phaiakia

Let me tell you a story...

2011-08-18T07:43:00.002-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was so brokenhearted, so untrusting, so unbelieving, and so isolated from the world that she began to pray to God, because He was her last hope. She didn't know what she was doing when she was praying, so she simply spoke to God like she wished she could to her own father.

One day, she felt heavy in her heart (which was a fairly common occurrence) and she called out to her Father, "Lord, please never put another man in my life. All they do is hurt me. But, I know You have better plans for me than I have for myself, so if it is Your will, please only put a man in my life if he is the right one -- the one I am supposed to marry. I am sick of all this pain. Please, please listen to this prayer." These words made her feel safe, so she lifted them up to God every day, over and over again, for years.

For quite some time, the girl was completely happy on her own, and her heart became so full of love for the Lord that she could hardly contain her giddiness. If she had the love of Jesus, how could anything worldly compare? Why had she ever wanted worldly love at all, when His love was so amazing? Any time a guy approached her, she would simply tell him, "I don't date. Sorry."

Then one sunny summer Sunday, the Lord brought a man into her life. She was totally caught off guard. What should she do? So she listened to God, and she did as He instructed -- she listened to the man, and talked to him, and opened herself up to him (as best as she knew how, at least, with her broken, walled-up heart). And the more she talked to him, the more she felt that God had definitely brought him into her life for a reason. She knew better than to expect anything from a man, but for some strange reason, this one she could trust. Trust? Was that even possible for her? God was obviously moving in her heart!

She was confused, and scared, and she prayed, "Lord, I don't know if this is going anywhere, but if it does, thank You! And if it doesn't, could You make sure I get a really, really worthwhile lesson out of it?" But in truth, she had a good feeling about the man, whom only by an ethereal mystery she trusted. She wanted to cover all her bases, though.

So when the man left her, as she feared (but also anticipated), she was more confused and brokenhearted than she had ever been before. She pleaded with the Lord, "Dear Father God, please never put another man in my life. Ever. Never, never ever. Under any circumstances. I love You, and that's it."

After some time, the girl spoke these words to her Heavenly Father: "Dear God, thank You for giving me this experience -- the chance to grow in myself, and the chance to grow closer to You. You are everything to me." And she began to feel better, because through all her pain, she had always known that the man was just trying to do what was right in God's eyes, and she certainly couldn't blame him for that. Though his actions hurt her greatly, and made her cry, Jesus Christ was there to wipe her tears away.

It's been a while...

2009-03-04T10:15:00.004-07:00

In the movie Practical Magic, if you've ever seen it, Nicole Kidman's character describes love to her little neice like this:

Gillian Owens: You ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast?
Antonia Owens: She does it all the time.
Gillian Owens: She does? Well, that's what love is like. It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you're not careful, if you don't keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can't see what's happening to the people around you. You can't see that you're about to fall.

I think it's a pretty apt description. Now, I'm not saying I'm in love, I'm talking about love. I think of it as driving down rural roads with all the windows down, screaming at the top of your lungs, "I'm in love!!! I love _____!!!"

You can't concentrate. You hold your phone next to you all the time, waiting for the next time he calls, because he said he would, and you trust him 100% to keep his word. Anything you try doing: reading, movies, burning one, listening to music, writing in your journal... none of it lasts for more than five minutes, because you have a one-track mind.

In a way, it's magical. In a way, it sucks :)

But it's worth it.

The Great Tragedy of Armageddon

2008-09-27T18:28:00.009-07:00

Let's see... it was the year 1999 CE when I believed I had discovered the fundamental truth of the human existence: Tragedy is at the core of everything, and to search for anything else (while it might make you feel better temporarily) is futile.

Why the hell did I think this? I watched Shakespeare in Love.

Now, the surprising thing is that I wasn't wrong. (No, I'm not experiencing a major depressive episode, I just happen to be an educated scientist.)

See, eventually the universe is going to burn out. New stars are not being created at the rate that old stars are dying. That means that eventually, we will run out of stars to light and heat our earth. What happens then? A whole bunch of crazy sh*t. Like the (dead) stars in the galaxies flying apart. Like the universe approaching absolute zero, where everything happens in slow motion because it's so damned cold. Then, at some point, only black holes exist, but when black holes run out of fuel, they explode. What comes out of them? A huge mess of particles. Particles that we can't even imagine. "Chaos" reigns, which I suppose if you take the Greek view, means that women are in charge. :)

And then quantum mechanics takes over, and with an eternity of probabilities to roll through, who knows what arrangements of things might appear?

So, my view is that the fate of the universe, which is basically the Second Law of Thermodynamics, isn't all that different from an Oscar-winning chick flick. Tragedy is the end result of everything after all.

The Universe : Cosmic Apocalypse. The Universe as we know it is condemned to death. Space, matter and even time will one day cease to exist and there's nothing we can do about it. Harsh realities are revealed about the future of our Universe; it may collapse and burn or it might be gripped by a galactic ice age. Either of these scenarios might be a long way off. However, our Universe could suddenly be destroyed by a "random quantum fluctuation", a bubble of destruction that can obliterate the entire cosmos in the blink of an eye. No matter how it ends, life in our Universe is doomed.

Large Hadron Collider Rap

2008-09-01T21:31:00.002-07:00

One of my students sent this to me. Hysterical.

Large Hadron Collider Rap

Remembering XKCD

2008-07-23T04:25:00.006-07:00

I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't fall back asleep... so I drew this:

P.S. My neurologist has forbidden me from drinking more than one drink in a 24-hour period (two Bud Lights, max)... so the alcohol experiment is definitely not happening.

I wonder where my NKOTB sleeping bag is now...

2008-07-08T10:43:00.006-07:00

I just saw the new New Kids on the Block video, "Summertime." It was so, so bad. But when I was a little kid, I loved those guys, so I have to admit, a tiny part of me wanted to download it.

A tiny part of me also felt like I'm getting old.

Carrie Bradshaw stole my wedding!

2008-06-02T19:43:00.013-07:00

(Spoiler alert.)

I went to see Sex and the City today. I loved it, of course... but I certainly wasn't expecting Carrie to steal my wedding.

I've been saying for years that if/when I get married, I want a small wedding, but that if my husband wants a large wedding, I think a good place would be a public library. They usually have cool architectural features, and... well... libraries are just classy.

So, this is way #1 in which Carrie steals my wedding. Then the wedding doesn't happen.

Okay, no biggie. Well, then at the end of the movie, the wedding does end up happening, and this is where it gets creepy. My dream wedding, the one that doesn't involve my husband interfering and demanding something big, goes something like this:

Hold the ceremony at City Hall. People tend to waste inordinate amounts of money on the ceremony when it only lasts 15 minutes, and I do not plan on doing this. City Hall is perfect for me.
Wear short, but not too short, off-white (probably vintage, but maybe designer) dress with ridiculously expensive blue shoes. (Blue because you need "something blue" -- this is my one nod to silly tradition -- and expensive because... well, if you can't buy ridiculously expensive shoes for your wedding day, when can you?)
Gather friends and family for an informal and fun reception (I used to joke that I would rent out No Anchovies for the night, but after years of scaring my mom, I finally promised her I would have my reception somewhere slightly more upscale than a college bar). None of that typical wedding crap -- every wedding I've ever been to has the same formulaic approach to the reception, and it gets old. I just want the people I love gathered around me, kicking off their ridiculously expensive shoes, and helping me celebrate my wedding to the man I love.

So, what did Carrie do at her successful wedding to Big? She wore a knee-length off-white dress with blue shoes. They had the ceremony at City Hall, after which they gathered their friends at an informal restaurant and had a great time celebrating. Seriously, I think my jaw was on the floor, because it was my wedding, exactly.

I called my mom and told her, and she suggested I get a job writing for Sex and the City, since the writers are "stealing" my ideas anyway. I would pursue this if I thought a second movie or a spinoff series were in the works. Hmm, maybe I could hook up with the He's Just Not That Into You people... they seem like they're still going strong... ;)

Edit: my dear friend Brie left me this comment on another webpage... "Uhm... they ARE doing a movie sequel (or so I hear). And Carrie totally did steal your wedding, I've known you for YEARS to say as much, and even while watching the movie, I thought to myself 'Lindsey would totally do it this way--down to the shoes.'"

<3 iTunes

2008-05-31T17:57:00.008-07:00

My dad reinstalled XP on my computer a few days ago, so I've been reconfiguring a lot of stuff. Today I restored all my iTunes files. Then a miracle happened.

For some reason, I had always assumed that iTunes podcasts cost money, and for this reason had never really cared about that feature. Uhm, I was seriously missing out, because it turns out they're free. All of them. And they're amazing. I was like a kid in a candy store -- I subscribed to way more podcasts than I can keep up with.

Then came iTunes U. Easily the greatest invention, ever. Turns out you can get entire courses on iTunes... FOR FREE. As I write, I'm still downloading. Physics, classics, news, gossip... it's all mine. I'm gonna need a bigger hard drive...

Def.: "Irony"

2008-05-28T20:45:00.004-07:00

I LOVE finding things to laugh at while I'm driving, and it isn't usually very difficult, because there are a lot of stupid people out there in the world. Today, I was sitting behind a Ford Explorer at a stoplight on Campbell. It had the following bumper sticker:

"TEACH RESPECT for the earth and all living things."

Now, I Googled it just to make sure, but an Explorer gets less than 20 miles to the gallon.

See, this is what pisses me off. We have all these people running around going "I'm green! I'm so green! Look at me with my reusable grocery bag! And my kid wears organic cotton t-shirts!" Right. And then you drive a f***ing Ford Explorer, you hypocritical soccer mom.

This happened back in '01 after 9/11 -- everyone was soooooooooooo patriotic. Like, if you weren't overly patriotic, you were the antichrist. A friend of mine and I used to walk through the mall and get visibly angry over this, because people weren't being patriotic as a result of how they truly felt, they were being patriotic out of peer pressure. This whole "green" fad is the same thing. Now, I'm not saying being patriotic is bad, or being green is bad. In fact, I think both are good. But if you're claiming to be more patriotic or more green than you actually are, then you're a liar. And lying is bad.

So there, soccer mom.

Bomb Shelter!

2008-05-19T11:11:00.006-07:00

The high school I work at has a bomb shelter, which is easily the coolest structural feature it could possibly have. The high school I graduated from was built in (I want to say) 1980, so we didn't have any noteworthy historical relics embedded in our campus. Cue jealousy.

I've known about the bomb shelter since (approximately) the first week I started working here, but have not had a chance to visit it until today. It was AMAZING. It was EVERYTHING I COULD HAVE HOPED FOR.

I would post a picture, but... well... that would ruin the mystery and the mythology which surround our bomb shelter. The few who have had the privilege of visiting it are truly blessed.

omg! like have a great summer! call me 555-1234

2008-05-16T19:41:00.004-07:00

I had two students come to me with entire blank pages in their yearbooks, and a list of bulleted points they wanted me to address when I signed their books. Here's what resulted (inside joke warning):

"Dear J~~~...
Please take this summer to work on your inflated ego. And also to learn how to treat women, because they don't usually like it when you break up with them in a text message. Here's the list of things you wanted me to mention:
* ManCoaster -- 'go big or go home.' I will keep the ManCoaster, so check back next year and we'll see if it held up over the summer.
* The PLRL -- as far as I know, you are still the Plumb Line Racing League record holder.
* The bird -- seriously, who brings a bird into physics? An actual bird?
* Your man crush on T~~~~~f. I am not sorry about this. A man crush does not imply homosexuality, just that T~~~~~f is a very good friend of yours. You know, like Achilles and Patroclus. Look it up.
* Nut Ball -- you are retarded.
* Your nerd voice -- I think the funniest part about this is that your brother had no idea what I was talking about when I asked him to do the "J~~~ voice."
Also, I maintain that you giggle like a woman and that you also have a man crush on S~~~~~. 'Woman.' --Miss G.
P.S. Murderball... the guy in the wheelchair."

"WIKIPEDIA.
S~~~~~, A~~~~~. A physics student who frequently makes unintentional sexual outbursts in class. He does homework in his bedsheets (then leaves it there and uses that as an excuse) and he drinks coffee in the shower. He enjoys reading about pretty much anything that is not related to his physics assignments, including Sealand, which was almost destroyed in a one-man coup-de-etat.
A~~~~~ came up with the term "Captain Gamo" to describe his teacher, Miss G, with whom he shares many strange OCD tendencies, like walking oddly across floor tiles. Though A~~~~~ has a generous vocabulary, he once took a vow of silence against this same teacher. (He also asked G to be a dodgeball referee, forcing her to wear an incredibly ridiculous outfit.)
A~~~~~ is best known for introducing Miss G's 6th period to the loquat, and for getting his finger stuck in the lab desk, a feat which required large amounts of lotion to remedy.
[citation needed]"

I actually did underline all those words in the yearbook to make it look like a Wikipedia article. Obviously I added the links just for this blog.

Cell phones

2008-05-01T07:01:00.009-07:00

When my students get caught using their cell phones in class, I take the phone away until the end of the day. To get it back, they have to write a 100-word paragraph. These paragraphs are usually boring, but one I received yesterday made me laugh pretty hard (note that some of the kids in my 6th period call me "Captain Gamo"):

Nostalgia

2008-04-27T15:04:00.006-07:00

It's fun to reminisce. The other day, I found myself noticing trends in side bangs (most girls sweep them to the right, not the left) and that got me to thinking about how kids' hairstyles have changed since I was their age. When I was 13, all the boys had some variant of the bowl cut -- most parted it down the center, though. Oh, and they all wore JNCO pants. JNCOs were the shit.

Then I started thinking about how technology has changed. When I was 16, you were cool if you had a pager... if you had one today, people would probably think you had something to sell. And we all had geocities pages back then (I think mine might have been in Tokyo, because I read an awful lot of Sailor Moon in 7th grade -- feel free to laugh). What ever happened to geocities? I guess people got sick of the watermark.

Anyway, AIM has amazingly survived. I still use it, although now I often log in from my phone. And the idiocy I once endured on ICQ is now the idiocy I endure on... well, anywhere people leave comments. Which is everywhere.

The reason I logged on to the internet back then is the same reason I log on now, though. There aren't a whole lot of people like me roaming around Arizona, so I figure there might be some people whose interests I share online. I've always conceived of the internet as some sort of John Donne-esque entity, so someday, I suppose, I'll find some people to share my little corner of the world with.