Category — Mental Sampler

I have long wanted to don a virtual reality headset and explore a three-dimensional space.  This summer I ended up getting two Google Cardboard… systems? (What do you even call that?)  But I couldn’t get them to work because I’m just not that bright.

The Wolvog found them this week and asked what they were, and he was able to figure it out in seconds.  He downloaded the app and told me he was looking at a beach.

OH MY G-D, I HAVE TO SEE NOOOOOOOOW.

So he handed it over and it was very cool.  If I turned my head, the image moved, too, just as it would if I was standing in reality and turned my head.

And then I pulled it away from my face and I instantly felt like I was going to vomit.  The dizziness and nausea didn’t leave me for at least 15 minutes.  It felt like when you stand in the middle of a field and spin around for a few minutes and then stop, and the whole world is wobbling.

Of course, in writing this, I went on Google Cardboard’s site and saw that there was a warning.  I’m a little bummed out because I had high hopes of doing some armchair travel with this, but I don’t think I can deal with the hangover.

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Martin Shkreli was arrested this week for securities fraud.  I cannot cheer on someone else’s misery despite their other actions, BUT I do wonder if he would have been investigated if he hadn’t jacked up the medicine prices.  Maybe yes and his arrest would have been a personal experience instead of an international news one, or maybe when people do crappy things, it draws negative attention that leads to crappy things done to them.  I don’t know: I guess I see him more as a “how not to comport oneself in the world” example more than anything else.

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Do squirrels feel shame?  I was writing and when I looked up, two squirrels were having sex… squirrel-style (I was going to say “doggie style,” but Josh said that’s probably rude to squirrels)… right outside my window.  If the window was open, I could have reached out to touch them.

The receiver squirrel had his/her eyes closed, and the other squirrel was taking care of business.  After they were finished, they looked up and met my eye, and froze in place.  We all stared at each other for about 3 minutes, and I got a definite shame vibe wafting off them, much in the same way teenagers stare at their parents when caught having sex on the living room sofa.

Finally, the giver squirrel casually cleaned himself up… with his tongue (TMI?).  And both squirrels hopped down.  Receiver returned a little while later with a different squirrel and promptly engaged in sex again.  In the same place.  Which seems a little rude, no?  I mean, if you’re going to have a second (third?  fourth?) sexual partner in the matter of an hour, shouldn’t you at least choose a new spot?  Pretend that you only have eyes for one squirrel?

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Have you found all the hidden images in the new Harry Potter covers?  I love stuff like this.

By now, I am sure you have read about the fertility-enhancing worm.  I didn’t click on the story at first because I didn’t want to see the pictures of the worm.  But, of course, curiosity won out.  Still.  Worms!

I think I found my deal breaker.  I don’t know if I could be infected with worms in order to have a baby. I am aware that I also didn’t think I could give myself injections, and I clearly overcame that fear.  But being infected with worms takes things to a different level.  I didn’t realize I had a limit, and yet here it is.

What do you think?  Could you purposefully become infected with worms?

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Do you ever go on Atlas Obscura?  It’s one of my favourite places on the Internet.  You type in your zipcode (or the zipcode of wherever you’re going), and it spits out interesting things in the area.

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I really want to go see this park of monsters.  I clicked on the article because I had been to Zuccari’s monster house in Rome, and thought they were related.  (See!  Mental Floss and Atlas Obscura go hand-in-hand.)  But they’re not.  And I missed this during my trip to Italy.  Must go back.

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I checked Jojo Moyes’s new book, After You, from the library.  I decided to borrow it rather than buy it, mostly due to my experience with her other book.  I guess I wanted to see similarities before I committed?  I’m really enjoying it; it’s a continuation of the first story.  Though I’m only at the beginning.  Anyone else read it yet?

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing.

Truman has pneumonia.  Remember a few weeks ago when he had a respiratory infection, and the sneezing didn’t go away with the antibiotics so I tried changing to a 100% more delicious bedding?  On Thursday he started wheezing again, so I took him back to the vet for chest x-rays.  One lung is completely filled with fluid, and they needed to give him oxygen.

(What does a guinea pig look like on oxygen, my friend asked.  I don’t know.  They wouldn’t let me go back there.  Maybe because I was crying.)

Pneumonia is better than cancer, which was the other idea they were entertaining.  I felt sick the ride out to the vet, but she reassured me that the fact that his appetite and personality are normal is a good sign.  He’s on another course of antibiotics.

She also told me (not to brag) that he is the sweetest, most easy-going guinea pig in the world, and that he is quite the little lover.  I’m assuming she meant that in the platonic, loving sense of the term.  He is a little lover.  The Wolvog dryly informed the vet that Truman is my third child.  She gave a nervous laugh, thinking he was joking, but the kids stared at her, hard.

He is my sweet baby boy.  And hopefully he’ll be better soon.

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Josh fixed our freezer.  We had an appointment for someone to come over and fix it (the freezer drain was clogged with ice), but I looked up instructions online and wanted to try it ourselves.  So after a day of guinea pig chest x-rays, we emptied the freezer, unplugged the machine, and spent a half hour trying to figure out how to remove the back so we could get at the drain.

It took about an hour to take everything apart, clean it out with hot water, and put everything back together.

The freezer is totally quiet.

I called to cancel the service appointment.  When the guy answering the phone asked me why, I crowed, “because we fixed it ourselves!”  He was not nearly excited enough.  So I said it several more times.  He still didn’t show proper excitement.  Then I gave up.  And I’ll say it to you:

We fixed it ourselves!

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The twins are huge fans of Welcome to Night Vale.  But imagine their horror when signs went up around the neighbourhood announcing a Street Cleaning Day.  The ChickieNob immediately shrieked, “run, run, stay calm, run!”

This is the episode:

Run!

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Someone erected a small cross on the side of the road near our house.  I would have missed it if the kids weren’t in camp; it’s not a direction I normally drive.  The cross is gone.  Or, rather, it’s on its side in the grass.  I sometimes think about stopping my car and setting it back up except I don’t know why it’s there.

The cross doesn’t look like other crosses that sometimes mark the place where a car crashed.  There are no flowers, no teddy bears, no neat white wooden cross purchased at a craft store.

This cross is made out of sticks and the base is a styrofoam block painted black.  There is black fabric draped over the crossed sticks.

I wonder who put it there and why.  And why they haven’t returned to set it upright again.  Or how it got knocked down in the first place.

Side note: Tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Get writing.

I’ve dubbed this summer the Summer of Mystery.  The twins and I are doing a mystery theme for the summer in regards to what we read.  We’re doing a few books together — The Westing Game and Sherlock Holmes stories — and then they went to the library and raided the mystery section to choose some independent reading books.  They’re writing mystery games.

I have put together a real, live mystery to solve, as in read the clues and figure out the message type mystery.  And they don’t want to do it.  Can you believe it?  I would do anything for someone to gift wrap a series of mysterious messages for me to solve throughout the summer.  I would do it for myself but… you know… that would mean that I already know the answer.

We’ll see if they come around.

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A few years ago, I started doing something brilliant.  (Please tell me this is brilliant.)  Every time I hear about a book I want to read, I go on iBooks and download the sample to my virtual bookcase.  Then, whenever I’m in the library, I can peruse my virtual bookcase and remember what I wanted to read.  Plus, if I’m ever somewhere with nothing to do, I can read the samples and decide whether or not the book actually holds my interest.

Once I read the book, I delete it from the virtual bookshelf.  I move all the books I really own in full down to the bottom of the bookcase so I can find them easily.

Isn’t that smart?  Please tell me I’m smart.

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My friend got me a Ninja for my birthday.  It’s sort of a blender, but it’s specifically for making icy drinks.  It turns ice cubes into snow in seconds.  Which means that you can make your own Frappuccinos or snow cones at home.

I have been consuming an obscene amount of liquid because of the Ninja.

I love my friend because she knows me so well.

I am totally bringing slushies to the pool this summer.  That’s my summer plan: books and slushies at the pool.

What’s your summer plan?

Side note: tomorrow is #MicroblogMonday.  Start writing your mini post.

I am someone who verbally beats myself up when I have an unproductive day and glows when I’ve managed to pound through a lot of work.  Perhaps I should look into not having my self-esteem tied to how much I perceive I’ve accomplished, but barring that, I was deeply interested in Lifehacker’s advice on how to get over an unproductive day.

I think my favourite idea on the list was sending myself to bed early and waking the next day early.  Though I will say that I use coffee as a productivity anchor.  I better have accomplished something substantial before I pour myself the final half-cup.  It’s like I need to hold that last bit of coffee partially out-of-reach so I’ll work hard to get it.

I’m a bit like a trained lab rat that way.

How do you get over an unproductive day?

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WOFE is a new portmanteau I just learned for the merging of work and life into one amorphous blob of time.  In other words, instead of designating the hours between X and Y to be dedicated to work, and designating the hours between Y and X to be dedicated to home life, the two have bled into one another so that we bring home life into the work day (such as pumping breast milk during work) and we bring work life into the home (answering emails after dinner).

I have no work-life divide because I work out of the house.  I mean, I could.  I could set firm boundaries, but I don’t really mind everything mixing together like a salad.  I like having the flexibility during the day to go volunteer at the twins’ school.  And if I want that, I have to also not mind that work sometimes pops up at 11 pm and needs to be completed before I go to sleep.  That last scenario is rare, but it does happen several times a year.  More often it is simply working after the twins have gone to bed, or dragging a laptop on vacation and taking care of a few tasks at the beginning of each day.

But this was the part of the piece that made me tired:

The need to stay constantly connected is rapidly on the rise, as individuals not only run the risk of losing business, but also need to maintain the working relationships they’ve formed … Work hours are creeping well past conventional daytime hours along with other activities such as eating, cleaning, socializing and taking care of the kids which are all intertwined, often quite seamlessly. When was the last time you went out for lunch without checking your phone at least a few times during the meal?

Uh… a long time?

When was the last time you went out (at any time — morning, lunch, late at night) without checking your phone at least once?