday when it hit me: I spend far more time making fictional characters human than I do granting the people around me the right to be human. I am far more eager to discover the rationale behind my characters' actions than I am to discover the reasons behind the actions of people I struggle to love.

Unlike the literary characters, they are acting in the same play and scene as I am. They antagonize me (and I them), not another fictional personality. That makes it harder to want to know their story. I can manipulate my fictional characters. I can give them a rationale that makes sense to me. I can't do that to real people. I can't always understand why they do what they do.

And then I have to stop again. Some of the most complex, compelling literary villains/antiheroes in existence are not entirely comprehensible: Macbeth, Iago, Heathcliff, Javert, Messala, Ahab, Rogozhin... I dislike them, but they also draw me because I have this deep belief that they too have reasons, a story, even if I can't see the whole picture or understand it fully. I still care, because I think of them as human. 

So why not people I know are human? It would seem that I care more about people who only exist on a piece of paper than I do about the real people God has placed around me. 

Ouch.

Life lessons can be such a pain in the neck.

Misleading book titles and my lack of patience

Taking a break from my heavier reading list, I recently decided to pick up The Inheritance "Trilogy" by Christopher Paolini. Friends who know I enjoy fantasy had recommended it to me, and I'd had a copy of Eragon I purchased at a library book sale sitting on my shelf for almost a year. 

Knowing that I can't start a book and not finish it unless severely provoked, I thought this would be a good reading project for a week or so; self-contained, pick-up-and-put-down etc. Even if it wasn't that good, I thought it would be a nice break. 

So I read Eragon. And I checked out Eldest and Brisingr from the library. And read them. For those of you who haven't read the books, they're long. Upwards of 500 pages each. They're okay. Not great literature, but not bad.

Just over a week later, as I neared the end of Brisingr today, I started realizing that the plot was winding up, not down.  There's no way he can finish this in 75 pages, I thought. Just as the books are getting more original and interesting, he's going to do a presto-changeo, slap-bang ending that will be horrible. Great.

And then I hit the last page and saw the words--To Be Continued. I know, I know, all the Eragon fans out there knew that already, but I never got caught up in that craze, so I was still riding on the word "trilogy" from book 1. He decided to make it a "cycle" not a "trilogy" and do four books.

Dang it. 

Now I have to wait for book 4, which I'm guessing will have a black dragon on the cover. Whenever it comes out. And I obviously can't not read it. So I have to a] buy it new (not likely), b] borrow it from a friend (I don't know many fanatics of this one), c] wait for it to hit the libraries and stay on a mile-long reserve waiting list, or d] wait for it to hit used paperbacks on Amazon.  

But most of all, I have to keep thinking about how it will end and which of the more-or-less predictable ending patterns Paolini has chosen. 

"Self-contained"

"Pick up and put down"

Patience?

Ha. 

Grumble.

The saddest thing

I just saw the saddest thing yesterday. I was driving on a country road, behind another car, and it swerved in front of me. I assumed there was roadkill that it didn't want to get in its tires. I do the same thing, after all.

Well, it was. There was a dead groundhog on the side of the road, a pretty big one. But sitting next to it was a live groundhog. Just sitting there.

I swerved too, and the live groundhog scampered a little way off the road and sat upright in the weeds, watching me driving by. 

I looked in my rearview mirror once I was past, and it had shuffled back onto the road and was sitting next to the dead one again. 

I'm not a crier, but I almost did cry. I'm not sure why it hit me so closely, but it was really sad, watching the little guy sit there, not moving around, just sitting there. :-(

Dancing = Exercise

To anyone who ever thought dancing was easy and couldn't be exercise?  Watch and weep... Made me tired just watching it.

Further proof is in the texting

You know for certain that you're an English major geek if you become insanely frustrated by your inability to type apostrophes on your cell phone, and you stop sending text messages that require the words "it's" "I'm" or "we'll". 

Large interstates have gas stations every few miles, right? So why can't they have dancing stations every twenty miles or so, for stress relief? I think that would go a long way toward decreasing road rage. Just sayin'... Take note, DOT.

One-Year Anniversary

It's hard to believe that today is my one-year anniversary of graduating from college. (And Wednesday is the one-year anniversary of starting contra dancing...haha). 

I looked back at my first blog posts, written around this time last year. Here's what I had to say the day after graduation:

I am "homesick" for college in a very real way. I think it's natural to feel this way. I've spent four years of my life with these people, in this place. They are family to me, and it is home. 

So now I have to ask myself the questions college freshman often ask: How do I move on from here? How do I keep the memories alive without dwelling in the past and missing out on the present? These are difficult questions that not even the many miles of dark, winding interstate are sufficient to answer.

I'm still working on the answers to those questions, even now. But in some ways, this year has been the answer I was looking for.

The year has flown by. It looks different in retrospect than it looked in expectation. Mostly, that's a good thing. I've grown up a lot this year, but I still have oh so far to go. I wonder what I'll be saying looking back next year?

You wanted to start grad school? 

You thought last year had a lot of changes?

I don't know where I'll be this time next year, but I am thankful for so many unexpected blessings this year, and I am excited to see what this next year will bring. (and terrified, but we won't dwell on that part ;-). Here's one for the road!)

Singing in the Rain

Have I mentioned that I love thunderstorms? Funny how things change, isn't it? 

And sleeping when it's raining on the roof. 

Starting grad school is starting to become real to me (though I've yet to hear a response after I sent in my acceptance card - yikes!). And scary. It's kind of like the difference between listening to rain on the roof and driving in a washout, though that can be exciting as well as scary. 

Baby steps. Baby steps. And weddings, in the meantime...

Why do bruises make good stories...

...if grass stains don't? and other questions that run through your mind after the sixth hour in the car. Such as...

• Why do people have such a strong urge to look for the rainbow?
  
• Why does no one stop their car in a rainstorm to get out and jump in puddles?
  
• Why do we seek information about other people from everyone except them?
  
• Why do police officers never drive red cars?
  
• Who invented hugs?
  
• Do turkeys know they taste good?
  
• If eyes cry and mouths turn down, how do ears express emotion?
  
• What does it mean to love and support someone?
  
• How much do good intentions count?
  
• What does joy smell like? How about sadness?

I'm feeling philosophical tonight. How about you?