Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Mmmm Tasty

So I have always known that college students don't really have the best diets. They don't talk about the "freshman 15" (or 20 as the case may be) for nothing. But there is one thing I was surprised to see a college student eating on his way to class one morning: Ramen noodles. I know what you're thinking. Um Linds, do you really go to college? Does the reason you don't have a degree yet have anything to do with your inability to see the obvious? (Well, actually, I do have a problem with seeing the obvious but that is beside the point.) No, Ramen noodles are not an unusual site on college campuses (I very nearly tried to pluralize that as campusii... there's another sign I've been here too long). No, I even enjoy the occasional Ramen noodles myself. I just like to COOK mine before eating them!!!! (At least in public). So I had to do a double take when I passed a kid who was eating a package of ramen noodles straight from the bag on his way to class. It was the funniest thing I have seen all week and I find humor in everything! Had I been thinking clearly I would have asked him if he needed a can opener for the cold spaghettios he probably had in his backpack. That's ok, I don't eat death in a can myself, especially not cold, (sorry if you actually like spaghettios) so I wouldn't have had a can opener anyway.
Anyway, it was the most random and surprising discovery I have made in awhile because I honestly had no idea people still ate raw ramen noodles after puberty, and had certainly never seen it done in public. To each his own I guess. Bon appetite!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Super Quick Tag

Sooooo... I have been"tagged." And while I contemplated ignoring the tag because I really think it is going to be boring for everyone to read, I decided that if I had attempted to do that on the playground in elementary school I would have quickly run out of friends. And I would like to avoid that at this point.
However, I am really short on time and not very creative so while I am attempting to answer the 8 is great tag if I can't think of 8 things I am just going to do the mathematically impossible and say that there are 8 even if you cant see them. I'm sorry but I think if mathematicians can tell you that you have two apples and then multiply them by zero and take away your apples so you have none and say that that makes sense, then I can make up my own numbering system and pretend that it all adds up to 8. Also, brownie points to anyone who can explain the zero times anything is zero concept in plain english to me. Ive been working on it since third grade and it still makes NO sense!
All right, here we go
8 things I am passionate about:
1. My family
2. Learning anything and everything I can
3. Africa (actually, seeing the whole world in general)
4. The Gospel
5. Solving world problems (not that I have done that...)
6. Education (my own, but especially to people who have none)
7. Health/Medicine/The Human body
8. Understanding the world in which I live

8 Phrases I say a lot
1. LAME!!!
2. What the Lame?
3. Good grief/ good goodness
4. Soooooo
5. Surely
6. I know
And two that I would like to adopt but never do:
7. Love (calling people that, like "Thanks love")(But I have a fear that this would somehow come back and bite me in the butt and really embarass me. Like if I said it to a professor or something. Bad news)
8. Swear to Buddha (Same reason as above. I would likely offend the Dalai Lama or something)

8 Things I want to do before I die
Uh, how about just if I had all the time and money in the world instead?
1. Be a doctor
2. Hike the Subway in Zions National Park
3. Scuba dive
4. Learn more languages (really obscure ones too, like Shona, or Hmong)
5. Teach health in Africa
6. Understand Chemistry
7. Witness the death of Facebook
8. Be the host of Scientific American Frontiers (If anyone knows Alan Alda, please give him my number:)

8 Things I have learned from my past
1. Whatever experiences you have you can learn from
2. Eggs WILL explode in the microwave (please don't try this, I am already responsible for the deaths of too many microwaves and I promise it is true, and messy)
3. It rains on everybody in Seattle but there are still happy people there. In other words, we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness.
4. It is better to try to understand somebody than to just judge them (harder, but better)
5. Not deciding is not a decision (not a good one anyway)
6. You are the only one who holds yourself back from achieving whatever it is you want.
7. Even if people get away with a certain behavior all the time, you will get caught the one time you do it. Especially if you are a responsible person
8. God has a wicked sense of humor. Have you seen the platypus? But He also laughs with you, not at you.

8 Places I want to go
Well, we could just sum this up quickly and say the whole world, but...
1. Africa (Botswana especially)
2. The Seychelles
3. Christmas Island during the crab migration
4. Anywhere that I could see the Aurora Borealis
5. Spain
6. New York City
7. Afghanistan
8. India
8. Taiwan, Ecuador, The Canary Islands....

8 Things I currently need or want
1. Piano lessons
2. A laptop
3. Someone to do my homework for me
4. For daylight savings time to cease to exist
5. a mental floss T shirt
6. to be graduated
7. to be able to take my dog with me to school
8. for more people to believe in global warming (seriously, do we have to wait till our skin melts off our faces to believe it? Ok thats the subject for another post...)
Yeah, those are mostly wants.... but if you want to get me any of them my birthday is coming up.....

8 people I tag
Ok so apparently a lot more people read my blog than what I know about. So if you are one of them I tag you! Leave me a link in the comments and I will check out your blog:)
So there you have it. I now consider myself vaccinated against future tag outbreaks and hereby declare my immunity. I promise my next post will be more interesting (if you find rants about recycling interesting that is...)
Que thanks Bye!

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Still Learning

Hey so I wanted to post a video from Youtube here, but to do so I have to sign up for an account and remember yet another password, and quite frankly I just don't have the energy or patience for it. But if you have enough energy to look up the following video on Youtube and about 8 minutes of patience I promise you won't be disappointed. I rarely watch this show because its on so late but when I do I laugh hysterically. The accent doesn't hurt either. Anyway, check out the following video: Craig Ferguson, "If you don't vote, you're a moron"
You can also just follow this link if you don't have quite that much patience: http://www.misscellania.com/miss-cellania/2008/9/12/if-you-dont-vote-youre-a-moron.html
Enjoy!

shrtned wrds

That's "shortened words" in the title, natch. (And if you didn't know, natch is short for naturally, of course!)
I got a question from Elise a while ago about a word that frequently popped up in her cross word puzzles. I had never heard it before and so was interested to learn about its meaning and background.
The word is "plaint" and I have a 'plaint of my own about it. Namely, it is not a word!!!! Its just a shortened word! Short for "complaint"! If only there were a customer service department for the English language I would be first in line to COMplain. (Notice I didn't say "plain" even though that is the shortened form of the word and it is now apparently acceptable to shorten words to your hearts content.)
RIDICULOUS!
Anyway, I was rather disappointed about this definition. Here i was all excited to see what new word I would learn and where it originated and all I get was this ghetto slang version of "complaint". Actually even ghetto slang is cooler than that. This was more like baby talk only not so cute because there wasn't a cute baby saying it. More like a crazy companion I had on the mission who spoke in baby talk every day despite the fact that she was 24!!!
Ok, I have calmed down. Happy thoughts. But all this did get me thinking. Sometimes I wish there were a customer service department for the English language. Though probably if there were it would be so busy that you would be put on hold for years at a time listening to a recording about the proper diagramming of sentences and the difference between your and you're (which really some of us could use a refresher course on...)
At any rate I know what my first order of business would be if there were a customer service department for English. And no it is not the shortening of words, though that would be on the list as well. My first order of business would be to ban the use of the word "impregnable."
Ugh, just writing it makes me cringe. I hate that word. I can't even explain why. Its just such a dumb, yucky, unnecessary word. Especially because it never refers to anything living (though truthfully I am glad of that as I would probably hate it even more if it did). People talk about a castle being impregnable. Well duh! Its made of rocks! I don't know what you were expecting here but basic biology could have probably enlightened you on this one had you let it penetrate your thick head, much like you are trying to penetrate the stupid castle. You know, the impenetrable one! Really, is the other word even necessary?
Another word I hate, but for different reasons, is pooch. Now quickly, what is the first thing that comes to mind when i use that word? It should be dog. That's what a pooch is. A small furry animal that brings joy or allergies into your life. Recently however some people have been using it to refer to the overdeveloped region around their abdomens. May I ask that you please refrain from doing so in my presence unless you happen to be holding a small dog near your middle? Because the name of the area you are referring to is called your gut. Beer belly, spare tire, muffin top, flab and love handles are also acceptable substitutions. Pooch is not.
I think this may have started because people were thinking it was a poofy area of the body but couldn't call it a poof because that word has a lighter connotation, like a cloud. And the gut, at least mine, is not poofy like a cloud:) They also couldn't use pouch, because kangaroos have those on their guts but not the rest of us (I hope!) So instead they decided to commandeer the word pooch and apply it to their flabby midsections. Not cool. The word is now ruined for me because even if somebody uses it to refer to a dog all I can think about is Uncle Joe's flabby midsection hanging over his pants. Gross.
So there is my rant for the day. Please feel free to share with me any words that you think really must go. Perhaps we can call customer service together and get them abolished. Right after we finish diagramming those sentences:)